by Holly Greene
Nick shook his head. “No, running away was the mistake. She left him when she shouldn’t have, and by then she was pregnant with you but perhaps did not know it.”
“And George never got to tell her that the woman was lying?”
“He tried. There are letters in a shoebox in his closet from him to her that she wrote return to sender on. She never read them.”
“When did she tell him about me then?”
“Not until very recently and only after she accepted that he was telling the truth— he never stopped writing to her, you see. One day - I think when she got sick - she decided to read what he had to say, and then started replying again - only a few years ago. I remember the day he got the letter. He wept like a man spared the death sentence. He was going to go to New York, but she wouldn’t let him. She didn’t want him to see how weak she had become. But to his great sadness, he didn't receive the letter telling him about you until after she’d died. And then when he found out about you, Joanna, he immediately had me start looking for you.”
At this, Nick looked pained. “But I failed him. It took me too long. It is and will always be one of my greatest failures in life not finding you fast enough. He never said one word in anger towards me about it though, but it was on his deathbed that he made me promise that you would come to Skiathos. He just wanted you to see, wanted you to know where he lived, who he was, what he did. He honestly didn’t care about the hotel. We do, those of us who knew him and loved him, but he didn’t. It didn’t mean anything to him.”
“So he did want to know who I was?” Joanna asked, relieved.
“Yes, Joanna. The very prospect of seeing you, I believe, is what kept him alive for so long after he was diagnosed.”
Joanna hugged her knees and leaned into him.
“Thank you, Nick. Even it what you say is not all true, thank you.”
“Every word of it is. This I swear upon my life.”
23
On day of her return flight, Nick walked with her for as far as airport customs would allow.
“Will we see you again?” he asked. “When you sell, will you at least come back to see us?”
Joanna didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t told him she was going to sell, but she hadn’t told him she wasn’t either. He had interpreted that to mean she was going to go through with it when the truth was she didn’t know yet.
All she knew right then was that couldn’t bring herself to look in his eyes. Not out of shame, but because if did she knew she would start crying. She embraced him with every ounce of strength she had, breathing in his scent one more time before she left.
Nick patted her hair and said, “Come back when you can. You are Skiathan, Joanna, one of us. You always will be.” He pulled her face to his, their foreheads touching, then turned and walked briskly away.
Joanna watched him for as long as she could before the crowds filled in around her.
On the flight back to New York, Joanna dug out the carry on bag that she had stored at her feet and took out one of her mother’s letters to her father.
The further across the Atlantic she travelled, the further the dream that was Skiathos was slowly fading away from her memory, and she needed some way to reconnect with it.
The letter was random, but appeared to be one of the last her mother had written to him before she died.
George,
I pray everyday that there is such a thing as reincarnation, one more chance with you. Even if it’s only for one day, I would cherish it with my entire soul.
I worked my whole life to become something that few other women before me have ever been: Powerful.
Now, as I sit upon my bed, drinking an orange juice that has never known refrigeration, eating a slice of stale cornbread and listening to gossipy nurses outside my room talk of some man named Dr. Phil, I know that no one knows who I am nor cares what I did.
Where is the reset button on life? It’s so fleeting! Surely it wouldn’t be hard to just rewind a little bit?
If I could just go back to that one night. No, all those ensuing years really… you sent me so many letters, so many opportunities, and I sent them all back like a maddened bull.
I expect nothing of you, George. I don’t expect your forgiveness, I don’t expect your condolences. Just know that I still dream of you every night, and waking up in a bed without you every morning…
I won’t lie, I wish I didn’t dream of you. Waking up from those beautiful, heavenly dreams is harder than I expect dying is going to be.
This I know with all of my soul.
Look for me in a white-washed hotel upon a hill overlooking crystal clear waters. I’ll be in room 111.
Waiting for you.
24
For one week Joanna tried. She really did. She performed her duties as a senior editor at Herod Publishing. She assigned junior editors work and went to meetings, fulfilled deadlines, answered emails.
She wanted to be thankful for the life she had earned, for the life she had fought for, but each moment she looked out her window and saw New York’s famous steel titans looming on the horizon, she didn’t feel like a modern woman in a sophisticated city anymore. Instead, she felt trapped and claustrophobic in a steel cage.
The city wasn’t liberating. It wasn’t inspiring.
It was imposing. It was finite. It was… wrong.
She put herself in autopilot mode, and went day by day hoping she was just suffering a case of post-vacation blues, but of course she knew better.
Her heart simply wasn’t in New York anymore, it was in Skiathos.
She wished she had a picture of Nick. She needed to see his dark, brown eyes. His simple smile. His tall, lean frame.
She missed spending time with him. She missed… it was weird, she knew, but she missed how he smelled. She missed smelling him. Like a bundle of herbs taken from the forest.
Nothing of real substance had happened between them, but now Joanna wished it had. If her life was going to consist of petty fantasies of him then at least she could have that one real memory. Where she allowed herself to forego rules and normalities, and indulged, even for just one night, in real passion.
She arrived back in New York early Wednesday morning, but didn’t bother calling Peter until Friday.
They never really communicated that much during the week, so it wasn’t unusual, but he could tell something was up when they got together for drinks.
“Want me to help you pack this weekend?” he asked, talking about them moving in together. “We could get you over fully to my place probably by Sunday afternoon.”
Joanna winced at the mere suggestion.
“You’re probably still a bit tired from the jet-lag though,” he said in a rare moment of consideration. “Rest up. We’ll do it next weekend, or whenever you’re ready. Want to start moving forward with selling the hotel, though?” he added, as he put a big smile on his face. “Ready to become a millionaire overnight?”
He then wagged his eyebrows and drummed the table excitedly. There was something carnivorous about him that Joanna hadn’t seen until then and something broke in her as she looked at him.
She decided to do something just then that she hadn’t planned on doing.
“No, Peter. That’s not going to happen.”
“Joanna,” he sighed. “Do the smart thing. It’s just a place. Think of it as a stepping stone to something bigger and better - for us.”
“Peter, I’m not going to sell the hotel, and I’m not going to move in with you.”
His face got still and flushed.
“The hotel has a lot of history for Skiathos,” Joanna explained. “It’s a lifeline for a lot of people. Selling it would guarantee its destruction. I couldn’t in good conscience do that.”
Peter clenched his teeth and turned his beer bottle on the table without looking at her. “Don’t be taken in by all that nostalgic nonsense. It’s just business and that isn’t a bad thing,” he said.
“No. Busine
ss is what people say when they know what they’re doing is wrong but don’t want to feel bad about it. Did you hear what I also said? I said I’m not moving in with you.”
“Yeah, I heard you,” he replied, still turning his beer bottle. He finally looked at her, gritting his teeth. “So what was his name? Whatever slimy Greek Lothario you cheated on me with over there. What was his name?”
She didn’t answer. “Before I left, I had to ask you if you loved me. Why is that Peter? And I know you only said yes out some sort of misguided loyalty. And what’s worse is before I asked you, it hadn’t even occurred to me to care. We’re in two different worlds, Peter. I stayed with you because I thought I was in a phase in my life where I should settle down. You were the mature, smart choice. And you were with me because I matched what you were looking for - on the way up the career ladder, lots of prospects. But you don’t marry someone for power. You marry them for love.”
Peter pursed his lips and she could tell he was biting back so many responses.
“But I wish you well. I really do. You’ve been nothing but good to me. Take care. I’m sorry it happened the way that it did.”
With that, she stood up and left the bar, pulling out her phone and calling Donna as she hailed a taxi.
“We’re you serious?” she asked her friend, without saying hello.
“About what?” Donna asked.
“About helping me to fix up the hotel?”
“Hell yeah!”
“OK, let’s do it,” she said, suddenly feeling like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
25
Flying back so quickly had put Greek Customs on high alert. They seemed to think she was trafficking drugs or something.
“Nope, just a woman on a mission. I’m in love,” she told them and they nodded agreeably, as if understanding.
Chris almost leapt out of her skin when she saw Joanna walk into the lobby.
“Where’s Nick?” she asked.
The other woman frowned and shook her head. “He’s not doing well, Joanna. He’s been out fishing since you left. No one knows where.”
“It’s OK,” she replied. “I know.”
She turned around to leave, and Chris shouted, “Wait, Miss Joanna! Does this mean you’re keeping the hotel?”
“That is exactly what this means!” Joanna turned around and shouted back. “But it also means something else. I have to find Nick.”
She left and ran back down to her taxi driver, whom she had asked to wait.
They went to Nick’s dock next. She had learned from him that Markos, too, had a houseboat there and she was going to need Nick’s best friend if she was going to get to him.
Lying down, listening to a Greek version of Wheel of Fortune and reading a book— Markos clearly needed something to do with his evening.
“Joanna! Are you back?” he said, startled. “Are you keeping the hotel?”
“Yes, but first I need your help.”
26
“Stop here,” Joanna ordered.
She and Markos were stopped about a hundred meters or so from Nick’s boat, which was nestled between the two small islands that was his father’s secret fishing ground. “I want to surprise him. Can you tell if he’s onboard or if he’s fishing below?”
“He’s onboard,” Markos said, spying on his friend with binoculars. “And he looks rough.”
“Good,” Joanna said as she quickly undressed. “That he’s there, I mean. If he moves off and I haven’t made it to him yet, for the love of god don’t leave me behind.”
Markos’ eyes widened as he saw Joanna’s voluptuous figure spill out of her dress. And then he almost fainted when he saw she was wearing only a tiny black bikini.
“OK,” he said. “You want me to watch you as you swim? Make sure you’re all right? I can do that.”
Joanna laughed and dived in, not caring how cold the water was.
She was a decent swimmer, but she surprised even herself by how fast she made it to the ladder of Nick’s houseboat.
Large tuna were swimming beneath the boat’s underbelly and her first thought was to get his speargun, but then she figured that she - they - had more important things to do first.
She surfaced near his ladder and was ascending it when Nick yelled out.
He was frightened, and had probably just threatened her.
“Will you take me fishing tomorrow?” she asked him, water dripping off her.
“Joanna …” he gasped. “Joanna, is that really you?”
She climbed onto the deck, but was almost knocked back into the water by the force of his embrace.
“You came back! Here to stay, yes?” Nick clutched her tightly.
She nodded and hugged him back, overcome at being in his arms once again.
This time it would be for good.
“Yes, I’m staying and I’m keeping the hotel. You told me my father would have wanted me to have my own story, that I didn’t need to keep the hotel. But you are part of my story, Nick, and unlike my parents, we should have a life together. One free from pining and desperation, hoping and waiting. Together we’re going to start living our lives now. And we’re going to change things— the hotel included.”
With that Joanna and Nick kissed and held on tight to one another, knowing they had all the time in the world, yet not wanting to waste another second.
From the Author: Thank you for reading SPRING IN SKIATHOS - I very much hope you enjoyed it. If so, and you had a free moment, I’d be most grateful for a quick review at Amazon.
Continue your escapist Greek Islands adventure with SUMMER IN SANTORINI, another standalone novel in the Escape to the Islands series.
Or perhaps you’d like to visit Italy next?
Read on for a short excerpt of SPRING IN SICILY, the first title in my Escape to Italy series.
Spring in Sicily
Escape to Italy - Excerpt
Another escapist summer read: the first in a series of romantic, heartwarming holiday reads set in Italy, from the author of Spring in Skiathos.
Three very different women arrive on the stunning island of Sicily for a cookery class promising incredible food, breathtaking scenery and a taste of Italian culture. It is hosted every year in the spring by Chef Isabella, in her little stone villa in the old town of Taormina.
Thirty-five year old Kate hopes a short break will take her mind off her infertility problems. Can time away help her come to terms with the fact that she may never be a mum?
Martha is in Sicily against her will. The break was a 50th birthday gift from her children, all of whom have now fled the nest. With the family gone and nobody left to mother, she has no idea what to do with herself. Can she rediscover some of her zest for life while in Italy?
Olivia is a travel writer, in Sicily to write a feature on the growing popularity of Isabella’s famed cookery class. She is intrigued to find out what makes previous guests rave about the short break. Is it the food, the location and the incredible scenery?
Or is there an alchemy about Chef Isabella, and her instinctive way of knowing that her students require more than cultural or food knowledge, but a means to balm their souls...
Escape to Italy Series
Spring in Sicily
Summer in Sorrento
Autumn in Verona
Winter in Rome
1
“Sicily?” Olivia Bennett narrowed her eyes at her features editor and annoyedly blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Come on, Erica, you can’t be serious…”
“Why not?,” Erica replied. “Sicily is beautiful—especially in the spring. You get to sit in the sun, eat loads of Italian food, and come back fifteen pounds heavier. Who wouldn’t want to do that?”
“Me, actually,” Olivia responded, irritated. “The place is just full of fatty foods, ugly beaches, and pushy men. And everything smells like fish.”
“Jeez, Olivia,” Her editor rolled her eyes, “did somebody from the island kick your d
og or something?”
Olivia held her tongue and stared past Erica out the window.
Four years before coming to The Wanderer, one of the USA’s premier travel magazines, she’d started out her brand new travel-writing career by following her then-publisher Richard on what was supposed to be a grand tour of Sicily—which was to double as a romantic holiday for the young lovers.
Excited for a shot at European romance and set on finding the hidden gems of Italy, she eagerly accepted the offer. But three days later, she found herself alone on a Sicilian beach vomiting undercooked garlic prawns and unable to find a decent area on the island that wasn’t a tourist trap. When she finally got home, she almost considered giving up travel writing altogether. Or at least anything vaguely related to Italy, which was forever soured in her mind.
Snapping back to reality, she turned her gaze back to Erica and sighed.
“I just—I thought I might’ve earned a little bit of leeway, I guess.”
Erica had recruited Olivia to The Wanderer based on her large established following, and evocative articles on East Asia, South America, and the Middle East.
Her first assignment for The Wanderer, an exploration of glaciers in Patagonia, had been hailed as revolutionary, and was already generating buzz for a slew of awards.
But Sicily was quickly becoming the it place in Europe for American vacationers, and the combination of a hyped location, and an incredibly popular writer was just too enticing to pass up.
“Look,” Erica conceded, “I know this isn’t ideal. But we need our best talent covering our top regions. And Sicily truly is it this year. I’ve gotten hundreds of enquiries about this self-taught chef who’s got a cooking class there that’s supposed to be incredible. We want you to check it out to see what the hype is all about.”
