‘Becky!’
Forty-One
Becky opened one eye. It was a voice she knew, but it didn’t belong here. Perhaps she was even imagining it. She opened her other eye and realised it wasn’t her imagination. It was Elias, wearing nothing but very small swimming trunks and grappling for the rope and the pole she had discarded as useless.
‘Becky, you have to be ready to jump off the boat if I can’t turn us away in time.’
‘I… don’t know what to do,’ she answered. She had never felt so stupid. It had been madness to agree to captain a craft when she was obviously completely incapable.
‘If I say “jump” you must jump!’ he told her. He was standing, every muscle in that tight torso straining and working, giving Becky a show worthy of a night at Magic Mike Live. And there was that tattoo. Finally fully on display. But with the wind and the sea spray and the fact they were in jeopardy, Becky couldn’t focus enough to see what it was. Just like the last time he’d had his shirt off in Kefalonia when she’d had to keep her attention on a half-drowned Petra.
‘Becky! If I say “jump” you jump,’ Elias repeated.
You jump I jump. Jack and Rose. That famous doomed vessel. Argh!
‘I can help,’ she insisted, trying to stand like Elias was.
‘Don’t come to this side,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll tip us.’
‘Then what can I do?’ she called back. Petra and Atlantis’s boats were so close now and Becky’s dinghy showed no signs of slowing down.
‘I am trying to turn it away from the wind,’ Elias told her.
‘I’ve been trying to do that,’ she insisted. ‘The wind is everywhere!’
Becky watched as Elias leaned back with the rope, desperately trying to manoeuvre the sail and change the direction of the yacht. He definitely had a gym body. A defined six-pack and muscular pecs but not in that overdone body-builder way, more in a way that said toned but not obsessed. And she needed to stop staring at him and concentrate on not dying.
The waves were still cresting and Petra started to scream as Becky’s boat began to come within inches of hers. Becky held on tight, almost knowing the call to jump was coming. How could it not be?
But then, with one almighty groan from Elias, suddenly the boat stopped its full-on assault of the ocean and the wind dropped out of the sail, turning slightly to the right and in just enough time for it to skirt past Petra and Atlantis.
Elias fell down onto the boat, breathing hard, perspiring, eyes now closed as the yacht continued to drift – but lightly – out around the cove.
‘You did it!’ Becky exclaimed excitedly. ‘No one died! And the boat isn’t wrecked!’ She clambered on all fours, from the sunken section, to the part where Elias was laid out.
‘I feel like I have died,’ he admitted, eyes still screwed up tight. ‘It is too long since I have sailed one of these things.’
Becky sat down, crossed her legs and took a moment to admire his physique again. The tattoo had branches, an olive tree, spiralling around a letter. H?
Elias eyes flicked open and Becky averted her gaze. ‘I haven’t sailed one of these things my whole life.’ She smiled. ‘What are you doing here? I mean, how come you were here when I got in trouble?’
‘I was at the taverna,’ he told her. ‘I saw you getting the boats and then I saw what was happening, so I called the lifeboat.’
‘I feel so embarrassed,’ she admitted. ‘All of that because I can’t sail a boat around a cove.’
‘It is not always that easy if you have never done it before.’
‘Petra doesn’t seem to be struggling.’ Petra was now looking like an expert in all things nautical, the breeze blowing through her plaits, Troy coming back into her orbit to admire her prowess.
‘Do you want to learn?’ Elias asked her.
‘I’m not entirely sure.’
‘I can teach you,’ he offered, sitting up.
‘Oh, I don’t want to put you out or…’
‘I’m already in my swimsuit, on board… it’s going to take the same amount of time to shower and clean up no matter when I do it.’
The alternative seemed to be calling back the lifeboat and being taken back to shore, humiliated. She was already going to have to brush it off as nothing with Petra later.
‘Well,’ Becky began. ‘If you think you can teach the unteachable then I guess I’ll give it a go.’
‘OK,’ Elias replied. He stood up again, balancing carefully as he made his way to the captain’s position. ‘But before we get started with the lesson, there’s something I need to tell you.’
Becky swallowed. Was he ready to be honest with her yet? What did it matter? He was a passing crush…
‘You’re a lawyer,’ she told him.
He let out a heavy sigh. ‘You know already.’
‘Petra and I asked around at the village and then she Googled you.’
‘OK,’ he answered, nodding. ‘OK.’
‘I don’t know why you wouldn’t want anyone to know that,’ Becky started. She could see that her knowing his real occupation had affected him. Gone was any self-assurance he had possessed in all their earlier interaction. Now he looked a little like he wished he had had to jump off the boat. And what was she expecting him to say next?
‘It is difficult,’ he answered. ‘Even more difficult now we are in Corfu.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Elias motioned for her to get back in the driving seat of the boat. ‘The first rule of sailing is to know that there is only ever one boss.’
‘Me, the captain,’ Becky answered. ‘That was the whole reason for the failure of sailing so far.’
‘No,’ Elias told her. ‘You are never in charge. The only thing in charge is the sea. Always respect the sea. Always.’
‘O-K.’
‘OK, relax. Hold the rope in this hand, like this and remember that it is your steering wheel. You drive, right?’
‘Currently a ride James Bond would approve of.’
‘Now, the boat needs the wind to power it, but equally, you need to control how much.’
‘Yes,’ Becky said. ‘I got that. Not a clue how to achieve it though.’
Elias put his hand over hers and helped her with the rope. ‘Learn to feel how the boat is moving. Understand by the reaction it has on the water, with the wind, what you need to do.’
Becky let out a squeal as the boat suddenly gathered momentum again.
‘You feel that?’ Elias asked her.
‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘I feel it!’
It wasn’t all she was feeling either. Elias’s hand in hers felt a lot more powerful than the signals the rope was giving off. It was firm and tender all at once and he was guiding her fingers with his.
‘One of the reasons I could not tell you what I did once we got to Corfu was…’ He took a breath. ‘My client, the one I have come here for, needs me to go into his house to create an inventory of what’s in there.’
‘An inventory?’ Becky queried, not understanding.
Elias nodded and shifted his position, coming up close behind her, squeezing into the small space and helping her gain more traction on the rope. That fine torso was pressing into hers, solid, muscular, the heat from his body transferring.