Twenty-eight
Of all the times for his car not to start this was the worst. Ordinarily, Andras did not have to transport anyone anywhere. Usually it would be just him and perhaps some boxes of items for the restaurant. It was never two women dressed for a dinner party. He swallowed as he saw Tess and Sonya appear at the archway at the front of Kalami Cove Apartments. This was his fault, making a joke about his moped. He looked over his shoulder to Babis on the moped behind him. Babis should be cooking right now, not playing taxi. But there was nothing he could do. He just needed to get on with this.
He waved a hand at the pair, smiling and turning the throttle a little. He already knew what reaction he was going to get from Tess. If she could not stand to get her bare feet dirty, she was not going to be the kind of girl to relish a ride on a moped.
‘You are ready?’ he asked when they were close enough to hear him.
‘That depends,’ Tess answered. Her eyes were going from him to the body of the vehicle he was sitting astride. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘About that …’
‘There isn’t one, is there?’ Sonya said, looking nervous.
‘You said you had a car,’ Tess followed it up.
‘I do have a car,’ he answered.
‘Then …’
‘I am afraid that today my car decides to behave like the Wi-Fi. It is not working.’
He looked to Tess, waiting for her to digest that information.
‘Then we’ll call a taxi,’ she stated.
He shook his head. ‘There are no taxis in Kalami.’
‘What?’
‘Taxis are for the main towns only. If we call a taxi it will come from Acharavi. It will take perhaps half an hour, maybe more.’
‘Look at me,’ Tess stated.
He watched her stand tall. The stunning dress that hugged her figure and stopped mid-thigh was not lost on him.
‘This dress, this designer dress, was not made for moped-riding.’
‘No?’ He couldn’t resist teasing her a little. She was strung so tightly. ‘What was it designed for?’
He saw her hesitate, not prepared for his reply.
‘For … going out for dinner … and for business …’
‘And standing still,’ he offered. ‘Like that craze on the Internet. The mannequin challenge.’
‘Oh!’ Sonya gasped. ‘Joey and his friends did that in full battle costume. It was so good. One of them had to stand with his axe poised over an enemy’s throat. I always thought one ill-placed sneeze and it might have all gone horribly wrong.’ She smiled. ‘But it didn’t.’
‘I will walk,’ Tess stated firmly.
‘Walk,’ he replied.
‘Yes, you know, one foot in front of the other. I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen months old, I’m quite accomplished at it.’
His gaze slipped down her long, slim legs knowing instinctively what he was going to find on the dusty tarmac. And there they were: high-heeled pale shoes, thin straps he knew were not going to withstand a two-mile walk to his mother’s home.
‘It is up a mountain,’ Andras stated.
‘Point us in the right direction,’ Tess ordered.
‘Wait, what?’ Sonya chipped in. ‘Did you say “us”? Because I have a metatarsal issue that hasn’t ever been fully resolved and as much as the “leg-over” thing is worrying me, I’m not sure mountain-climbing is going to do my pre-existing condition any good.’
‘You cannot walk,’ Andras told Tess bluntly.
‘Watch me.’ She turned away and began strutting out onto the road heading for the way out of the village.
Andras drove the moped forward, keeping her pace, the engine struggling to idle.
She turned to him, still strutting in those high shoes, her face already reddening in response to the hot evening. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What are you doing?’ he responded.
‘I am going to find your mother’s house to eat a Greek god’s bodyweight in lamb.’
‘Tess, it is too far for you to walk.’ He shifted the moped further forward to keep in line with her. ‘Please, get on the bike.’
She stopped abruptly then and turned to face him. A bead of perspiration was starting to weave its way down from her brow. She was hot. And she was doing him this huge favour. He should have borrowed a car.
‘You do not have to come,’ he stated, killing the engine. ‘I will say you are not feeling very well … or, I will tell the truth.’
‘No,’ she said immediately and with force.
He looked at her a little quizzically.
She shook her head, blonde hair shifting across her back. ‘No, don’t do that.’ She took a breath. ‘I want to come.’
‘You want to come?’ he repeated, with a swallow.
‘Because earlier, they told me not to come,’ she stated, her blue eyes looking directly into his.
‘They did?’
‘And no one does that to me and … Sonya is going through a … difficult time.’
He watched her look over her shoulder at her friend. He turned then too, saw Babis aiding Sonya’s mount on to the pillion.
‘Sonya loves the boat.’ Tess sniffed. ‘I need you to take us out on the boat and—’
He turned back to her. ‘And?’
‘And I’m going to need a computer.’
‘A computer.’
‘Do you have one?’
‘There is something wrong with your phone?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m going to need something bigger.’
He felt the need to wet his lips. ‘Bigger?’
‘More substantial,’ she answered. Now he was starting to perspire a little himself.
‘For work,’ she said. ‘I have to do a bit of work while I’m here.’
He nodded. ‘Of course. Work.’
‘So do you have one?’ Tess asked.
‘Yes.’
‘That works?’ she asked.
He smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she answered. He watched her breathe out, smoothing her hair back and away from her face. ‘Why is it still so hot?’
‘This is Corfu in the summer,’ he reminded her. ‘Perhaps the breeze from the ride up the mountain would help.’
Right on cue there was an ear-splitting shriek and Babis’s moped roared into life. Sonya was clinging on to the Greek man, red hair flying out from underneath the helmet. The woman waved a hand and then was gone, hammering up the incline on two wheels and leaving a trail of dust.
‘Turn away and close your eyes,’ Tess stated with a resigned sigh.
He carried on looking at her, wondering what his gaze had to be diverted from.
‘Close your eyes,’ she demanded. ‘Because me getting on that thing’ – she pointed at the bike like it was a sworn enemy – ‘is going to be more overexposure than on the Playboy channel.’
Still, his eyelids didn’t seem to want to commit.
‘Andras!’ she shouted.
His eyes shut then. But, as he heard her shoes move on the gravelly road, then felt her hand on his shoulder, her body slowly slipping in close to his, every part of him was remembering the joy of female contact and rapidly starting to forget his current desire for absolute abstinence.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Tess asked, her arms clasped tight around him like a rock climber clinging to a life-saving precipice. ‘Just, make it quick and promise me wine when we get there.’
‘Kanena provlima,’ he replied, restarting the engine. ‘No problem.’