Out of the corner of her eye she saw Emily walk in, reach for the remote and turn up the volume. At first the English words and the images of a Greece she didn’t quite recognize wouldn’t register. They were a series of disconnected phrases and pictures that weren’t falling into place.
“Isn’t that the island you’re from?” Emma prompted. “Mythelios?”
Cailey nodded in slow motion as everything began falling into place.
An earthquake. Fatalities. Ongoing rescue efforts.
Her heart stopped still. The pictures of devastation had switched to a live interview being conducted outside the clinic in the fading daylight.
Of course it was him. Who else could command the world’s attention?
There, front and center, more breathtakingly gorgeous than she’d allowed herself to remember, was Dr. Theo Nikolaides, appealing for any and all medical personnel who could help to come to Greece in its time of need.
She tried not to morph his entreaty for help into an arrogant call for “the little people” to come and do the dirty work while he took the glory. This was a crisis and all hands were helping hands—not rich or poor, just hands.
She stared at her own hands...her fingers so accustomed to work...
“Cailey?” Heidi touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
She turned her hands back and forth in the afternoon light as the news sank in. People were hurt. Her mother could be hurt. Her brothers...
A flame lit in her chest. One she knew wouldn’t abate until she was on a plane home.
No matter how much she hated Theo, hated the wounds his words had etched into her psyche, she would have to go home. Islanders helped one another—no matter what.
“I’m fine. But my island isn’t. I’m afraid I’m going to need some time off.”
IT WAS ALL Cailey could do not to jump off the ferry and swim to shore. Flights to the island had been canceled because of earthquake damage to the runway, but it hadn’t put her off coming. The same way a childhood crush gone epically wrong wouldn’t stop her from helping. Not when her fellow islanders needed her. And this time she would be able to do more than help with the clean-up.
Ducking out of the wind, she pulled her mobile out of her pocket and dialed the familiar number. She wanted to hit the ground running—literally—but if her mother found out she’d come back and hadn’t checked in first it would be delicious slices of guilt pie from here on out.
“Mama?”
Static crackled through the handset. She strained to listen through the roar of the ferry’s engine’s.
“...seen Theo?” her mother asked.
Theo?
Why was her mother asking about him? She’d come back to the island to help, not answer questions about her teenage crush. Surely ten years meant she’d moved on enough in her life for people to stop asking if her heart had mended yet?
“Mama. If you’re all right...” she parsed out the words slowly “...I’ll go straight to the clinic.”
“Go...clinic... Theo...love...brothers...getting by...”
Cailey held out the handset and stared at it. She’d spoken briefly to her mum before she’d boarded her flight last night, so she knew her brothers were unhurt and, of course, already out working. As was her mother who—surprise, surprise—had already gathered a brigade of women to feed the rescue crews and survivors at the local taverna.
A Greek mother, she’d reminded Cailey time and again, was nothing if not a provider of food in times of crisis.
But...love and Theo in the same sentence?
Had her mother gone completely mad or was the dodgy reception playing havoc with her sanity?
“See you soon, Mama. I love you,” she shouted into the phone, before ending the call and adding grumpily, “But not Theo!”
She glared at the handset before giving it an apologetic pat. It wasn’t its fault that everyone on Mythelios was trapped in a time warp. But she’d moved on, and working at the clinic was as good a time as any to prove it.
She moved back out to the ferry’s deck and squinted, trying to make out the details of the small harbor she’d once known like the back of her hand. By the looks of all the blinking lights—blue, red, yellow—it was little more than a construction site. Deconstruction, more like, she thought, grimly stuffing the phone in her bag and shouldering her backpack.
The news footage she’d seen at the ferry terminal in Athens had painted a pretty vivid picture. Some people’s lives would never be the same. Two tourists had already been declared dead. Scores injured. And the numbers were only expected to rise as rescue efforts continued.
The second the boat hit the shoreline Cailey cinched the straps on the backpack she’d so angrily stuffed with clothes she’d hoped would suit the British climate all those years ago, and took off at a jog.
Some buildings looked untouched, whilst others were piles of rubble. There was a fevered, intense buzz of work as the dust-covered people of Mythelios painstakingly picked apart the raw materials of the lives they had been living just twenty-four hours earlier. Window frames. Cinder blocks. Stone. It was clear the earthquake had been indiscriminate, and in some cases brutal.
“Cailey!”
She stopped and turned. Only three voices in the world made her feel safe, and this was one of them.
Kyros!
Before she had a chance to give voice to her big brother’s name she was being picked up and swirled around.
“Cailey mou! My little starfish! How are you?”
Despite the gravity of the situation, Cailey laughed. She never would have believed hearing her childhood nickname would feel so good. Or simply smelling the island, her brother’s dusty chest and, miraculously, the scent of baking bread.
Together she and her brother looked across the street to the bakery. All that was left was the building’s huge and ancient stone-built ovens. And there, undeterred by the open-air setting, was Mythelios’s top baker, pulling loaves out as if working amidst rubble was the most normal thing on earth.
Cailey’s brother smiled down on her. “I’m so glad I saw you. We’re just about to go up to the mountains—see what we can do up there to help the more isolated houses.” He squeezed her tight. “How is the family success story? Does that London hospital know how lucky it is to have you? Have you seen Theo?”
Cailey did her best not to let her smile falter as Kyros held her at arm’s length and waited for answers. What was it with her family and all the Theo questions?
Kyros’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like you eat enough over there.”
“I’m fine!” She batted away his concerns. She ate plenty. There was no keeping her curves at bay no matter how often she ate like a rabbit. “You must be boiling in that suit.”
“This?” He did a twirl in his firefighter’s gear. “I suit it well, don’t I?”
“Still the show-off, I see.”
“Absolutely!” He winked, then just as quickly his expression turned sober. “And now I’d better show off how good I am at helping.