Sunlounger - the Ultimate Beach Read (Sunlounger Stories Book 1)

by Belinda Jones

  ‘Oh, you’ll be there.’ His confidence was sexy, but I didn’t let on.

  ‘Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.’ I slid the key into the slot, then opened the door and stepped inside.

  ‘I’ll wait for you at Fly Catalina.’ He grinned, his eyes dancing. ‘Don’t stand me up.’

  I leaned into the hallway again and kissed his cheek softly, leaving an outline of my lips in ruby lipstick, my mouth lingering next to his face for a few seconds after.

  Even though there were bachelorette festivities still ahead of me, I already knew this moment was the best part of my evening.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I whispered into his ear with a playful smile, before retreating into my room and shutting the door.

  My motto? Always keep them wanting more.

  About the Author

  Nancy Scrofano worked as an editor and journalist for her college newspaper, then went on to develop sociology textbooks for an academic publisher. Now she is a freelance writer and the author of novel TRUE LOVE WAY and novelette CUPID ON DECK. Additionally, Nancy is the founder and managing editor of The Chick Lit Bee, a book blog that promotes and celebrates women’s fiction. She lives in southern California where she is at work on her next novel.

  Visit the Sunlounger website at www.va-va-vacation.com/nancy-scrofano

  We have everything you need to make this your Best Summer Ever!

  You can also chat with the authors on the Belinda Jones Travel Club Facebook page.

  Return to the contents list.

  MR LOVER LOVER

  ***

  Cally Taylor

  Destination: Lindos, Greek Islands

  Laura and I were hauling squashed sandwiches, crushed crisps and warm lemonade out of the boot of the car when Stella appeared on the brow of the hill and sped towards us wailing like a banshee, her arms outstretched, her flip-flopped feet skidding and slipping on loose stones and rocks.

  ‘Man!’ she screamed, pointing back up the hill we’d chosen for its breath-taking view of the bay. ‘Up there.’

  ‘A man you say? In Rhodes? Who’d have thought it?’ Laura rolled her eyes and I laughed. It was no secret that Stella was desperate to get over Simon but surely her man hunt could wait until we’d had some lunch. We’d only been on holiday for four hours. There was a full six days to go on the pull!

  ‘He’s naked!’ Stella breathed.

  ‘That’s fast work. You only got out the car five minutes ago!’

  ‘Stop taking the piss you two, I’m serious.’ Stella wiped the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead. ‘I was up there, shaking the picnic rug out when I heard a noise from the bushes. At first I thought it was an injured animal but then I spotted him, a man lying in the undergrowth. He’s unconscious and there’s blood pouring out the side of his head.’

  ‘What happened?’ Laura asked, her eyes wide.

  Stella shook her head. ‘No idea, there’s no one else around.’

  ‘We should ring for help,’ I reached into the back pocket of my jean shorts for my mobile and looked at the screen. ‘Shit, no signal. Either of you got your phone?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘Mine hasn’t got a signal either.’

  ‘Mine’s back in the villa, charging,’ Laura said.

  We stared at each other, unsure what to do next.

  ‘We need to check if he’s okay,’ I said, worry overcoming my fear. ‘Stella, grab a water bottle from the car. Laura, grab a clean beach towel.’

  ‘Yep,’ Laura’s cheeks flushed a sun-kissed shade of pink, ‘he’s definitely naked.’

  ‘Very, very naked,’ Stella peered through the lavender bush for a better look at the man curled up in its heart. His chiselled, tightly muscled body wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Calvin Klein underwear model while his face, with its high cheekbones, strong nose and wide jaw could have belonged to a Hollywood actor. ‘And very, very beautiful.’

  ‘And injured,’ I added, gently pushing her out of the way and crouching down beside him. ‘Hello, can you hear me?’

  The scent of lavender filled the air as I reached through the branches for the man’s wrist. I rolled my fingers over his skin, feeling for his pulse. My only medical qualification was a two day first-aid course for work but, compared to Laura and Stella, that made me Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman.

  ‘Is he alive?’ Laura look a step back, the colour draining from her face.

  I shot a look at Stella who immediately rounded the bush and put an arm around Laura’s shoulders.

  ‘He’ll be fine.’ She gave Laura’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘Won’t he, Milly?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I lied. Naked man had a pulse and he was breathing but the wound on his left temple looked deep, even if it had stopped bleeding.

  ‘Hello?’ I gingerly tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hello can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?’

  Naked man didn’t move.

  ‘Blow on him, Milly,’ Stella urged.

  ‘He’s not a birthday cake!’

  ‘I know but your halitosis might wake him up.’

  I stole a look at Laura, relieved to discover she was laughing too. Good old Stella, if anyone could diffuse an awkward situation it was her. With us anyway. She hadn’t been quite so successful with Simon.

  ‘You can laugh it up all you like Stel,’ I said, ‘but at least— Aaaggh!’ I screamed as naked man’s eyes flew open and he gripped my upper arm.

  ‘Pou eemai,’ he said, wincing as he tried to sit up. ‘Pou eemai.’

  I prised his fingers off my arm and glanced at Stella who shook her head. She didn’t understand Greek either.

  ‘He wants to know where he is,’ Laura said, taking a step forward. She’d worked as a holiday rep in Falharaki when she was in her early twenties. She’d tried to convince us that her Greek was as rusty as Taylor Swift’s chastity belt but she was obviously doing herself a disservice.

  ‘Rothos,’ she said, looking at naked man. I assumed she was telling him he was in Rhodes, or possibly Greece, or maybe just ‘a bush’.

  ‘Rothos,’ naked man repeated. His dark brown eyes narrowed with suspicion as he looked us up and down. ‘Rothos.’ He glanced down between his legs and raised his eyebrows but made no effort to cover himself with his hands. If anything he looked a little bit proud.

  ‘Peos eessai?’ he said, looking at up Laura.

  ‘Laura,’ she pointed to her chest, ‘and this is Stella and that’s,’ she pointed to me, ‘Milly.’

  Naked man jabbed himself in the chest with his index finger. ‘Eros.’

  ‘Eros!’ Stella snorted with laughter and unsuccessfully tried to turn it into a cough. ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’

  ‘Stella!’ I raised an eyebrow at her. Tact wasn’t her big thing. It wasn’t even her small thing.

  ‘What?’ She shrugged. ‘It is a bit of a coincidence isn’t it? Our first day in Rhodes and we meet a handsome naked Greek man called Eros? What next? A man clambering out of the sea, covered with seaweed calling himself Poseidon? A woman with her saggy tits out calling herself Aphrodite?’

  Naked man placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and groaned as he pulled himself up onto his feet. ‘What you said about my mother?’

  ‘Oooh!’ Stella stumbled backwards in surprise, caught the heel of her sandal on a rock and tumbled onto her bum.

  ‘You speak English?’ Laura said. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You did not ask! But thank you, you speak beautiful Greek.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she covered her pleased smile with her hand. ‘How did you end up in the bush?’

  ‘I fell.’

  ‘Where from?’

  Eros gazed upwards.

  ‘Yeah right, Birdman!’ Stella snorted with laughter. ‘Seriously? You expect us to believe you fell down from heaven? Is that supposed to be a chat-up line or what?’

  ‘What’s funny?’ Eros shook his head and a trickle of blood wound its way down his temple, along his cheek and dropped off his jaw. ‘I don�
��t understand.’

  I exchanged a look with Laura. She nodded towards the car.

  ‘We’ve got a car down there,’ I said, pointing down the hill towards the temperamental Ford Fiesta. ‘We need to get you to a hospital. Your cut’s reopened.’

  ‘Milly!’ Stella gasped. ‘Laura! What are you thinking? We don’t know anything him. He could be a mass murderer or—’

  ‘We need to take him to the hospital.’ I crouched down to pick the tartan picnic rug up off the ground. I gave it a shake then handed it to Eros. ‘You might want to wrap that around your waist before we go anywhere.’

  Stella didn’t say a word on the drive from the hospital to our villa. Instead she gazed out of the window, her body tightly pressed against the door even though there was a good half a metre between her and Eros who was also sitting in the back. Laura, in the passenger seat beside me, was more animated than I’d seen her in months. She kept twisting back to chat, gabbling at him in Greek. It was good to hear her so carefree and happy. It was three years since Michael had died and Laura still caught herself every time she laughed. Michael would never have wanted that. Her laugh was one of the things he adored about her, he even mentioned it in his wedding speech, making a joke that it wasn’t Laura’s long blonde hair or her slim figure that made him notice her that night at Beats nightclub, it was her seal-like guffaw.

  ‘He’s not sleeping in my room,’ Stella snapped as we piled out of the car and traipsed across the dirt driveway to the villa. ‘I didn’t leave one unreliable bastard to replace him with another.’

  ‘Stella!’ I glanced at Eros who was carrying our food bags, the picnic rug hanging precariously from his hips. He nodded pleasantly at me. If he’d heard what Stella had said, he wasn’t letting on.

  To be honest I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of him spending the night in our villa either. None of us had any idea who Eros was – if that was even his name. He seemed harmless enough but that meant nothing. A smile could turn into a scowl in a heartbeat. I’d learnt that the hard way.

  The only reason we’d driven him back to our villa was because we figured that someone in Lindos must know who Eros was and where he lived, even if he didn’t know himself. But we couldn’t put him up for the night; that was a step too far.

  ‘Eros,’ I said. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Of course, Milly.’ He turned towards me, his brown eyes crinkled with amusement.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude...’ I could see Laura and Stella staring at me from the front door out of the corner of my eye, ‘...but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay in our villa. We’re three girls and you’re a man—’

  ‘I am,’ he glanced downwards, ‘or I was the last time I checked.’

  I didn’t smile. I was looking at his hands, hanging loosely at his sides, half-expecting them to clench into fists. My ex had taught me how quickly a man could flip from amiable to angry. ‘We know you don’t have anywhere else to go so, um, how about we give you fifty Euros and you could stay in one of the inns in Lindos while you wait for your memory to come back and then maybe tomorrow we could go into a few shops with you and ask if anyone—’

  ‘It’s okay, Milly!’ He touched me lightly on the forearm. I snatched it away as a thousand goosebumps pricked on my skin. Stella took a step towards us. ‘I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I’m happy to sleep on the beach. It’s quite warm and I have a blanket.’ He tapped the material around his hips.

  ‘We’ve got cushions in there,’ I gestured towards the house. ‘If you want a pillow. And some food and wine.’

  ‘Time to stop worrying, Milly,’ Eros said softly, reaching into the bag he was carrying and extracting an apple. He took a bite, ‘and re-learn how to live.’

  He turned and strolled casually away from the villa. I continued to watch as he crossed the road at the bottom of the driveway and picked his way down the rough path to the beach.

  ‘So,’ Stella said, reaching for a glass of champagne and leaning back into a stream of hot-tub bubbles. Three hours had passed since we’d said goodbye to Eros and we were all nicely tipsy from the three bottles of wine we’d shared over dinner, ‘what do you reckon? Have we just forced the god of love to sleep on the beach or have we saved ourselves from being murdered in our beds by Rhodes’ first naked serial killer?’

  I took a sip of champagne. ‘I think he’s harmless.’

  ‘You don’t think he fell from the sky to sort out our love lives?’ Laura laughed but there were clouds behind her smile.

  ‘Fat chance!’ Stella reached for the champagne bottle and refilled our glasses. ‘We need more than some naked bilingual-hottie-weirdo to do that. We need a magic wand!’

  ‘Well, we are the Witches of Westwick!’ I leaned forward and clinked my glass against theirs.

  Pete, my boss and the owner of The Star and Dove pub, had started calling us that a few years ago thanks to Stella’s red hair, Laura’s blonde tresses and my brunette locks. Considering we’ve been mates since we were at primary school it was probably one of the least offensive nicknames we’d been given over the years.

  ‘Here’s to the Witches of Westwick!’ Stella raised her glass to the stars. ‘And our fucked-up love lives!’

  ‘Single, separated and solitary!’ we all chorused.

  It was Laura’s idea to call herself ‘solitary’. She hated the word widowed – she thought it made her sound like a shrivelled old woman, not the young, vibrant, thirty-three year old she actually was. Not that she’d been very vibrant since Michael had died. She hadn’t so much as looked at another man in the three years since his funeral.

  ‘I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life,’ she’d told us six months earlier when she was drunk out of her head at Stella’s thirty-third birthday party, ‘and I’m okay with that.’

  She might have believed that, but Stella and I didn’t. Laura radiated loneliness. She clung on for a little too long when you hugged her, suggested more drinks when everyone else had had enough and slept on our sofas rather than calling a cab home at the end of the night.

  I understood why she’d rather be lonely than get into another relationship, but I wasn’t single because my soulmate had died. I wasn’t avoiding men because they couldn’t live up to the memory of the last man I’d loved. I was avoiding them in case they were just like him.

  ‘Milly?’ Laura nudged me with her toe. ‘Stop it! I can tell by the look on your face that you’re thinking about him.’

  Him. We never said my ex’s name out loud. We joked it was like the Bogeyman – if you said it three times he’d come and get you – and I didn’t want ‘him’ anywhere near me ever again.

  ‘Actually,’ I lied, ‘I was thinking about Eros.’

  ‘Pervert!’ Stella snorted with laughter then clamped her hand to her nose. ‘Ow! Champagne hurts when you snort it out through your nose.’

  Laura glanced towards the beach. ‘It’s quite cold now the sun’s gone down. Maybe we should go and check that Eros is okay?’

  ‘He’s a man,’ Stella waved her hand dismissively, ‘he’ll survive, just like we have!’ She raised her glass again and held it towards the middle of the hot tub. ‘I feel a Beyonce sing song coming on ladies...’

  There was no singing the next morning. In fact there wasn’t much of anything apart from the sound of bacon sizzling on the grill, the kettle boiling and teaspoons clanking against the side of the coffee jar.

  Laura glanced out of the kitchen window. ‘Looks like it rained last night. Poor Eros. I wonder how he got on, sleeping on the beach.’

  We shared a look. Stella was in the shower, she’d never know.

  We spotted the blanket as soon as we crossed the road. We could see it, long and lumpy at the mouth of a small cave carved into the mouth of the cliff. The sea was still, cobalt blue and glistening in the sunshine, the white sandy beach smooth and unspoilt.

  ‘He’s still asleep,’ Laura whispered as we stepped silently across the beach
, the sand cold under our feet.

  ‘He must be freezing,’ I whispered as we approached the blanket. There was a pair of long, tanned feet sticking out of the bottom.

  ‘Eros,’ Laura nudged his feet with her toes, ‘we brought breakfast. A nice, hot cup of coffee and a—’

  We both screamed as the blanket flew up in the air.

  ‘You’re not Eros,’ I clutched hold of Laura as a blond-haired man stared up at us, his blue sleep-creased eyes blinking in surprise.

  Blonde man ignored me.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he said to Laura.

  ‘Um. No.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yeah I do,’ he stood up and brushed the sand from his t-shirt and shorts, a slow smile crossing his face as he looked Laura up and down. ‘You came to my wedding. Four years ago, on the band stand on Brighton seafront. I’m James, I went to uni with Mike. Shit,’ he glanced up towards the villa, ‘he’s not here is he? I’ve been so bad at keeping in touch but you know what it’s like...’ His smile slipped. ‘What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  Laura looked at me, her eyes glistening.

  ‘Do you want me to tell him?’ I said softly.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I should do that.’

  I left them alone on the beach, Laura with the blanket around her shoulders, James sitting beside her, a comforting hand on her shoulder, and made my way back to the house. Stella was sitting on the patio, her over-sized sunglasses pressed firmly up her nose, her mobile phone and a Bloody Mary on the table in front of her.

  I gestured towards it. ‘That bad ‘eh?’

  She nodded. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  I told her about our mercy mission to take Eros a warm cup of coffee and a bacon roll and how we’d discovered James instead.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘So what happened to Eros then?’

  ‘No idea. James said he went down to the shore last night. He was pissed and he needed to clear his head.’