My Sexy Greek Summer

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Cara tossed him a nasty glance and stalked off. The dignity of their exit was ruined, however, by Emma blowing a kiss to the men and giggling again.

Cara finally got them out the door into the warm Grecian night and steered Emma uphill to their villa.

“Cara, the blue-eyed guy likes you! Could be something special.”

Cara groaned. Since meeting Yannis Petrides for the very first time less than eight hours ago, he had almost run her down, she had chewed him out on the street, he had tried to get her tipsy and she had insulted his beloved grandfather’s wine. Special wasn’t the word that came to mind, but the other words that did would shock even a drunken Emma.

4

“SO HOW WAS YOUR EVENING OUT with Niko Theodoridis?” Yannis’s aunt Eleni poured him a cup of coffee and set plates of hard-boiled eggs, olives and thick slices of homemade bread on the table in front of him.

“Eh, all right. I had some of Pappous’s wine at the taverna.”

“Must not have been too much, or else you wouldn’t have found your way home. Your uncle uses that wine to clean tarnished brass sometimes. It works like a charm.”

It sure hadn’t charmed a certain Cara Sokol. Ah, well. The ferry that brought her would take her away soon enough.

“Eat, eat!” his aunt urged. “A big handsome boy like yourself needs good food, especially to work construction for your slave driver uncle.”

Yannis helped himself to the eggs and olives and drizzled local wild honey on the bread. He smiled up at Theia Eleni after a couple mouthfuls. “It’s as delicious as you are beautiful.”

She beamed down at him and patted her carefully combed and sprayed black hair. He’d seen her only once with her face bare and her hair limp and wet around her shoulders and had for a split second wondered if his uncle had sneaked a girlfriend into the house. “Oh, you! Your mother warned me you were a charmer. Like I told you before, my friend Georgia has a daughter who would be perfect for you. Just let me know if you want to meet her. Such a nice girl and a good cook.” His aunt pinched his cheek and bustled back to the stove.

Yannis winced. Most of his aunt’s friends were on the lookout for a husband for their girls, but he wasn’t interested in girls in their late teens who only giggled when he tried to talk about more than the weather.

His uncle Gus came into the kitchen, still buckling his belt. Uncle Gus was wearing one of his dressier shirts today, a button-down white linen with embroidered panels down the chest over black dress pants. He must not be planning to visit a job site today. He sat and gestured to the empty table in front of him. “Coffee.” Yannis’s aunt quickly filled his cup and set down an ashtray, as well.

Yannis took a deep breath of the last clear air of the morning. Sure enough, his uncle lit a cigarette to smoke while drinking his coffee. Having grown up in Greece, Yannis was used to cigarette smoke, but didn’t care for it at meals, where it seemed to change the flavor of his food.

He popped a couple more olives into his mouth and pushed the bowl toward Uncle Gus who raised a work-roughened hand in refusal.

“None for me. Time to go to work, anyway.” He stubbed out his cigarette and stood. Yannis followed, his aunt fluttering after them with a couple bundles of pastries for their kolatsio, or midmorning snack. Yannis’s uncle more than made up for missing breakfast then.

“Have a good day! I’m making lamb for dinner tonight.” Aunt Eleni waved goodbye and then went back into the house, presumably to do whatever Greek women did all day at home.

“Lamb, eh?” Uncle Gus grinned at him as they hopped in his white compact car and backed out of the driveway. “And not even your name day for another couple weeks.”

Yannis grinned. His name day was June 24, the birthday feast, or Nativity, of Agios Ioannis Prodomos, St. John the Baptist. Yannis’s own birthday was in September, but name day feasts were celebrated more than birthdays, especially on an island where at least a quarter of the men were named some version of Ioannis.

“Ah, well, your aunt loves to have somebody else around to cook for since the girls are off in Athens.” He lit another cigarette. “Up to no good there, I’m sure. But they won those islander scholarships to university and were on the next ferry out.”

Yannis rolled down his window to let the ocean breeze blow through the car and privately thought his two cousins Marina and Petra had done well to get their education. Aside from tourism, fishing and small-scale farming, Aphrodisias didn’t have many career opportunities. “Athens isn’t as pretty as here. I’m sure they miss the island.”

Uncle Gus grunted. “Probably marry boys from the mainland and only come back once a year.”

Yannis nodded. That was a real possibility. Marina and Petra were related to half the guys on Aphrodisias and knew the other half too well to ever want to marry them. His uncle finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the car’s full ashtray. The island was too dry during the summer to flick butts out the window. Nobody wanted a brushfire, especially his uncle, who was in the middle of several building projects. “What’s the plan for today, Uncle Gus?”

“You go over to the villa site and make sure those lazy bastards who call themselves finish carpenters are doing the door and window moldings correctly. The buyers are Germans and they’ll come in with magnifying glasses and rulers to make sure everything’s square.” Uncle Gus would take foreigners’ money for building houses, but that didn’t mean he approved of them moving to Aphrodisias.

“Sure thing, Uncle.”

“After our kolatsio, get them working again and then come back to the office. I want you to sit in on a meeting with some Belgian property investors. They’re brand-new to the island and I don’t want them to sign a contract with my competitors.”

That would explain his uncle’s dressier clothes. Yannis looked down at his own light blue T-shirt, well-worn jeans and steel-toed brown construction boots. “Should I change before the meeting?”

Uncle Gus made a dismissive gesture. “No. Let them see we are real working men who are not afraid to get dirty.”

Yannis wasn’t sure he wanted to be the poster boy for dirty working men, but he wasn’t the boss. “What property is this about?”

His uncle pulled into a small parking spot in the alley behind his office and got out of the car. Yannis grabbed his tool belt out of the trunk. “One we don’t have yet. Kyria Nomikou was about to sell it to Athena Kefalas for some weaving museum, but Kyria Nomikou just died a couple days ago, before any papers were signed. Her nephew from Athens is asking around to see if he can get a better price—maybe he can, if these Belgians are interested in building their villa condominiums there. If we can help arrange the real estate, they are interested in contracting us for the build.” His uncle tipped him a wink as he unlocked the office door. “Now take a truck to the site, but—” he held up a hand “—park behind the trees where they can’t see you and sneak up on them.”

Yannis laughed. Sneaking up on men while he wore heavy boots and a bulky, noisy tool belt would be quite a feat. “Just how lazy are these carpenters?”

“Eh, they’re from Apollonias. They think they’re the sun god himself and the world revolves around them.” His uncle tossed him one of the pastry bundles. “Bribe them with your aunt’s baking if you have to. Those German buyers are coming next week and I need them to release the rest of the construction money—they won’t, not unless everything is perfect. And don’t forget to come back for the meeting.”

“Okay, Uncle.” Yannis stowed his gear in the battered Aphrodisias Builders pickup truck and hopped behind the wheel. The engine roared to life with a cloud of black exhaust. He pulled away and shook his head. So much for sneaking up on the lazy Apollonian carpenters—they’d hear and smell the truck a mile away.

“WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD, it’s shopping time!”

Cara cracked open an eyelid and squinted up at the giant lemon sitting on her bed. She peeled open the other eye and realized it was Emma wearing a yellow T-shirt and matching shorts, her blond hair fluffed around her face. “Why am I feeling the wine and you aren’t? You were a riot to get home last night.”

“First, I seem to remember you made me drink a lot of water and take some aspirin before I fell asleep. Second, white wine makes you less hungover than red.”

Cara grunted. She’d had several disturbing dreams featuring Yannis Petrides that had left her tossing and achy with need. Probably jet lag thrown in on top of it, too. “What time is it?”

Emma checked Cara’s bedside clock-radio. “Ten o’clock.”

“Good. Just in time for kolatsio.” Cara sat up in bed, the sheet falling away from the oversize T-shirt she customarily wore to bed.

Emma grimaced. “What’s with the big duck on that shirt?”

“It’s comfortable.” The caption below read, I’m on the Verge of a Quack-up, which had appealed to Cara’s dark sense of humor a couple years back.

“Maybe we can give it to the housekeeper for her cleaning supplies. Don’t be surprised if it mysteriously disappears. Even that hempy hippie you were eyeing yesterday would turn up his nose at it.”

“But I sleep well when I wear it.”

“Who said anything about sleep?” Emma winked at her and stood up. “I’ll run to the bakery downstairs and get some breakfast. What sounds good?”

“Oh, get me a bougatsa—that’s a baked phyllo pastry with sweet cheese if they have any fresh ones. Otherwise, whatever looks good.”

“It all looks good to me. How do you want your coffee?”

“Black. I don’t need the sugar and cream calories,” she replied automatically.

Emma laughed. “Cara, you dingbat. You want me to get you a cheese-stuffed pie-thingie and you’re worried about a packet of sugar and a drop of cream?”

Cara took a deep breath. Emma was right. As long as Cara walked or swam every day and didn’t eat only bougatsa, she would be fine. “Okay, cream and sugar both.” She liked her coffee a bit lighter and sweeter thanks to the strong brewing customs.

“That’s more like it. And don’t worry, I have no intention of letting you sit on your heinie on the beach all day. Have I mentioned we’re going shopping?”

“Only about ten times,” Cara replied drily. “Now be off with you and don’t come back without my food.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Emma saluted briskly and hurried out the door.

Cara hopped out of bed and looked down at her night-shirt. “No more quack-ups—or crack-ups, either.” She stripped off the shirt and dropped it into the wastebasket.

By the time she’d finished her shower and wrestled her hair into submission, Emma was setting up breakfast on the terrace table.

“These cheese pastries are fresh out of the oven.” Emma slid them onto bright blue-and-yellow plates from the villa kitchen and poured coffee from the foam containers into matching mugs. “Sit, sit.”