Sixty-four
‘You drew all of this?’ Andras asked.
Lying on the beach, grazing on the picnic of feta, juicy, sweet tomatoes, olives and fresh bread, Tess had just shown Andras her Black Velvet branding. She snatched up another olive, popping it into her mouth as she nodded at him. His trousers were back in place but he was still deliciously bare-chested owing to the fact she was wearing his shirt.
‘Obviously, your laptop didn’t have a drawing app and it was so slow to log into my work system, so I had to download a free program that’s probably corrupted everything digital you own and draw the rest.’
‘It is amazing,’ Andras said, scrolling over to the next design.
‘I’m pleased with it,’ Tess admitted. ‘At short notice and, given what I had to design with, it’s actually some of my best work.’ She smiled. ‘And quite a lot of it is down to Corfu.’
‘It is?’ Andras asked.
She nodded, then pointed at the screen. ‘See the name? Well, ordinarily, I would have gone for something with straight lines, thick, bold, shouting out, the way the “b” has a tail that connects to the “v” and in turn swirls to the icon of the glass, that was inspired by everything I’ve seen here. It’s like a flag fluttering from a boat or those eucalyptus trees at Agios Spyridon beach twisting in the breeze. It says “relaxation perfection”.’
He smiled at her. ‘And is that how you feel now?’
‘Are you referring to our “swim”?’ She felt the need to make the quotation marks in the air and, as she did that, she felt her cheeks heating up as her mind rewound to thirty minutes earlier when he had melted her in every way.
‘I am referring to the moment when I felt happier, more complete, than ever before,’ he whispered.
‘Andras …’ she breathed.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, leaning forward and kissing her lips. ‘I do not want to make you feel afraid.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not afraid, just processing.’
‘For me too,’ he admitted.
She kissed him again, then flipped the laptop shut and turned around onto her back, gazing up at the azure sky above them. ‘So, do you want me to help you with some branding for the new, improved Taverna Georgiou?’
‘You would do that?’
‘Of course,’ she said, turning to look at him as he settled next to her, lying on his back too. ‘I know I’m not here for much longer but …’ And there it was. The reason why this was never going to work. Because she was on holiday, and he wasn’t.
‘You know, the restaurant, it was never really my father’s,’ Andras said, changing the subject.
‘What?’ Tess exclaimed. ‘But I thought it was one of those family businesses where it passed to the sons and you took over, and now Spiros is leaving, that was why your mum wanted to be involved.’
‘The restaurant was my father’s dream. He had worked in restaurants all his life and wanted to be the one in charge of his own place. He worked and he saved and then, finally, he got enough money to buy the taverna. But three weeks after it was his, before he could even open, he died.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Tess said, reaching for his hand.
‘And that’s why Mama always hated the restaurant. She would become my business partner to help Spiros, and to think that she was helping me, but she believes the restaurant killed my father. The pressure of taking on a new business, the hard work he had to put in to save the money. She wanted us to sell it on again but I didn’t want that. I wanted to make it work, in my father’s honour, and I have.’
‘Yes, you have,’ Tess agreed.
‘But now it’s time for a change,’ he said.
‘With your new ideas for events.’
‘Not just that,’ he said, turning over on his side and looking at her.
‘No?’
‘The restaurant is everything to me but, after my divorce, it became an obsession,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t want it to be an obsession any more. I want it to be a passion again.’ He took her hand. ‘Seeing the island again, with you and Sonya, it has shown me how much I have been missing, locking myself into work all the time, not having time for anything else, not making time for anything else. I need time away from serving meze to make these plans for expansion and entertainments and I need time to finish building my house.’
‘So, what are you saying? You’re not going to wait tables any more?’
‘Not all the time, no,’ he replied. ‘I am going to appoint a manager.’
Tess disconnected their hands and stifled a laugh. ‘It killed you to say that.’
‘It did not,’ he retorted. Then immediately he relented. ‘OK, maybe a little.’
‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Tess told him. ‘No one can survive on work alone.’ The sentence echoed in her own mind. If she believed that, she wouldn’t be spending every waking moment when she wasn’t dating at McKenzie Falconer.
‘And what about you?’ Andras asked.
Rumbled. He knew her far too well already. She smiled. ‘I think we were talking about your restaurant plans.’
‘Helllllloooo!’
Tess sat bolt upright at the sound of Sonya’s voice. ‘It’s Sonya,’ she said, her eyes already scouring the sand for her dress. She dipped a shoulder out of Andras’s shirt before she remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra today. She chanced a glance over in the direction the voice had come from, then snapped her head back. ‘I think she’s with the German couple!’
Andras caught her hand in his. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Your dress got wet in the sea and you needed my shirt.’
She swallowed. He knew that she wasn’t ready for the world to know what had happened between them. She felt bad about that, as if she had given him everything in one minute and then taken it straight away again the next.
‘Andras …’
He squeezed her hand. ‘It is OK.’
‘Oh my! It’s sooo hot, isn’t it? Isn’t it hot, Hans?’
‘Ja,’ the man, presumably Hans, replied. ‘It is very hot for walking.’
He looked at least six foot three, had cropped ginger hair with a beard that almost reached his chest. Next to him was a tiny woman, her jet-black hair in plaits. Around both their necks were expensive-looking cameras and a set of binoculars.
‘Sorry!’ Sonya exclaimed. ‘How rude am I, not introducing you all.’ She waved a hand towards Andras and Tess. ‘Hans, Elsabeth, this is Tess and Andras.’
‘It is nice to meet you,’ Andras said, getting to his feet and holding his hand out to Hans.
‘You too. Your island, it is so wonderful,’ Hans said, shaking Andras’s hand.
‘We have almost trekked the whole length of Corfu,’ Elsabeth informed them, settling herself on the sand next to Tess. ‘Today we came here for one special reason.’
‘The Great White Egret.’
‘I think you’ll find he’s the new president of America,’ Tess answered.
‘It’s a bird,’ Sonya said, sitting down. ‘There are lots of them on Corfu but here, on Vidos, Hans and Elsabeth were hoping to catch them in action.’
‘In action?’ Tess queried.
‘Mating,’ Hans announced, dropping his large frame to the beach too. ‘You know …’ He grinned. ‘In, out, shake it all about.’
Elsabeth laughed and Tess could feel Andras was looking straight at her.
‘They do a dance,’ Sonya said, picking up an olive and slipping it into her mouth. ‘The male rises up on its legs, bright white feathers fanning out at the bottom and spiking up at the top and then he bobs and bows … up and down, down and up … Then finally he starts swooping his swan-like neck around.’ Sonya laughed. ‘Hans showed me a YouTube video over his loukanika.’
‘His what?’ Tess asked, finally looking up.
Andras smiled. ‘Greek sausage.’
Tess baulked. Thirty minutes earlier and … no, she didn’t even want to contemplate it.
‘So,’ Sonya asked, nudging Tess’s arm. ‘How did it go with the banker?’
She nodded quickly, toying with the buttons of Andras’s shirt. ‘It was really good, in the end.’ She looked to Andras who was offering out some picnic to Hans and Elsabeth, sunlight gleaming off that gorgeous body. ‘There’s no firm decision yet but we’re, you know, quietly hopeful.’