LUKAS
“Good afternoon, Mr. Kostas.”
“Hello, Milly.”
“I’m surprised to see you out in this bad weather. I thought you would be locked up in your office as usual,” Milly teases as I grab a bar stool to sit at the counter.
“I got a taste for a club sandwich and a piece of your famous apple pie, so I decided to take a break. Acquisitions and the reliable spreadsheets can wait for a change,” I tell her.
“Hallelujah! I had given up on you for a while, but I’m glad to see you take a break for a change. All work and no play can cause stress and make you dull.”
“Yeah, you’re right. So, feed me so I can get back to the office. My assistant is holding down the fort until I return with her meal. I need a Swiss mushroom burger, fries and a sweet tea to go, also,” I inform Milly.
“Sure thing, Mr. Kostas. I will personally handle your order.”
“Thank you, but I will eat my order here and Cassidy’s is to go.”
“Got ya,” she says walking away to fulfill my order.
Milly’s Café is crowded even with the weather being in such disarray outside. The usual customers sit clustered together with their colleagues, family or friends in the cherry interior of the café. Suddenly, the entrance door swings open, the wetness from the rain and a blast of cold wind blow inside. My heart stops beating in my chest and my breath catches in my throat. The rest of the customers glance toward the doorway like I do but soon they return to their conversations, as the door swings closed behind the new customer standing in the doorway, closing her umbrella and hanging it on the coatrack not too far from the doorway. She removes her raincoat and hangs it on the rack as well. The heavy cold rain, the customers and my order are long forgotten as my eyes land on the beautiful vision of my estranged wife, Melah Kostas.
Melah’s voluptuous body is encased in a pair of fitted jeans and a burnt orange sweater that compliments her dark sienna glowing skin tone. She is looking more beautiful today than she did when I first laid eyes on her seven years ago. Her black hair hangs chin length in a flattering bob. I notice the black leather boots she has on her are the sensible choice for this type of weather.
She looks around and waltzes up towards the counter where I’m sitting. Her eyes suddenly clash with mine and she pauses mid step. Her head goes up a notch, and a look of determination enters her dark brown eyes before she resumes her sauntering walk. My brows draw together as I watch her with intensity.
“Hey Lukas,” she says as if she hasn’t been away from Mercy, Texas for the past three years. Then she licks her lips. My cock instantly lunges to life.
Damn, she’s so beautiful. My eyes trail down to the soft cushion of her heart shaped lips. It takes everything I’ve got not to stand up and haul her into my arms and thrust my tongue down her throat, but I can’t do that because I’m angry as hell with her for walking away from me.
“Here is your order, Mr. Kostas.” Milly places my club sandwich and slice of pie in front of me.
I turn in my seat to face Milly, before looking down at my lunch. I suddenly seem to have lost my appetite.
“Hello, welcome to Milly’s. Have a seat and I’ll send over a waitress to take your order,” Milly says to Melah.
“Ah, Milly, this is my wife, Melah Kostas.”
“Ahem,” Melah clears her throat and gives me a twisted smile. “Not for long,” she says before taking a seat beside me at the counter.
I glare at her. What the hell does she mean not for long? Melah has some answering to do, and I’ll get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later. Milly’s voice jerks me out of my musings.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t recognize you right away, Mrs. Kostas. It’s been three years since the last time I saw you. How have you been?”
“She’s been great, no doubt, you can tell just by looking at her,” I cut in.
Melah’s brown eyes meet mine and she is giving me an icy glare that is cold enough to freeze Antarctica.
I angle my head and return her frigid glare. “Milly, can you get Cassidy’s order ready? It seems that I have lost my appetite,” I direct her.
The owner of the café nods as she looks between Melah and me with interest. Melah still has a frown on her pretty face and she looks at me as if I’m nothing more than a stranger to her. This makes me very unhappy.
“Oh, I’ll send the waiter right over to take your order,” Milly directs her conversation at Melah.
“No need to go to the trouble. Lukas said he’d lost his appetite, so I’ll just take his lunch,” Melah says as she goes about her business of reaching in front of me to take my sandwich into her hands, bringing it to her mouth.
Melah opens her mouth wide and takes a big bite. “No pickles,” she says after chewing and swallowing the food that was in her mouth.
Milly laughs loudly and walks off.
“I would have eaten that later," I tell Melah, but she just sits there and finishes eating my sandwich as if she’s starving. “You might as well eat the apple pie too while you are at it.”
“Thanks,” she replies gulping down the rest of my sandwich before taking me up on the apple pie. She gulps it down and without stopping to inhale, taking bite after bite of the apple pie until she finishes eating.
“So, you’re still fucking Cassidy, huh?” Melah bluntly asks.
Melah glares at me as she blurts the words out. There is a fire burning in her brown eyes as they clash with my own. I become enthralled by her long eyelashes. She blinks her eyes rapidly as if to fight off tears and the beauty of her orbs becomes blurred as a tear slides down her right eye.
“Damn it, Melah! What the hell are you talking about?” I spit out between clenched teeth. This conversation doesn’t make any damn sense. “Why the hell would I be fucking Cassidy anyway?”
“You tell me. You are the one who had your damn tongue rammed down her throat on the last day I came into your office,” she responds by pointing a finger in my face. "Why else do you think I walked out on your treacherous ass?” She adds. “I promised myself from day one that I would never be like my mama. To this day, my dad still cheats on her, but she stays with him anyway. No, not me. I will never stay with a lying, cheating man like you, Lukas Kostas. That’s why I came here for you to sign the divorce papers that I had filed. I know I could have had my lawyer fax you the papers, but I needed to do this face to face since I have business here anyway,” she says.
I quickly breathe in, and my stomach muscles clench tightly. My head shakes from side to side in denial. I think back to the shitty day when Melah walked out of my life without facing me. All she left was a lousy ass letter dismissing the love, the trust and our marriage in the blink of an eye.
The first three years that Melah and I spent together were glorious, precious years, filled with love, laughter and many, many beautiful moments in between. A reality of heartbreak visited me the day she left. I haven’t been the same inside since. Not since the day Melah says she caught me kissing Cassidy Marlowe. I know she’s telling the truth, because that was the day I betrayed my wife for the first time in our marriage.
The kiss came out of nowhere. One minute, Cassidy was across the other side of the boardroom, looking out the window, telling me that her boyfriend Keith Barnes was going away to the military. Cassidy was so distraught that my only motive at first was to comfort her. I was absorbed with helping her stop crying when I walked over to her to take her into my arms for comfort. In the next instance she was kissing me. I was kissing her back. My hands clasped her to me as she urgently pressed her body against my own. After some time had gone by, I thought I’d heard a noise and a second later, I broke away from the kiss.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen!” Cassidy looked at me with a look akin to shock. She seemed just as bewildered as I was.
“You are right. This shouldn’t have happened, and it will never happen again. I love my wife, and she means everything to me. I have never looked at another woman sideways since Melah entered my life,” I confessed, feeling like I had just cheated on my wife for the first time since we had been married.
“And I love Keith with all of my heart. I would never do anything to hurt him,” she said.
“Ahem, let’s just chalk this up to this one kiss between the two of us being a mistake, on both of our behalves.”
“Right,” Cassidy agreed. “It was inconsequential, and one day when we are old and gray, I’m sure we will laugh about it. I’d better get back to work,” she had said and hurried out of the boardroom without looking back. Since that day, Cassidy and I both never mentioned that awkward moment again. I thought my one little indiscretion would be a secret I took to my grave but now I know that’s the reason my wife ran out on me. All these years, I have suffered because of one fucking kiss. Shit!
“Melah, you had to know how much I loved you and love you still. You should have come to me and confronted me with what you saw. I deserved better than you gave me. I deserved your trust in me—in us. I have never strayed, betrayed, or abandoned you, not even once. A mistake doesn’t count.”
“But you did betray me, Lukas. Every time I asked you not to answer Cassidy’s calls late at night or not go running to the office at odd hours every time she asked you to. None of that helped our marriage along the way. I tried my best to tell you time and time again.” Her mouth shuts tightly, and she shakes her head with her every word. “So, why’d you cheat on me with your assistant, Lukas? I hope to God it was worth it for you.”
“I didn’t cheat on you with her, Melah. But let me ask you a question. Why was it so easy for you to walk away from our marriage in the way that you did?”
“You didn’t come after me, Lukas. I couldn’t have been that important to you,” Melah says, giving me a puzzling frown. “I want to know why you never came looking for me, not even once.”
“Melah, I am not going to have this conversation with you here. In case you haven’t noticed everyone’s attention is on us. I’m sure they are saying the runaway wife has returned. So, where's your baggage? Where are you staying?”
“Here is Cassidy’s order to go,” a waitress walks up and places a brown bag in front of me.
“Change of plans. Have this delivered to Kostas Corporation and leave it at the front desk for Cassidy Marlowe,” I say, reaching into my suit pocket for a thin black leather wallet with the initials L.K. on the front. I slid out a hundred-dollar bill and place it down on the counter. “Keep the change,” I add standing up.
I take my wife’s wrist, pull her up from her seat and start walking towards the exit of Milly’s Café with her in tow. I stop at the doorway to help her into her coat. She grabs her umbrella and I grab her wrist again and out the door we go.