Saved By The Greek Doctor (Greek Gods #3) - Holly Rayner Page 0,30

to the cliffs that tumbled down into the ocean.

The ruins weren’t large or particularly impressive. Just the remains of a bunch of houses that had once looked out over the horizon. It was nothing like the Acropolis or Delphi, but I’d always found it… touching.

Now, with the sun just rising up into the sky, the light was filtering through the vacant window spaces encased in stone, the archways that must have once been the doorways, the gaps where roofs and walls used to be. The buildings were made of stacked stones the same color as the stones buried in the ground, and whoever had designed the place had made them so that they blended into the hill they sat on, almost a part of nature.

“How many are there?” Trish asked quietly.

“Ten,” I told her. “Ten that I’ve found, anyhow. There might have been more at one point, but they aren’t exactly well-protected against any storms that come through. No one has been doing maintenance on them for hundreds of years. Some of them might just be stones and old mortar by now.”

She nodded, her eyes intense on the ruins below us. “Just a fishing village, do you think?” she asked. “Just a few families?”

“That’s right, according to the historians I’ve talked to. We’re not close enough to the mainland for them to have gone there much, but we figure they were fishermen who journeyed to the mainland once a month, maybe twice, to trade fish for things like grains and meat. Maybe vegetables. Though it should have been easy enough for them to grow their own produce here. The soil on the island is good enough to grow things. Obviously.”

One more nod from Trish, and then she was revving her engine up again. “Let’s go,” she said.

She didn’t say anything else. Just took off down the hill, her eyes on the ruins, her hair blowing behind her in the wind.

When we got to the ruins, she parked a hundred meters away, turning her quad off and staring at the remains of the buildings as if she was asking permission to approach them. When she did finally walk toward them, it was with quiet, careful steps, her fingers spread and a peaceful look on her face.

The moment she got close enough to the first building, she reached out and pressed her palm carefully on the wall. Then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she asked. “That these walls were built hundreds of years ago? And that there were people who lived here? People who had kids and fed those kids and shouted at the dog for chewing on the furniture and cursed the weather?”

She turned to me with a dreamy smile on her face, and I saw her dimples flash. “People who were just like you and me?”

I watched her, enchanted, as she walked through the ruins, stopping here and there to touch a stone or a wall as if she was communing with the people who had once lived here. And I felt my heart beating harder and harder with every step she took. I felt her making tracks across my heart, just as she was making tracks through the soil around those old buildings.

And I knew I was in deep, deep trouble. Because I’d never met anyone who could see things as clearly as she could. I’d never met anyone who could see me as clearly as she could. And I knew I was losing myself to it.

I knew I should at least try to stop that slide down into that space where affection became something a whole lot deeper. But my heart was waking up again. And I was starting to remember that when my heart wanted something, there was almost nothing I could do to stop it.

Chapter 15

Trish

The next morning, I woke up early but lingered in bed, staring through the window at the slice of ocean I could see in the distance and trying to follow the steps that had brought me here.

Honestly, I could hardly believe it. One moment I’d been sailing along on my own, trying very hard not to think about my ex-boyfriend and the mess that was waiting for me back in Texas. The next, I was waking up in this gorgeous house with a man who sported the brightest turquoise eyes I’d ever seen, and who insisted that I stay the night so he could keep me under observation for dehydration.

That had been nearly a week ago,