Chapter 33
They took the small boat to Santorini. Though Angelos was loath to share Mia with anyone else, he longed to show her off.
And to pamper her. Tonight, they would eat at the finest restaurant overlooking the caldera.
They’d watch the sunset while sipping champagne. And they’d make love under the stars.
- One Week with the Greek
CALLIE
A ll through dinner I kept thinking about what Gaz had said to me earlier that day.
That my menu was too much and so were my plans for the resort.
I needed to pare it all down for the investors.
I was so sick of always feeling like I was too much.
I should have walked away from Gaz and Greystone a long time ago.
Liv had always called me fearless, but now I felt like a fraud. The truth was I was scared.
Scared that what Gaz said about owing everything I had to him was true. Scared of failing. Scared of starting over.
Maybe it was this fear that made me cling to Nikos as we fell into bed.
I needed to feel him around me, inside me, everywhere.
I needed something rougher tonight. I dug my nails into him, urging him forward.
My mouth devoured him hungrily. When we finally collapsed against each other, panting, sweaty, my hair tangled around his fingers, I at last felt some relief.
He held me against him, my ear next to his thundering heart. “Whoa, what was that for?” he panted out. “Earlier this evening, I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not you.”
He was silent for a minute before asking. “Still thinking about your list?”
“Not the list. I don’t care anymore about that.” I surprised myself with the truth. “It’s a relief, actually. I didn’t have the right clothes for the photo shoot anyway.”
He chuckled, the warmth of it vibrating through me. “Now, that I don’t believe.” He stroked his hand over my hair again and I closed my eyes.
“So, what is it you’re not telling me?” he asked.
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
I sighed, rolled over onto my pillow and stared outside the window at the waning moon, half hidden by a veil of white curtains. I’d never said the truth out loud, not even to Liv, and she knew me better than anyone.
“The truth is I’m scared.”
He turned on his side to face me, eyebrows drawn together, waiting for me to elaborate.
“I’m scared that I don’t really have what it takes to make it in this industry. That everything I’ve built so far could come crumbling down at any moment. That I’m a fraud.”
I paused; this was harder than I thought, but it also felt like lancing a wound that had been festering inside me.
“I know I come across as super confident. It’s all an act.
When I was a kid, I was bullied—badly. I was always too much—too tall, too big, talked too much, too loudly.
I took up too much space, so I tried to make myself smaller, which obviously didn’t work.
And I went from feeling like too much to not enough.
Then one day I decided, I couldn’t fight against who I was and I’d just embrace it, layer it on like armor.
“For a while it worked. And don’t get me wrong, I really don’t have low self-esteem.
I’m not trying to change myself anymore, at least not physically.
But in this industry, you always have to prove yourself, especially as a woman.
It’s not enough to just be . You have to create a fucking brand, and I’ve spent the last few years, paring myself and my food down, trying to fit the Greystone mold until I’m half smoke and shadow and it’s somehow still too much.
” I covered my eyes with my hands and groaned.
“I can’t believe I’m admitting this to you of all people. ”
I felt him shift beside me, his large hand covering mine as he gently pried my fingers away from my eyes.
“Callie, how could you ever be too much”—his fingers stroked over my face as if memorizing it—“when I can never get enough of you?”
* * *
Despite the crappy situation with Greystone, things with Nikos were good. Too good. That part of me that was always waiting for the other shoe to drop was on high alert, like it couldn’t wait to say “I told you so.”
We spent every night together. I cooked for him.
At this point, he’d tasted countless iterations of my menu and even more variations of my eternal work in progress, AKA “the fucking dessert.” I couldn’t get it right; it was either too bland or too sweet and cloying.
Thankfully, Nikos had a way with criticism that was always encouraging, especially when I got scared and started to play small.
“It needs more of you, asteri mou ,” he’d say with a wink. And most of the time he was right. I’d been so used to making myself and my food simpler that I was afraid to be bolder, to go bigger. But with Nikos I could be myself and embrace my big kitchen witch energy.
I’d never felt this close to a man before, and yet I still felt like he was holding something back.
A few times I’d caught him staring at me and frowning.
He’d start to say something and then stop and pretend like it was nothing.
I tried to brush it off because, right now, all that mattered was my food. The rest was out of my control.
The next week, I accompanied him to the camp again. I spent the day working with Ferhana—who had made the grueling trip from Afghanistan with two kids after her husband had passed away. She was a talented cook and hoped to get a job in a kitchen somewhere in Europe.
“You have to come work with me!” I told her.
Why hadn’t I thought of that before? There had to be a way to get Greystone to sponsor refugees from the camps—and not just Greystone, other restaurants too.
An idea began to take root in my mind for creating some sort of network that would help train migrants to work in the food industry.
As we finished cleaning up, Nikos reappeared. Even now, he gave me butterflies. I could finally admit it to myself. I liked him. A lot. More than a lot. A dangerous amount. It was hard to imagine there was ever a time when I couldn’t stand him.
On the way back to Lyra I told him about my idea.
“It’s a brilliant plan. It’ll be difficult, though,” he warned, taking my hand.
“Do I strike you as someone who’s afraid of hard work?”
“No, not at all. You terrify me with your drive.” He laughed, playing with my fingers in a way that made all the nerve endings in my body come to life. I couldn’t wait to get back to his place and show him how much I’d missed him that day.
When we got off the boat and walked past the taverna, Yiannis waved and shouted at us. “Niko, someone wants to see you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I hope this isn’t another emergency rash.”
“Well, you can’t blame them for trying.” I laughed as he led me toward the restaurant.
A large crowd had gathered around the bar and when we approached, they parted to reveal a small, dark-haired woman perched on the leather stool. Nikos’s mouth dropped open when he saw her, and he dropped my hand. “Ma? What are you doing here?”
His mother jumped off her seat and threw her arms around his waist, laughing and kissing his cheek. She ran her hands over his scruff and shook her head. Then she turned her large dark eyes to me, greeting me in Greek.
“She doesn’t speak Greek, Ma. This is Callie. She’s American.” As Nikos introduced us, his mood changed, his forehead creased with worry. I tried to ignore the alarm bells ringing in my head.
“Nice to meet you,” his mother said, gripping my hand firmly in her own. “It’s so rare to see an American on this island.”
“I’m opening a restaurant here.”
“Oh?” Her eyes darted between us. “You don’t mean at the hotel?”
“That’s right.” It was my turn to look meaningfully at Nikos who still wore an expression of utter panic like he’d been caught stealing from the collection basket at church. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about it.”
“I have. I’m amazed it’s happening after all the energy this one has put into stopping it.” She patted her son’s arm, smiling fondly. “He’s very stubborn.”
“I’ve noticed, yes.” I tried to smile, but the awkwardness of the encounter was throwing me for a loop. His mother was looking at me like I’d upended her plans.
“Callie has been helping at Kos, cooking at the community center.”
“Oh? How good of you. Does that mean you’re friends now?”
Nikos jumped in to reply before I could, quickly changing the subject. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
I felt a sting of rejection. Okay, I got it. He wasn’t crazy about me meeting his mom. I wasn’t ready to meet his parents either.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did,” he said. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Not yet.” She turned to me. “Will you join us?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .” I said looking for a way out. “I should probably get back home. Let the two of you catch up.”
“Don’t be silly. I already know everything about him.” She took my arm. “Come, I want to hear all about this famous hotel.”
I glanced at Nikos who shrugged but still looked shell-shocked. Reluctantly, I followed her to the table and ordered a plate of souvlaki, although my stomach had started to clench. This is it. Cue the other shoe to drop.
Nikos’s mother, Eleni, was talkative, much more so than her son.
In her lightly accented English, she asked me about my job, how I found life on the island, what I thought of the camp at Kos.
After the full day at the camp and now faced with Nikos’s weird reserve, I didn’t have the energy to reply in complex sentences.
She must have thought I was either terribly rude or morbidly dull.
She made up for the lack of conversation on our end, however, by filling the silence with stories about her sons.
The other two were both successful businessmen in New York.
“Nikos was the only one to follow us into medicine. He always idolized my father. And according to Teresa, he has become so much like him that she sometimes mistakes him for his grandfather.”
As the evening wore on, Eleni warmed to me and I gradually found my voice again.
Yet I still had the impression that my presence wasn’t entirely welcome.
I’d heard that Greek mothers could be extra protective of their sons, so following Nikos’s lead, I pretended that there was nothing between us. It felt like a betrayal of us to do so.
When Nikos excused himself, his mother went into full-on confession mode. As she poured me a glass of wine, she explained her fraught relationship with Lyra. “I grew up on this island and couldn’t wait to get out of here. You don’t want to stay here, do you?”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” I admitted.
“It can be so dull here. You will hate it eventually. It still amazes me that my son is so attached to it when he had everything he could want back in New York.” She let out a deep sigh, shaking her head.
“I thought maybe if I came out here, I could remind him of everything he’d left behind.
I tried to convince Nathalie to come with me, but she didn’t want to leave New York. ”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wanted to pretend like I hadn’t heard, like I didn’t know what was coming. But I couldn’t stop myself from asking in a squeaky voice I barely recognized, “Who is Nathalie?”
She raised her eyebrows in confusion. “His wife. Well, his estranged wife. He never mentioned her?”
For a second, I thought the souvlaki I’d just eaten might come rushing back up my throat. My hand shook as I took my glass of wine and downed it in one gulp, covering my nausea with the burn of alcohol.
His wife.
How could you be so stupid? And to think you had begun to trust him. You actually thought you might even be in love with him.
“Do you want dessert?” Eleni asked, gesturing at Maria.
“No, I think I should go now.” I pulled out my wallet, but Eleni waved it away.
“No, you can’t go yet. Wait, for Nikos. We’ll walk back together.” She grabbed at my arm and maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, but she almost looked apologetic.
“Sorry, I have to go. I forgot I have to make a call. Thank you for dinner.”
I needed to leave before I threw up said dinner. Or before I started to cry.