Chapter 63
HOTEL MARGARITáRI, AVLAKI
‘Isn’t that your husband?’
It was the next morning and Faye was helping clear tables in the restaurant with Katerina.
It was all hands on deck today as three of their staff had called in sick.
Faye would usually have been glad of the distraction, but having that take place in front of Matthew, who was what she needed to be distracted from, was an issue. He was sitting at a table with Saffron.
‘Ex-husband, Katerina,’ Faye answered. ‘Don’t forget the important bit at the front.’
‘That is what all men say,’ Katerina stated nonchalantly. ‘But what is he doing here?’
‘I really honestly don’t know,’ Faye said with a sigh. And she wasn’t about to tell Katerina the bits she did actually know. Then she lowered her voice. ‘Listen, Katerina, have you said anything to anyone about what we saw in Kostas’s suite? The plans?’
‘Well… I might have said something to Dimitria,’ Katerina admitted. ‘And my mother.’
‘What?’ Faye feigned surprise. She obviously knew Dimitria knew, but she had also suspected Katerina would not have stopped there.
‘But my mother, she said that it is best we do not tell the newspapers until we have our own plans in place. She is gathering together everyone she knows that helped fight against the last Erimitis project.’ Katerina lowered her voice a notch, something rarely done.
‘The Avlaki Resistance, she is calling it.’ She touched her nose and continued to whisper. ‘There is a meeting tomorrow night.’
‘OK, good.’
‘So you are on our side?’ Katerina asked.
‘Katerina, of course, I am.’
‘I don’t know,’ Katerina said. ‘Your Kostas has things about him that might sway my opinion. If I were you, not me, obviously. And if he was not an evil millionaire who wants to slay monk seals.’
‘No one is slaying anything while there is still breath in my body, OK?’ Faye said sincerely.
And then the breath left her body as Kostas strode into the dining room.
He looked tired. But hot. Dressed in distressed jeans and a plain white T-shirt.
Hot. But she wasn’t about to lose her focus.
He had lied to her. He had never been honest. Exactly the same as the ex-husband who was loading his plate with sausages from the buffet.
‘He is still showing that handsome but dishonourable face I see,’ Katerina remarked.
‘He is still a guest, Katerina, and we have to be professional,’ Faye said.
Although right now she did not want him and Matthew in the same space as it felt all kinds of awkward for so many reasons.
There was also one thing she didn’t understand.
If Kostas had all these plans for changing the entire coastline, why wasn’t he the one who had made an offer on the hotel?
She directed her attention to Matthew then, watched him chatting with their daughter.
And what was he thinking? He couldn’t really want to buy the hotel, so did he truly think there was a chance for reconciliation?
And did Saffron know this was his plan all along?
Since she had arrived on Corfu? She needed to get to the bottom of that too, softly, but leaving her daughter with no doubt that the divorce was final as far as she was concerned and there was no going back.
‘Do you think Kostas will make a complaint?’ Katerina asked. ‘Because we looked at his private things in his room? I mean, I do not want to lose my job while I still have a job.’
Faye turned back, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘If he does make a complaint, I will say it was all me.’
And then Kostas looked right at her and, despite everything, the eye contact somehow stung soul-deep. But she didn’t have time to react because then Dimitria entered the restaurant and greeted him. A few moments of conversation and he was following her from the room.
‘Maybe she has told him he is not welcome here,’ Katerina mused.
‘Maybe,’ Faye replied. ‘But we don’t have time to wonder about that. Can you make sure Fani’s eggs are on point and I will bring out more clean glasses for the juices.’