The rustic charm and simplicity in this heavenly setting delighted her.
Once inside, she saw that the living room had been carved out of rock. A fireplace dominated that side of the cottage. The vaulted ceiling and beams of the house with its stone walls and arches defied description. Here and there were small framed photos of his family and splashes of color from the odd cushion and ceramics. She felt like she’d arrived in a place where time had stood still.
He opened French doors to the terrace with a table and chairs that looked out over a small, kidney-shaped swimming pool. A cluster of flowers grew at one end. Beyond it shimmered the blue waters of the Ionian in the distance. You couldn’t see where the sky met the sea.
She walked to the edge of the grill-work railing. “If I lived here, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. What a perfect hideaway.”
He stood behind her, but he didn’t touch her. He’d promised he wouldn’t, but the heat from his body created yearnings within her. “I like living in a cottage. It suits my needs.”
Unlike the penthouse, this place reflected his personality.
“How old is the original house?”
“Two hundred years more or less. If you want to use the bathroom, I’ll take your bags to the guest room.”
“Thank you.”
In a few minutes she’d seen the layout of the house. The kitchen and bathroom had been modernized, but everything else remained intact like dwellings from the nineteenth century. She adored the little drop-leaf table and chairs meant for two, built into a wall in the kitchen. On the opposite wall was a door that opened onto steps leading down to the terrace.
A room for the washer and dryer had been built in the middle of the hallway between the two bedrooms. He had everything at his fingertips. She sat in one of the easy chairs and put her crutches down beside her. Akis brought a stool over to rest her leg, then he went to the kitchen and started getting things out of the fridge.
“I’m going to fix our dinner.”
“If you’ll give me a job, I’ll help.”
“Don’t worry about it today.”
“Akis? I don’t know if you’ve heard the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but this cottage reminds me of their adorable house in the forest.”
“We Greeks have our own fairy tales. My favorite was the one our father taught me and Vasso about Demetros who lived with his mother in a hut much like this one was once. When I come here to be alone, I’m reminded of it. He fell in love with a golden-haired fairy, but she wasn’t happy with him and went away.
“Vasso and I must have heard that story so many times we memorized the words. Demetros would cry for the rest of his life, ‘Come back, come back, my fairy wife. Come back, my fairy child. Seeking and searching I spend my life; I wander lone and wild.’”
Strangely touched by the story she asked, “He never found her again?”
“No. She belonged to a fairy kingdom where he couldn’t go.”
“That’s a sad fairy tale.”
“Our father was a realist. I believe he wanted us to learn that you shouldn’t try to hold on to something that isn’t truly yours or you’ll end up like Demetros.”
That’s what Raina had tried to do when she first felt like she was losing Byron, who’d married her for money. It wasn’t until the divorce she’d learned he’d been unfaithful even while they were dating.
No wonder their marriage hadn’t worked. He thought he could have a wife, plus her money and another life on the side. Byron had belonged to his own secret world and could never be hers. Her choice in men before she’d come to Greece had been flawed.
As she glanced at Theo’s best man, she realized she was looking at the best man alive. The knowledge shook her to the foundations. “Your father sounds like a wise man,” she murmured. “Tell me about him.”
“He came from a very poor family on Paxos.” Ah, she was beginning to understand why these islands drew him. “My grandparents and their children, with the exception of my father, were victims of the malaria epidemic that hit thousands of Greek villages at the time. By the early nineteen-sixties it was eradicated, but too late for them.”
“But your father didn’t contract the disease?”
“No. Sometimes it missed someone in a family. A poor fisherman living in a tiny hut in Loggos, who’d lost his family, took my father in to help him catch fish they sold at a shop in the marketplace. When he died, he left my father the hut and a rowboat. Papa married a girl who worked in the olive groves. Her family had perished during the epidemic too. They had to scrape for a living any way they could.”
“It’s hard for me to believe people can live through such hardships, but I know they do. Millions and millions, and somehow they survive.”
“According to our papa, our parents were in love and happy.”
“The magic ingredients. Mine were in love, too.”
He nodded. “First Vasso was born, then I came along eleven months later. But the delivery was too hard on Mama, who was in frail health, and she died.”
“Oh, no,” Raina cried softly. “To not know your mother... I’m so sorry, Akis. I at least had mine until I was twelve.”
Solemn eyes met hers. “But you lost both parents. It seems you and I have that in common.”
“But you never even knew her. It breaks my heart. How on earth did you all manage?”
“Our father kept on working to keep us alive by supplying olives and fish to the shop. When we were five and six years old, we would help him and never attended school on a regular basis. Life was a struggle. It was all we knew.
“The village thought of us as the poor Giannopoulos kids. Most people looked down on us. Then things turned worse when our father was diagnosed with lymphoma and died.”
A quiet gasp escaped. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen and fourteen. By then the woman’s husband who owned the shop had also died and she needed help. So she let us work in her shop and helped us learn English. She said it was important to cater to the British and American tourists in their language. We studied English from a book when we could.”
“You learned English with no formal schooling? That’s incredible.”
He stared hard at her. “You’re talking to a man whose education is sorely lacking in so many areas, I don’t even like to think about it.”
“I see no lack in you. Anything but.”
“Give it time and my inadequacies will be evident in dozens of ways, but I digress.
“While Vasso waited on customers and did jobs the woman’s husband had done, I would go fishing and pick olives. Then it would be my turn to spell him off. I don’t think we got more than six hours sleep a night for several years.”
“No time to play,” she mused aloud.
He made an odd sound in his throat. “We didn’t know the meaning of the word.”
Raina hated to see him do all the work and got up to help him. For the first time she didn’t use crutches because the kitchen was so close.
“Careful,” he cautioned.
“My ankle doesn’t hurt.”
“Just do me a favor and sit in the chair at the table. The food is ready. I’ll bring everything over so we can eat.” He’d cut up fresh melon and made a shrimp salad. Lastly came some rolls and iced tea.
“When did you have time to stock the refrigerator?”
He