‘You have a lovely home.’
‘Thank you. Shall we go outside?’
‘Yes!’ Jonas answered before Ben could, and Arianna smiled.
‘Okay. I’ll get some drinks and then you can play on the beach.’ She turned to Ben. ‘The bathroom’s through there if you need it.’
‘Thanks. I think Jonas could do with another application of sunscreen.’ He pulled the bottle out of the bag he carried, along with Jonas’s beach shoes.
The bathroom was white-tiled and shining. Ben stripped off Jonas’s T-shirt, applying the sunscreen carefully while the boy wriggled impatiently.
He really shouldn’t be noticing that only one toothbrush sat in the glass by the sink. Or imagining what it might look like with two, or three, sitting there. He wasn’t looking for a relationship with anyone and, despite the instant attraction that would normally have rendered a love affair between two people practically inevitable, it was unthinkable. Guilt was a heavy burden to carry and it didn’t leave much room for anyone other than Jonas in his life.
He found Arianna in the kitchen, adding sliced lemons and mint leaves to a jug of lemonade. She’d taken off her sandals, and Ben tried not to notice the natural grace of her movements, or the way the skirts of her dress moved around her bare legs.
‘I’ll let you choose a drink for Jonas from the fridge. There’s a bottle of ouzo in there as well, if you fancy a dash to flavour the lemonade.’
‘Thanks. That sounds good.’ This felt like a dream. Ben hadn’t allowed himself to have any expectations beyond his initial meeting with Arianna, and he wasn’t sure what to say or do. Arianna seemed on edge as well.
She tipped slightly more than a dash into the pitcher, ice clanking as she mixed its contents thoroughly. Ben took a bottle of orange-flavoured water from the fridge and opened it, and Arianna leaned over, popping a bendy straw into the top of it. She opened a box of sesame and honey snacks and frowned.
‘Will Jonas like these?’
‘Try him.’ When Arianna hesitated, Ben took two of the snacks from the box, giving one to Jonas and popping the other into his own mouth. ‘Mmm... They’re good...’
As he expected, Jonas followed suit and nodded his agreement. Arianna tipped the whole box into a bowl and added it to the tray that the pitcher stood on, then opened the fridge and took out two covered dishes.
‘I’ll put these into the oven to warm. I thought something light for now, and I’ll cook later...’
‘Don’t go to any trouble for us, please.’
Arianna laughed suddenly and the tension between them broke, smashing into little pieces on the tiled floor.
‘You’re on a Greek island. You think you can sit down at my table without being fed?’
The warmth was back now, chasing away all the awkwardness. ‘I wouldn’t presume to do any such thing.’
‘Good. Just as well.’
She switched the oven on, opening the kitchen door so that Ben could carry the tray out onto the patio. It was beautiful here, the breeze carrying the scent of flowers along with the tang of the sea. Sand stretched from the back of the house down to the shoreline, with raised ground and rocks on either side forming a small secluded beach. Ben took Jonas’s hat from his pocket, putting it onto his son’s head.
‘Can I make sandcastles, Dad?’ Jonas looked up at him pleadingly.
‘Okay. As long as you stay where I can see you.’
‘He’ll be all right. This is a private beach—the land on either side of it goes with the house. I’ve got some buckets and spades...’
The children’s buckets and spades were placed neatly in the corner of the veranda, and it was impossible that they hadn’t been put there in preparation for their arrival. Ben watched as Arianna showed Jonas how to dip the buckets into the water butt at the back of the house and wet the sand a little so it would retain its shape. She was so eager to get involved, and all of Jonas’s initial shyness had disappeared now and he was hanging on her every word.
He drew a line in the sand, impressing on his son that he mustn’t cross it. Jonas was used to the lines that Ben drew; he’d never known anything different, and he was far too interested in his sandcastle to want to bother with the sea.
Hearing how Arianna had reacted to her own father’s protectiveness was food for thought, though. It was tempting to believe he might somehow make up for Emma’s death by protecting Jonas, but Ben had to admit that his solicitousness for his son was sometimes a little too much of a good thing. If Jonas reacted as Arianna had, it would break his heart.
He could think about that later, though, because right now he had a moat to dig. Jonas stood to one side, issuing instructions and advice, and then decided that if you wanted a job done well it was necessary to do it yourself.
Ben saw Arianna laughing behind her hand as Jonas relieved him of the spade and shooed him away, leaving him to walk back to the shaded patio.
* * *
‘He’s a great little boy. You must be very proud of him.’ Arianna was watching Jonas while Ben filled two glasses from the pitcher.
‘Yes, I am.’ There was no hesitation in his answer. If her father had reacted in that way just once, then things might have been very different.
‘It must be hard. Working and looking after him alone.’
Ben shook his head. ‘It would have been harder without him. After Emma died, it was having Jonas to look after that kept me going. And I’m lucky; my sister, Lizzie, has a girl Jonas’s age and she’d already made the decision to be a stay-at-home mum. She offered to look after Jonas while I was working.’
‘That’s a good arrangement. Although I expect he misses his mother.’
‘He doesn’t really remember Emma. He asks about her sometimes and we talk and look at old photographs together. I think he may start to feel her absence a little more when he’s older.’ Ben’s brow furrowed slightly. ‘I guess the two of us will deal with that when we come to it.’
Arianna guessed they would too. Her own loss seemed so long ago in comparison and not nearly as life-changing, but somehow Ben had managed to look forward. Maybe she should take a leaf from his book and shake off her nightmares.
Their conversation drifted, past places they both knew in London, and things they’d both done as doctors. When the timer sounded from the kitchen Arianna jumped to her feet, hurrying inside, and then reappeared with a bowl of warm tiropita in one hand and one of keftedakia in the other. Ben called Jonas, taking him into the kitchen to wash his hands.
Jonas worked his way through everything that was put in front of him, and then ran back to his castle. Arianna made coffee, and they watched Jonas playing in the sand. When he called his father, Ben slipped off his shoes to walk out onto the beach and Arianna followed him.
‘That’s amazing. Fantastic work, Jonas. What do you think, Arianna?’
‘Best I’ve ever seen.’
Ben rolled up his trouser legs and knelt down in the sand next to his son, and the boy nestled close. ‘That’s a great moat. Like the one we saw at Leeds Castle.’
Jonas wrinkled his nose. ‘It doesn’t have any water, Dad. And I can’t go across the line.’ He pointed at the line that Ben had drawn in the sand.
‘Yeah, good boy. It’s okay if you and I go across the line together. Perhaps we’ll just flatten the sand a bit first, eh?’
Ben started to tamp down the sand at the bottom of the moat and Jonas followed suit, watching his father carefully. Arianna knelt down on the other side.
‘Can I help?’ Maybe this was something that Ben and Jonas wanted to do together.
‘Hear that? Your castle has its very own princess who doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty.’ Ben grinned at Jonas. ‘I think that’ll be a yes please, won’t it?’
‘Yes! You can do that bit.’ Jonas pointed to a segment next to his own. ‘Please...’
She could feel Jonas’s warm skin against her arm as they worked. His hands pressing on top of hers. The half-remembered feeling of playing with other kids, before she’d lost her childhood and become the little girl who made no noise, and who didn’t attract any attention to herself, for fear that the weight of her parents’ grief might suddenly break free and crush her.
‘Dad...’ Jonas frowned. ‘You have to do the sides too. We’re doing the sides.’
‘Yep. In a minute. I’ll just finish off here...’ Ben was packing the sand down at the bottom of the moat first, and Jonas clearly felt that his father wasn’t doing things in the right order. Wriggling in between Ben’s arms, Jonas started to rectify the problem, tamping the sand at the sides.
Arianna left them, nudging each other good-naturedly out of the way, and went to fetch three large buckets. Ben got to his feet, catching two of the buckets up in his hand, while Jonas followed suit, picking up the two small children’s pails. When they got to the line in the sand, he slid one foot over it, grinning cheekily up at his dad, and Ben laughed, picking him up and swinging him over the line, before racing him down to the water’s edge. When Jonas reached the sea, he dropped his pails and started to splash water at his father.
‘So that’s the way you want it, eh?’ Ben growled, lifting his son up into the air and then threatening to dunk him in the waves.
Jonas shrieked with joy, his arms and legs flailing, and as Ben lowered him he sent a plume of water in his father’s direction, hitting him full in the face. Arianna heard herself laugh.
Two blond heads turned in her direction. Jonas flung his arms above his head, beckoning to her to join the game. Ben’s smile was less demonstrative, but much more compelling.
Could she cross the line in the sand? The line that had been drawn when her brother died and she’d suddenly been sucked into the emptiness of a family bound by grief. Arianna had thought that the chance to play with other kids was long gone now, but Ben’s smile was irresistible...
She walked down to the water’s edge and, as soon as she was in range, Jonas sent a splash of water in her direction. She sidestepped out of the way and Ben picked Jonas up, holding him clear of the water.
‘Careful, mate. Don’t get Arianna’s dress all wet.’
Suddenly, she didn’t care about that. Arianna gathered her skirts up in one hand, wading into the water and sending a splash in Jonas’s direction, then another larger one towards Ben.
‘Hey! How come I’m so wet...?’
Because...he looked so much better wet than dry. His T-shirt was sticking to his skin, clearly outlining an impressive pair of shoulders. The temptation to run her fingers across his chest, to see if it felt as good as it looked, was almost too much. His blue eyes were ninety per cent laughter but the other ten per cent were all smouldering heat, which burned right into her soul.
Jonas had decided to even the odds a little, and when his father let him down into the water he filled one of his pails, running over to his father and drenching him.
‘Uh...two can play at that game...’ Ben filled one of the larger buckets and Jonas ran squealing away to hide behind Arianna.
One look from those mischievous blue eyes that seemed entirely for her, and all about play of a much more adult nature. Then he stepped back, filling the other bucket and walking away up the beach, leaving Arianna to help Jonas dunk his pails into the sea. He gave her one to carry, taking her hand as they walked back to the sandcastle.
Ben carefully emptied the water into the moat, grinning as he passed them on his way back down to the sea. Sudden blinding desire gripped her, and she tried to focus her eyes on his face. But she couldn’t resist turning to watch him for just a moment, before Jonas tugged on her hand, impatient to add their water to the moat.
When she looked again towards the water’s edge, she saw that Ben had stripped off his T-shirt and was wringing it out in the sea, sunshine glistening on his skin. Its warm fingers seemed to caress him as he moved, and Arianna froze.
‘We need more water.’ Jonas nudged her and she jumped, pulled back into the moment.
‘Yes, we do.’ Arianna reached for the last bucket, grabbing her sunglasses at the same time and settling them firmly on her nose. They were a meagre enough defence against the golden lines of Ben’s body, but at least it wasn’t quite so obvious that she couldn’t drag her gaze away from him.
As she walked back down the beach with Jonas, Ben flapped his T-shirt in the breeze and pulled it back over his head. That didn’t help as much as it should have done; his image was already burned into her mind. He gave her a cheery smile, dodging out of the way as Jonas splashed more water in his direction, and filling the buckets in the sea.
When the moat was full, and Jonas was busily engaged in building a causeway across it made from stones and shells, Ben came to sit next to her on the steps that ran down from the veranda.
‘Would you like a towel?’ He smelled of sun, sand and the sea. Like the faraway, much missed summers that she’d spent with her family, here on the island.
‘No, I’m fine, thank you. Almost dry now.’
She’d noticed. Had watched as dry patches appeared on his T-shirt, wanting to trace their edges with her finger. They’d spread and begun to join and now she could almost...almost look at him without feeling that her heart was going to stop.
‘Your practice here is very different from mine.’ He leaned back on his elbows, basking in the sun. ‘Different and yet the same.’
‘Yes. Some of the problems are unique, but many of them are the same as the ones I saw when I was working in London. I learned a lot there.’
He nodded. ‘My practice would kill for the kind of facilities you have here, at the health centre. But it’s a lot easier for me to send people to the hospital for things like blood tests and X-rays.’
‘That’s true.’ Arianna quirked her lips down. ‘Although we do have better facilities than some island practices.’
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. Arianna couldn’t help answering anyway. There was no holding out against a man who combined beauty and brains.
‘When I came here there was no doctor, and no medical centre. If someone was ill they had to go to the mainland. There were funds available to start up a practice, but we would have had to raise a lot more money to afford anything approaching what we have now. Then an...anonymous donor made a very large gift.’
Ben nodded slowly. ‘That sounds extremely well timed.’ The humour in his eyes left Arianna in no doubt that he’d put two and two together and that four was the correct answer.
‘Doesn’t it. My father had just about come around to the idea that I was serious about being a doctor, and had been hoping I’d opt for a smart practice in Athens when I came back to Greece. He knew I couldn’t turn the donation down.’
‘Because it wasn’t really for you; it was for your patients.’
‘Yes. When I told him I knew it was him, he said that he wanted me to have a nice place to work. Although, if that was all he’d wanted, he could have spent a great deal less.’
‘So it was an altruistic move, after all?’
‘My father does care about Ilaria. Did you notice that the harbour was a little different when you arrived yesterday?’
He shook his head. ‘I noticed that nothing seemed familiar. I was only here for less than a day and it was a long time ago.’
It seemed like yesterday. But it had been a long time.
‘The ferry that we were on was hit by a larger ferry that had just left the harbour. It had always been a bit of a tight squeeze for the ferries to get in and out of the bay, and my father had a separate ferry terminal built, so that things were much safer for both the ferries and the smaller boats in the harbour. Two men from here drowned as well as my brother, and he made sure that their families would always be provided for. He built the hotel
on the other side of the island as well, which has provided employment and allowed people to stay on the island.’
‘So he does his good deeds by stealth.’ Ben smiled.
‘By chequebook. He doesn’t turn up in person.’
‘Never?’
‘No. I didn’t expect him to buy a house here and start throwing parties, the way he did in London, but I’d hoped he might finally decide to come back. But he hasn’t set foot on the island since the day of the ferry accident. I haven’t seen him in two years.’
Ben was watching Jonas playing in the sand, his expression tight and pinched suddenly. Arianna wondered if there was anything that could ever keep him from his son. Maybe if Jonas became an astronaut and flew to Mars...
‘Coming here must have been challenging for you.’
‘Yes and no. When I first got here, I had to work very hard to oversee the building works for the health centre, and to gain people’s confidence. Most of the older people here remember me as a child, and everyone knows what happened, but it took a while to convince them that I could be their doctor.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, busy can carry you through a lot of things. It did me, when Emma died, but as soon as I caught my breath I realised I was only postponing the loss I needed to feel.’
Maybe that was what she’d done too. Arianna hadn’t told anyone about the nightmares, and after all this time no one had asked. But she couldn’t shake the certainty that Ben just knew.
‘You had nightmares?’ She couldn’t look at him for fear that he’d see her own reflecting in her eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘And they passed?’
‘Yes. They did.’ His voice seemed to pull her back out of the vortex and offer her a way forward. Maybe if she just clung to him...
Or maybe if she stood on her own two feet and pulled herself together. That was Arianna’s preferred coping strategy and it generally worked.
Greek Island Fling to Forever Page 4