Free Kissed by Moonlight by Dorothy Vernon

course, knew the routine and had left his things in a neat pile. Also scooped up had been several discarded items of Petrina’s. Had her permission been asked she would have said no, preferring to do her own small things. As she looked helplessly around her, she resolved that next time she would beat the chambermaid to it.
    She felt so useless. She didn’t like to think that other people were working while she had nothing to do. Looking over the balcony rail down to the swimming pool below, she saw that the gaily colored loungers were still occupied by the sun worshippers. Such inactivity wasn’t in her line at all. She looked at her watch. Although it was still on the early side to think about getting dressed for dinner, the day was too far advanced to consider doing something that would take any length of time. David would be coming up soon, though heaven alone knew in what kind of mood. It would be an open act of defiance not to be there when he came.
    That thought was all she needed to jam her sun hat on her head and give the brim a jaunty twist before making her way down and leaving the hotel again.
    This time she circled around the back of the hotel and walked past several other hotels, which, although not quite as large, were almost identical to the Hotel Leon with their sea-facing balconies, huge swimming pools, attractively laid out sun terraces, children’s playgrounds, and sports areas. As the brochures said, something for everybody – everybody but Petrina.
    She located a road that wound interestingly up into the mountains. It crossed her mind that if she reached higher ground she might be able to see the piece of land that flicked around in the shape of a serpent’s tail. But distances are deceptive, as she was to find out. Although she climbed to a fair height and had a panoramic view of the hotel complex in the lion’s head and the stretch of sand that was, in her mind, at least, the goat’s body, the peculiar twist of the coastline still concealed the serpent’s tail from her.
    It was tantalizing to have come so far without reward. It was becoming an obsession with her to probe this secret place. She sat on a rock, getting her breath back and fanning her burning cheeks with her sun hat. She felt sick and dizzy. She would have blamed this on the steep climb but for the fact that this feeling had been coming and going since lunchtime.
    Although the secret of the serpent’s tail was not revealed to her, her toil did not go unrewarded. The sun slid into the sea. It was so dramatically sudden that she felt she should have heard the plop.
    She had seen sunsets before, but never one of this splendor. It was an unexpected manifestation of shot-silk colors spinning across the sky in bolts of gaudy orange, imperial purple, and rich dragon’s blood red. The beauty of it held her in silent homage. Even when it was over, and the twilight stillness fell, she sat a while longer before reluctantly beginning the downhill journey.
    Stones and ruts, easily spotted in the daytime, assaulted the soles of her feet and jarred her spine. The need to tread warily slowed her pace and she knew she was going to be disgracefully late getting back.
    She opened the door of their suite to find that David had already showered and changed and was fuming in that predominantly male fashion. A woman waiting on a man’s inclination to put in an appearance is a much more patient and tranquil creature, Petrina told herself.
    She pelted in, hoping to slip past him, but his hand came out to bar her progress just a few steps short of the sanctuary of the bathroom.
    â€œWhere have you been?” he demanded.
    â€œWalking,” she snapped back in defiance.
    â€œIn the dark?” His voice was ominously icy and had a chilling effect on her nerves.
    With less fervor, she said, “That sort of fell on me.” She was immediately sorry that she had allowed herself to be intimidated and stoked up