Chapter 15
Mia sipped nervously at her champagne. She could spend a week in this man’s bed if it meant her father would live. She would be sharing her body with him. What was a body anyway? Only the vessel for her soul and that he could never touch. She’d make sure of it.
- One Week with the Greek
NIKOS
“ W here are we going?” Callie stared, disbelieving, at Sokratis and the wagon Giorgos had lent me.
“To your get your things,” I explained, remaining deliberately vague about where we’d be moving them.
The moment would come when I’d have to admit I’d tricked her, but I didn’t want her throwing rocks at me yet.
We’d had a civilized conversation this morning and I didn’t want to ruin it.
My grudging respect for her had deepened, and she’d softened a bit toward me as well.
That wouldn’t last though, once she learned what I’d done.
She frowned. “What do you mean ‘to get my things’?”
“You obviously can’t stay up there by yourself, and since you refuse to listen to my advice and go back home, we have to find alternative accommodations for you.”
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not just going to leave me up there? Surely, you’d enjoy seeing me crawl down the mountain every day.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .” Her eyes widened, and I laughed. Turning back around, I gestured to Sokratis. “Do you prefer to ride in the wagon or on the donkey?”
She sighed and held up her hands in resignation. “I mean, each option is humiliating in its own way, but since my ass is still bruised from riding Sokratis yesterday, I suppose I’ll try the wagon.”
I helped her up into the small wooden cart lined with a colorful old quilt. As she tucked her crutches in next to her, I took her ankle in my hands to see if the swelling had gone down.
“Hey!” She protested, eyes wide. “You should warn a girl before you manhandle her.”
“Just checking on my patient.” I released her foot, relieved that the bruising hadn’t worsened.
“ Your patient? I’m not your anything.” If only that were true, because since she’d arrived, she’d become my obsession.
Half an hour later, we made it up to the cottage. After tying Sokratis up to the old cedar tree, I helped her out of the wagon. “Okay, I take it back. The donkey was easy compared to this hell chariot. I’m pretty sure I got a splinter through the blanket.”
She rubbed her bottom, and I couldn’t help myself: “I can take a look at it for you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “In your dreams.”
If she only knew.
As we approached the cottage, I cringed inwardly; it was a shitty place to have put her.
There were holes in the crumbling walls where sparrows had built nests, the wood of the door was bleached by the sun and barely hanging on its hinges, and when it creaked open the dark interior created a menacing atmosphere.
Once inside, however, I barely recognized the place.
She’d made the living room cozy with a knitted blanket on the sagging sofa and a makeshift bookshelf built from an old crate.
The place even smelled like her. The musty odor of old stones and goats had been replaced with the smell of lemons, jasmine, and a hint of sandalwood.
I wandered over to the “coffee table” where she’d displayed several framed photos.
The older couple with two small dogs had to be her parents.
Another photo showed her smiling with two friends in front of the Globe Theatre in London.
Next to it was a photo of her with the Greystone heir who’d rented out Yiannis’s place last year.
I recognized the oily smile on his pretty-boy face and the slicked-back hair.
His arm was draped over Callie’s shoulder, her hand was around his waist and she was looking at him like a lovestruck teenager.
I pinched the photo between my fingers. What the hell was she doing with a pretentious ass like that? She was way out of his league.
“What are you doing?” She grabbed the photo from my hands. “I don’t remember giving you permission to touch anything.”
I held my hands up. “I don’t want to spend the rest of the day here. It’ll be quicker if you let me help you pack.”
“Fine. This room only, please. The suitcase is in the closet. And no snooping.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes this time at the Louis Vuitton logo on the suitcase I pulled out of the rickety closet. Maybe it was a family heirloom. She did say most of her designer pieces were vintage.
I wrapped the photos in the throw blanket on the couch, ignoring the temptation to study them again.
I’d never been one to snoop into people’s private lives—as a physician I was privy to lots of personal information, and it was essential that I learn to hold it at a distance.
But where she was concerned, I wanted to know more; she aggravated and fascinated me at the same time. I wanted to learn all her secrets.
Once the personal items were packed away, I started on the bookshelf. Now here was one area where I could admit to being nosy.
“You brought a lot of books,” I said, sitting down on the floor to study each one before setting it in the suitcase.
“Yeah, well, most of them are for research. And I’m a mood reader. I like to read books about the places I’m in.” She poked her head out of the bedroom, and my eyes drifted to the silky camisole she held in her hands. “What did I tell you about snooping? Just throw them in the bag.”
“I have more respect for books than that,” I muttered.
The idea of creased spines and dog-eared pages made me shudder.
It was possibly the only area in my life where I had an actual stick up my ass.
Callie, however, clearly belonged to the well-loved book school.
Most of hers looked to have been read dozens of times.
There were two enormous cooking manuals that were practically falling apart. A Greece travel guide , The Odyssey , Ovid, and Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho.
“You know, if you want some recommendations for modern Greek writers, I can give you some. The classics are nice, but complete bullshit,” I said, half joking. I’d lived on a steady diet of mythology as a boy and could still quote chapters of The Odyssey . But I wanted to get a rise out of her.
“Did you really just insult Homer? I was sure that if you cut yourself, your blood would be the color of the ‘wine-dark sea.’”
“I have nothing against Homer, but if you want to understand Greece today, you should read some contemporary authors.” I shut Sappho and moved on to what looked to be a much more interesting set of books.
All right, now it was getting good; I’d discovered a set of old category romance books with titles each more improbable than the next: The Greek’s Reluctant Mistress, The Cozakis Bride , A Baby for the Greek Tycoon .
I picked out an especially well-worn book entitled One Week with the Greek and flipping through its yellowing pages, wandered over to the bedroom.
“Is this research?” Leaning against the doorway, I began to read: “He was as hard as a marble statue, his muscles glistening in the moonlight as the waves crashed against the shore—”
With surprising rapidity given her sprained ankle, she was next to me, tearing the book from my hands. “What did I tell you? Keep your eyes to yourself!”
“Okay, but if this is the type of research you need help with, I could perhaps be of assistance . . .”
“Forget about helping me with my research. It’s not going to happen.” She hopped back over to the bed and got back to her folding. “And don’t judge! I didn’t say anything about those soporific philosophy books you gave me to read yesterday.”
“Had I known your tastes, I’m sure I could have found something a bit spicier for you.” I picked up the book from the floor and slumped against the door watching her as she slipped silky garment after silky garment into her suitcase.
“Those spicy books are what got me into reading. They were my grandmother’s. I found them under her bed one Thanksgiving when I was eleven or twelve,” she explained. “Anyway, they have helped me with my recipe development. My best friend and I have had a Books and Cooks club for years.”
“What’s that?”
“We read together and then invent recipes inspired by the books. It really helps me when I’m in a creative slump.
Food for me is about love and connection.
It tells a story. That’s what I’m trying to do here: tell the story of this place through food.
Except that things have been so bloody difficult since I arrived.
” She sighed, and I was hit by another wave of guilt.
She thought fate had intervened to make her life difficult when it had all been engineered by me.
In the past twenty-four hours, I’d almost forgotten that I was supposed to hate her. It was a lost cause. I hated the company she worked for; I hated that she didn’t see how the resort would be a disaster for the island.
But I found her challenging. And, like her, I enjoyed a challenge.
I’d made up my mind yesterday that I had to abandon my plan to make her run crying back to Greystone to convince them that the resort was a bad idea.
It had been na?ve of me to even think that would work.
I was no Odysseus, cunning and content in my own ruse.
I took no pleasure in hurting people, and I couldn’t help but feel that she’d injured herself ultimately because I’d tricked her.
She was too worthy an opponent to best by cheating. I was still determined to win this battle, but I’d do it fairly. On my own terms.
I was pretty sure, however, that whatever fragile truce we’d made today would be over once she found out that I’d tricked her.
“Are you just going to stand there staring at me, or are you going to finish out there?”
“Yeah, let me know when you’re done.” I went back to the living room, but instead of placing the book in the suitcase, I slid it into my pocket.
* * *
After loading up the wagon with Callie’s suitcases, we made it back down to Kamini. “I can’t believe that I’m just blindly letting you lead me to some new home. You’re not bringing me back to your place, are you?” she asked as we approached the main road.
“Not unless you want to come back to my place.” I glanced back at her and wiggled my eyebrows over my sunglasses. She was perched on the donkey’s back, clinging to his mane and gritting her teeth.
The house was on the opposite end of the hamlet from mine, tucked away behind a cherry tree that had just started to bloom. Like my house, it had its own water entrance and a terrace overlooking the sea. Yiannis’s father usually rented it to the occasional tourist who came to the island.
I helped Callie down as she surveyed the place. “This is nice.”
After retrieving her bags from the wagon, I made my way to the blue doors and waited for her to hobble over.
Once inside, I went straight to the bedroom where I set the bags down next to the iron-framed bed.
I felt ashamed as I looked around and saw the kind of accommodations that she should have had for the past ten days.
When I came back into the living area she was poking around the kitchen, opening the many cupboard doors.
“There’s a fridge!” She gasped when she saw that it was full. I’d asked Sofia, my neighbor and occasional housekeeper to fill it this morning. “And it’s stocked!”
She shook her head and leaned back against the counter. “It’s crazy to think I’d gotten used to living without a fridge and a hot shower. I am really going to give Gaz an earful over this.”
Then she started to put two and two together. She turned toward me very slowly. “Wait, whose house is this?”
“It belongs to Yiannis’s family.”
“And it just happened to be available? I’ve been after Yiannis since I got here to find me an apartment.” I waited for her to connect all the dots, bracing myself. So much for the truce we’d established.
“Actually, this has always been the house that was rented for you. I convinced him to put you elsewhere.” I decided to come clean. There was no point in hiding it anymore.
“You!” she growled I had never seen a more coldly furious look. If looks could kill, as they say, I’d be on the boat to the underworld.
“You had him put me in that hovel? With holes in the roof, no electricity, no hot water, no toilet? I couldn’t lock the door! I woke up with demon goats dancing on the tin shed. I could have been murdered, or worse. And you let me stay there for ten days!” Her voice was steady, frighteningly so.
“In my defense, I was counting on you leaving after the first night.”
“And when I didn’t, you left me there. You wanted me to suffer. I’m surprised you didn’t knock me over the head and throw me overboard when we were out on your boat. That would have solved your problem!”
“It wasn’t an easy decision to leave you there. I didn’t know you were so stubborn.”
“And then you sent your dog to terrorize me!”
“He was there to protect you.”
“Protect me? From whom? The only person I need protecting from on this island is you!” I flinched because it was true. Every word of it.
“Look . . .”
“No, I don’t want to hear any more. Just get out.” When I didn’t budge, she lost it. “Go! I would call the cops, but you’re probably the sheriff too. Just get out now!”
She shoved me toward the door, and I tried to calm her down, but it was no use. It was like she was possessed. “All right. I’m leaving, but when you’ve calmed down, I’d like to explain . . .”
“There’s nothing to explain. You’re a bully. And I loathe bullies.” She slammed the door in my face.