Paradise Nights

CHAPTER FIVE

PETE was five steps from the front door of Chloe’s hotel, his duffel slung over his shoulder and his mind on a dark-eyed goddess he’d promised to court discreetly, when Sam hightailed it past him to hold the door open for him before making a beeline for the reception desk. The passengers Pete had flown to the island were staying with family, he had no need to help anyone else check in, no one else’s belongings but his own to carry, no one to answer to until mid-morning the following day. Nothing to do but suit himself.

As far as Pete was concerned, suiting himself involved checking in, grabbing something to eat at some stage, and finding Serena.

Furious whispering ensued as he headed towards the desk. Maybe they were booked out? Maybe that was what all the fuss was about? Because, without question, they were fussing about something. Sam beamed. The receptionist blushed.

‘Checking in, sir?’ she said. ‘Do you have a booking?’

‘Not yet. I’m after a room for the night. If you have one.’

‘Certainly, sir. One person?’

Pete nodded.

‘You’ll be in room seventeen.’

He handed over his credit card and she processed his payment and handed him a key. ‘Enjoy your stay.’

‘You want me to carry your bag?’ asked Sam.

‘Why? You working here now too?’

‘Nope.’ Sam paused as if to consider the notion, his eyes brightening. ‘Not yet. But I could. Do you think she’d pay me?’

‘Who? Your Aunt Chloe? Maybe.’ He studied the boy. ‘You need money?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘What for?’

‘Stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Just stuff.’

Pete opened the door to room seventeen and looked around. ‘Nice room,’ he said.

Sam’s smile broadened.

Pete dumped his duffel on the end of the bed and deliberately turned to survey the minibar. ‘Do you drink, Sam?’

Sam’s mouth set into a thin stubborn line. ‘No.’

‘Smoke?’

‘No.’

‘Shoot?’

‘I said no!’

‘Good for you,’ he said mildly. ‘Then why are you so determined to start work and earn money?’

Sam didn’t answer him, just stood silently in the doorway with a stubborn set to his jaw that Pete was more than familiar with having grown up in a household full of siblings who were anything but malleable. He held Sam’s gaze and waited, not stern, not demanding, just waiting. Borrowing the technique from Jake—hell, it always seemed to work for him.

‘What if I need to buy food, or shoes?’ said Sam abruptly. ‘What if I need to buy medicine for—’ The boy stopped, looking as stricken as Pete suddenly felt. ‘What if I get sick?’ he said in a small, thin voice.

‘Your family will take care of that kind of stuff for you, Sam,’ he said gruffly.

‘And if they don’t?’

‘They will. Your aunt Chloe will.’

There was a world of mistrust in Sam’s eyes. ‘You don’t know that.’

‘You’re right, I don’t.’ He’d lost his mother, just like Sam. But he’d never been alone. He’d always had his brothers to rely on. Even when their father had fallen apart, he’d always had his siblings. Sam had had no one and Pete couldn’t begin to imagine what the boy had gone through—was still going through if his dogged determination to work and to earn his own way was any indication. ‘But I’ll bet you fifty euros that if you get sick your aunt will get you the medicine, or the doctors, or the hospital care you need.’ He fished his wallet from his pocket, withdrew a fifty euro-note and tossed it down on the bed. He withdrew another note. ‘I’ll bet you another fifty she’ll never let you go hungry.’

Sam stared at him with those dark, haunted eyes. Wanting to believe, thought Pete. Desperately wanting it to be so, when experience had only ever taught him otherwise. ‘I don’t have a hundred euros to bet with,’ Sam said at last.

‘You don’t need it. If your aunt lets you down the money’s yours. If she doesn’t, you give it back. That’s the deal,’ he said, but still the boy hesitated. ‘Take it or leave it.’ Pete turned away, started to unpack his duffel. When he turned back Sam was standing by the bed and the money was gone.

‘Deal,’ said Sam awkwardly.

Pete nodded. Maybe with some money in his pocket the kid would feel slightly more secure. He hoped so.

‘Everyone’s down at the beach fixing nets,’ Sam said next. ‘You could come down too.’

‘I have a few things to do here first.’ He was trying to be discreet. Trying very hard not to go looking for Serena the minute he set foot on the island. Although … Maybe seeing her now was better than seeing her later. Maybe being seen with her openly, in the company of others, was the epitome of discreet in Sathi. Who knew?

Sam studied him curiously. ‘Serena’s down there.’

‘So I saw.’

‘She keeps talking to herself. Nico reckons she’s pining for something.’

‘Does he now?’

‘Yeah. Serena reckons Nico’s got a death wish.’

‘Maybe I will come down,’ he said, stifling a grin. After all, Sam had come looking for him. Nico and Serena and Chloe had to be thinking it was okay for him to join them otherwise they wouldn’t have let Sam come looking for him in the first place. Right?

Besides, denial wasn’t exactly one of his strong suites.

What Pete Bennett wanted, he usually got.

Fast.

Serena had decided to be cool, calm, and in control if the flying one decided to join them down on the beach. Cool was a shoe in given that she was wearing short white shorts, a pink and lime bikini top, and currently stood knee deep in water. Calm and in control were proving a little more problematic given that her heart was hammering and her brain had chosen to replay the beach kiss scene in From Here To Eternity and suggest it as a viable greeting option.

‘Not!’ she muttered vehemently and glared at Nico when he laughed.

Maybe if she’d had a little more forewarning she might have been able to manage calm and in control. Honestly, couldn’t he have called ahead to let her know he’d be flying in?

Didn’t the man know how to use a phone?

On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t even stopping, just dropping passengers and flying on. That was possible too.

Not that she cared if he stayed or if he left. No. He was a distraction, nothing more, and distractions could always be replaced by other distractions.

Trying to paint signage while scanning the waterfront walkway every few seconds, for example, was very distracting.

She botched the curve of the middle letter about the same time she spotted Pete and Sam heading towards the beach from the direction of the village. Not the most direct route from the hotel by any stretch of the imagination, but the reason for their detour could probably be explained by the newspaper Pete carried in one hand, and the woven blue and white shopping bag he carried in the other. The reason for her botched paint job probably had something to do with the way he filled out a white crew-necked T-shirt and an old pair of cargo trousers cut off at the knee.

‘There they are,’ said Chloe.

‘Mmm.’ She was trying for an indifferent-sounding ‘mmm,’ but figured from Chloe’s smirk that it had emerged as a whimper. Hopefully Chloe would think she was staring at the shopping bag.

Pete took his own sweet time making his way down to the boat. He stopped to kick off his shoes when he reached the sand. Stopped again to share a few words with a couple of elderly tourists.

When he stopped with Sam to poke at a mound of seaweed and watch a tiny soldier crab scuttle back into its hole in the sand she could have screamed.

He knew exactly what he was doing to her. Making her wait. And want. And want some more.

Damn but he was good at this game.

‘Serena,’ said Pete with a nod, when he and Sam finally reached her. He leaned into the boat and set the shopping bag and the papers inside it before sending her a lazy, noncommittal smile, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. Exactly how much more currently being a subject of much internal debate between her body and her brain.

‘Hey, flyboy.’ She was not changing her plans for him.

‘Apple and honey cake?’ he said affably.

She was going to become a successful international photojournalist! She didn’t want to be a suburban housewife. ‘No,’ she snapped, before reconsidering the question actually on the table. ‘Yes.’ She jammed the paintbrush back into its pot. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He eyed her warily. ‘Something wrong?’

‘It’s this island,’ she muttered.

‘She needs to get off it,’ said Nico, zeroing in on that woven shopping bag like a seagull after a crust. Chloe wasn’t far behind him. Not that she blamed them. Marianne Papadopoulos might have been the biggest gossip on the island, but her pastries could make grizzled Greek fisherman get down on their knees and beg. The woven shopping bag Pete had carried down to the boat was one of the ones she saved for special treats and Nico knew it. ‘What’s in the bag?’

‘Apple and honey cake,’ she said. ‘And it’s for me.’

‘Actually, I bought it for all of us,’ said Pete. ‘I would have bought something just for you but I’m being discreet.’

‘Makes sense to me,’ said Nico, delving into the bag. ‘Look, she even sliced it for us. Who’s the big bit for?’

‘Sam,’ said Pete. ‘As directed by Mrs Papadopoulos herself.’

‘She likes you, Sam,’ said Chloe, eyeing the slice. ‘That’s a big bit of cake.’

Sam looked at the cake, looked at Chloe. ‘You can have it if you like,’ he offered awkwardly. ‘I’m not that hungry.’

Chloe stared at him in startled silence, Nico smiled, and Pete turned away but not before Serena caught the hefty dose of concern in his eyes. Serena didn’t know what was going on. But it felt big.

‘Thank you, Sam, but I couldn’t. I’d never hear the end of it,’ said Chloe, trying to make light of his unexpected gesture and not quite managing it. Her eyes were too bright. Her voice wobbled too much. ‘It’s yours.’ She reached into the box and selected a smaller piece. ‘Save it for later if you don’t feel like eating it now.’

Later, by Sam’s reckoning, turned out to be approximately two seconds later. He took the cake and, head down, went back to examining the nets for holes. Loading themselves up in similar fashion, Nico and Pete did the same.

‘I should have taken it, shouldn’t I?’ whispered Chloe anxiously, her gaze still on Sam. ‘He offered, and I turned it down. I did it all wrong.’

‘No.’ Serena laid a hand on the other woman’s arm. ‘It’s okay, you did fine. It was sweet of Sam to offer, and right of you to turn it down.’ Her thoughts turned to Nico and to what she as a good and helpful cousin might do to support his cause. ‘Of course, if you wanted to capitalise on the whole food sharing business you’d go over there and very casually offer to help Sam cook up the sea bass he caught this morning, and even more casually suggest that Nico come over later and help you eat it.’

Chloe blushed furiously, her eyes wide and panicked as she turned back to Serena. ‘But, Serena, I couldn’t! That would put Nico in a terrible position. It’d be almost like a date or something.’

‘What if it was? Would that be so bad?’ Serena shook her head. ‘Get to know my cousin, Chloe. You might be surprised.’

‘I don’t want to be surprised! Nico will leave here soon. They always leave.’ She shrugged and looked back towards the village. ‘Whereas me … I couldn’t leave here even if I wanted to. My parents are old. Someone has to run the hotel. That someone is me. I have to make good, especially now I have Sam.’

‘You know from my point of view Nico’s leaving here is somewhat negotiable,’ said Serena, after a moment. ‘He could make this place his home, given the right incentive. Look at him showing Sam how to roll the nets. He likes fishing. He likes being a part of this community. He likes you.’

Chloe stayed silent, but her gaze skittered back to Nico and Sam. She was scared of opening herself up to hurt, Serena got that. But surely she could see that in this case the prize was well worth the risk? ‘So if you like him, maybe you need to think about giving the man a reason to stay.’

Serena ate apple and honey cake while Chloe headed up the beach towards the nets and Pete headed back down the beach towards her. They stopped midway to chat, while Serena brushed the crumbs from her hands and wet sand from her legs and tried to remember how she was supposed to be acting around this man. Cool, calm and collected, that was it.

Definitely a stretch.

But he made it easy for her as he made small talk about the island and his charter customers, settling back against the boat and leafing through the newspapers he’d brought with him. The Times was one of them; The Australian was the other one.

‘I saw a job in here for you earlier,’ he said as he reached into the cake box for another slice of cake. Serena eyed it wistfully. If she had any more of that cake she’d be up for some serious exercise afterwards. Tempting … but no. ‘They’re looking for a political foreign correspondent. It’s based in Jerusalem though.’

‘I could do Jerusalem.’

‘Can you do Hebrew?’

‘Do I need to?’

‘Beats me.’ He pulled out the jobs section and passed it to her. ‘Keep it.’

She waded the few feet to the shore and set her paint pot down, pushing it into the wet sand to stop it from spilling before settling down beside it and opening up the paper. Nothing like a world of possibilities to distract her from a vision sublime of man and cake, both of which she wanted far more than common sense allowed.

‘There’s one in here for you too,’ she said after a few minutes of silent browsing. ‘Feel like flying climate-control scientists around Greenland?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d freeze. Here’s another one.’ He’d been leafing through The Australian. ‘They’re looking for a Wilderness Society photographer. This one’s based in Tasmania.’

‘You think I have environmentalist tendencies?’

‘Serena, you’re trying to send me to Greenland.’

Good point. ‘Tasmania might be a little too close to home,’ she told him. ‘I’m thinking further afield.’ Pete glanced at her and shook his head. Serena lifted her chin. She knew that look. Usually it preceded a lecture about setting goals that were realistic, not to mention closer to home. ‘What? You think I’m wrong to want my freedom?’

‘I think you should be choosing your future career based on the work you’ll be doing and whether it’ll satisfy you, not on how far away it is from your family.’

Another good point.

‘You’ll miss them, you know.’ He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Sam, thinking of Sam, unless she missed her guess. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are to have a family who cares for you. People you can rely on because they love you.’

‘He’s talked to you, hasn’t he?’

Pete looked at her but said nothing.

‘Sam. He’s talked to you. About his mother.’

‘No.’

‘About Chloe, then? And not fitting in here.’

‘No.’ And at her look of disbelief, ‘What?’

Honestly, men! They had no idea how to communicate. ‘Well, what did you talk about?’

‘Money, and stuff.’

Serena sighed heavily and shook her head. ‘Talk to him next time. See if you can get him to open up to you about his feelings.’

Pete snorted. ‘Not gonna happen, Serena.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it won’t.’ He glanced back at Sam. ‘He’s doing okay.’

Serena followed his gaze to where Sam and Nico sat mending the net. She narrowed her eyes, automatically framing the shot as she waded out into the water and reached for the camera she’d tucked inside the boat. The pattern of the nets contrasted with the ripples in the sand beneath and presented an interesting juxtaposition, but it was the focus both Nico and Sam brought to their task that interested her. The wordless connection between them as boy looked to man for guidance. Nico’s nod of approval; the pleasure and quiet pride Sam took in it. She captured every heart wrenching nuance, and knew instinctively that somewhere amongst the photos she’d just taken she’d find the final image for her postcard series and that it could well be the best photo she’d ever taken.

‘Here, grab a brush and let’s get this done,’ she said to Pete, picking up the paint pot and handing it to him. ‘We’re getting out of here.’

‘We are?’ He took the paint pot with the brush sticking out of it and wandered around to the bow of the boat to survey her work. ‘I only just got here.’

‘How do you feel about spending the afternoon working on postcard photos?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘No. You’ll like it. Trust me.’

‘Does it involve a darkroom?’ He smiled a pirate’s smile. ‘I love darkrooms.’

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Start painting.’

‘I thought you said you had a darkroom,’ Pete muttered half an hour later. They were up at her grandparents’ little whitewashed cottage, in a neat little sitting room that looked as if it doubled as an office. A widescreen laptop computer sat on a table in the corner beside a printer. Half a dozen folders stood beside that. There was nothing wrong with it, as far as rooms went. But it wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind. ‘You know, dark, private, discreet.’

‘I said no such thing,’ Serena said cheerfully and pulled down the window shades, switched on the computer, and sat down in front of it. ‘You just assumed we’d need a darkroom. Welcome to the age of digital photography. The days of broom-cupboard darkrooms and messy, smelly chemicals are long gone.’

Pity. He’d had a fantasy or two about broom cupboards, beautiful women, and the mingling thereof. Guess it’d have to stay a fantasy. ‘These photos had better be good,’ he said with a sigh as he pulled up a chair and settled down beside her to watch her work.

The photos were better than good. They were outstanding. From a wide-angle shot of Mrs Papadopoulos watering the geraniums out the front of her shop to the latest shot of Nico and Sam, they showed the power of the human spirit, with all its strengths and frailties.

‘Forget the words, Serena,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Your pictures don’t need them.’

‘There’s another one you might like to see,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s not for the postcard series, though.’

‘What’s it for, then?’

‘You.’ She trawled through her files until she found it. Pete sat back in his chair, aiming for distance, and wished to hell she hadn’t. It was one of the photos she’d taken of him when they were up on the plateau. She’d captured his solitude, he thought, trying to be objective. And she’d captured a pain he’d thought he’d buried deep.

‘If I were a curious woman,’ she said with a tiny half-smile, ‘I’d ask you what you were thinking about.’

‘If I were the sharing kind I’d tell you.’ He glanced away; he didn’t want to look at his picture any longer. One day he’d stop running. He’d turn and face his past and all that went with it. Maybe one day he’d even make his peace with it. But not today.

‘No great tragedy?’

‘No,’ he muttered as she stood and pushed the laptop aside before leaning her backside on the table, curling her hands around the edge of the table, and regarding him solemnly. ‘You’re very persistent, aren’t you?’

‘So I’m told.’

Not that it seemed to bother her.

‘Something put that look in your eyes,’ she said at last.

‘Experience.’ He spanned her waist with his hands and slid her towards him in one effortless movement. She was still perched on the edge of the table. He still sat in the chair. Their bodies weren’t quite touching, not yet, but if … when … he pulled her into his lap she’d be straddling him. ‘Nothing more, nothing less.’ His hands were rough, her stomach was silky smooth and just begging to be kissed. He slid her closer and set to tracing lazy circles across her stomach with his fingertips, before leaning back in the chair and glancing up at her face to gauge her reaction.

If the flush of colour riding high on her cheeks and the lip she’d caught between her teeth were any indication, she liked his hands on her just fine. So did he. ‘I went into air-sea rescue battle-trained and ready for anything,’ he said wryly. ‘Or so I thought.’

‘Cocky,’ she murmured as her hands settled on his shoulders. ‘Invincible.’

‘Yeah. And when you save a soul that would have been lost that’s exactly how you feel.’ He didn’t know why he was telling her this. He should stop now, leave it be, but her eyes didn’t judge him and the hands on his shoulders were warm and somehow soothing, and he offered up more. ‘It’s the best feeling in the world. The best job in the world. But when you don’t … ‘He paused and drew in a long breath before continuing. ‘They take a little piece of you with them.’

Somewhere along the way he’d stopped tracing circles on her skin. He started up again, slower this time, lower, until they scraped the waistband of her shorts. ‘Got that way there wasn’t much of me left. Got that way that the person I needed to save most was me. I couldn’t do it any more, Serena. So I left.’ He leaned back in the chair, concentrating on the present, on those little white shorts, and the woman in his arms. Hell of a way to woo her, he thought with a twist of his lips. Hell of a way to make her think well of him.

‘You think you’ve failed them, don’t you? The people who trained you? The people you couldn’t save?’

‘I did fail them.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ she said quietly. ‘No one gets to save them all. Not even Superman.’

‘You believe in Superman?’ He tried for a smile and almost managed it. Enough soul-baring. Enough. He couldn’t do this.

‘I believe in you.’

‘Oh, hell, Serena.’ He drew her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his forehead on her stomach. ‘Don’t.’

‘Too late.’ She wound her hands in his hair and drew his head back before sliding from the table and into his lap as if she belonged there, as if she’d always belonged there. His body responded instantly, even if his brain was still playing catch-up. He felt himself harden beneath her slight weight, inhaled the essence of her and the scent of the sea, and shuddered.