Eighteen
Andras watched the swallows dip and swerve across the morning skyline, their wing tips sometimes brushing the ocean, other times frisking the cypress trees either side of his view. How did it feel to be free like that? Just flying with the breeze, changing your direction in an instant with no consequence?
He had tossed and turned all night, a dozen things fighting for space in his already cluttered mind. His lack of a new business partner. His role in the wedding with Marietta. His new girlfriend from England. What had he been thinking, kissing her? Granted, at first it had been on impulse, to stop her blowing their cover, but he hadn’t needed to commit to it quite as much as he had. Maybe it had something to do with not having had a woman in six months. At first, after Elissa left, he thought he could just throw himself into the tourist crowd. There were plenty of women looking for a Greek Romeo to while away the hot summer nights, but it had all felt so … wrong. He was using and being used and he wasn’t sure which party got the rawer deal. He may not want to be burned again but it seemed fickle sex wasn’t for him either. Perhaps he and Papa Yiannis had more in common than he thought.
He leapt upwards from the chair he was standing on, bare torso straining, as he caught hold of the ceiling beam. He was going to have to do a few things he didn’t want to do today. One was finding Spiros a donkey, and the other was leaving someone else in charge of the restaurant.
He pulled his body up, forearms biting. He had hoped to persuade Victor to take Tess and Sonya out on the boat, but his head waiter had reminded him it was his day off and, whereas ordinarily he would be only too happy to cancel, he was visiting his mother in the hospital. The only choice left was to take the women out himself and put Mathias in charge. He hated leaving anyone else in charge. Not because he thought the restaurant wouldn’t survive without him, but because he knew the restaurant could survive without him. Now, the main concern was getting out on to the water before his mother involved him in wedding planning he had sworn he didn’t have time for.
‘Oh my!’
Sonya reached out a hand that landed hard on Tess’s arm and she stopped walking, eyes following her friend’s line of vision.
They had come down the road way to the restaurant, entering through the back. And now there was Andras, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans that moulded around him like a second skin, back stretched and showing every perfectly positioned muscle working beautifully as he rose up and down from one of the beams in the restaurant ceiling.
Tess liked male backs almost as much as she liked a strong forearm. There was something about a set of muscular shoulder blades and that shaped curve that ran down to the coccyx. She swallowed, unable to keep her eyes from roving over his form – tight biceps pumped from the workout.
‘We should say something,’ Sonya whispered. ‘Announce we’re here.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Tess said, focus still on the semi-naked demigod.
Sonya cleared her throat and the sound reverberated like the thunderous roar of an advancing storm. Andras dropped down onto the chair then jumped down onto the tiled floor, reaching for his T-shirt.
‘Kalimera,’ he greeted, using the clothing item to wipe the perspiration from his torso as he advanced towards them. ‘You are early.’
Tess looked at her watch. It was exactly eight o’ clock. She looked back to him. ‘You said eight o’ clock.’
He smiled. ‘A Greek eight o’ clock,’ he answered. ‘Somewhere between eight and nine.’
‘Oh. Shall we come back?’ Sonya offered. ‘We could have another coffee and—’
He shook his head. ‘No, it is fine.’ He pulled out two chairs. ‘Please, sit down. I will get you some coffee. Then I will wash.’
Wash? Tess still couldn’t drag her eyes away from that smooth, ripped chest; the thought of that and water …
‘Coffee would be lovely,’ Sonya stated. ‘Wouldn’t coffee be lovely, Tess?’ She nudged Tess with her elbow.
‘Yes,’ Tess replied quickly. ‘And this unlimited Internet you promised?’
He nodded and held out his hand. ‘Please give me your phone.’
Tess hesitated for a moment, like he had asked for her to cut off her arm and pass that over.
‘The code for my business Wi-Fi is in Greek and is sixteen letters long,’ he explained.
‘Gosh!’ Sonya exclaimed. ‘No name of your first pet and the year you were born here.’
Tess dipped her hand into her Michael Kors handbag, pulling out her iPhone and dropping it into Andras’s palm. In minutes, hopefully she would be connected to London life, work and dating apps of opportunity. She could focus on potential no-strings mates who didn’t come with a Greek family attached. Perhaps she would have a quick scan in the toilets where Sonya couldn’t see.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ Sonya remarked, looking across the restaurant at the view.
It was a beautiful day. Even though Tess had been tired from the journey it had been lovely to wake up to the sunshine in a cloudless sky, the sun’s first rays filtering through the terrace shutters.
Andras passed the mobile back. ‘You are online.’
‘Really?’ Tess said, like someone had announced she’d won the Euromillions.
He nodded. ‘I pray for no great flood.’ He looked to Sonya. ‘Coffee with cream, am I right?’
Tess watched Sonya flush.
‘Didn’t I spoon up all your cream last night?’ Sonya asked with a giggle.
‘I have milked another goat this morning,’ he replied.
‘You have?’ Sonya asked.
‘He was joking,’ Tess stated. Then she looked up, needing confirmation. ‘You were joking, weren’t you?’
He smiled. ‘One moment, yes?’
Tess watched him head off to the kitchen, taut perfection gliding past tables. Shaking her head, she concentrated on her phone that really did now have three bars of Wi-Fi.
‘So, I looked at the map last night and there are some lovely little places not far from here,’ Sonya stated.
‘Mmm.’ The first thing she was going to do was check her email.
‘There’s Kouloura just around the corner, well, not the corner, the coast.’ Sonya laughed. ‘The coast is more a boaty term. Then there’s Agios Stefanos where all the celebrities go.’
Tess watched the roll of emails come flooding in. She tried to catch them as they flashed by. Harrods. Admiral Insurance. Music Magpie. McKenzie Falconer.
It was an email from Russell entitled Blackberry Boudoir Final and there was an attachment. Her heart was racing. Why was there an attachment with the word ‘final’ in the subject line? She was the head of that project. Only she should be using words like ‘final’. She tapped on the email.
‘Of course, our guide man is bound to know other places off the beaten track, isn’t he?’
Tess skim-read the contents of the text. Phrases like ‘not the vision they had in mind’, ‘new direction’ and ‘swift turnaround’ all merged into one until she wasn’t really taking in anything.
‘Have you brought some flat shoes?’ Sonya asked.
Tess clicked on the attachment and waited for it to load.
‘Tess?’
‘Just a second.’
Slowly, little by little, piece by piece, the image started to appear. Gone was the cheeky blackberry behind the curtain, nowhere to be seen was the animated wine bottle or any of the other images she had put forward for approval. In front of her eyes was nothing that resembled a blackberry at all. In front of her were two indistinguishable fruits and foliage that resembled a penis.
‘Fuck!’
Sonya jumped, knocking an ashtray off the table and on to the floor.
‘Fuck it!’ Tess got to her feet, her whole body flooding with heat. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. What were the clients thinking? What was Russell thinking? Did no one see that this didn’t look like the avatar of an exclusive wine bar-cum-brasserie establishment but a lap-dancing club? Was it just her who saw a penis and a pair of balls, not shrubbery and fruit?
‘What’s wrong?’ Sonya asked. ‘Is it Rachel? Or your parents?’
Tess put the screen towards her friend. ‘Tell me what you see here!’
Sonya squinted, looking at the graphic. ‘I see some … are they grapes?’
‘Allegedly blackberries,’ Tess stated.
‘And is that a banana?’ Sonya added, looking closer.
‘See! I knew it!’ Tess exclaimed, almost triumphant.
‘What is it?’ Sonya asked.
‘A disaster! That’s what it is!’ She looked to her friend. ‘What do I do?’
‘Is this the new client?’ Sonya asked. ‘The chain of wine bars?’
‘Yes! Currently being represented by bits of a man’s anatomy.’
‘I take it that wasn’t the look they were going for.’
‘I need to call Russell.’ Tess started to pace backwards and forwards over the flagstone floor before tapping the screen of her phone.
‘Tess, it’s six o’clock in the morning in England.’
Was it? Instinctively she checked her watch. Sonya was right. There would be no one there and Russell had never answered his mobile before eight on the occasions she had had to avert near-crisis before.
‘Coffee.’
Andras was back. He placed a wooden tray on the table and took off two rather nice contemporary white mugs, setting one in front of Sonya and the other in the space where Tess wasn’t yet sitting. She watched him pour the coffee and push the jug of cream towards her friend. She couldn’t concentrate. All she could see were blackberries that weren’t bloody blackberries.
‘Thank you,’ Sonya said.
What was she going to do? What the fuck was she going to do?
‘You would prefer Coke with three sugars?’
Tess looked up at Andras then. A Dr Pepper substitute was exactly what she needed and somehow her fake boyfriend knew it. She nodded her head and sank down onto the chair. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Parakalo,’ he replied, backing away.
Sonya put a hand over Tess’s and inched her iPhone out of her grip. ‘Wi-Fi is overrated.’
Tess stretched out her pinkie, determined to reconnect with the device.
‘Uh-uh,’ Sonya said, taking a firm hold of the phone. ‘Drinks and a boat tour with our guide man.’ She waggled a finger. ‘No worrying about blackberries. Say, “Yes, Sonya.”’
Tess swallowed. ‘Yes.’ She breathed out, hard and heavy. She felt sick to the stomach but, right now, at 8 a.m. in Greece, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.