CHAPTER TWENTY

Despite the warm and thrilling smiles from Dimitri in the wake of my own confusing discoveries about him, I hated the beach. It was hot. It was sandy. The sun was beating down on me and pulling every last drop of moisture out of my skin. I was sweating. And every now and again the wind would pick up and slap me in the face with a handful of sand.

I’d tried. I’d tried to do the whole Greek thing and lie in the sun as if there were no tomorrow. I’d tried looking out over the sea and contemplating its blue magnificence. Contemplating the warm, glorious sun and beauty of nature… but I couldn’t.

“Okay. I’ve tried,” I said. “I’ve tried everything, but I just can’t get into it.”

“Mmmmm,” Dimitri moaned. His eyes were closed and he looked like a snake on a warm rock soaking up the rays.

“I hate the beach. I always have. I especially hate sand, it gets in all sorts of places, and did you know that the bacteria content in sand is actually very high? I’ve also never seen the point of lying down and doing nothing. And I don’t like not wearing sunscreen, either, okay?”

Dimitri sat up and pulled his glasses down. “Okay. We can go.”

“Just like that? We can go?”

“Sure.” He stood up and started collecting our things.

“You’re not going to give a lecture about letting go and getting my inner Greek on?”

“No. If you aren’t enjoying the beach, we’ll go.”

“Okay.” I was slightly stunned. “So what’s next on the list again?”

“One of the highlights of your trip,” he said.

We walked along the beach for about twenty minutes in total silence. The black sand was beautiful and the water was so warm that I waded in ankle-deep and kicked it up with my feet.

“So will you tell me where we are going yet?”

“Over there.” He pointed in the direction of a few brightly colored boats that were moored on the sand. Behind them stood an old-looking building. Long tables stretched out lazily under shady trees. There were a few people sitting at the tables drinking glasses of wine and laughing. The sign on the door read WINERY.

“Wine tasting in Santorini is a must.” Dimitri smiled, took me by the hand, and led me to a table right there on the beach under a tree. A woman rushed over to us and greeted Dimitri like she knew him, and naturally—like every woman that seemed to know him—she was gorgeous. There was more smiling and hugging being thrown around again. *Pang of jealousy*

“Do you know every woman on the island?” It had been my intention to hide the sarcasm in my tone, but it hadn’t worked very well.

“Why, are you jealous?” He smiled, looking very pleased with himself. Too pleased.

“No!”

“It kind of sounded like it,” he teased.

“No, it’s just an observation.” I tried to brush it off but couldn’t. “And,” I continued, “they’re all so beautiful and they flip their hair a lot and they fawn and they look at you all flirtatiously and do things like this—”

I pouted my lips and tried to give myself a pair of cute Bambi eyes. “Oooh, Dimitri. How are you? Hair flip, hair flip,” I said while flipping my newly cut hair and giving it a good shake.

First his eyes slowly crinkled into a smile, and then his whole face joined in. “Do that again, please.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to work out if that was the cutest or the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I froze. My mouth opened and I thought I could feel my eyes widen unnaturally. He must have thought I looked like an idiot. I closed my mouth—I might as well have taken my hand and pushed it shut—and focused very hard on relaxing my neck and shoulders in an air of indifference. I felt like a contortionist. Why was he still watching me? I smiled and placed my hand under my chin, leaning my head on it not-so-nonchalantly.

“Nice place,” I finally said, deflecting.

“Nice place,” he echoed, still holding eye contact. “They are famous for their nice wine.”

“Nice,” I said. God, this was such a useless conversation, and the word nice was being way too overused. I was happy when the waitress suddenly arrived with our glasses of wine. After some explanations and discussions about them (I heard something about oak and citrus and pairing with lamb), we began tasting. Each wine was more amazing and delicious than the previous one. I’d never been one to consider the flavors of wine before, but today, sitting here with him, under the trees, on one of the most amazing beaches I had ever been on, everything tasted better. Everything looked more beautiful, like I was seeing it all in crisp high-definition detail. Perhaps it was the gentle buzz of the sixth sip, but a feeling of courage started to bubble up in me.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.” His face was flushed from the sun. His hair was slightly messy and tussled by the wind. His eyes were that gut-stabbing, hypnotizing green color. He was perfect.

“Are you…” I cleared my throat as the next half of the sentence got stuck there. I couldn’t believe I was about to ask such a question. I’d never asked anyone this before. “Are you…”

I coughed a tad. My words were still stuck and I reached for my glass of wine, holding up my finger to him, indicating for him to wait.

“Take your time.” He watched me closely.

I swallowed and the liquid somewhat soothed my dry throat. I tried again. “Are you flirting with me?” I finally managed.

A slow, languid, and downright filthy-sexy smile lit up Dimitri’s face. “What do you think?”

“Well…” I gathered my thoughts logically. “Many of our conversations have seemed to err on the side of s-e-x. Understandable in a way since we did h-a-v-e i-t.” I didn’t know why I was spelling out all the words like a parent swearing in front of a toddler. “But we did agree to keep things professional—I even paid you—yet it just doesn’t feel that professional.”

“What’s not professional about it?” he said, leaning across the table.

“Well, there’s that leaning you’re doing right now. You did take my clothes off earlier on the beach, and there is all that looking and husky-toned talking. So if I add all those things together, they are fairly congruent with the hypothesis that you are in fact flirty.”

I finished and looked at Dimitri expectantly, but he said absolutely nothing. He simply stared and continued his table lean. Silence. More silence. Oh God, maybe I had crossed a line here and had totally misinterpreted the situation between us. Maybe he was trying to think of a way to say no without embarrassing me.

“What?” I asked nervously. A movement caught my eye and I watched as his hands stole their way across the table. They stopped inches away from mine. We both gazed down at them expecting them to do something, like they were somehow not connected to us. A solitary finger reached out and twirled itself around one of mine.

“Have you only noticed now?” he asked, looking up at me. “I’m flirting with you, Jane.” His words came out firmly, and he couldn’t have sounded sexier if he tried.

“I see.” I nodded, taking in the information and trying to process it in a logical, reasonable manner and not one in the vein of a…

“Push the glasses of wine off the table and have sex with me. Now. Sex. Now.”

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never been in a situation like this before, and for the first time ever I regret not reading all those articles my mother sent me about flirting and sex and…” I stopped midsentence. This was so bizarre; honestly I had no idea what to do. Only one way to find out. I might as well ask him.

“You tell me what usually happens next,” I asked tentatively.

“That’s up to the woman. I’ve made my intentions clear, and you can decide what you want to do with that.” His smile was gone now; instead he stared at me with a look that made my blood reach boiling point, only to completely freeze over immediately after.

His intentions were clear. He wanted to sleep with me again. Just like Val had said. And it terrified me. A part of me wanted that so badly, but this time it was different. It would be different from the other night when I’d considered it a one-night stand with a man I would never see again. This time, I liked him. And that was a dangerous place to be.