Seventy
Andras Georgiou’s home
The moon was full and almost as round and fat as the tortoise Andras had carried up the mountain to his house.
‘How does he get out?’ Tess whispered as they made their way across the lawn to the pen Andras had built.
‘I do not know, but if my mother catches him anywhere near the restaurant …’
He didn’t need to finish the sentence for her. ‘Uncle Dimitri?’
Andras smiled at her. ‘Spiros swears he is going to ask our mother exactly what happened to Uncle Dimitri tomorrow.’
‘You mean no one actually knows?’ Tess asked.
He laughed. ‘No.’ He put Hector back into the wooden home, making sure the latch was secure. Then he moved over to Tess, taking her hands in his. ‘You are sure you want to stay tonight?’
She smiled. He was always so concerned for her feelings, not wanting to push, never expecting anything. She leant forward, lightly brushing her lips with his. ‘Yes, I’m sure. Besides, I could hardly stay in the apartment with a newly engaged couple, playing a very awkward raspberry.’
‘Or blackberry,’ Andras added. ‘Like your clients.’
‘Exactly,’ Tess replied.
‘Then I will make coffee,’ he said, leading the way to the property. ‘Or something stronger?’
‘Still no Dr Pepper I presume?’ Tess asked, hopefully.
‘No,’ Andras answered. ‘But I do have Coke.’
Andras couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He had made coffee and every so often, as he waited for the machine to brew, he had looked through his sparse, unfinished kitchen, just to gaze at Tess, sitting on his sofa, shoes off, bare feet up on the cushions, staring through the full-width windows to the moonlit view of the sea beyond. It seemed surreal. To have someone sharing his space, someone he already cared so deeply about.
‘What?’ Tess asked, smiling as she took the Coke he handed her.
‘Having you here.’ He sat down on the sofa beside her.
‘Yes?’ she asked.
‘I like it,’ he replied, finding her hand and entwining his fingers with hers.
‘You do?’
He nodded, edging his body closer to hers. ‘I do.’
‘Be careful there, Andras, you’ll be getting very close to repeating Spiros’s wedding vows.’ She gave him a soft smile.
‘The wedding is tomorrow,’ he reminded her.
‘I know. Isn’t the whole village in lock down and a whole Greek armada sailing to the church?’
‘Something like this,’ he agreed. ‘Then the day after …’
Her fingers tensed next to his and she shifted, reaching forward to put her glass on the coffee table.
‘I go home,’ she said.
He swallowed, in reaction to how those words hit out at his heart. He wanted to say so much but part of him was still holding back, not wanting to address the inevitable.
The silence was deafening. She was looking at him, those azure eyes affecting him in so many different ways. What did he want to say?
‘Tess …’
‘Andras …’
‘Please, you speak first.’
She shook her head. ‘No, you can.’
He took a breath, readjusting his position on the sofa, one arm resting on the seatback, fingers closing over the fabric. ‘I know that we do not live in the same place but that should not mean that we cannot be in the same place for some of the time …’ He sighed. ‘I am not making this very clear.’
She shook her head. ‘I know what you’re trying to say.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘You want us to try to see if we can make this … this connection between us … something more than just for this holiday.’
He nodded. ‘I would like to try that, but what do you feel?’
He was almost holding his breath as she released hers. What if she did not feel the same? What if the moments they had shared on Corfu were going to be the only ones they had together?
‘You know everything about me, Andras,’ she said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. ‘You are the only one who has ever known everything about me. And there is a reason for that. I just … I don’t … that is, I’m not very good … at making commitments that last longer than six weeks, and …’
‘I know,’ he replied, squeezing her hand. ‘I understand.’
‘When I get home, when you’re here without me, neither of us know how we are going to feel,’ she said. ‘What feels real here, under that perfect sky, with all the cray-cray family stuff going on, it might feel different when there’s some distance between us.’
She was being wholly honest and he valued that. He knew his feelings for her were strong, but she was tapping on the brake, being sensible, and it was entirely the right thing to do.
‘Andras, I’ve given you more than I’ve ever given anyone since my wedding-that-didn’t-happen. That means everything to me.’
‘It means everything to me too,’ he reassured her.
‘I think, what I’m trying to say is, let’s make the most of how we feel now, and let the future take care of itself.’
Had she really said that? It sounded like a TV commercial for over-sixties life insurance and Tess’s heart was drumming like the baseline of a Tinchy Stryder track. She wanted to be all in. She felt all in. She wanted to tell Andras that she was falling in love with him, words to back up her actions on the beach when she had literally hummed with ecstasy. But her psyche, the defence mechanism she had so maintained so beautifully, was still urging caution.
‘Andras …’ It felt like a brush-off and she didn’t want that. She hadn’t said nearly enough.
‘You do not need to say any more,’ he insisted, still holding her hand in his. ‘We have both been through difficult times, both thinking that these feelings could not be for us in the future.’
‘There’s more to it than that.’ She sighed. ‘I need to put some things right at home before I can even think about moving on.’
Moving on. Was she really going to finally be able to do that? It had always seemed so impossible and maybe it still wasn’t clear cut, but the one thing she did know was she was going to speak to her mum. She was going to actually have a conversation with her about the wedding-that-wasn’t, about what happened afterwards, about how sorry she was for the loss of all the money and how she had tried to go some way towards saving to pay it back to her and her dad. Even if it didn’t rescue their relationship, she will have done everything she could.
‘I want to try, Andras,’ she said. ‘To move on.’
‘Me too,’ he responded.
She looked into those chocolate-brown eyes, then shifted her gaze a little lower to rest on those sultry lips. The only moving on she wanted to engage in right at this moment involved her on top of him sans clothes.
‘Show me some more of the house,’ Tess purred.
‘What would you like to see?’ Andras asked, bringing her hand to his mouth and dropping hot kisses on her fingertips.
‘Does your bedroom have a sea view?’ she asked.