in myself, and almost gasped. I hadn’t seen it yesterday, and last night had been a blur of fever dreams and hallucinations. Plus, you know, it had been dark.
But now that I was seeing it…
“Good God, I’d sell my entire soul to get to see that view every morning,” I murmured.
And I wasn’t lying. The place looked like Heaven itself come to life.
It wasn’t a large island, and though it had to be at least five miles long, I could see the other end of it in the distance, a tumble of rocks leading to a sharp drop, and the ocean on the other side. So it was more like a really big estate, I guessed.
One that happened to be on an island in Greece. Because you know, if you wanted to buy an estate where you would grow olives and grapes and evidently keep horses and alpacas, why not just go all the way and buy yourself an entire island?
The house itself was on a steep hill at the edge of the island, and gave us the perfect view of the rest of the estate. Along one side of the island—the rockier, cliffier side, it seemed—hundreds of trees clung to the sloping hills and crags, their dusty green leaves turning up to the sky in row upon row, occasionally broken up by whatever landscape happened to come between them. I saw open lanes between them and a larger break around the entire grove.
“The olives?” I guessed, pointing in that direction.
“The olives,” he said with a nod. “They grow better in shallower soil, and like being up high where they can see the sun and absorb its warmth.”
“How poetic,” I said, smiling.
I turned to the other side of the island, which was slightly flatter, though there was still a bit of a slope. And there I saw the grapevines, their long, trailing stems growing up over wires until they looked like one continuous bush. They were a bright green in some places and moved down to something very dark in others, and in their straight rows, looked just like a beautiful photograph of a place someone was trying to get you to travel to. I fancied that I could almost smell them from here, and took a deep, appreciative breath.
“Do you sit up here every morning, just surveying your territory?” I asked Nikos. “Because I definitely would.”
He looked out over the island as if he was actually thinking about this. “I don’t know that I’m surveying my territory,” he finally replied. “At a certain point it just becomes background scenery, you know? It’s there every day, always the same.
“For the most part, I only ever think of that part of the island when we need to either plant or harvest. I suppose I come up here because this is where I do my best thinking.”
“No wonder,” I said, turning to look at the view again. “How could you do anything but have a clear head up here?”
He stood abruptly, moved over, and took my hand. “Would you like to see it up close?” he whispered, his breath sending the hair around my ear dancing along my skin.
I closed my eyes and let the shiver it caused run from my shoulders down to my toes, enjoying every second of it.
Then I opened my eyes and squeezed his hand, looking up at him. “Definitely.”
He sparkled with excitement at that, as if giving people tours of his private island was his favorite thing in the world to do, and led me quickly along the patio to the side of the house, where we found a sort of freestanding garage. There, he took out a ring of keys and unlocked the first door we came to.
A quick push of a button and a larger door opened up, revealing not only a sporty blue convertible—vintage, unless I was mistaken—but also something that could only be called a luxury golf cart. I’d never seen anything like it. The thing was polished to a high shine and had both a front bench and a back bench, complete with a basket sort of thing at the rear.
Sort of like a tiny pickup truck. One that was golf-cart shaped.
“Where do you even buy something like that?” I asked, laughing. “Can you even call that a golf cart?”
He pursed his lips and cocked his head. “Well, I call it the golf cart, so I suppose the answer to that is yes, you can. Shall we?”
He motioned for me to get