If she’d known she was going to have to walk she’d have grabbed her trainers from her suitcase before it was whipped away. She’d have taken her sunhat too and applied more sunscreen.
It was late afternoon but the sun still blazed down. She could feel its rays penetrating her scalp and thought what an excellent start to her stay sunstroke would be.
Minutes later she’d folded her skirt up at the waist, undone the top three buttons of her shirt, tied the bottom into a knot around her belly and rolled the sleeves up, yet she still felt as if she’d been placed in a boil-in-the-bag.
She was still cursing both her own stubbornness and Theo’s deviousness under her shortening breath ten minutes later when she heard the scooter’s distinctive engine nearing.
Theo stopped in front of her again. She was quite sure she looked exactly as she felt—like she was melting from the inside out—while Theo looked as fresh as if he’d just showered and dressed. The black shorts and khaki polo shirt he wore didn’t have a speck of road dust on them.
After a long silence he tilted his head and fixed her with a stare that suggested she was behaving like a recalcitrant child. ‘Ready to accept a lift now? Or should I do another lap of the peninsula first?’
Helena’s feet were killing her. She’d been on the verge of kicking off her stupid shoes and walking barefoot. Her throat was parched. All the moisture in her body had seeped out and clung to her skin.
But she really, really, really didn’t want to get on the back of that scooter.
Three years ago they had spent a month on this island travelling everywhere by scooter, her face pressed against Theo’s back, arms wrapped tightly around his waist. She had loved every minute of it.
‘Last chance,’ he warned with a raised brow.
She shifted her stance and winced as her shoe inadvertently rubbed against the brand-new blister on the heel of her right foot.
Theo saw the wince, tutted and shook his head sadly. ‘It is incredible how the most intelligent people are always the most stubborn.’
‘Your IQ must be sky high,’ she muttered.
He grinned broadly. ‘I thank you for the compliment.’
‘It wasn’t a...’ She sighed, filling her lungs with yet more hot air, which dried her throat that little bit more.
She gave up.
Glaring at him one more time for luck, Helena stepped out of her shoes and swapped them for the helmet in the box. Only when the helmet was secure on her head did she attempt to get on the back of the scooter.
Why had she chosen to wear such a tight skirt? The only way to get her legs to part enough to climb on was to hitch it up to her hips.
‘Can you look away, please?’ she asked stiffly.
Amusement danced in his eyes but he did as she asked.
Cheeks burning with humiliation, Helena quickly yanked her skirt up and hopped on with a flexibility that took her by surprise. She’d forgotten how nimble she used to be.
But getting onto the back of the scooter was only the first challenge. The second challenge was how to hold on without touching Theo.
The blasted man read her mind. ‘You need to hold on to me, agapi mou, just as you used to do.’
Gritting her teeth, she placed her hands gingerly on his waist.
‘I don’t bite,’ he said, then lowered his gravelly voice to add at the exact same time that she tightened her hold a fraction, ‘Not unless you ask me very nicely.’
There was no time for her to jump off or make a retort for Theo squeezed the throttle and they were off. The motion made her lose her balance and, frightened of being thrown off, she pressed herself into his back and clung on tightly.
He drove them over the narrow tracks, expertly avoiding potholes and other hazards such as random goats. Helena closed her eyes and tried to trick her mind into ignoring the broad back her face was pressed against.
He steered the scooter to the left. She leaned in with him, her thighs squeezing automatically against his. His back muscles bunched against her cheek.
When had she joined her hands together across his hard, flat stomach? It wasn’t possible for her to hold on any tighter.
She forgot to breathe through her mouth. The scent of laundry soap from his T-shirt and his cologne coiled into her airways. It was a woody smell that always evoked thoughts of deep forests.
She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter and tried to block out everything, but it had become impossible. The vibrations of the scooter and the solidity and warmth of Theo had transported her back in time to the summer when she’d...
‘You can let go now.’
Theo’s gravelly voice cut through her desperate, futile mind-block.
Helena opened one eye cautiously.
They’d arrived at the dwelling he’d pointed to earlier.
And she was still pressed against him.
A burst of panic crashed through her. Yanking her hands away from his waist, she swung her left leg in a backward arch and virtually threw herself off the scooter. She would undoubtedly have face-planted the ground had Theo not caught hold of her arm at the last second.
Falling would almost have been preferable.
The impact of Theo’s touch was immediate. The pads of four fingers and a thumb holding her forearm sent what felt like a thousand volts of pure electricity charging through her skin and firing into her veins, making her heart accelerate and her breathing shorten.
And then she was caught in his ice-blue stare. Her accelerating heart and shallow breaths froze in suspended animation. Time itself became suspended.
She couldn’t break away from the trap of his stare, and in that suspended moment had no desire to break from it, her eyes suddenly thirsty to drink in the face of the man she had once loved with all her heart. There was that groove in his forehead, indented with both laughter and his childhood bicycle accident, which had been practically
