Saved By The Greek Doctor (Greek Gods #3) - Holly Rayner

Chapter 1

Trish

I put my face up into the wind and laughed out loud, reveling in the cool, refreshing brilliance of it and letting it wash away all the thoughts in my brain—starting with the one about my bastard ex-boyfriend and what he’d done to me, and finishing with the one about the job I’d left behind in the US.

The job that was theoretically still waiting for me. The job I wasn’t entirely sure I even wanted to go back to.

Once that was done and my mind was free again—free to appreciate the beauty around me rather than dwelling on the sheer horror that had been my life for the past month—I opened my eyes and stared out across the brilliant turquoise water, soaking it in and letting the gorgeous day, the sunshine, the warmth, and the fact that I was in a country far, far away from all those troubles, fill my soul back up again.

I mean yeah, sure, you might say that closing my eyes and keeping them closed like that was reckless. And I guess you’d be right, considering I was currently sailing a boat.

But really, it wasn’t like anyone else was out here with me. I’d checked the horizon two minutes ago and I hadn’t seen one other boat in the vicinity. It was too early in the morning and most of the tourists were probably still asleep. Even the locals wouldn’t be out yet, unless they were fishing—and if they were fishing, they wouldn’t be in this particular strait of water.

And more to the point, I wasn’t close enough to shore for it to really even be that big a deal. Honestly, unless a whale suddenly decided to rear right up out of the water—in the middle of the Greek islands, where whales didn’t generally make an appearance—there was absolutely nothing for me to hit.

Okay, okay, you’re right again. Even saying something like that was tempting fate. And I should probably have stopped it right then and there. You’re right, okay?

But I’d had the most horrible month a person could possibly have, and I figured that at that point in time, having fled my job and life in Houston for the furthest reaches of the Greek islands, I deserved a little bit of recklessness.

I’d lived my entire life on the straight and narrow. I’d done everything anyone had ever asked of me. Straight As through school. Head of the cheerleading squad. A cowgirl from the time I could walk—and a darn good barrel racer, if I do say so myself. I had trophies and ribbons and everything. Good college, and from there, right into the best job I could nail down in my hometown, working for GoGoDelish, one of the biggest up-and-coming food delivery apps.

And I’d done well there, too. Risen from intern to account exec in almost no time, and found myself helping run the entire company before I’d even passed my thirtieth birthday.

I had always done everything right. I’d been the model student, the model daughter, the model employee. And look at where it had gotten me.

Maybe it was time I did something wrong, for a change. Something unexpected, out of the ordinary, and downright reckless.

I opened my eyes and glanced around, making sure I was still in the clear as far as other boats and the rocky coastline went. Then I closed my eyes again and turned my face back up to the sun, sticking my tongue right out—mentally—to whoever was watching and judging me at that moment. Screw them. This was my boat—at least for the next two weeks—and I’d do what I darn well pleased with it.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy to just put the entire last month out of my head, and I knew perfectly well that no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t. So I went ahead and let myself think about it. Just a little bit. Just enough to get myself angry enough. Because anger, I’d decided, was my best friend right now.

At that, I opened my eyes again—because as it turned out, I just wasn’t rebel enough to think that sailing with them closed was really a good idea—and stared out over the scenery. My God, it was beautiful here. The kind of beauty that is so indisputable that it actually kind of makes your heart hurt to look at it. And I couldn’t seem to get enough of it. No matter how much it made my heart hurt.

Officially, I was staying on the mainland,