The Summer House in Santorini

“Fine,” Anna said. “Let’s just fix up his summer house and be around his family without ever once mentioning him. Sounds easy.” She looked up at Nikos, who was still frowning, and rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, for real. No Giorgos talk.”

Nikos nodded, put the truck back into gear, and started down the road.

“So tell me about yourself, then,” he said as they turned onto the main road.

“Not much to tell,” Anna said. “I’m from Connecticut, which I’m sure you know from he-who-must-not-be-named. I moved to New York City about a year and a half ago to work at an art gallery. I spend too much time at work, not enough time with my sister, and too much of my salary on cheap wine and falafels. And now I’m halfway around the world collecting inheritance property. Does that about do it?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Nikos asked, smiling slyly at Anna.

“No,” she said, perhaps a bit too sharply. Nikos noticed.

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Does it?” She wasn’t about to take the bait. “I assure you, there is no boyfriend.”

“So when do you have to be back at this art gallery job of yours?” he asked.

“Well, the thing is…” Anna wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t even told Lizzy that she was fired. But was she going to try to convince Marcus to give her her job back? No, the thought of that made her feel sick. So what was the harm in saying so? “I don’t really have a job to go back to,” she admitted.

“So, your stay is open-ended, then?” Nikos asked, and he almost sounded excited. “Maybe you should see a bit more of the island. Make sure you get the full experience before you go back to the city.”

“We’ll see,” Anna said. “I only want to be here as long as I have to be in order to get the summer house on the market.”

Nikos laughed. “I think you’ll find that will be much longer than a couple of weeks. We’re on island time here, and then there’s Greek time on top of that.”

“What is Greek time?”

Nikos chuckled again. “Let’s just say your social life here will involve a lot of waiting around for people.”

Anna shrugged. “We’ll see. Plus, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to develop much of a social life.”

“We’ll see about that,” Nikos said as they turned into a car park. “Okay, first things first, let’s get you an actual bed to sleep on.”

A couple of hours later, Anna ran out of the McDonald’s in Fira with a greasy brown bag and two drinks. They had tried to fit through the drive-through, but Anna’s new mattress was sticking up too high, so Nikos had made her run in for the food, his only demand for payment for the day of help.

“Two Big Macs, chicken nuggets with sweet and sour sauce, large fries and a Coke,” Anna said, her own burger and fries taking up very little space in the bag. “I still can’t believe you can eat that much.”

“Seeing is believing,” Nikos said. “Now let’s get back to your dad’s place so you can see.”

“It’s my place,” Anna said quietly.

“What?”

“I said it’s my place now,” Anna said, louder this time. “I know everyone wishes I would have just stayed away, but it’s my place now. And I think I deserve it, what after going without a father for the last two decades.”

Nikos sighed as he stared at the road ahead. “I don’t think anyone feels that way – that you should have stayed away.”

Anna scoffed. “Yeah, right. You’re telling me Eirini wouldn’t prefer to have her backyard empty of unwanted grandchildren right now?”

He hesitated a beat before responding. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about this?”

“Yeah, well, we’re not,” Anna said, crossing her arms. “But that response does sort of prove my point.” Plus, it’s not nice to be completely ignored by your only family for thousands of miles.

They made the rest of the drive in silence. When they pulled up to the house a few minutes later, Anna took the food and a couple of shopping bags from the back. Nikos grabbed the mattress and lifted it over his head, following behind her.

“You sure you don’t want to wait until I can help with that?” Anna asked.

“I’m fine. Just carry the light stuff and leave the heavy lifting to the pros,” Nikos said, though Anna could hear a strain in his voice. She just chuckled and continued toward the summer house, leaving the gates open for Nikos behind her. She turned around as she walked through the back gate and chuckled again when she saw him trying to squeeze the mattress down so it would fit through the front gate.

As she walked up to the front door of the summer house, she saw another stew waiting outside for her. She looked from it to the McDonald’s bag and felt a small pang of guilt. She hoped Nikos could eat as much as she claimed. She unlocked the door and stepped carefully around the bowl as she went inside, dropping the bags on the table.

Then, behind her, Anna heard the crunch of something breaking. She turned around to see Nikos frozen, facing away from the door, holding the mattress behind him, the bottom of one of his pant legs soaked in stew, the bowl broken under his boot.

Anna started to laugh.

“Okay, that is not funny,” Nikos said, but he started to laugh as well. He picked his leg up to inspect it.

“No, don’t move,” Anna said between chuckles. “I want to make sure you don’t track any shards into the house.” She reached into one of the shopping bags and grabbed a rag, the price tag still attached, then started picking up pieces of the bowl and putting them on the tray.

“Smells like carrot,” Nikos said, still laughing. “What a shame.”

Anna finally managed to pull herself together and began picking shards from the tread of Nikos’s boot. As she pulled it closer to get a better look, he nearly fell, only just catching himself with the mattress, and it set the two of them off laughing again.

When they eventually managed to make it into the summer house, Nikos swapped the mattresses and immediately collapsed onto the new one while Anna dealt with the mess.

“Hey, lazy bones, no way. We’ve still got an oven and a bathroom sink to unload from that truck.”

“Come on, Anna, it’s nap time. We’ve worked so hard.”

“Not a chance,” Anna said, pulling at his arm, but he shooed her away. “I only have two weeks to get this place in working order. I’m not going to waste perfectly good hours of the day resting.”

“Says the girl who slept until noon.” He didn’t move, but instead began pretend-snoring. For just a moment, Anna stood there admiring the sight of him lying on her bed. She didn’t hate it. But she shook it off. She had more important things to focus on.

“Fine,” Anna said, walking back to the table. “I guess I’ll just have to eat all this food myself.”

Nikos rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. “I’d like to see you try.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you would just come eat,” she said, holding an order of fries in front of her, wafting the scent toward him with her hand.

“Fine,” Nikos said, hopping up and trying to grab the fries from her hand. But Anna pulled them away.

“Not until you help me bring in the rest,” she said.

“But it will be cold by then!” he said, pouting and tilting his head.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have stepped in stew or tried to take a nap.”

Nikos groaned. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you pay for lunch.”

“That’s right,” Anna said, putting the fries back in the bag and guiding him toward the door. “Now let’s go earn it.”

6

A couple of days later, Anna and Nikos were stood in line at Vodafone to get Anna a Greek cell phone. She was only going to be in town for a little while, but she had racked up an impressive phone bill for the month of May, so she needed to use a bit less data and make fewer calls. At the moment, she was scrolling obsessively through Instagram while connected to the WiFi, liking all the Memorial Day photos of people in the Hamptons and Nantucket.

“Are those people your friends?” Nikos asked, watching over her shoulder.

“Not really,” Anna said. “A couple of them are friends from high school or the city. But most of them are just bloggers and YouTubers.”

Nikos rolled his eyes. “I swear, Instagram is the best and the worst thing to ever happen to this island. We’re grateful for the business, but it’s a pain in the ass to be stopped every few meters in Oia because someone doesn’t want any people in their photo stood on top of someone’s wall.”

Anna laughed. “Tell us how you really feel.”

He shot her a look. “Honestly, don’t get me started. I could rant about influencers” – he made air quotes with his fingers – “all day long.”

It was their turn at the counter, so Anna set the flip phone she had chosen in front of her and let Nikos do the talking. She wasn’t about to get talked out of all her money because she didn’t speak Greek. When Nikos went to pay, Anna tried to press her credit card into his palm, but he shook his head and squeezed her hand in his.

“Why did you do that?” she asked him as they exited the shop, her new flip phone in her purse next to her iPhone.

“Your grandfather saw everything we bought the other day and told me to put anything else you need on the business account.”

“What? Really? Why would he do that?” Anna asked, though she knew the answer. She smiled as she thought about how excited he had been to see her.

“Not everyone is as upset as Eirini about a new generation of Xenakises taking up residence in the summer house.”

Anna frowned a bit. “My name’s Linton,” she said, realizing even as she said it how ungrateful she sounded. These people were her family, after all.

Nikos looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Clearly, he was as unimpressed with her comment as she was. “Whatever you are, your grandfather is really excited that you’re here. And I think his feelings would be hurt if he heard how quickly you disown his son and his family, two things he’s extremely proud of.”

Anna looked at her shoes as they walked. She didn’t like Nikos chastising her. But when she peeked up at him, he wasn’t frowning but smiling softly at her. She returned the smile with her own tentative version.

“That is, if he could understand you to begin with, which would be a miracle,” he said, breaking the tension. They laughed together for a moment the unease of his reprimand effectively diffused for the moment. They climbed into the truck, and Anna broached the topic again, less defensively this time.

“So, you knew Giorgos—” Nikos shot her a look from the driver’s seat. “Sorry, I mean, you knew my dad well?”

Nikos nodded. “Really well. My father was never in the picture, and my mother died in childbirth. They were really poor, and she couldn’t get to a hospital. But my aunt was there, and she raised me along with my cousins, even though she was a single mother as well. When she got sick, I came back from university to help out, and your father convinced your grandfather to give me a job. I had never even held a hammer before, and look at me now.”

He grinned and sat up straight, and Anna giggled. Nikos looked over at her and smiled.

“I love your laugh,” he said, and Anna felt her face flush immediately.

“You know you do that a lot, right?” he said, his gaze locked on her.

“Do what? Laugh?”

“No, blush when I look at you.”

Of course, all this did was make Anna blush even more. She turned away and looked out the window, rolling it down a bit to get some fresh air on her face.

“Anyway,” Nikos said, thankfully changing the subject. “Your dad took me under his wing. He trained me, not just at work, but also at home. He taught me how to cook for my aunt and cousins, and he showed me how to budget. He even helped me finish my sustainable agriculture degree online.”

“He did?” Anna asked, turning to him. “I wouldn’t have thought he would have known about that sort of thing.”

“That’s just it, he didn’t,” Nikos said. “He stayed up just as late as I did every night, reading the textbooks and quizzing me on the effect of nuclear power plants on the environment. And when my aunt died and I couldn’t get out of bed for days, he logged on and took one of my tests for me. Got an A, too.”

Anna looked down at her hands. This sounded like the father she remembered from when she had been little. Caring. Thoughtful. Passionate. Not like the man who had cheated on them and then left. “You make him sound like such a good guy.”

“He was,” Nikos said firmly. “The best. And an amazing father, no matter what you think you know. And the day his heart gave out was the saddest day of my life.”

Anna had been ordered her whole life to never talk about her father, never to bring him up around her mother, until she didn’t want to talk about him either. But now she was a part of his world; living in his house, with his parents. Hanging out with someone he apparently spent so much of his time with. And she found herself growing more and more curious about who he really was.

“Maybe you can tell me more about him sometime,” Anna said as they pulled up to the house.

“I’d like that,” Nikos said, smiling. He parked the truck and put his hand tentatively on Anna’s knee. It was warm, and she could feel his calluses on her skin. She froze at his touch, not ready to reciprocate it but not wanting to scare him off either.

“But for now,” he said, moving his hand away, “we have a bathroom to tile!” Then he turned, climbed out of the truck and disappeared through the gate. Anna could still feel where his hand had been on her knee.

Eventually, she got out of the truck and grabbed a pack of tiles from the bed, barely able to lift it herself. As she came through the courtyard, she could hear Nikos arguing with someone up ahead – a woman, in Greek. As she turned the corner, she nearly dropped the tiles on her feet at the sight of one of the most beautiful girls she had ever seen shouting at Nikos. Her hair was so long that a bit of it was caught in the waistband of her jean shorts, the colour the same dark brown as Nikos’s. She looked to be around the same age as him. Anna wondered who she was and why they were shouting at each other, but she had a sinking feeling she was walking into the middle of a lovers’ quarrel.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.