Paradise Nights: Taken by the Bad Boy

Serena started stacking plates in the dishwasher while Chloe found containers for the remaining food.

‘I was watching you with Pete Bennett tonight,’ said Chloe, uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘He’s more than passing fond of you, Serena.’

Serena shook her head. ‘He’s playing a game, that’s all. And he’s very, very good at it.’

‘Maybe he is,’ murmured Chloe. ‘Maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing. But for what it’s worth I think you should start thinking about what you’re going to do if he ever decides to stop.’ Sam swung in through the back door and Chloe turned towards him. ‘Thank you, Sam.’

Sam shrugged awkwardly.

‘Had enough to eat?’ Chloe said next.

He nodded.

‘Then it’s bedtime.’ Chloe paused awkwardly. ‘Would you like me to come up with you?’

‘I’m not six,’ he said scathingly, shooting her a dark glare before scooping up his schoolbooks and heading from the room.

‘I thought things were improving,’ said Serena into the silence Sam left in his wake.

‘They are. This is one of our better days,’ said Chloe with a strangled laugh. ‘I don’t know how to help him, Rena. He wants nothing from me. He’s so defensive. So fiercely independent.’

‘Maybe he’s had to be,’ she said gently. ‘It can’t have been easy looking after his mother.’ Watching her die.

‘I know.’ Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes. ‘I hate the thought of it. There was no need for it. One phone call from my sister, one single phone call, and I’d have been there. She knew that, but no. She was too proud for that; too damn selfish. Even if she wanted nothing for herself why didn’t she ask it for Sam, Serena? Why? What kind of mother makes an eleven-year-old bear the brunt of her illness alone?’

There was a slight shuffling noise in the doorway and Serena turned just in time to see Sam’s retreating form. Her stomach clenched. The kitchen and dining area was a large one. The doorway stood a fair distance away. He probably hadn’t heard them. And yet.

‘He heard us.’

‘No,’ Serena muttered, desperately trying to believe it. ‘He was too far away. And even if he did hear us, we didn’t say anything wrong.’

‘I criticised my sister.’ Chloe’s eyes were like bruises. ‘I shouldn’t have done that, even if I believed it. Not in front of Sam.’

‘He didn’t hear you.’ Serena held Chloe’s panicked gaze with her own. ‘He couldn’t have,’ she said firmly. And prayed that it was so.

CHAPTER NINE

THERE was something to be said for sitting beneath a stripy blue beach umbrella next to a little tin shed half full of Vespas and dreaming about a man. It helped pass the time, decided Serena. It kept a brain agile and a body … aware. The breeze playing with her hair put her in mind of Pete’s hands in it, the sun on her skin reminded her of the warmth of his body. She wanted to be back in his arms. Soon. That was a given. The trick lay in figuring out how to get there without disgracing her family in the process.

Nico delivered her lunch a little later than usual. He looked tired, subdued. As if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and then some. But he handed her the day’s mail and her lunchbox, same as usual, and hunkered down in the chair beside her.

‘Chloe was waiting down at the docks when the boats came in this morning,’ he said finally.

That sounded promising. ‘Moon kissed roses will do that to a girl.’

‘Sam’s not at school.’

That didn’t sound promising at all.

‘She thought he might have been waiting for the boats to come in. Waiting for me. He wasn’t.’

‘Oh.’

‘Chloe told me what she’d said about his mother. She thinks Sam overheard her.’ He ran a hand through his already untidy hair. ‘Some of his clothes are gone. His wallet … Chloe thinks he’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’

Nico shrugged helplessly. ‘I checked the ferry terminal, the ticket office. He didn’t buy a ticket off the island, no one saw him getting onto a ferry. Chances are he’s somewhere on the island. I thought I’d take a Vespa out and look around. He’s probably just gone for a swim, or a walk. He does that sometimes. Skips out for a while. That’s probably all that’s happened.’

Serena nodded. ‘Yeah. He’ll be around.’ She looked up at the hill, looked out over the sea. ‘Where could he go?’

By mid-afternoon all the Vespas bar the one Nico had taken out were back in the shed. None of Serena’s customers had seen Sam; no one had seen Sam, according to Chloe, and Serena had decided to shut up shop for the rest of the day.

Chloe was helping her.

When Nico rode up and told them his sea catamaran was missing, Chloe’s face crumpled. Nico watched in silence, his own face a study in indecision before finally he reached out and drew Chloe into his arms.

‘Not quite the way I imagined it,’ he murmured softly to Chloe. ‘Not quite the reason why.’

Chloe laughed through her tears, a choked, strangled sound, and her arms tightened around him.

‘You think Sam’s taken it out?’ Serena asked him quietly.

‘It’s too big for him, Serena. If he tips it he’ll never get the sail back up.’ Nico looked out to sea. ‘The wind’s blowing North East. I’ll take Theo’s speedboat out. If Sam has taken the cat he won’t have got far.’ He rattled off Theo’s radio frequency, Serena wrote it on her hand. She wrote it on Chloe’s hand too, the one still wrapped around her cousin.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Chloe told Nico shakily.

‘No.’ He set her away and smoothed the hair from her face with gentle hands. ‘You keep looking for him here. Keep asking around. Get Marianne Papadopoulos onto it.’

‘I’ve already called her,’ mumbled Chloe. ‘I’ve called everyone on the island. There’s no one left to call.’

Maybe not on this island. Serena pulled out her cell phone and started scrolling through her directory for a newly familiar number. Nico’s gaze sought hers as she put the phone to her ear and he gave her the tiniest of nods. He already knew where her thoughts were headed. She was calling Pete.

‘Where are you?’ she said when he answered the phone.

‘Kos,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Tell me you’re about to walk through this restaurant door in a sky-blue sundress and make my day.’

‘Sam’s missing,’ she said baldly.

Silence from Pete’s end, silence from hers while she waited for him to comprehend the situation and change direction. He did it in a heartbeat, moving smoothly from lover to warrior and earning her undying admiration in the process. ‘Have you reported it to the authorities?’

‘Chloe’s doing it now. He hasn’t been gone all that long, only a few hours, but Chloe’s worried about him. We all are.’ She gave him the worst of it. ‘Nico’s super-cat is missing too.’

‘Where’s Nico?’

‘On his way to the harbour. He’s taking Theo’s speedboat out to look around.’

‘What’s his radio frequency?’