Chapter 9
A week had passed but still Angelos could not get her out of his mind.
His fingers tingled with the ghostly memory of her silky skin and hair.
The deep green of the summer leaves in the park reminded him of her eyes.
And when he slept, he dreamed of her and woke hard and yearning. He had to find her.
- One Week with the Greek
NIKOS
S o far, she’d cooked for everyone but me.
Maria had practically let her take over the kitchen, which had astonished me, since Maria never even let Takis help her cook.
Since ‘Miss Calista’ had arrived, I came to the taverna every day for lunch before heading back to my practice in the afternoon and every day, there she was, preparing more of her mysterious dishes.
I couldn’t understand why she was still here. One night in that old cottage should have been enough to send her packing, and it had been nearly a week. And what’s more, she looked even more beautiful than the day she’d arrived. It was like she was taunting me.
She was clearly teasing me with her food. She made a point of smirking at me every time she surprised one of the regulars with a new dish.
Today she’d made a big show of setting down a plate of seared scallops and fava bean puree in front of Panos, bending down so I had a full view of her cleavage. My mouth watered, and not just from looking at her food.
“Niko, this is delicious.” He elbowed me, holding his fork in front of my face. “Want a taste?”
“ Re malaka , I’m not eating off your fork. Anyway, she made it for you.” I took another forkful of the imam bayildi that Maria had prepared for me and glanced at my watch.
“What time is she coming?” asked Panos. The “she” he was referring to was an American archaeologist named Diana Russo.
She’d written to me yesterday because she’d come across a copy of my grandfather’s book in a used bookstore in Thessaloniki and was intrigued by the photo of his “treasure”—a half-broken drinking vessel with an etching of three women swimming with a dolphin.
My grandfather had found it when he was a kid, playing near the grotto in Orpheus’s Cove.
He’d always maintained that it was Minoan though he’d never tried to have it authenticated.
It had been displayed prominently on his bookshelves as long as I could remember.
If it turned out that it was of archaeological interest, it could be exactly what we needed to delay Greystone’s resort indefinitely. My eyes shifted to Callie and it was my turn to smirk. But then the joke was on me because I couldn’t look away from her.
I found her completely mesmerizing. She’d changed slightly since she’d been here, ditching her body-hugging dresses for a more bohemian style.
Her hair was no longer perfectly coiffed but tied up in a chiffon scarf with loose wavy tendrils framing her face.
She had abandoned the red lipstick—she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all, but her skin was glowing, and her cheeks were flushed from running back and forth to the kitchen.
Today, she wore flared pants with a billowy blouse with a cinched waist and a deep plunging neckline that revealed tempting glimpses of creamy skin and clung to her full breasts.
And her shoes—well, they were as unsuitable as always—a pair of burgundy leather boots with boxy heels.
She looked like the lead singer of a classic rock band, which gave me an idea for another way to annoy her. It was my duty and principal goal, after all. I nodded at Panos’s guitar. “Pass me that, will you?”
As soon as I started strumming the first chords of The Doors’s “People Are Strange” her head jerked my way, and she leveled a razor-sharp glare at me.
I grinned back. It was so easy to torture her.
And I loved doing it—I’d started to memorize all her micro gestures of annoyance, how she flicked her hair, the way her plump lips flattened into a line, the blush that crept up from her chest to her neck, the slight tic in her left eye.
She made a few more trips between the kitchen and the dining room while I played more ’70s rock hits for her. I could tell I was getting under her skin. As she passed by carrying dessert plates, our eyes met again.
I stopped strumming and asked, “Any requests?”
“Let me think about it,” she answered, setting a plate with some sort of chocolate confection in front of Panos. Flashing me a saccharine grin, she said, “How about ‘You’re so Vain’?”
The corner of my mouth turned up. “Don’t know that one by heart.”
Then, in a moment of inspiration, it came to me. I started strumming the first notes of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy,” and she turned around slowly and crossed her arms, giving me another unforgettable view of valley between her breasts.
“Son of a . . . how did you know?”
“That you were a Stevie Nicks fan?” My eyes ran over her outfit. “Wild guess.”
“Well, I suppose when you’re in your line of work, being able to read people is a requirement.”
“And what line of work would that be?”
“Oh, you know, small-time espionage. Prevarication.”
“Don’t you mean provocation ?” I continued strumming the chorus.
“Yes, definitely provocation.” She gathered up the plates then turned on the heel of her burgundy boots and strutted off to the kitchen.
When I turned back to Panos, he was grinning at me like he’d just discovered my biggest secret. “What?” I demanded.
“I see how it is.”
“You don’t see anything, malaka . You refuse to wear your glasses.”
“I don’t need to wear glasses to see you’ve got it bad.” He laughed and I shoved his shoulder.
“Like hell, I do.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you. I’d marry her myself if she cooked like that for me every day.” He settled back in his chair and scratched at his auburn beard.
I rubbed a hand over his bald head. “You’d have to move out of your parents’ house first.”
“Fuck off!” He huffed.
“Niko!” Takis cried from the patio, pointing to an auburn-haired woman in a white T-shirt and worn jeans.
“Not another one!” mumbled Panos as I stood to meet them.
“Diana Russo?” Damn, I’d already forgotten our meeting. What was that blonde witch doing to my brain?
“Dr. Laskaris, nice to meet you.” She held out her hand.
“Please, call me Nikos.” She had a worn copy of my grandfather’s book in her other hand.
I stared at it, amazed that anyone outside our island had read it.
Not many copies of the book existed—and this one was in bad shape.
The edges were water stained, and the purple cover so worn I could only just make out the sketch of Orpheus sitting on the rocks playing his lyre for a dancing sea nymph.
“Come, sit. Would you like a drink?” I led her out to the terrace and felt Callie’s eyes on me, but my full attention was now on Diana Russo and the plastic bag she pulled out of her backpack.
“I’m sorry to hear that your grandfather is no longer with us.
I so wanted to meet him, especially since I found this. ”
There were fragments of pottery in the bag, nothing but shards really, and caked with dirt. But they were the same shiny dark material as my grandfather’s cup. My heart pounded hard against my ribs. “Where did you find this?”
“Near the cove your grandfather writes about here.” She opened to a page with an illustration that I knew too well of three women swimming in water with a dolphin.
* * *
An hour later my head was still spinning. We were sitting on the terrace finishing our coffee and I held the plastic bag in my hand, studying the miraculous object Diana Russo had found.
As a boy the stories that my grandfather had told me of ancient sea pirates and sirens had captivated me.
But as a rational adult, I’d stopped believing they were true.
If I’d spent the last year translating my grandfather’s book, it wasn’t because I thought those old legends were accurate, but because they were a part of our culture.
And it was my way of paying homage to his life’s work and appeasing the guilt I carried for having abandoned him for so many years while I was busy in med school.
Now, holding these fragments between my fingers and listening to Diana Russo’s hypothesis, I thrilled at the idea that he might have been right. And, more importantly, that his obscure historical tome had led to a discovery that would block The Greystone Group from moving forward with their resort.
Diana, it turns out, was getting her doctorate with Harvard, specializing in Etruscan archaeology.
I couldn’t see the link to Greece, let alone Lyra, but as she described her research, it started to make sense.
“Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans came from Lydia in Anatolia.
And Etruscan writing was found on the island of Lemnos.
They had a reputation for being sea pirates, you know.
“When I read the story about the three sisters and the dolphin, it was so similar to what had been discovered in Italy,” Diana explained, tucking a runaway strand of auburn hair behind her ears.
“And then this photo . . . Look.” She showed me a photo with a chalice that looked eerily similar to my grandfather’s.
“This was in an Etruscan burial site in Northern Italy.”
Diana had spent the past few days roaming around Lyra and had found her pottery fragments not far from the old olive grove. “I’ll take the fragments back to Athens tomorrow. My thesis advisor is there. Reginald Harris.” She said his name almost sheepishly.
“You mean, like Raiders of the Lost Cities , Reginald Harris?” I’d grown up watching his shows on National Geographic and PBS. He was a legend.
“Yeah, that’s him. The Etruscans are his area of specialty.”
The door opened and Callie stepped outside, again with her phone in her hand, aiming it at the sky like a homing beacon and then stabbing at it.
As she stretched her arms up, her golden hair tumbled from her bun, falling over her shoulders in wild waves.
Even now, she distracted me. She turned my way and her eyes flicked to Diana and back to me.
I couldn’t help but wink at her. If she only knew that I was discussing a way to put a stop to the construction of the hotel.
She rolled her eyes and went back inside.
“If you want, you can take my grandfather’s cup with you. I was always on him to get it authenticated.”
“That would be wonderful!” Diana beamed.
We made plans to meet at my place the next morning, so she could pick up the cup before she caught the ferry.
After she left, I sat there dazed. This had to be a sign from my grandfather.
And it reassured me that I was doing the right thing by scaring Greystone off and that I shouldn’t feel guilty about the ruse I’d hatched for Callie.
When Callie came back out, her bag slung over her shoulder, I ambled over to her.
“I see your fan club is international,” she said without turning her head to look at me.
“Oh, were you eavesdropping?” I asked.
“Please, unlike you, I don’t spy. I heard English, that’s all.” She was curious no matter how disinterested she tried to appear.
“It might interest you to know what we were talking about,” I teased, picking the guitar back up from where I’d left it leaning against the wall.
“Nothing you have to say is of any interest to me,” she quipped and began to walk away as I strummed the chorus to “Gypsy.”
Without turning around, she held her arm in the air, her middle finger aimed right at me. I chuckled and played louder.