CHAPTER 7
________
EVA
Present Day
One of the hardest things I’d ever had to do was to pretend that I hadn’t recognized him. Thankfully, the sun was so glaringly strong that it was necessary for me to wear my sunglasses as soon as we stepped out of the small airport. It meant that he couldn’t see me staring at him, or that I knew he was staring at me. I’d wanted to shrivel up like a dried leaf and have the wind blow me away.
For God’s sake, I’d just spent the last twenty hours flying practically halfway across the world, and look who just had to be the perfect nephew I’d heard so much about! Of course, when Maria had mentioned her nephew, Nikos, there was no part of me that would have connected him to Nick! Not in a hundred years. The chances were as remote as winning the lottery!
Once Maria was comfortably seated in the front of the car, and all our luggage was stacked in the very large trunk, we were ready to leave. I sat in the back seat, behind Maria, with Anna on the other side of me. I must have looked like I was very ill indeed, because she handed me a cold bottle of water, the concern on her face evident. I took a few sips; not daring to look in the rearview mirror in front of me for fear of seeing Nick looking back at me.
My heart was beating so violently I was practically rocking. My mind was in a whirl as I thought back to the last time I’d seen him. Of course, I hadn’t forgotten. After Dad had called me that morning, and I’d left in a state of panic, I could have kicked myself for the way I’d left. It was stupid, I know. But those few summer days with Nick were not easily forgotten.
When I’d seen the look on his face back at the airport, I’d half expected him to ask me to turn around and go back to where I came from, and spout some terse remark about how someone like me wasn’t good enough to attend to Maria. I couldn’t be trusted after all.
God, he must hate me, I thought. I rested my head against the window, out of sight of the mirror. I was grateful for the car’s powerful air conditioning; stepping off the plane had been like stepping in front of a furnace, the force of the heat pushing me back a step. I was also grateful for Maria’s chattering. She hadn’t seen Nikos for quite some time it seemed, and they had a lot to catch up on. Births, marriages, deaths, gossip.
I should have been looking out of the window at the beautiful, rugged Greek landscape, taking in the sights during my first ever trip to Europe. But I could only stare at the back of Nick’s head, the side of his face. God, that face. I’d thought about it so many times over the years after leaving him that morning. Now, it looked even better than it had in my dreams.
His jaw looked squarer, his stubbled cheeks a little rougher than I remembered. But he did look good. In fact, he looked better than good. I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off him in the same way I’d been unable to stop gazing at him that morning on the beach while he’d stood up so strongly on his surfboard.
At first, when Caroline had told me he’d given her his number, I was elated, soon to be devastated again when she couldn’t find the piece of paper, convinced that she’d put it in her purse. I nearly tore her bag apart, hoping it might have slipped through a tear in the lining, but no such luck. It was gone, and so was all hope of contacting him again.
Caroline had apologized profusely, even going as far as searching through her car to see if it might have slipped out and fallen in-between the seats, but the piece of paper seemed to have disappeared into thin air. And even though I’d felt shattered, I couldn’t blame her. It was my own fault for not getting his number before I’d left. I just hadn’t been thinking rationally at the time.
Over the years, I’d gotten over him. I told myself that it was nothing more than a holiday romance and that, even though I hadn’t wanted to leave him that morning, it never would have worked out anyway.
Only now, in the back of his car, looking at his striking profile, I wondered whether I should have made more of an effort to somehow get in touch with him, maybe even going to the trouble of phoning up every newspaper agency in Illinois.
But hey, there was no time to beat myself up about that now. In a couple of hours we’d be laughing about old times over a glass of ouzo, I hoped. I wasn’t there to talk about the past, anyway. It would be pretty unprofessional for me to bring up any of it. Besides, I wasn’t there for Nick. I was there for Maria. She continued to chatter away in the front seat.
“How’s Lily?” she asked Nick, placing her hand on his thigh. “I’ve missed her so much. Is she here?”
Lily? That must be his wife.
Great!
As if the whole situation wasn’t awkward enough already, now I had to worry about all of those old memories resurfacing while watching him happily settled down with a wife. I’d checked his hand earlier, though. There was no wedding ring on his left hand. But we were in Greece. Shit. They wore it on the other hand… but nope. Nothing there, either. Lily must be his girlfriend. Maybe his fiancée?
“She’s coming in a couple of weeks,” Nick said, smiling at Maria. “She’s very excited to see you, too.”
He glanced up, and I saw him look at me in the rear-view mirror again. I looked away. The winding roads seemed to go on forever. I couldn’t wait to get to the house so that I could get online and check for return flights. I had enough cash saved up to get home again. Dad had made sure of it. It was one of their stipulations about leaving in the first place. I can’t imagine that, after everything he’s been through, it was easy for my Dad to let me out of the country. It had been hard enough for me to convince him that I was going to be fine moving to Texas for college.
But then again, Maria was paying me handsomely for my work, so why should I be the one to quit? If Nick had a problem with me, then he needed to be the one to step aside and let me do my job. I was a good therapist, and I was the only one who knew the best way to help his beloved aunt recuperate.
On and on, as we drove along the seemingly never-ending road to the house, my mind kept up this bizarre internal dialogue. I sipped the water until there was none left. Nick saw me with an empty bottle and turned around for a second.
“Miss Kent, if you’re still thirsty, there’s chilled water in the armrest between you and Anna,” he said. “It was something the guys put in for me before they delivered the car.”
“It’s a beauty,” Maria said, stroking the leather. “Much better than that sporty little number you had last summer.”
Nick laughed. “I wanted something similar, but of course I had to think about your leg.”
“Ah, you’re such a good boy,” Maria said, and she patted his cheek lovingly. He grinned. It was nice to see the affection between the two of them. Maria clearly adored her nephew, and he felt the same way about her. It made sense that he’d bought her a house with his first ever advance.
I had time, as we continued on the journey to Maria’s home, to think about everything Nick had told me seven years ago, during our short time together. How it matched up with his life now. I remember him saying that he didn’t live with his parents, and Maria must have been the woman he’d talked about living with back then. Now I looked at the beautiful car and thought about how successful he was, and I wondered whether that success had come off the back of the story he’d told me about then, the one he knew was inside him and was just about to write. I was pleased for him having put pen to paper. He had clearly worked hard for what he had.
Maria pulled her safety-belt so that she had plenty of slack and turned awkwardly to look at me. “We’re there!” she cried. “Eva, look! Look! That’s my beautiful house!” We were heading up a long drive, and I could hear the crunch of gravel underneath the tires. I had to tip my glasses forward to look at the place.
Damn. It was incredible.
It was a huge, glass-fronted building, three stories high, with plants on every balcony. At the very top, there was a larger balcony, and a flat roof above that, on which I could just make out an awning and some chairs. I could understand why Maria had been so desperate to come here again. I was surprised she’d ever bothered to leave in the first place.
As Nick turned off the engine, it was time for me to get to work. I hopped out of the car and immediately tasted salt on my lips. The breeze in the air had caught the sea and brought it inland, and I knew that we weren’t far from the ocean at all. I suddenly ached to be in the water, but there was no time for me to be thinking about that now. I had to get Maria out of the car.
The chair had been folded up and put in the trunk, and I slid it out of the back and pulled it open. I half expected someone to come out and help with the luggage, but nobody came. Instead, Anna, surprisingly wiry and strong for such a small, demure woman, began lugging cases out onto the drive until Nick came and stopped her.
“I’ll do that,” he insisted. “You go inside and get some fresh lemonade. I made it this morning. I just need to get Maria in the house, and then I’ll take care of the luggage.”
Between the two of us, we turned Maria around, still sitting in the car, so that her legs now faced out of the door. With much loud bellowing and what I can only assume were some very choice Greek swear words, she was down on the ground and standing on the paved driveway. Nick helped her into the chair, and I wheeled it inside. In the cool hallway, Anna took over pushing Maria into the house, and I went back outside to the car to collect my suitcase. My sunglasses were still firmly in place. I wasn’t about to make any kind of eye contact with Nick.
He slid out the last of the cases, one after the other, putting them onto the ground. I took them despite his protests and carried them one by one into the house. I wasn’t about to have him see me as some pathetic young girl. He might have thrown me around in bed as though I weighed nothing seven years ago, but he needed to know that I was there to work hard and not to be waited on.
Finally, we had everything in the house, and Maria had already been taken through to the back of the house, to the rear balcony. I went to find her, but was at a loss for words when I stepped out onto the deck and saw the view stretched out in front of me. I’d never seen anything more breathtaking in my life. I’d expected a green lawn, and perhaps a sandy path to a beach a few hundred yards away, but boy, was I wrong.
It was as if we were suspended above the ocean. There was literally nothing between the back of the house and the water below, save for a very high drop. In front of me was only deep blue sea, and it was so beautiful I almost cried. I took my sunglasses off to fully appreciate the color of the water that sparkled in the light of the sun beaming down. Far off in the distance, the water was a dark royal blue where it was deepest and cold, but closer to the shoreline, it was turquoise in color, a stunning emerald green in some places. I could have sworn I was peeking straight through the keyhole of heaven’s door.
Both Maria and I were silent as we took in the scene before us, and even Anna took a moment, I think, to collect herself as she relished being back in her home country. I could have stood there, staring out at that view until the sun disappeared over the horizon, but behind me, Nick’s voice broke the spell, it’s timbre deep and masculine.
“It’s pretty, but it makes for lousy surfing,” Nick’s low voice muttered in my ear. He was standing close to me now, and I could smell the fresh spice of his cologne. He stared down at me, a soft smile on his face.
“Hello, Eva.”