‘Do you still wish it was fruit?’ she asked him, pausing in her eating.
‘I am not going to admit anything else,’ he answered with a wry smile.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I know the answer because there’s no fruit on earth that could compare to agyrosfrom Dimitris.’
‘Hmm, I don’t know about that,’ he mused. ‘It makes me wonder if you have tasted a really good strawberry.’
‘Well, I have had the tiny ones here, ate them less than an hour after they were harvested,’ she told him.
‘You like small things?’
‘Well… not all the time,’ she answered. ‘But you know the saying about size not being everything.’
‘Yeah, that’s usually said by the people with small things.’
Fuck, what was he saying?
She laughed then. It was loud and warm and… sexy.
‘Or,’ she said, ‘it’s said by the people who know that everything in life is more to do with experience than size.’
‘Is that what you think?’ he asked her, pausing in his eating.
‘It’s what I know,’ she answered. ‘I mean, doesn’t everything start off small? Before it grows?’
She looked directly at him then and those eyes were holding him hostage. What was wrong with him tonight? It was being on this fucking island. The whole place screwed you up if you lost your control. He went to speak but she carried on.
‘Like…louloúdia– flowers, oróneira– dreams.’ She sighed. ‘Or my stomach now bloated after this meat feast.’ She screwed the paper up into a ball and put it on the table.
‘How long have you been here, Mrs Lawson? On Corfu.’
‘Well, I probably started coming here before you were born.’
‘Really? I am thirty-seven, you know.’
She laughed again. ‘I know that’s not true. My skin never looked that good at thirty-seven.’
‘How do you know?’ he asked. ‘Because surely you are not there yet.’
She laughed more and he enjoyed the sound all over again.
‘Corfu was my holiday destination for many years and it’s been my home for the last few.’
‘And you like it here?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I love it here.’
‘Wow. OK.’ He put his pita wrapper on the table next to hers.
‘You sound surprised. But there must also be a reason why you chose here to have your holiday,’ she said to him.
He smiled. ‘I haven’t told you why I am here.’
‘OK, and that is your VIP right to have privacy while you are here at Hotel Margaritári.’
‘Spoken like someone who knows the company manual very well.’
‘Spoken like someone who helped to write the company manual actually. But I’m not one to boast. And I couldn’t get you a fruit basket so…’
