Leeward

One yacht. One hidden cove. One birthday list that was never meant to be read out loud.

Captain Dimitri Kallas is thirty-nine, a former merchant-navy officer who skippers his late father's sailing yacht through the Greek islands every summer. He is six foot three, sun-dark and broad, all black curls, salt-and-pepper beard, hairy chest and rope-hard muscle, and he lives by one rule, written in his father's hand above the chart table: never touch a guest. In five seasons he has never broken it.

Then two American women book his boat for a week in October.

Marisol Vega is thirty-three, a bold, red-lipped interior designer from San Diego with long dark curls, golden skin and a red satin dress that ought to come with a warning. Freya Lindqvist turns thirty-four tonight, a careful Seattle architect with long honey-blonde waves, freckled shoulders and a long white linen dress unbuttoned exactly as far as she dares. Her divorce came through last month. This week is supposed to be her celebration.

They have been best friends for ten years. There is something between them that neither of them has ever said.

Tonight Kyma lies at anchor below the lights of a cliffside village. The lanterns are lit, the wine is cold, and Marisol has found what Freya wrote in the back of the guest logbook: a list of everything she never let herself do. Marisol has a dare. Freya has a choice. And the captain has a rule that is about to meet the warmest, darkest water in the Aegean.

He can say no. They can say stop. Nobody wants to.