“Fucking hell,” he mutters to himself. Things are hard these days. And the annoying thing is, he isn’t even that bothered about sex. Well, of course he’s interested in it, but, like, in a normal way. Jesus! He just likes her. He just wants to see her again and chat to her because—because she’s great.
He shakes off his concerns and instead runs full-tilt at the gate, finding a foothold on a hinge halfway up the left gatepost and heaving himself up to straddle the wooden gate top. He looks up at the hill visible beyond, and memories of his brief time working on the site flood back.
He shivers in spite of himself at the memory of the floor plans from earlier that day, the idea that the house at the top of the hill goes down into the rock is creepy in a way he hadn’t conceived of at the time.
Joe swings his legs over the gate, lowers himself as far as arm’s length, and drops the final distance to the ground.
No alarms sound, no attack dogs are released, and so he dusts himself down and makes his way toward the steep stone staircase leading up to the house.
Halfway up the ascent the house comes into view. He hasn’t seen the finished article; he and his father’s company were only required for the excavation stage of construction. They hauled and removed the tons of rubble necessary to hollow out the cliff in which the property nestles. Now that he can see it, he stops in his tracks. It gleams in the sun, an unexpected jewel carved out of the rock.
It’s sophisticated and minimalist. A lot of the luxury properties on the island are not. It looks like her in a way, the house, Joe thinks, then he grimaces at the stupidity of the thought and continues to ascend. It’s a building; it doesn’t look anything like her.
He is definitely putting too much on all this, he reasons. He should just get on with it, help her with whatever, and go home.
When he reaches the top of the steps the full experience of the house hits him: the terraces, pools, beach, the breeze rolling in from the ocean view. He pauses again.
Yeah, he thinks, he should definitely not read too much into this. It’s unlikely that a university professor who owns a house like this would be interested in anything other than a booty call from someone like him. Not that he isn’t a thinking, feeling, emotionally intelligent guy with—
Joe stops. All thoughts put on hold as a woman in a long flowing black dress emerges through one of the terrace doors. She is beautiful, but she isn’t Nina.
“Hello,” she says, a polite level of surprise in her voice—but perhaps not quite enough surprise given the fact she has just found a complete stranger on her secured property. “Who are you?”
Joe opens his mouth to speak and then stops. Has he vaulted the wrong gate? He thinks back through the last twenty minutes and then frowns. No, this is definitely the place.
“Joe. Nina asked me to pop over.”
It is the woman’s turn to frown now. “You’re here for Nina?”
Her surprise is so genuine that Joe is suddenly certain this is all a joke. Perhaps this woman is Nina’s friend or a sister playing a trick on him? He looks past her into the open-plan living room beyond and there sure as anything is Nina’s handbag resting on the counter.
Joe cracks an amused smile and nods his understanding. He thinks he gets it: Nina wanted company, and obviously she didn’t just message him. Her friend arrived before he did and she’s got it covered, and now, apparently, the friend has been told to get rid of him.
“Okay, fair enough. Just tell her hi, okay. No pressure: she’s got my number. Tell her I’m around if she wants to grab a coffee or something next week.”
The woman tilts her head appraisingly. “You like her? Nina?” she asks, her tone curious, objective.
Joe suddenly feels something is off. Something about Nina’s friend doesn’t quite fit; he can’t quite picture them together. But he answers truthfully, interested to see where this conversation might take him.
“Er, yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“But you don’t really know her, do you?”
Joe frowns in spite of himself. That’s what Nina said of herself only this afternoon. In a sense it is true, and yet he does feel like he innately knows Nina. He knew her from the moment he saw her.
“I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of her. People like to think they’re fairly complex but I find my first feel for someone tends to hold true. You can see the good and bad pretty much straightaway—and sometimes one outweighs the other. So yeah, to answer your question: I know her; I like her,” he concludes, watching carefully to see how the sentiment lands on the woman in front of him; the woman he absolutely does not trust, even though he clearly doesn’t know her either.
He watches her easy charm tense, almost imperceptibly, as she flashes an amused smile, but its edges are a little tighter than perhaps she is aware.
She doesn’t like the response, Joe sees that. She is hiding it well, but he is good with people and she doesn’t like what he just said one bit.
And it suddenly dawns on Joe that perhaps this woman isn’t Nina’s friend. This woman is the reason Nina asked for his help. Whether she is Nina’s bizarre note leaver or the woman who pretended to be her, it’s impossible to tell, but she is most definitely not Nina’s friend.
“Well, that’s good. Interesting philosophy,” the woman muses, her gaze drifting out to the view. “But I’m afraid Nina isn’t here right now. You’re welcome to come in and wait? She should be back soon.”
Joe looks down at his phone. If Nina is out, she would have a signal, but he just tried her number and it wasn’t working. Joe looks back at the woman, hoping to buy himself a little thinking time. Behind her through the terrace doors, an immaculately clean living room and kitchen and there on the counter Nina’s handbag. Odd that she would leave it behind.
“Where did she go?” Joe asks.
