just didn’t have the balls to admit it. I don’t know him, but I’d say you’re better off without him. Now, about dessert…”
I smiled at him, pleased beyond words to have been able to tell my story… and to have him blow Bryan off the way I wanted to.
And in that moment, as Nikos asked me whether I would be willing to try olives with my dessert as well, because he had way too many, I realized that I might have been trying to lose myself that morning, as I sailed through the turquoise water of the Greek islands, but in trying to lose myself… I might have found something that felt a whole lot like coming home.
Which was, of course, a completely ridiculous thing to think of a man I’d just met like, an hour ago. But once I’d had the thought, it stuck. And started to grow.
Chapter 6
Trish
I’m embarrassed to admit that I fell asleep almost immediately after that wonderful dinner, my belly full of good food and my head full of good conversation. Also, I’d had rather a lot of wine. Not to mention that I’d been involved in a shipwreck and a near drowning. So I thought I could get away with falling asleep a little earlier than I might have liked.
Nikos certainly didn’t try to stop me. In fact, he took me right to the guest bedroom—which had clean sheets and a brilliant blue comforter on the bed—and told me the room was mine to use for as long as I liked.
He’d also laid out a set of pajamas, which I didn’t think too much about. I mean, he had this big house and a kitchen to die for, plus knew how to cook an amazing dinner. It didn’t seem out of line to think that he entertained here often—if I’d had my own island and an enormous mansion all to myself, I would have thrown house parties every weekend.
And if that was true, then it made sense for him to have clothes around, just in case people forgot to bring something they needed.
Which was perfect for me, since the majority of my belongings were currently back in my little room in a hotel on the mainland, waiting for me to return from my day trip on the water. All I had with me was my bathing suit, the outfit I’d been wearing over my bathing suit, and the waterproof fanny pack that had saved my phone, wallet and passport from the sea. Honestly, if it turned out that Nikos had a whole wardrobe in my size, it would be a pretty convenient thing. Makeup too, while I was placing orders.
I changed into the pajamas—new enough to still have the tags on them, as a matter of fact—washed my face and brushed my teeth, courtesy of the toiletries in the attached bathroom (he definitely entertained often), and then crawled into that enormous, lovely bed and went immediately to sleep.
The problem was, wine gives me dreams, and they’re not always nice ones. So although I might have fallen asleep almost before my head touched the pillow, I didn’t sleep well.
My dreams were filled with ghosts and monsters, shadowy feelings of having forgotten something important, and even a memory of two. And even in my sleep, it gave me an unsettled feeling of not quite being safe.
Not quite being as secure as I thought I was.
When I woke up in a rush in the middle of the night, sitting straight up in the bed as if someone had just come crashing into my room and I had to fight them, it was from a dream that had both ghosts and monsters—namely, my ex-boyfriend, who had been up to his old tricks again.
Bryan was, as it turned out, terrorizing me even now, when I was supposed to be on vacation. It didn’t matter how quickly I’d run or how far I’d gone from that stupid, gossipy office in Houston. It still wasn’t enough to outrun the memories.
The disorientation of having woken up from such a dream—with a wine haze still hanging out in my head, and in a bedroom that wasn’t my own—made me feel immediately confused and panicked.
I tried to figure out where in the world I could possibly be, and how I’d gotten there. I remembered a couch… but no bed. And that didn’t help with the question of whose house this even was. The sheets were far too nice to be at my house, and