Chapter 28
‘Hey! What’s happening here?’
Faye was shaking, trying to walk along the road a little, get out of sight while extracting her phone from her bag.
Why was she acting like this? She knew she would have to keep seeing Kostas at the hotel until he left, even spend time with him as Dimitria had requested.
And she had had one-night stands in the past, before she got married, and the very inadequate ice cream guy since; she could do nonchalantly unbothered.
But now Kostas was calling to her, following her?
‘Mrs Lawson! I am a guest at your hotel, you need to answer me!’
Her legs moved faster, the zip on her bag was getting stuck.
This was too much. She had spent all evening trying to be the support she knew she needed to be for Dimitria, but it was like choreographing her own demise and, right now, it was all suddenly overwhelming, too similar to when the ground was being taken from under her when she found out about Matthew’s affair…
Her bag fell off her arm, landed on the road, and before she could pick it up, Kostas had. It swung from his hand like a ridiculous, slightly mocking pendulum.
‘Please give that to me,’ she said, reaching for it.
‘So you are talking to me now.’
‘How old are you? Ten? Give me my bag.’
He held on to it, keeping it just out of reach. She grabbed again and the bag caught the wing mirror of a parked Fiat Panda as Kostas swung it away.
‘I would… like to make a complaint,’ Kostas continued.
‘Well, Dimitria told you I am not on duty right now.’
‘So this “meeting” with Alexandros was not business?’
She stopped trying to get her bag, stopped moving, stopped.
And looked at him. What was that expression he was wearing?
Those eyes were flickering, like at any moment they might turn into fiery flares.
Yet it was different to how they had dilated and constricted in reaction to her last night in his bed, on the balcony.
Was this… jealousy? She said nothing and she saw unease take hold in him.
He shifted his trainers, toyed with one of the sleeves of his linen shirt.
‘I do not like him,’ Kostas stated.
‘You don’t know him,’ Faye replied.
‘And I do not want to know him.’
‘OK.’
‘Because…’
‘Because?’
His eyes were having a conversation with everything except her eyes – her left shoulder, the ground, the parked Fiat.
‘Because… he seemed like the kind of person who would ask me for a selfie,’ Kostas blurted.
How astute, but also a completely ridiculous thing to say.
However, the few minutes this interjection had taken had allowed her brain to shift focus slightly from the whole impending doom she was feeling over the potential sale of the hotel, to remembering she was an adult.
She had the skills to deal with any situation and this one night with Kostas was about as far from seriousness as a clown in The White House. OK, bad analogy.
‘I really have to make a phone call now, Kosta,’ she said. ‘If you could give me my bag.’
He looked at the bag in his hand as if only just realising he had ownership of it. Then, straightaway, he passed it over.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, taking it. ‘So, do you have a complaint you want me to go through in the morning when I’m on duty?’
He sighed, long, low, perhaps interspersed with slight embarrassment. ‘No.’
‘OK, good,’ she answered, and then: ‘Listen, I realise it’s all a bit awkward, you know…
’ She lowered her voice. ‘After last night. But… we can go back to how things were, can’t we?
Me being the frazzled hotel manager and you being the slightly tense superstar guest who demands fruit baskets and drives buggies up the beach. ’
She smiled, putting the bag crossways over her body.
She had meant it to be humorous, the kind of up-beat pep talk she would give Saffron when school had been particularly tough, followed by a hug of solidarity.
But, looking up at that tall, wide, honed frame she had had complete control of in the VIP suite, well, even a platonic cuddle was going to give her a mental rewind to her rocking her hips against him…
And then he stepped towards her, his hand suddenly around the strap of her bag, fist winding it tight and, in turn, bringing her closer to him until they were almost as close as you could get. His eyes were now definitely talking to hers.
‘We cannot go back to how things were,’ he told her, his voice ragged. ‘Know that.’
Her heart was somehow simultaneously in her throat and in her stomach, and it was the only thing she could hear, thudding through her like a thick, pounding bassline.
She swallowed and she watched him do the same, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his heart pulsing strong in his neck.
And then the sound of a motorbike backfiring broke the night air and the tension.
Kostas’s hand came away from the bag strap and he took a step back, and Faye had no idea what would come next until…
‘Signómi,’ Kostas said, running his hand through his hair. ‘I am sorry. Stathis and I, we will find somewhere else to eat, OK?’
And then, just like that, he walked away.