THAT'S AMORE

by Janelle Denison, Tori Carrington, Leslie Kelly

  "Hi, Mrs. Crofton," he murmured.

  She smiled, certain she'd never felt happier in her whole entire life. She was well and truly Jason's wife. "I love the way that sounds."

  "I think you'll like the sound of this, too," he said, his voice low and husky. "Aloha Au la 'oe, Leila."

  Her eyes widened as she processed the words he'd spoken to her in her native language, albeit slowly and with concentration on his part. "I love you," she said, and shook her head in disbelief. "How did you learn to say that in Hawaiian?"

  His eyes glimmered mischievously. "Your Nana."

  She laughed lightly, grateful that her grandmother hadn't taught him other, more unrefined phrases. "You're so full of surprises tonight."

  "Only the best kind."

  She agreed. Pulling his mouth down to hers, she arched her hips up against his, pushing him closer to the edge of his own release. "Now let's get this marriage of ours consummated."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said, and proceeded to do exactly that, christening their new home with hopes and dreams, searing passion, and sweet, everlasting love.

  * * *

  I DO, DON'T I

  Tori Carrington

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  A fairy tale. Isn't that how all weddings and the days leading up to them are looked upon? A man and woman fall in love and want to spend their lives together. Nothing could be more perfect. Then—boom!—something happens to send everything into a tailspin that guarantees the day will remain in your memory forever … but for the wrong reason!

  In our novella I Do, Don't I? Efi Panayotopoulou is one week away from her wedding … or a nervous breakdown, whichever comes first. Everything should be perfect. After all, she's marrying her childhood sweetheart Nick Constantinos, she has a dream of an original designer dress and her family is finally treating her like an adult instead of an overgrown child. Then within the blink of an eye, Murphy's Law goes into effect and everything that can go wrong, does!

  We drew heavily from Tony's Greek heritage not only to share some wonderful traditions, but to put our own humorous twist on them. We hope you enjoy Efi and Nick's version of their big, fat Greek wedding! We'd love to hear what you think. Write us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, Ohio 43612

  , e-mail us at toricarrington@aol.com and visit our Web site at www.toricarrington.com.

  Here's wishing you your own special brand of happily-ever-after!

  Lori & Tony Karayianni

  aka Tori Carrington

  * * *

  We dedicate this story to our niece, Eleni Tsilias, and her intended, Ciannis. Congratulations on your engagement! Here's wishing you both love, always.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Day one

  "I hate you."

  The words weren't said in anger or in true dislike. Rather they were said with a certain wistfulness that made Efi Panayotopoulou smile at her best friend.

  "No, you don't. You only think you do." Efi didn't spare Kiki a glance as they hung the fluffy white lace concoction on the back of her bedroom door, then wondered at the breathtaking wedding dress.

  Kiki began bobbing her head. "Oh no. I very definitely hate you. Always have, if you want the truth."

  Efi backed up until her bed impeded her progress. She plopped down on it, staring unblinkingly at her wedding dress. The mattress moved as Kiki sat down next to her and sighed heavily.

  "I mean, just look at you. You have it all. A great family that loves you." She gestured around her. "A room fit for a princess. A great job at your family's pastry shop. And now you're marrying Nick, the most eligible bachelor in Michigan."

  Of course, neither one of them mentioned that Nick Constantinos was the most eligible Greek bachelor. Partly because that was a given. Greeks married other Greeks—it was as simple as that. Efi didn't really care what nationality Nick was. She'd loved him ever since she'd first seen him on the neighborhood playground when she was five and he six and he'd just suffered a black eye because he hadn't known a lick of English.

  And now, twenty years later, they were getting married.

  Efi nudged Kiki. "Good thing I love you so much, or else we wouldn't be friends then, huh?"

  She and Aggeliki Karras, aka Kiki, had been friends for longer than Efi could remember. Certainly before they'd attended the same schools together. And long before Kiki had made the decision to go on to university then medical school—from which she'd just graduated at the top of her class—while, after a few college business courses, Efi had gone to work full-time in her family's pastry shop.

  Kiki's pretty features softened. "Good thing. I can't imagine you not being in my life, you know, pestering me to complain less and live more."

  "Somebody has to, or else you'll end up a lonely old woman in a black dress growling at everyone you cross paths with. You know, like my aunt Frosini."

  They gave the statement the pause it deserved, then they both shuddered. Aunt Frosini was enough to make the bravest soul quake in fear. When she was younger, Efi used to dream that her aunt was the old woman trying to cook Hansel and Gretel in the oven. Or the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. It was better they didn't see much of Aunt Frosini. She only visited from Crete every couple of years. Of course, she stayed far longer than anyone wanted her to, upsetting lives everywhere she went, spreading poison that didn't do much damage in small doses, but was lethal—mostly to her own well-being since it caused others to contemplate killing her—in large, continuous doses.

  Efi had once asked her mother what had turned her aunt so bitter. Penelope Panayotopoulou had said something about goats and family property and a wedding that never was but the story was so outside anything Efi could relate to she hadn't understood much of it at the time. Of course, she'd been ten years old and she hadn't seen goats outside the walls of the Detroit Zoo. That had changed quickly when her father decided she and her three younger sisters needed to understand more of their heritage and instituted annual family trips to Greece, in a small town in Ancient Olympia where his family was from.

  While the majority of their time was spent on the Ionian beach, it had been the goats and chickens wandering the hillside town that stayed in her mind. She was just thankful she hadn't seen any of the animals being sacrificed for dinner like her younger sister Eleni had or she might even now also be a strict vegetarian.

  Kiki bounced from the bed. "Come on, try it on."

  Efi made a face. "Why? You've already seen me in it."

  "Yes, but I want to see you in it again. Here."

  She eyed the Vera Wang creation rumored to have been the one designed for J.Lo's non-wedding to Ben Affleck. She'd wanted the dress on sight when she and Kiki and her mother had flown to New York six months ago to shop for a dress. But now that it was there, hanging in her room, seven days before her wedding, she was almost half afraid to touch it for fear of getting it dirty.

  Kiki picked up one of the boubounieras—Greek wedding favors—on the dresser and straightened the white bow. "God, I hate you even more. If that were my dress hanging there, I'd live in it until the day of the wedding."

  Efi laughed. "You would not."

  "I would so. Not only that, I'd probably wear it for days even after the wedding."

  "That would put a crimp in the honeymoon."

  Kiki grinned widely. "Who said you can't lift the skirt?"

  Efi tossed a bed pillow at her friend.

  They heard a car pull up outside, then voices fill the otherwise quiet of Grosse Point, Michigan, a posh, wealthy suburb just north of the bustling metropolis of Detroit on the St. Clair shore. Efi moved to her window along with Kiki and they stared down at what had to be at least twenty relatives getting out of one taxi. There was much cheek kissing and welcoming by Efi's parents. Then Aunt Frosini edged out of the cab and everyone seemed to freeze midmotion; an instant that might not be noticeable to outsiders but everyone there understood too well.

  "Speak of the devil," Kiki murmured next to her.

  Efi drew
a deep breath. "Let the festivities begin."

  Efi's father, Gregoris Panayotopoulou, tapped his knife against his wineglass to gain the attention of the fifty or so relatives seated in different areas of the large house for the first of many pre-wedding dinners for the families of both the bride and the groom. Efi felt Nick's hand on her leg and her knee jerked involuntarily, knocking against the table and nearly upsetting the dozen or so glasses there. Even as heat suffused her cheeks and her thighs, she smiled at everyone when they looked her way.

  Her father cleared his throat, offering her a disapproving frown. "Today the flamboro, the Greek wedding flag, was hung outside our home, marking the blessed ceremony to take place one week from today."

  The guests tapped their own knives against their glasses until Gregoris lifted his hand. "Father Spyros, would you like to say a few words?"

  The Greek Orthodox priest seated at the end of the table stood up, the end of his long gray beard nearly dipping inside his glass of retsina as he straightened in his black robes. "I would be honored to speak at this blessed event, the beginning of…"

  Efi tuned out and stared at Nick, who grinned wickedly next to her, pretending an interest in what the old priest had to say.

  Nick Constantinos was more than handsome. He was of the same make that had inspired ancient Greeks to sculpt and to follow charismatic warriors into battle. From his mesmerizing dark eyes, his slightly hooked nose and his generous mouth, Efi believed she'd never tire of looking into his face. But more than a collection of parts and pieces, it was Niko, now Nick's, charm that made him irresistible. He had but to turn on one of his grins, like now, and she was rendered speechless. Efi slid her own hand over to lay against his thigh. Speechless, maybe. But not paralyzed. She slid her fingers up his hard muscles until the back of her knuckles met his crotch. Nick made a strangled sound and his own knee jerked against the table, upsetting glasses where her jerk had not.

  Efi grinned and made sure both her hands were in sight when everyone turned to stare, including her aunt Frosini across from them. Was her gnarled old aunt actually grinning at them as if recalling a wicked memory of her own? Efi lifted a brow.

  The priest skillfully reached out and prevented his own glass from toppling over and didn't miss a beat as he continued to drone on in that way that only old priests knew how to.

  A little while later, the official introductory speeches at a close, Efi went into the kitchen to help her mother serve the chopped fruit when Nick crowded her into the pantry and shut the door after them.

  "You're a bad, bad girl," he murmured, his scent filling her senses even as he filled his hands with her breasts.

  Efi made a half-hearted attempt to swat him away. "Me? You were the one who started it. I could have died when the table tottered the first time."

  Nick chuckled and kissed her. "It was worth it just to see you blush."

  Efi couldn't help but melt against his touch, his kiss making other, greater urgencies known.

  "You realize it's been a week since we've made love," he said, kissing the side of her neck.

  "Mmm. And it's going to be another week yet."

  Nick groaned. "I don't think I can go that long without feeling you around me."

  "You're going to have to." Efi said the words even as he backed her against one wall. A couple of cans teetered, so he switched directions and backed her against the door instead. He hiked her dress up even as she spread her thighs to his knowing touch. Just a few minutes. She wanted to feel him inside her as badly as he wanted to be there. To be joined in a way that shut all else out. That reminded her how very much she wanted this man. Not just now, but always.

  And in one sweet week, seven short days, they would be finally able to have as much of each other as they desired.

  The door moved against her back.

  Efi groaned, reluctant to open her eyes and acknowledge that someone was trying to gain access to the room.

  The door shook again, then was followed by a strident knock. "Efi? Are you in there?"

  "No," she said quietly against Nick's mouth.

  He chuckled and kissed her more deeply, working his index finger inside the elastic of her underpants until he stroked her slick flesh.

  "Efi, you open this door this minute, do you hear me? A me sos."

  Her mother's tone brooked no argument. Efi knew that nothing short of a barricade would stop Penelope Panayotopoulou from gaining access to the room. The question was whether Efi wanted to be caught with her underpants around her ankles when it happened, even if Nick was her groom and they would soon be married. There were just some things you didn't want your mother to see you doing. Ever.

  Efi groaned and leaned her forehead against Nick's. "Please tell me these seven days will pass quickly."

  "It's going to seem like a lifetime."

  "That's not what I want to hear."

  "Trust me, it's not what I want to say." He kissed her, his tongue lingering against her lips. "I'll find a way for us to get together."

  She joined her hands behind his neck knowing that he would. She'd learned long ago that whatever Nick wanted, Nick got. And she was oh so happy he wanted her.

  "Efi, tora. Now," came her mother's voice again.

  Probably she was listening against the door and heard their exchange.

  With a sigh, she straightened herself, then helped Nick do the same. Wearing a bright smile, she opened the door. "I don't know what could have happened," she said, sailing past her mother who stood cross-armed with her grandmother and her scowling aunt Frosini. "Nick came in to help me get some onions and the door just … stuck."

  "Hmph," her mother said, pulling her arm in that way that only mothers knew how to do. "You smeared your lipstick while getting those onions. Go clean up in the bathroom before going into the other room or else everyone will know what you two were doing."

  Efi made a face.

  "As for you, kolopetho," Penelope said, exchanging Efi's arm for Nick's. "Pull another stunt like that and I'll lock you up in the pantry until Sunday."

  He grinned at Efi.

  "Alone," Penelope clarified.

  Nick bowed his head like a chastised child. "My apologies, Miss Penelope."

  Efi's mother smiled. "That's more like it. Now go help Mr. Gregoris pour the wine."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Day two

  The scent of baking sweet bread wafted around Efi, lifting her mood. Truth was, she hadn't quite seen the week of festivities leading to her wedding day being so … lonely. She'd imagined herself and Nick being joined at the hip, holding hands, as the family swirled around them. Instead it seemed the family was insistent on their being apart. Of course, if the pantry incident last night had anything to do with that, she wasn't going to acknowledge it. What was wrong with her and her groom wanting a little alone time?

  "It makes the wedding night that much more … meaningful," her mother had said when she'd asked the question this morning before heading off to the shop at seven.

  "The fact that we'll be married should be all the meaning the night should need," Efi had answered back.

  But she might as well have been speaking to a granite wall, because her mother was hearing none of it.

  So she figured all this maneuvering to keep her and Nick apart was being done for their own good, the way their families saw it.

  Better she should have a nice, full orgasm to release the stress.

  Is that why brides got cold feet? Following all this well-meaning intervention, and normal nerves that went along with the planning—not to mention the monumental meaning behind the "till death do us part" event itself—she could easily see where a bride might throw up her hands and do the equivalent of quitting her own wedding.

  Yes, a solid orgasm would be just what the doctor ordered.

  A shiver ran over her skin at the thought of being alone with Nick for an unspecified amount of time. Five minutes, five hours, it didn't matter. Hell, at th
is point she'd take one minute.

  She rolled out a ball of dough against the marble slab until it was a quarter of an inch thick and about two feet long. Then with a pastry knife she cut the rope into two-inch lengths and began braiding those to make koulourakia, what amounted to Greek sugar cookies. Her movements were quick and efficient as a result of years of making the sweet. She put the tray of cookies into the oven, then pulled another tray in front of her and began buttering sheets of phyllo dough to make baklava. Even as she sprinkled the walnut, sugar and cinnamon mixture on top of the buttered pastry sheets, she remembered when she'd asked her father if she could add drizzles of melted milk chocolate to the mix. Or, better, raspberry sauce. He'd scoffed and told her no self-respecting Greek would ever put chocolate or raspberry sauce into baklava. And just what was the matter with the traditional recipe anyway? he'd asked. That was the problem with the younger generation. They didn't respect tradition. Always wanted to fix things that weren't broken.

  Efi rubbed her nose against her shoulder and looked around the ancient kitchen that was attached to a gloomy showroom beyond. She had a notebook burgeoning with ideas on how to make the shop more modern, more appealing, but it sat gathering dust on the makeshift desk in the corner, receipts nearly burying it. Every now and again she took it out and went over her renovation ideas. My Big Fat Pastry Shop was one idea she had, inspired by another Greek pioneer Nia Vardalos. She wanted to change the beige and more beige color scheme in the showroom to sparkling white and blue. Longed to take out the wall that separated the showroom from the not-needed supply closet and add tables where customers might enjoy their sweets with a view of the street and Greek Town beyond.

  "We're not a restaurant," her father had said. "This place has run just fine for twenty-five years without the fancy things you want to do. What do you think puts the food on the table? Keeps a roof over our heads?"

  Efi had offered him a huge eye roll but she hadn't given up on the idea. In fact, she fully intended to launch another attack as soon as she and Nick returned from their honeymoon.