Behind her, Stavros said something, a curse or a protest, she wasn’t sure. His hands seemed to harden on her hips, fingertips digging in, but not in a sensual way.
Worried about getting back to work?
“The sheep will be twenty minutes clearing the road. It would take that long to go back around the other way,” she called back as she wound along the goat track to the end.
The motion rubbed their bodies together even more and she was relieved to finally stop the bike and climb off. “At least there’s a breeze out here. And it’s pretty.”
It was spectacular. The jut of land provided a near 360-degree view of the horizon. As she took off her helmet, there was no sound except the whisper of wind in the long grass and the rush of foaming waves against the boulders that formed the tip of the spit.
The rugged beauty was deceptive, though. Sometimes people walked out on those boulders, tourists who didn’t know better. One slip could be deadly. The currents were dangerous and if bad weather was headed for the island, it showed up here first, chopping the sea into crashing waves, then throwing itself against the land in mighty gusts and nasty pelts of rain.
When Stavros stayed by the bike, she glanced back. “Is your leg bothering you?”
He sent her a filthy look, one loaded with resentment and hostility, taking her aback.
She parted her lips, not knowing what to say.
The way he stalked behind her, toward the tip of the spit, had her stammering, “You can’t swim here. It’s too dangerous. People die.”
“I know.” The gravel in his voice made her scalp prickle.
Stavros paused where the end of the striated rock had been broken off by a millennia of waves, the pieces left jagged and toppled in the churning water below.
Part of her had disbelieved that he had ever lived here, but as he looked out as if he saw something in the rolling, shifting sea, she had the impression he had stood in that exact spot before. Searching.
Her heart dropped.
He seemed very isolated in that moment, with his profile stark and carved, his hands slowly clenching as though he was bearing up under tortuous pressure.
His anguish was palpable.
She moved without consciously deciding to, standing next to him, searching his expression, wanting to reach out and offer comfort.
His flinty gaze seemed to drill a hole into the water, one that led directly to the underworld. He looked as though he was girding himself to dive straight into it.
His ravaged face made her throat sting. His posture was braced and resolute. Like he was taking a lashing, but refused to cringe. He accepted the castigation. Bore it, even though there was no end in sight for this particular punishment.
A clench of compassion gripped her, but he was a column of contained emotion.
“Stavros.” It was barely a whisper. She wanted to say she was sorry. How could she have known this would be so painful for him?
His face spasmed before he hardened his jaw and controlled his expression. When he cut his gaze to hers, it was icy cold. His voice was thick with self-contempt.
“Man whore is the least of my character flaws.”
Her heart lurched. She knew how deeply that word whore cut. She hadn’t meant to sink to that level when she had called him a tomcat.
In that moment, she knew he was nothing like superficial Brandon who threw money at an unplanned child to make it go away. Stavros was as deep as the vast sea they faced, churning beneath the gilded surface he presented to the world.
“I didn’t know—” She touched his cold arm, but he shrugged off her light fingers.
“Let’s go. I have a job to finish so I can get the hell off this island.”
THE WATER CURTAIN had been only a drawing and some footings when his father had died. Stavros was laying the tiles around the base of the two columns, standing back to assess his work, when Calli spoke.
“I’ve been making spanakopita. I thought you might like some.”
He’d been trying to keep her at a distance these last few days, feeling exposed since she had blithely forced him to face what he had been avoiding for twenty years.
Swim for shore. I’ll be right behind you.
He had always had a defiant streak. He came by it honestly. His father had flouted rules just as often.
Why do I have to wear a life vest if you don’t? he had asked his father as they’d boarded the small skiff.
Do you want to go fishing or not? I’ll be fine. Put on your vest or we’re not going anywhere.
Sebastien had asked Stavros why he owned a boat he didn’t use. That was why. Boating made him sick and it wasn’t mal de mer.
He’d always had it in his mind that he would overcome that weakness, though. Perhaps he would even sail these waters one day.
To what end? So he could do this? Relive the day he had, for once, done as he had been told and swam? Swam as if his life depended on it, because it had?
While abandoning his father to his death.
He kept thinking that Sebastien could have the damned yacht. He didn’t want it. It certainly didn’t bring him any sort of happiness, exactly as Sebastien had called it that night in St. Moritz.
He should have helped his father get to shore. That was the voice he used money and toys and women and death-defying feats to muffle. It wasn’t only his opinion. That truth had been reinforced in his grandfather’s interrogation after the accident and colored every word his grandfather had spoken to him since.
Use your American name. It’s better for business. Translation: “You don’t have the right to use Stavros. That was your father’s name.”
You want the company to succeed, don’t you? Don’t let your father’s dreams die with him.
Think of your mother and sisters. Do you want them to be well supported or not? It’s up to you.
Basically, “do as I say or I will turn all of you onto the street.”
Despite Stavros saying nothing to Calli about the way his father had been killed, she had offered a doe-eyed empathy that had been too tender a thing to bear. He had brought her back here and worked until dark, only pausing when she had brought out a plate of ground lamb sprinkled over triangles of grilled pita, and a dollop of tzatziki with a salad of peppers.
“I’ll have to start over with the moussaka tomorrow, but no sense letting this go to waste,” she had said.
She was acting compassionate when he had only ever seen grief in his mother and sisters and that well-deserved censure from his grandfather.
Yet, since that day on the spit, he hadn’t been dwelling on the accident so much as how his grandfather had yanked them off this island and sold the house immediately after the accident. He had changed their names and refused to hear Greek under his roof, denying Stavros this connection to his roots. To his memories of a happy childhood.
“Keep the keys for the Vespa,” Calli had told Stavros when he finished up that evening. “If I need it, I’ll let you know.”
Her generosity had been hard to assimilate against the criticism that had dominated his life for nearly two decades. He had taken the keys, but turned from her kindness like it was too hot, too bright.
He had worked half days