Chapter 10
“What have you discovered?” Angelos studied the photographs his private detective had placed in front of him. There was one of his little star, dressed in a maid’s uniform, the stiff black fabric barely containing her gorgeous curves. His hand curled into a fist. “Why is she dressed like this?”
“She’s a maid and has been since you ruined her father.”
Angelos so rarely gave a second thought to his former competitors. Now, he was confronted with the consequences of his actions, and he felt . . . nothing. Except outrage that it meant she was a servant.
Her predicament, however, also gave him a way to get her into his bed: her father was sick and needed treatment. He would arrange it if she agreed to his terms.
- One Week with the Greek
CALLIE
“ W hat do you mean there’s been another delay?” I sighed into the phone. Amazingly I had service today; I’d taken the opportunity to call Fred and immediately wished I hadn’t.
“There’s been some sort of discovery—some trinket that may be of archaeological interest,” Fred said. There was a nervous edge to his voice that I didn’t like. “They’ve already tried to pull a similar tactic on us.”
“Tactic? So it’s not real?” My breath had caught at the mention of an artifact. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were thousands of artifacts on the island. We were so screwed if this was for real.
“Don’t worry. It’s probably a fake. It’ll be another week at most.”
“Another week? Fred, I’ll go out of my mind!”
“I’m doing everything I can. I’ll send you the details as soon as I get them,” he assured me. “I’m sorry, I have a meeting now. I’ll write later today.”
He hung up and I stared at my phone in disbelief. Then I closed my eyes and repeated my new mantra:
I’m opening a restaurant. I’m opening a restaurant .
I repeated the words anytime I started to feel overwhelmed or defeated. It helped distract me from my depressing living situation. As did an all-consuming desire to prove to that lying mass of muscle that I was tougher than he thought I was.
The proof? I didn’t even care anymore that I had no electricity, that my toilet was outside, that my only neighbors were goats.
No hot water? No problem. Cold hand baths were invigorating, and I didn’t need to wash my hair that often.
Reading by candlelight, lights out by eight o’clock?
Romantic in a very Victorian Gothic kind of way.
And really was there a better wake-up call than the clattering of goat feet on the roof of a tin shed at five a.m.?
At least that’s what I’d convinced myself to get through this week. I just needed to hold out for the meeting with the permit guy. I could do this, dammit, if it meant I would have my own restaurant, and then, fingers crossed, a feature in a Netflix documentary.
I’m opening a restaurant . I repeated the mantra every morning as I headed down to the port to get first dibs on seafood when the fishermen returned.
There was so much to choose from—the red mullet was delicate and flavorful, the squid and octopus plentiful, and there were these amazing bright red shrimp that were a local delicacy.
I’d pop by the market for fresh fruit and veg, then head over to the taverna to prep my ingredients before the noon rush.
Maria and her husband Takis often hovered over me, sharing their opinions, which I was glad I didn’t understand because their bemused expressions when they studied my small portions told me all I needed to know.
When they did try my food, Maria would just click her tongue and insist I eat something of hers.
Honestly, her food was better than mine.
Simple, fresh with straightforward flavors—grassy olive oil, lemon, the sharp acidic bite of fresh feta and myzithra.
On the first day she made me try imam bayildi —eggplant stuffed with tomatoes, onions, and fresh herbs and bathed in the best olive oil I’ve ever had.
The olive oil was local, Takis explained—again through elaborate pantomime—a communal effort made from everyone’s small harvest pressed together in the local olive mill.
Takis was very proud of his olive oil and took me to see the stone mill. Walking around in a circle with his head down, he made a braying sound that was an incredibly accurate imitation of Giorgos’s donkey.
“Oh, you mean the donkey presses the oil? Sokratis?”
“ Ne, ne !” he agreed excitedly.
“Good job, Sokratis.” I said to the donkey as we returned to the taverna through the port. I patted him on the head and he flicked his enormous ears in response.
I was so grateful for the welcome I’d received from the taverna owners, who I now counted as my only friends on the island.
They were also incredibly generous. I mean, let’s face it, I was taking up valuable kitchen space, but they didn’t seem to mind, especially since I was happy to lend a hand during the lunch service.
But lunch service was also a moment of profound irritation because he was always there like a bad case of dandruff I couldn’t shake off.
Every morning, he was down at the port unloading fish and every afternoon he had lunch with his friends at the taverna.
He sat there forever, taking up an inordinate amount of space with his beautiful body, playing ’70s music like he was a one-man cover band.
I pretended to ignore him, but sometimes I couldn’t stop my hips from swaying to the sound.
Maria always prepared some special dish for him, and he’d pop back in the kitchen to tease her. It was depressing to see that even she seemed charmed by him. And she wasn’t the only one. His fan club was out of control.
Like today. I’d convinced a couple of the local fishermen to taste some appetizers I’d been developing.
I was just plating up my red shrimp tartar with fresh basil, orange, and pomegranate when the sound of girlish giggling caught my attention.
I peeked out into the dining room where three young women had plopped themselves down at a table next to Nikos.
Their fawning was so over the top that I had major second-hand embarrassment from watching them.
What did everyone see in this guy? Okay, he was sexy in a brawny, oversized kind of way . . . but, come on, he so thought he was God’s gift. His personality ruined it for me.
Right, keep telling yourself that, Cal . Liv’s voice echoed in my head. Ugh, she was annoying. Why was she always right?
The giggling intensified, and when I peeked again at their table, Nikos was standing behind one of the girls who was pulling the neckline of her sundress down so he could get a good look at her cleavage.
“Ugh!” I gagged. Had he no shame? Ogling women while other people—old, presumably church-going people—were having lunch at the next table. And then he was tracing his finger over her bare skin of her back.
“Whatever, I don’t care,” I mumbled at my food. When I came out front to serve my taste-testers, Nikos had finished groping his fangirl and was strumming his guitar again for his rapt female audience. It was a miracle my eyes didn’t roll all the way to the back of my head.
I tried to concentrate on my tasters, but when I heard the first few bars of “Rhiannon,” one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs, I lost it.
I stomped over to his table and demanded through clenched teeth, “Can you not play that song? It’s one of my favorites and I don’t want to associate you with it. ”
He stopped playing and raised his palms. Those same palms that had been on me and that I swore I could still feel . “Okay.”
He went back to strumming Greek tunes as I served the rest of my menu.
I tried to ignore his eyes on me while I asked the men how they’d liked my food.
One of them smiled and said something that sounded complimentary, at least I chose to believe it was.
Why wasn’t I more proficient in Greek yet?
Languages, like food, were my thing and yet, most of my Greek vocabulary came from old romance books.
“He says he enjoyed the shrimp, but the dessert was a little too spongy.” Nikos translated.
So he was eavesdropping now.
“He did not say that.” I gritted my teeth.
“Uh, yes, he did. Evangelos is honest to a fault. You might need to tweak your recipe.”
“That recipe came from a two-star Michelin chef.”
“Well, you know what they say, there’s no accounting for taste.” Nikos shrugged and then said something that made the two men laugh. I turned around and glared at him.
“What? Just doing my job as your translator.”
“Ha! My translator, my tour guide? More like a pain in my ass.”
“That could be arranged.”
I stomped back into the kitchen, but he insisted on following me. When I turned around his eyes were on my ass, and I tried to ignore the shiver of excitement that ran through me. Why? Why did I always get turned on by egomaniacal assholes? What was wrong with me?
“Haven’t you done enough ogling for one day?”
His eyebrows drew together.
“Oh please, you were just staring at my ass. And earlier you practically had your head in your fangirl’s cleavage.”
His responding chuckle vibrated through me all the way down to my toes. “She was showing me her rash.”
“Which conveniently happened to be under her bra?” I scoffed and continued clearing dishes for Maria.
“It was purely professional.” He leaned in closer, and I could feel the heat of his body and smell the grassy, citrusy scent of his cologne.
“There is nothing the least bit professional about you.”
His dark eyes fixed on mine, and I forced myself to turn my back to him. I squeezed my eyes shut, and repeated my mantra. I’m opening a restaurant. I’m opening a restaurant.
I just had to make it to the meeting next week.
* * *
The next day, I was determined not to let Nikos get under my skin.
I was going to get under his. I turned on the television over the bar and set it to a Greek music video channel.
Then I recruited his friend Panos to once again be my taste-tester.
The idea of giving him my food while ignoring Tall, Dark, and Broody made me giddy with anticipation.
I needed a fight this afternoon to keep me going because no matter how many times I kept repeating my mantra, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was wasting my time here.
Gaz had gone MIA, as had Fred, and with no news on the permit front, I didn’t have much to distract me from the prospect of another lonely night on the hill.
As pathetic as it was, I’d come to look forward to my daily sparring match with Nikos.
The butterflies that took flight in my stomach at the thought of him were just further confirmation that I was attracted to the worst men.
I kept glancing expectantly at the door for him, but by the time I served Panos dessert, there was still no sign of my small-island nemesis. I didn’t want to let on that I cared in any way, but my curiosity got the better of me.
“No Nikos today?” I asked as I set my latest dessert experiment—a riff on a baba au rhum , but with fennel and ouzo—in front of him. Panos dove right in, shoveling a forkful of the liquor-doused cake in his mouth and giving me the thumbs-up.
“ Ochi ,” he said with his mouth full, gesturing to the port with his fork. “He go . . . see his children.”
“Children?” My stomach twisted for some weird reason. “How many are there?”
“Many. Too many.” God, he was even worse than I thought. Panos sighed. “It’s too bad.”
“For him? Or for the mother?”
“Mother? Many, many mothers . . .”
“Wow, unbelievable,” I agreed. I’d wanted another reason to dislike him, so why did I feel so disappointed in this news? After all, it gave me permission to disapprove of him even more.
As I cleared the plates away, I caught a whiff of myself. There was no amount of jasmine-scented perfume that could cover up my stench. I desperately needed a bath.
Just then Yiannis popped in and I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt before he could sit down with his friends. “Any news about a new rental, Yiannis?”
His eye twitched and he scratched his neck. “Soon, there will be something. I let you know.”
“Okay, the thing is I could really use some hot water for a bath.”
He came closer and whispered. “Do you know the thermal springs?”
“The thermal springs?”
“Yes, there are a dozen of them on the island. If you want to,” he said as he cleared his throat, “bathe. You can do.”
“Where are they?”
He pinched a napkin from the stack next to the cash register and drew a quick map of the island, making scribbly marks where the hot springs were. “Here is a very nice private one, with—how do you say it?—falling water?”
“A waterfall?” Now this sounded magical.
“Yes.” He smiled.
I needed that and now. Forget about spending the rest of the day cooking. I was going swimming.
I hoofed it up to my place, grabbed a towel and my bathing suit and went looking for the springs. Studying the map, I realized how little exploring I’d done on the island. I’d been so focused on not letting down Greystone that I hadn’t taken any time for me. Well, screw that, not anymore.
The springs were ridiculously close to my house, but I had to climb down a steep incline next to a small stream to reach the cove below. Twice I nearly slipped on the rocks, but it was worth it when I came upon a little beach, circled by pine trees and framed by craggy rocks and tall grass.
The stream that I’d followed down to the beach turned into a small waterfall at the end of the rocks. The water was an opaque green, and when I dipped my toes in one of the shallow pools I jumped back. Wow, that was hot!
I glanced around, making sure no one was lurking, and slid my sundress off, laying it out on the rocks to warm. After a moment’s hesitation, I took my bikini top off and slipped into the water, sighing with pleasure as the heat enveloped me.
Now this was heaven. I settled my head against the rocks and this time it was with real gratitude that I repeated my new mantra.
I’m opening a restaurant.