but Greece had a great set of islands off the coast—around six thousand of them, in fact—and I’d wasted no time renting a sailboat and getting out onto the water to tour the channels through those islands and the little reefs and broken-off bits that littered the water between them.
Now, you might be asking what I knew about sailing, and I’ll tell you: I knew a lot about it. My dad had been taking me out since I was a kid. My hometown, Houston, was right on the water, and though we didn’t have anything as beautiful as the water now flowing beneath my feet, it was pretty much all the same thing when it came to… you know, boats.
So I knew how to handle a small sailboat on my own. It was one of the things I was most proud of. In fact, I’d long had a goal of actually owning my own sailboat.
It hadn’t happened yet. But it was going to happen the moment I had the money for that sort of thing.
Because out here on the water, surrounded by nothing but the clear, blue ocean? That was where I felt the most peaceful. The most myself.
In Greece, that water wasn’t a clear blue but rather a nearly transparent turquoise, and I’d almost gasped when I first saw it. Combine that with the white of the beaches, the dramatic cliffs of the coastline, and the backdrop of the bright blue sky, and it was absolute heaven, as far as I was concerned.
I’d gotten here and promptly decided that I needed to live here for the rest of my life. Then I’d remembered that I couldn’t actually afford to do that—and worse, that I had a job I had to go back to. A job that included my ex, who was another exec with the same company, and the man who had cheated on me.
Repeatedly.
When I’d found out about it and confronted him—because what was I supposed to do, just sit back and take it, like it didn’t matter?—he’d promptly marched into our office and started spreading stories about what I was like in bed.
To say it had been humiliating would have been to undersell it by a long shot. These were people I’d known for years. People I worked with—and saw every single day. I’d grown up a good girl from Houston, daughter of a ranching family and well enough off to have been at least partially insulated from the world.
I’d never actually experienced anyone trying to hurt me on purpose.
I was horrified at how mean he’d managed to become in the space of one night. And I’d promptly put in for a leave of absence—for an undefined amount of time—and run for the hills. Or rather… the islands.
Now that I was here, I was going to do everything I could think of as long as it didn’t have to do with men. Or drama.
No random hook-ups. No vacation dates. No flings that stayed in Athens. Just books, wine, sailing, and the ocean. Some amazing Greek food. Maybe touring the ruins they had all around the place.
I knew exactly what I wanted while I was here, and I meant to have it. I was used to dictating the way my life went at home—until Bryan had thrown everything up in the air and started using it for target practice—and I saw no reason that I couldn’t just put the rules down for this vacation and then follow them.
Period.
At that thought, though, I started to feel… woozy. I put a quick hand to my head, feeling around for a temperature, and promptly used my fingers to check my vision. One finger, two fingers. I moved them in and out, and yes, my eyes were tracking just fine. I didn’t feel feverish, but I definitely felt… dizzy.
I looked off into the distance, trying to judge my vision a little bit better, and saw another sailboat. It was docked at a small pier that jutted out from an island I hadn’t noticed before—perhaps because I’d been very stupidly sailing with my eyes closed.
God, I thought suddenly, had I done this to myself? Had I somehow given myself a migraine or something by repeatedly opening and closing my eyes while on the water?
Back to that sailboat, though. It was closer than I’d thought—because the island was closer than I thought—and, now that I looked more closely, I could see that there was a man standing next to it.
I couldn’t see him all