by Karen Swan
He looked taken aback momentarily. ‘And to think I thought it was one of the perks of membership.’ That dry tone again.
‘Well, I mean I would have told you about it anyway,’ she said quickly. ‘Look, that’s her over there,’ she said, pointing to Elle now standing with Julien Sacramento, one of the bad boys of the New York art scene. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ she sighed.
‘She is,’ he nodded, barely looking over at her before coming back to face Chloe again.
‘I can give you her number if you like.’ No! Why was she doing this? Why were these words coming out of her?
‘Is that part of the service too?’ he asked coldly, looking at her directly, a wedge of that curtness from their first meeting back in his voice.
‘Nooooo,’ Chloe groaned, playfully swatting him across the stomach with the back of her hand, trying to lighten the mood.
But she’d clearly misjudged again because, for a terrible moment, everything went still – for her anyway – as he looked down at his shirt. She felt instantly horrified, realizing she had got it wrong again. She had crossed a line, touching him inappropriately, a man she scarcely knew! Her client! Which was the worst of all those scenarios?
She waited, feeling her pulse pound in her ears louder than the dance-floor beat. She watched as he took a breath, as though pressing a ‘reset’ button. ‘Listen,’ he said, taking a step closer, his voice becoming louder in her ear. ‘I don’t actually care why you invited me; I only came tonight because I want to talk to you about Greece. I need to move on it.’
‘Greece?’ she echoed, feeling relieved he wasn’t going to upbraid her for harassing him. ‘Greece is great. It’s going well.’
He looked at her and she could tell from the way he eyed her suspiciously that he definitely knew she was drunk. ‘So then you’ve found something?’
‘Absolutely, yes,’ she nodded. ‘Lots.’
‘Even better. A choice then?’
‘Well I have found men do like choice,’ she mumbled under her breath as another image of Serena and Tom zipped through her mind. Whisky. She needed more whisky.
He frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Nothing,’ she sighed, dismissing the query with another, more feeble, swat in the air. She leant her head against the wall, wanting to go home now. She felt suddenly exhausted. Defeated.
‘So when can I see them? Have you got anything I could look at now?’
She arched an eyebrow, looking at him as though he’d just asked her to poledance. ‘Now? Now-now?’
‘Yes. Now-now. Show me on your phone.’
‘I can’t. I should do it properly – you know, brunch at Sant Ambroeus, laptop presentation. The whole VIP treatment,’ she said scathingly, with a roll of her eyes for good measure.
‘Chloe, I’ve already told you several times I don’t care about all that; I don’t need to be mollycoddled. I just want to see the damned properties.’ He fixed her with a stern look.
‘Really?’ She bit her lip.
‘Really.’
‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ she said, giving a huge sigh and opening up her phone and finding the files in her emails; it took a few minutes. The screen wasn’t working properly. Or it was the 4G. Or her fingers.
‘. . . Right, so that’s one of them,’ she said finally, handing over the phone so he could get a closer look. She peered over his shoulder, having to remind herself not to rest her head on it. All she wanted now was to sleep. ‘Beautiful sea views, twelve acres. No mains power though and the plumbing is . . . basic.’
‘Twelve acres is too small. And I need mains power.’
She gave a sigh that she didn’t even try to hide. ‘Okay, so then the next one is a really beautiful building.’ She reached over him and swiped the screen left. ‘The old mayor’s house. It has zero land and is in the old town—’
‘It needs to be rural, Chloe, with lots of land. I told you I want privacy.’
‘Splendid isolation is all very well in principle,’ she countered, not liking the way he cut over her. ‘But you might find you like having neighbours when you get there.’
‘I have neighbours here.’
‘But it’s not like here, over there,’ she said, beginning to feel huffy; he was so difficult. ‘They’d be different neighbours.’
‘How?’
‘You know,’ she shrugged, wide-eyed. ‘Farmers and goats and shit.’
‘Farmers and goats and . . . ?’ He sighed, looking exasperated by her now. ‘Chloe, the entire point of this place is seclusion. I thought I made myself clear on that.’ He handed the phone back to her.
‘But I haven’t shown you the picture yet,’ she pouted. ‘It’s super pretty.’
‘It doesn’t fit the brief,’ he said firmly.
She tutted loudly, her finger jabbing the screen as she searched for the next property. ‘. . . Oh, this is one, but I don’t think it’s right: old farmhouse, walled garden, olive groves. About a mile off the nearest road but—’
He took the phone from her hand again and she watched him flicking through the pictures intently, his eyes keen on the detail. He had a good profile. Strong. Manly. She wondered whether he cheated on his girlfriend too . . . Was it all men, or just Tom? Or was it her? Was she the problem, lacking in some way?
‘I like this one.’ He held her phone back and she tore her gaze off his profile to have a look.
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s worth seeing. Have you others like that?’
‘Tons,’ she said confidently, even though she couldn’t remember her own phone number right now.
‘Okay – but we’ll need to go see them.’
She blinked. Then blinked again; she wasn’t entirely sure her eyes were working together properly. ‘We?’
‘Well of course. I need a woman’s eye.’
‘But . . . but . . .’
‘But what? That’s okay isn’t it? Surely you’re allowed to travel with clients if it’s required?’
‘Absolutely. I just didn’t realize that’s what you wanted, is all.’
‘Well I do. And time is of the essence for me. I don’t want to lose this summer and it’s mid-July already. How soon can you get away?’
‘I’d have to look at my diary,’ she said, feeling disorientated, looking around the room. Could she do this? She’d need to speak to Jack. What if Alexander needed her? Or Pelham? What if Poppy woke up? Where was Elle?
Joe turned to face her square on, blocking her view of the rest of the room, his hands jammed in his pockets. He was all she could see; it wasn’t a bad view. ‘I suppose tonight’s out of the question?’
‘Toni—?’ she spluttered. ‘You want to take off for Greece right now, without a moment’s notice?’
He shrugged, as if he couldn’t see what the big deal was. ‘Yeah.’
He was mad. ‘. . . But we’d never get a flight.’
‘Not commercially maybe. But you can get us a jet, can’t you?’
‘A private jet?’ she echoed, sure she was hearing things.
‘I seem to recall you telling me you could get me a rickshaw in Bangkok with three minutes’ notice if that was what I wanted. Well, I’m telling you I want a plane to get me from here to Greece, now.’ He looked at her with that intense expression of his again, as though scrutinizing her, looking for the fault lines. ‘What’s the problem? Have you got meetings that can’t be rescheduled?’
‘Well, no, but—’ Apart from Poppy, she actually couldn’t think of any compelling reasons to stay in New York this week. And there was one overwhelmingly good reason to leave.
‘So then go pack a bag and we can be on our way.’
‘It’s just so . . . sudden,’ she faltered.
‘I’m asking you to accompany me to Greece, Chloe. Not marry me.’ His face split into an amused smile, enlivening his features. She noticed he had very white teeth. ‘. . . Joke?’ he added when she didn’t respond.
‘Oh. Oh yes, of course. I knew that,’ she
managed. Men joking about not marrying her was too close to the bone, though.
‘Listen, spontaneity is money’s single greatest gift, Chloe,’ he said, watching her. ‘Don’t overthink it. Let’s just go.’ She placed a hand on the wall, just to prop it up. She felt harried, rushed. ‘You can sleep on the plane and tomorrow, by the time you wake up, we’ll be on a different continent. A hangover on a Greek island is surely better than a hangover in New York.’
‘Will you be hungover?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
His eyes glittered with contained laughter. ‘Not me. You.’
‘Me?’
‘Don’t worry, a swim in the sea will perk you up.’
‘What makes you think I’m going to be hungover?’ she asked huffily.
At that, he threw his head back and laughed. ‘Precisely that!’ His eyes flashed, his mood upbeat. ‘So what do you say? Are you in?’
Chloe leaned against the wall and looked at him: being on a different continent to Tom by daybreak? She couldn’t think of anything better than that at all. ‘Hell yes I am – I’m in.’
Chapter Fifteen
The drone was constant, a noise to match the pressure in her head and she frowned without trying to open her eyes, pulling the pillow closer to her and snuggling back down again. Just five more minutes. She would sleep until her alarm went off, no way was she getting up early . . .
The earth dropped suddenly and she flinched violently, feeling as though the bed was falling away from her. Her eyes flew open and, for a moment, she was utterly bewildered by the scene that greeted her – ivory leather everywhere she looked, on the walls, chairs, ceiling even; the small tubular space . . .
She sat up in a rush, a panicky feeling beginning to rush through her as she tried to make sense of what was happening – what had happened last night? – but her head disagreed with the sudden motion and she dropped it in her hands, wondering if she was going to be sick.
A self-pitying groan escaped her as flashes of last night came back in silent cameos: The velvet chairs in the Blond. Serena at Tom’s doorway. The mojito on the floor. Whisky on a table. Elle in the centre of the room. Martinis on a tray. Joe—
‘Good morning.’
She looked up – again too quickly – an aghast expression on her face as the man himself smiled back at her. He was standing by the partition that blocked the bedroom she was in from what she could see was a seating area behind him.
Plane. She was on a plane.
‘I thought I heard you stirring. There’s been some turbulence. Did it wake you?’
‘Uh . . .’ Her voice was an octave deeper than usual. Her hands went to her hair, her face. Oh God, what did she look like? And – she looked down at herself – how the hell had she got into these pyjamas?
‘Don’t worry, you were able to do it yourself – just,’ he said, watching her slow-dawning panic. ‘I thought it was better if you had the bed.’
‘Where have you slept?’ she managed, every word a croak. Water, she needed water.
As though reading her mind, he came into the room and poured her a glass from the bottle on the burr-walnut side table.
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, taking long, thirsty sips.
‘I slept back there,’ he said, jerking his head towards the main cabin as he settled himself on the arm of a chair across the aisle from the bed. ‘And very comfortable it was too.’
‘Well, thank you,’ she said acknowledging his manners for forfeiting a truly flat bed and proper night’s sleep for her. ‘Did I do this?’ she asked, looking around the plane in wonderment. She had booked them countless times over the years but had never actually been in one.
‘You were very efficient. I had no sooner suggested the idea than you made a few calls and had it sorted in ten minutes. A very impressive service, Miss Marston.’
Her eyes met his and she saw the pity on his face. ‘. . . Hmm, not so impressive today though,’ she murmured, her free hand going to smooth her hair again, feeling mortified that she had got herself into this state in front of him, her client. ‘I’m so sorry.’
His gaze was steady. ‘Why? It was a party. You partied.’
She glanced at him. Was that what he thought she was – some high-flying party girl, living the life she flogged to her clients? ‘I know, but, I don’t usually . . . I’d . . . I’d had some bad news. I was upset.’
He nodded, watching her and she wondered whether he believed her or just thought this was an excuse.
‘ . . . Where are we going?’ It was humiliating to have to even ask.
‘You don’t remember?’
She shook her head.
‘Greece. Specifically the Saronic islands.’ He watched the look of horror spread across her face. ‘You said you could rearrange your meetings, that there wasn’t anything particularly tying you to the city this week.’
‘Uh . . . right,’ she stumbled. ‘Yes.’ Had she really said that? She’d been blind drunk. Even now, she couldn’t remember her commitments off the top of her head. Had she signed off on the Andermatt deal?
‘Are you sure it’s okay?’ he asked.
What about Pelham – had the river cruise worked? What if Alexander called? ‘Well, I’m guessing it’s too late to ask the pilot to turn around now,’ she said, giving a feeble smile.
‘To be honest, yes. We refuelled in London three hours ago. We should be landing in Athens in about forty minutes.’
She’d been asleep all that time, crossing an ocean and a continent? She wondered what Tom would be thinking after she hadn’t turned up at his room last night. Had he called? Her phone was on the little side table but she could see the blue light flashing. She tore her eyes away from it.
‘Forty minutes . . . Right.’ She finished the remaining water, leaning across the bed to push back the blind. The day jumped in without manners; outside, a symphony of blues was playing: clear skies and cerulean seas, oceangoing yachts merely white pinpricks from here. ‘And how long will we be here?’
He shrugged. ‘As long as it takes, I guess. It could be a couple of days, it could be the week. It depends what happens on the ground when we see the properties.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She tried to hide her frustration at the open-endedness of it. How could she have done this – just boarded a private jet with a man she barely knew to come to a tiny island for an unspecified amount of time? Kate would freak if she found out. Her mother would—
He watched her for a moment as though her thoughts played across her face like a television screen. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to get changed. You were adamant you didn’t want to pack anything last night, you kept saying you just wanted to go, so they’ve left your suit in the closet.’ He looked at her apologetically. ‘But we can get you some lighter stuff when we get there.’ He himself was wearing jeans and a grey-marl t-shirt. Had he been wearing that last night too?
‘Absolutely, no problem,’ she said, trying to smile again even though the idea of pushing her body into a tailored anything made her want to curl up in a ball and cry. Her head was making her want to cry. Tom and what he’d done . . .
Joe retreated back into the cabin and she looked down again at the Mediterranean view – the purple range of the Peloponnese mountains like dimpled bruises on the earth’s skin, islands threading the Greek seas like dot-to-dot pictures, the horizon blindingly bright. It wasn’t just a new landscape out there, it looked like an entirely different world, the bare, scrubbed terrains and plunging chalky cliffs the polar opposite to the thrusting, avaricious man-made, steelclad intensity of Manhattan.
She felt a small quiver in her soul at the sight of it. It was odd. She had come out here on the screaming delirium of alcohol, but something told her this was the very place she needed to be: somewhere simple, clean and healing, back in the elements.
Clearly it would have been preferable to have Elle here instead of Joe (although the commute wouldn’t have been anywhere near as merciful), and she couldn’t help but wish that this could hav
e been a girls’ holiday to help her get over her broken heart, composed of lie-ins till noon, afternoon tanning sessions and hanging out in bars with pretty Greek boys. That was the way forward surely? She needed to cut all ties with her old life, completely this time. No more half measures.
But not quite yet. Whether she liked it or not, she was here with Joe, and having hitched a free ride here, she couldn’t very well ditch the guy; she had a moral as well as professional obligation to do what she had signed up to do when she stepped onto that jet, and that was to help him buy his house.
But . . . if she could wrap up his business here quickly, there was nothing to stop her staying on a while, without him, and working out her next step. Tom was a tumour she had to cut from her life and she had to find a new path now.
She pressed her hand to the glass.
And this was the perfect place to start.
Hydra
It turned out she was excellent at her job, even pie-eyed. The helicopter was waiting on the tarmac when they disembarked, ready to whisk them straight to the island, so that their feet were on Athenian soil for less than fifteen minutes. Its drone through the earphones – significantly louder than the plane’s – didn’t do her headache any favours, but she supposed since it was self-inflicted, she had no one to blame but herself. And besides, it was worth the freedom.
She spent the short journey with her forehead pressed to the cool glass, gazing down at the islands that she could see in much greater detail now they had dropped altitude. Most of her visions of the Greek islands had been built around the twee perfection of Santorini and Mykonos, their blue-and-white cubiform buildings sitting in dense clusters above the sea; but looking down on the vastly more rustic and underdeveloped islands here, the buildings looked more friendly and familiar, with red tile roofs, pale-grey stonework and brightly coloured windows and doors. Beside her, Joe sat scrolling on his phone, not seeming overly interested in the view for someone who was potentially going to buy a home here.
