Lovers and Liars: An addictive sexy beach read

by Nigel May

  Impatiently Sheridan swerved the hire car to see if he could overtake the tractor. The car juddered, its tyres moving out from what was already a fairly uneven surface to an even more stony and treacherous part. The road wasn’t wide enough for their car to make its way past the tractor and the elderly Cretan farmer who was obliviously driving the vehicle at a speed that he seemed to be more than content with. Wherever he was going he was certainly in no hurry to reach his final destination and couldn’t care less that the driver of the car behind him was anxious to pass.

  Max hadn’t been keen to go anywhere with Sheridan in the first place and his father-in-law’s manic driving was only compounding his feelings. He was still worried about Heather. She had texted him to say that she was feeling a little better and that her stomach was not hurting as much as it had been, but Max wanted to be with her. He hated being away from her side.

  He took a sharp and nervous intake of breath as Sheridan swerved the car back into line behind the tractor, watching the worry beads that were hanging off the rear-view mirror bouncing with the erratic motion of the vehicle. Max wasn’t sure where Kassidy had hired the car from but it was hardly deluxe; he could feel every bump in the road. An image of a saint or some other kind of religious icon swung from the mirror too, as Max had seen in many of the taxis he and Heather had taken during their time in Crete. But then the presence of a moustachioed taxi driver, smiling pleasantly in the hope of a tip, made the whole thing seem kind of rustic, in possession of a comforting charm. Watching his father-in-law becoming increasingly angry behind the wheel of such a vehicle was certainly not the same.

  Max’s phone beeped. It was another text from Heather. How’s the evening going? Dad behaving himself?

  Max texted back, thankful for the evolution of predictive text as he typed. The constant jerky movement of the car was inconducive to grammatically correct texting. We haven’t even reached a village yet. Your dad is getting madder and madder at the local drivers. God help me – we’re stuck behind a tractor!

  He pressed send and received an answer almost immediately.

  He’s never been known for his patience. And Dad doesn’t really do countryside – he’s more of an urban kind of guy. You okay? You’ve never struck me as a religious man and I know you better than anybody. LOL.

  Max quickly texted back. Let’s just say that I’m pleased there’s a saint in the car with me looking on. Because the way your dad is driving I need all of the divine intervention I can get.

  Heather clearly didn’t understand what Max meant and texted a line of question marks.

  Max explained. There’s a picture of one hanging from the mirror, just like in the cab we took the other night. Hopefully he’ll keep us safe. Your dad is driving like a maniac.

  Well, make sure you are safe, I love you. Max read Heather’s message and replied with a trio of kisses.

  ‘This is fucking ridiculous. Edmund Hillary spent less time than this climbing to the top of Everest!’ barked Sheridan. There was a slight slurring in his voice and it didn’t go unnoticed to Max, who suddenly got the impression that maybe the pair of them were even less safe in the car than he had first realised.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this. We’ll be lucky if we find a village by midnight at this fucking rate!’ Sheridan’s voice was becoming increasingly louder and just as Max was about to suggest that perhaps it would be better if he stopped the car and allowed him to drive instead, Sheridan jolted into action.

  The hotel tycoon jerked the steering wheel to one side to move the car further out into the road, which was finally becoming wider. The beads on the rear-view mirror started to swing ominously again.

  ‘Finally we can force our way past,’ he boomed, the elation in his voice clear.

  The road was certainly wider at that point but it still wasn’t wide enough for two cars, especially when one was a farm vehicle sporting the chunkiest of tyres.

  Max automatically gripped the small handle situated above the passenger window on his side of the car to try and steady himself as the vehicle jolted across the rough terrain of the road. His phone beeped and as he looked down to see the screen light up the movement of the car caused it to fall to the floor. He hadn’t seen who the message was from but assumed that it would be from Heather. He would look at it once he’d managed to make his father-in-law stop the car and swap drivers, and that would be immediately once they had passed this tractor, whether Sheridan liked it or not.

  Sheridan forced his foot to the floor in an attempt to speed the car up sufficiently to move past the tractor before the road narrowed again.

  ‘Will you fucking slow down?’ screamed Max, this time genuinely petrified at Sheridan’s driving. ‘The road is not good enough to pass anything as yet. Don’t try it.’

  ‘Bloody wuss! Of course it is.’ Sheridan shifted the car down a gear and revved the motor to try and manoeuvre the vehicle past the tractor. The road was indeed becoming narrower again and the two men found themselves sandwiched between the tractor and the craggy stonework at the side of the road. The driver of the tractor was now flicking his finger at them in annoyance that they had chosen this moment to try and pass without any degree of safety. Boulders merged into mountains and rocks into ravines that would not allow a car any possibility of steering away from the road.

  Unable to do anything else but allow the two vehicles to move towards each other, Max watched in horror as Sheridan realised that maybe his judgement was not as perfect as he’d thought. The front wheel on the driver’s side bumped the back wheel of the tractor and the car, being considerably smaller and lighter than the tractor, span as the wheels collided, its rear end shooting out at an angle of ninety degrees.

  ‘Oh fuck! That didn’t work,’ stated Sheridan.

  Those were the last words that Max let himself hear as the car started to spin around on itself, the motion of the bump between the two vehicles setting it into an anti-clockwise motion that Sheridan was unable to control. Max looked out the window and as the vehicle span three-sixty he watched as one of the jagged boulders on the edge of the road, the size of a small car itself, seemed to speed towards them. Of course he knew that the car was in fact speeding towards it. Boulders didn’t move, cars did – he knew that. But suddenly his brain wasn’t his. Or at least he wasn’t in charge of it.

  As he focussed on the boulder rapidly approaching his side of the car, a collage of things began to flash through his mind. He suddenly remembered his first on-air hour on US shopping TV and how he had sold a strand of genuine Elvis Presley hair, supposedly kept and donated by a man who had once clipped the King’s locks and then framed it in a presentation souvenir, a must-have for any fan of ‘The Pelvis’. He found himself thinking about the first time he had set eyes on Heather and how he had fallen for her in a heartbeat. She had been wearing a black T-shirt with a grainy retro image of Like a Virgin Madonna on the front and the tightest pair of Levi’s. Her appearance was so beautiful and cool she was branded onto his heart there and then. She had been just as gorgeous in his eyes every moment since. He thought about the day that he and Heather had moved into their Cap Estate, St Lucia home, a stunning haven that was their peace and tranquillity away from the hustle and madness of their abodes in New York and Florida. Max’s mind filled with the image of their crystal-blue swimming pool, which looked out over the incredible coastline and the Caribbean Sea. He found himself wondering if he would ever see that coastline again.

  As the boulder slammed into his side of the car Max heard his phone beep again, indicating that he still hadn’t checked the last message. He wondered whether it was from Heather. It was. Not that he’d seen it. If he had, he’d have read the words from his wife.

  Three kisses… Perfect. One for our past, one for our present and one for our wonderful future. Hurry back, my angel.

  20

  The tattoo machine whirred into action as Fidge Carter straddled himself across the seat where he would doubtless be spending the next few ho
urs of his life. He was naked from the waist up and ready to be inked by Adam, the man who had recently tattooed Hatton – The Main Man in Fidge’s life in more ways than one.

  ‘So, you definitely want a couple of seahorses then?’ asked Adam, having already traced Fidge’s chosen design onto his skin ready to place his tattoo machine in position.

  ‘I sure do. Just as detailed as the sketch I’ve picked and as large as we’ve discussed with their tails interlinked.’

  ‘Any particular significance?’ asked Adam, inquisitive as ever to find out just why his clients chose certain designs to decorate their bodies with.

  ‘No, not especially, I just think they’re cool little creatures and I used to be fascinated by them when I was a child,’ said Fidge, hoping that his cheeks didn’t blush at the lie he was telling the tattoo artist.

  ‘Okay, well here goes,’ said Adam, bringing the needle into contact with Fidge’s skin. ‘Given their size we could be here for a while.’

  Fidge felt the slight movement of his flesh as the first stroke of the design flowed onto his upper back. It was a feeling he was used to after spending so many years with Hatton, scratchy but not unbearable, even though the area was said to be one of the most painful to ink. It was just one of the many new experiences that the Bulgarian boxer had given him: a body full of tattoos, sporting success beyond his wildest dreams and total, unadulterated love.

  Fidge hoped that Hatton would appreciate the sentiment behind the seahorses. He was having them for him. Sure, they were cute little creatures, but that wasn’t the reason he wanted them inked across his upper back: he wanted to show Hatton how much he loved him. Fidge had seen on TV that seahorses were supposed to be predominantly monogamous and that they found a mate for life. He hadn’t paid the hugest amount of attention, having flicked over to one of the sports channels pretty quickly when Hatton had walked in, but he loved the idea that seahorses were one-partner creatures. As far as he was concerned that was what he had found in Hatton. A man he could share his life with, a man he could grow old with, a man who was just as beautiful on the inside as he was on the outside.

  Ideally he would have had their names tattooed underneath the interlinking tails of the ‘Hippocampuses’ – that was what they were called, if he remembered the TV show correctly. He could have had the word ‘Hatton’ inked under one and his own name inked under the other, or maybe just a monogram, an ‘H’ and an ‘F’. Although he and Hatton may have found love, spelling it out for the world to see was not a good idea, especially in the macho world of the boxing ring. Perhaps one day they would be able to declare their love for each other, but for the moment their relationship was as taboo as it could be.

  Fidge closed his eyes as he felt the needle work its way across his skin and thought back to the day that he had first caught sight of Hatton Eden. It was a meeting he would never forget.

  Fidge Carter thought that the Bulgarian city of Varna looked very attractive indeed. Or at least what he’d seen of it through his taxi window as he was transported from Varna Airport, Bulgaria’s third-largest airport, situated about ten kilometres from the city centre itself. He’d been told back in the UK by a few other boxing pals that Varna was quite a place. It was the biggest city on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast and the place where, in 1972, the oldest gold treasure in the world had been discovered, at the site of an ancient necropolis dating back to 4,500 BC. But Fidge was there because he had been told that it was a melting pot for Eastern European – and as yet undiscovered – sporting talent.

  Fidge had worked in the boxing world for many years, both as a wannabe, as a manager and as a trainer. He had gained both kudos and notoriety with stars such as Jimmy ‘The Thighs’ Sutton, Scotty ‘The Slammer’ Pauley and Rocky ‘The Mohawk’ Reidy back in the UK, taking them to the top of their respective weight categories over the years, but success on an international scale had always escaped him. Maybe it was the fact that he had stuck to home-grown talent that stopped him from stretching the wings of his success little further than bouts in Wembley or Belfast. His three protégés had been in-the-ring legends for a short while but in a very small geographical pool of talent. Fidge himself had once been a man tipped as the next big thing in the boxing world, but injury had caused him to throw in the towel in his mid-twenties and by the age of twenty-eight he was a mere uppercut from being yesterday’s news. A one-time hopeful reverted to commentary status at best or flogging his old match programmes and gumshields on eBay at worst.

  Fidge needed a new challenge and when he heard that Bulgaria was the place to find the next ringside piece of the action he was on a plane at lightning speed. And it was an overheard conversation at a boxing club he frequented in London’s East End that took him to Varna in particular. Two former boxers, who like Fidge had unfortunately had their careers cut somewhat short due to injury, were having a knockabout in the ring while Fidge was attacking a punch bag. One of them had just been to Varna on holiday and he was telling his friend about a boxer he had seen sparring in the Bulgarian city. Fidge had earwigged enough to know that the man was called Penko, a Bulgarian name meaning ‘stone’, which seemed apt as he was hard as a rock and could floor any opponent with one crushing blow. He’d also caught the name of the gym in Varna. Apparently, Penko was world-class and as yet undiscovered. Less than twenty-four hours later Fidge was on a flight to the Bulgarian city from London via Istanbul. Maybe Penko could be the challenge he needed.

  Pulling up outside the gym, Fidge knew that trying to find the man in question would be like finding a needle in a Bulgarian haystack. Penko may have been a common name for all he knew, the Bulgarian version of Nick or Steve. Fidge had googled the words ‘boxer’, ‘Penko’ and ‘Bulgaria’ together but nothing came up trumps. Luckily the gym had been easier to track down and as he walked inside he scanned the posters and notices on the wall to see if the famed Penko was mentioned anywhere. He wasn’t, or at least not in any language that Fidge could understand.

  The gym was what he imagined to be the Eastern European equivalent of the sawdust, hard-knock gyms he had experienced many times throughout his career in the seedier quarters of London. Men who fought there would fight hard and fight dirty. Certainly the two that he spied in the main ring at the centre of the gym were punching each other with a brand of skill and expertise that would have seen them awarded instant disqualification on the prize circuit back in the UK.

  Fidge could see a man in an office at the corner of the gym. An unlit cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth and his shirt was unbuttoned nearly all the way to his waist, revealing a body that was obviously once ring-fit but had been left to go to seed over the years. He must have been about forty-five years of age and there wasn’t a hair on his head; he looked like he meant business.

  Fidge knocked on his office door, which was already open. The man looked up and uttered a word which was obviously Bulgarian and unintelligible to him. He hoped it meant ‘Come in’ and so he walked in.

  ‘Hello, my name is Fidge Carter. Do you speak any English?’

  The man looked at Fidge in inquisitive silence for a little longer than was necessary before answering. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and spoke.

  ‘Hello, I speak English, yes? Can I help you?’ The accent was Bond-villain thick.

  ‘I’m an ex-boxer from the UK. I am looking for a man called Penko.’

  He pronounced the name with a questioning air in case he had said it incorrectly.

  The man smiled, any air of thuggish demeanour disappearing in an instant. ‘I know your name. Fidge Carter, I followed your career for many years until you had to retire due to injury. Such a shame, you could have been amazing.’ He left a pause before adding. ‘Sorry, that sounds rude, I suspect.’

  Fidge smiled too, always pleased to gain some recognition for his talents, especially when he’d least been expecting it. ‘Not at all rude, and totally correct. I’m thrilled you know who I am.’

  ‘I am a big fan of the
British boxing scene. I used to box myself back in the day, when I was younger and fitter. Long before you started.’

  ‘And now you run this place?’ asked Fidge.

  ‘I own it. My name is Radko. It means “happy” in your language and I am very happy that you have chosen this gym to visit. It is not every day we have a person of your legend here with us.’

  Fidge could feel his cheeks beginning to colour at Radko’s praise. ‘Thank you.’ It was all he could think of to say.

  There was a slight awkward silence before Radko spoke again. ‘You say you are looking for someone. Who?’

  ‘A boxer called Penko.’

  ‘The stone?’

  Fidge’s face lit up. ‘That’s him. I hear he’s pretty tasty in the ring.’

  ‘You can see for yourself.’

  Fidge motioned towards the two men in the boxing ring. ‘Is he one of those two?’

  Radko began to laugh. ‘No, not at all, he would have those two idiots for breakfast! Penko will be fighting here tonight. We have a local match and he will be one of the fighters.’

  ‘I’d love to see him fight. Will he win?’ It was a simple question from Fidge.

  ‘He is good but he is arrogant. His opponent is unknown to me but he will have to be good to beat Penko, that’s certain. The fight starts at 8.30 p.m. You must come and observe. In fact, you can present the winner with his prize – I have bought a trophy.’ Radko pointed to a cheap-looking shield in the corner of the office.

  Fidge glanced at his watch. It was already approaching six and he had come to the gym straight from the airport. He hadn’t even booked into a hotel yet.

  ‘I would love to. I need to find somewhere to stay, though. Do you know a cheap hotel close to here that I can crash at for maybe a few nights?’