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she texted instead. After a minute of staring at the screen, the three dots of an impending message appeared, only to disappear again. Whatever Ben had written, he hadn’t wanted Holly to see it. Her anxiety kicked up by another notch. What would he have written that he didn’t want her to see? And why hadn’t he called her when he’d promised they would speak every day? She was about to dial for a second time when a message finally pinged through.
Sorry, someone was up very early. Everything good here.
The text was accompanied by a photo of an exceptionally grizzly looking Hope and a pouting Ben.
Holly sighed with relief before lying back on the sofa and opening the book.
An hour later and Holly was near giddy with excitement. She’d just enjoyed sixty minutes of uninterrupted reading and she didn’t need to stop. Only it was getting hot, and as the sun glimmered on the surface of the pool, it became harder and harder to ignore how appealing it looked.
With a crystal-clear swimming pool before her, a view over the sea and not a single person to see her, one thought sprang to her mind.
Skinny dipping.
Holly wasn’t a person who had ever written a bucket list. Adventurous escapades, like climbing mountains or jumping out of a plane had always been too far-fetched for her to consider, though at that moment, she was feeling alive with possibility. After all, it wasn’t like she was ever going to get an opportunity like this again.
With no time to second guess herself, she stripped off her clothes and slid into the water.
‘I am skinny dipping.’ She said the words quietly, relishing in their ridiculousness. Then shouted even louder. ‘I am skinny dipping!’
Never in all her life had she envisioned a moment like this. Pushing away from the side of the pool, she swam into the middle. She could feel the tension melting away from her shoulders. All the stress and strain that had been playing on her mind since this holiday had first been discussed dissolved into the water as she lay on her back and closed her eyes.
Maybe this was a start of a new chapter of her life. One where she was bold and adventurous. After all, wasn’t that what she wanted Hope to be like too? Fearless. Adventurous. The type of woman who grabbed life by the horns. Maybe writing a bucket list wasn’t all that ridiculous.
With the sun beating down on her face, she imagined what items might be next on her list, when a sudden noise broke her concentration.
Opening her eyes, Holly stared straight up.
‘Mademoiselle, you are having fun, yes?’
23
Holly ducked down under the water so the bottom of her chin was submerged. The man was standing on the other side of the pool with a giant pair of secateurs in his hand, which would have looked menacing at any time, but even more so given she was naked in an empty villa in a foreign country.
‘Hugo. What are you doing here?’
‘Gardening.’ He lifted the pair of secateurs and gestured to the overground foliage that blanketed the brickwork and covered the flower beds. ‘These bushes need a big trim. No?’
‘Oh God. Oh God.’ Holly could barely breathe.
Hoping that her fluorescent glow could be disguised as sunburn, rather than raw embarrassment, she forced herself to smile. ‘Okay, well, I’m going to just… stay here. Swimming.’
‘Very good. Very good.’
He smiled broadly, though it brought Holly zero comfort. Maybe he thought this was completely normal. Maybe he it was extremely common here for people to swim naked when others were around. Maybe he would stand there until her skin became a shrivelled mass and she caught hyperthermia.
Panic had well and truly set in when Hugo dipped his head in a nod.
‘I should work. Have a good swim, mademoiselle.’
The second he turned his back, Holly leaped from the pool, grabbed her clothes from the sun lounger and bolted upstairs, her sense of adventure well and truly quashed and the bucket list forgotten.
Only when Hugo’s voice rang up through the house, bidding her farewell, over an hour later, was she brave enough to leave her room again.
This time, she headed back down towards the pool in a full swimsuit and took two towels, one to use on herself after another dip and the other to mop up the puddles she had left when she darted into the house earlier.
She had just reached the landing when the doorbell rang. Just as she’d noticed when she first arrived, this wasn’t the average electric ding-dong like she had at the cottage, but was an actual bell, and resonated with a sonorous, metallic gong. Her initial thought was that Hugo had returned. However, given that he’d previously let himself in, that seemed unlikely. Which was when she recalled that she was expecting someone. Or rather something.
Her heart leaped. Being reunited with the suitcase was just the good bit of news she needed to perk up her mood. With the fastest walk she could manage, she raced downstairs and swung open the front door.
