Miss Prim's Greek Island Fling

‘It’s always so cheerful down here,’ she said, pausing beside one of the flower-filled barrels, and dragging a deep breath into her lungs.

He glanced down at the flowers to avoid noticing the way her chest lifted, and touched his fingers to a bright pink petal. ‘These are...nice.’

‘I love petunias,’ she said. She touched a scarlet blossom. ‘And these geraniums and begonias look beautiful.’

He reached for a delicate spray of tiny white flowers at the same time that she did, and their fingers brushed against each other. It was the briefest of contacts, but it sent electricity charging up his arm and had him sucking in a breath. For one utterly unbalancing moment he thought she meant to repeat the gesture.

‘That’s alyssum,’ she said, pulling her hand away.

He moistened his lips. ‘I had no idea you liked gardening.’

She stared at him for a moment and he watched her snap back into herself like a rubber band that had been stretched and then released. But opposite to that because the stretching had seemed to relax her while the snapping back had her all tense again.

‘Don’t worry, Finn. I’m not going to make you garden while you’re here.’

Something sad and hungry, though, lurked in the backs of her eyes, and he didn’t understand it at all. He opened his mouth to ask her about it, but closed it again. He didn’t get involved with complicated emotions or sensitive issues. He avoided them like the plague. Get her to laugh, get her to loosen up. That was his remit. Nothing more. But that didn’t stop the memory of that sad and hungry expression from playing over and over in his mind.

CHAPTER THREE

AUDRA WHEELED AWAY from Finn and the barrel of flowers to survey the length of the village street, and tried to slow the racing of her pulse...to quell the temptation that swept through her like the breeze tugging at her hair. But the sound of the waves splashing against the seawall and the sparkles of light on the water as the sun danced off its surface only fed the yearning and the restlessness.

She couldn’t believe that the idea—the temptation—had even occurred to her. She and Finn? The idea was laughable.

For pity’s sake, she’d had one romantic disaster this year. Did she really want to follow that up with another?

Absolutely not.

She dragged a trembling hand across her eyes. She must be more shaken by Thomas and his betrayal than she’d realised. She needed to focus on herself and her family, and to make things right again. That was what this break here on Kyanós was all about—that and avoiding the media storm that had surrounded her in Geneva. The one thing she didn’t want to do was to make things worse.

The building at the end of the row of shops drew her gaze. Its white walls and blue shutters gleamed in the sun like the quintessential advertisement for a Greek holiday. The For Sale sign made her swallow. She resolutely dragged her gaze away, but the gaily coloured planter pots dotted along the thoroughfare caught her gaze again and that didn’t help either. But...

A sigh welled inside her. But if she ever owned a shop, she’d have a tub—or maybe two tubs—of flowers like these outside its door.

You’re never going to own a shop.

She made herself straighten. No, she was never going to own a shop. And the sooner she got over it, the better.

The lengthening silence between her and Finn grew more and more fraught.

See what happens when you don’t keep a lid on the nonsense? You become tempted to do ridiculous things.

Well, she could annihilate that in one fell swoop.

‘If I ever owned a shop, I’d want flowers outside its door too, just like these ones.’ And she waited for the raucous laughter to scald her dream with the scorn it deserved.

Rather than laughter a warm chuckle greeted her, a chuckle filled with...affection? ‘You used to talk about opening a shop when you were a little girl.’

And everyone had laughed at her—teased her for not wanting to be something more glamorous like an astronaut or ballerina.

Poor poppet, she mocked herself.

‘What did you want to be when you were little?’

‘A fireman...a knife-thrower at the circus...an explorer...and I went through a phase of wanting to be in a glam-rock band. It was the costumes,’ he added when she swung to stare at him. ‘I loved the costumes.’

She couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I’m sure you’d look fetching in purple satin, platform boots and silver glitter.’

He snorted.

‘You know what the next challenge is going to be, don’t you? The very next fancy dress party you attend, you have to go as a glam rocker.’

‘You know there’ll be a counter challenge to that?’