Paradise Nights: Taken by the Bad Boy

‘Would you believe for setting the dinner table?’

‘Are you serious?’

He sent her his charming, reckless smile. ‘Maybe.’

She narrowed her eyes, mulled over his words and cursed him for being so much more than she wanted him to be. ‘You love the idea of coming home to this every night, don’t you? Coming home to family. You’re not a carefree playboy at all. You’re a fraud!’

‘Only lately. Sorry I interrupted.’ He picked up the cutlery and dumped it back in her hand. ‘Feel free to continue. You looked like you were enjoying it and Lord knows I’ll enjoy watching you.’

‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she snapped. ‘I’m a career woman.’

His smile deepened. ‘I know that.’

‘Guess you’re not the only fraud around here,’ Chloe murmured to him as she handed him a glass of wine. Serena opened her mouth to protest, Chloe raised a delicate eyebrow and shoved a glass of wine in her free hand too. ‘Watch her deny it,’ she said to Pete.

‘Just because I don’t mind setting a dinner table doesn’t mean I want a life of domestic servitude,’ she muttered loftily, taking a sip of her wine before putting it down and carrying on with the task of laying out the cutlery.

‘Just because I like watching you set a dinner table doesn’t mean you couldn’t chase your chosen career.’ He leaned forward, battle ready, a blue-eyed black-haired thief of hearts who could have charmed the moon down from the sky if he put his mind to it. ‘I’m quite capable of setting a table myself. Or not at all if it comes to that.’

‘You were right,’ Chloe told her from the counter, her movements deft and practised as she swiftly uncorked another bottle of wine. ‘Standing here listening to you two argue about a simple everyday task that takes about two minutes is so much better than standing here brooding.’

Sam and Nico arrived not long after that, the latter with pink roses, white daisies and green ferny things in hand. ‘Pretty,’ said Serena as Nico handed them over to a suddenly tongue-tied Chloe. ‘A man who can find flowers like that at this time of night is both romantic and resourceful.’

‘Although not entirely discreet,’ murmured Pete.

‘He doesn’t need to be discreet,’ countered Serena. ‘His intentions are pure.’

‘Not that pure,’ said Nico.

‘What about honourable?’ said Pete.

‘They’re mostly honourable,’ said Nico.

Chloe glared at them both. ‘Do you mind? There’s a child present.’

Sam rolled his eyes, Pete grinned his sympathy. ‘I just figured Sam should probably know the difference between courtship and seduction too. You know … for future reference. At first I thought it had something to do with speed, seduction being the faster of the two methods of wooing a woman. Then I got to thinking it might have something to do with a man’s intentions, but, no, man’s intentions are a grey area. Who in their right mind would base it on that?’

‘A woman might,’ said Nico. ‘They get some strange notions in their heads at times.’

‘You’re right,’ said Pete.

‘Aren’t they sweet?’ said Serena. ‘All that brawn, so little brain. Puts me in mind of Winnie the Pooh. He was a bear of little brain too.’

‘But cuddly,’ said Pete. ‘Generally happy with his lot.’

‘Well, that rules you out, flyboy,’ she murmured, handing him a plate of food. ‘You can’t even find your lot.’

She was right. But it still stung. ‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ he said defensively.

‘It’s in your folder,’ she said dryly. ‘Three pages in.’

Pete unwound over the course of the dinner, everyone did, with the help of Chloe’s excellent cooking and hospitality skills and Serena’s knack for turning conversation into entertainment. Caring bubbled beneath the surface; bonds of friendship and of blood; ties of affection and of love.

The ache around his heart was gone.

They didn’t make it a late evening, what with early starts for him and Nico the following morning and Sam looking increasingly sleepy.

‘Walk me to the door,’ he murmured to Serena as Nico made his farewells to Chloe and Sam.

‘I’m sorry the evening didn’t quite go to plan,’ Serena said to him when they reached Chloe’s front step. ‘It probably wasn’t what you had in mind. It certainly wasn’t what I had in mind.’

‘I’m not unhappy with the way it turned out,’ he told her.

‘The lack of mind-blowing sex doesn’t bother you?’

‘Is this a trick question?’ Because he didn’t have the faintest idea how to answer it.

‘No, it’s just a regular question.’

He still didn’t know how to answer it. ‘Hell, Serena.’ He opted for the simple unvarnished truth. ‘I just wanted to see you again.’

‘Are you courting me, Pete Bennett?’

‘Damned if I know.’ He thought he might be. He thought he might just keep that bit of information to himself.

‘When are you leaving in the morning?’ she asked.

‘Early.’

‘When will you be back?’

‘Soon. Alternatively, you could come up with another reason to get off this island. You could come with me in the morning.’

‘You do miss the mind-blowing sex!’

Pete reached out to run a wayward strand of her hair through his fingers, noting with interest the way her eyes seemed to darken at his nearness and his touch. ‘Maybe a little.’ Maybe he wasn’t the only one.

‘The need is there, don’t get me wrong,’ she told him. ‘But practically speaking it’s just not possible to get away right now. I have Nico and Chloe to throw together… Vespa hire to arrange so I don’t let my grandparents down. How about we aim to meet up in Athens in a few days’ time?’

‘We can do that,’ he said. And with more bravado than sense, ‘It doesn’t bother you that I had to come and see you tonight?’

‘Should it?’ she whispered, her eyes dark and fey.

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘But it sure as hell bothers me.’

‘Where’s Nico?’ Serena asked Chloe when she came back into the kitchen. ‘And Sam?’

‘Nico’s gone to talk to Theo about fish-hooks for tomorrow,’ said Chloe. ‘I dare say he’ll also find a way to casually mention that dinner’s over, Pete’s back in his hotel room, and that you and he are about to head back to the cottage. He’ll be back in a few minutes. Sam’s putting the rubbish out.’