by Alex A King
How dumb was he? Pretty damn dumb, apparently. “You sure about that?”
“She is as honest at it gets, and she has more integrity than most in her position.” He winked at me. “Nice breasts, too.”
I flung my napkin in his face, frustrated that his masculine vitals were safely concealed under the table. “You’re a donkey’s ass!”
He tipped back his head and laughed, then curled his fingers around my wrist and reeled me in for a kiss. It wasn’t a big thing—a warm stamp on my forehead—but it heated me up in all the right-wrong places. I didn’t want to be turned on by Nikos Melas. He was a lying rat bastard. Or at least he was about this. I was miffed, okay?
“Relax, I know it’s not yours. You’re not that good a liar, baby.” I opened my mouth to protest but was interrupted by the waiter returning with a tray of mezedes—appetizers. Melas transferred a couple of bites of formerly flaming halloumi cheese to my plate and then served himself before continuing. “Let me guess—the test is Marika’s?”
I nodded dumbly.
“And Takis doesn’t know?”
“Not yet.”
“She should tell him.”
“Marika’s in denial. You’ve met their kids. Would you want another one?”
He cut a dolmada in half with his fork and swallowed both pieces before answering. “They’re just kids being kids.”
“Yeah ... in the jungle.”
“I wouldn’t mind half a dozen children.” He flashed a grin in my open-mouthed direction. “Not with Marika though. Why not tell everyone it’s hers?”
I was still stuck on the idea of Melas with six kids. He already had a child who was the result of a clandestine affair with one of the family’s wives. I didn’t know who she was, and I’d never ask. That way I could deny everything in the event I was tortured. “Uh ... she asked me not to tell.”
“You’re a good friend.” Another dolmada vanished into his mouth.
It was nice that he thought so. All I knew is that I’d made her a promise that I was doing everything I could to keep.
When it came, the interruption came out of nowhere. A woman who was at least eighty percent butter and twenty percent rock shoved a finger up under Melas’s nose, putting a halt to his eating process. She wore top to bottom black, including a black kerchief, and her knee-high stockings (black, of course) had given in to gravity and were now puddling around what might have once been ankles.
“You are that policeman,” she said. Before either of us could speak her finger swung around. “And you are Katerina Makri’s pregnant granddaughter. What happened to your head?”
“Allergies.” I raised my hand. “Also, not pregnant.”
She made a face commonly seen at lynch mobs. “I saw you in the newspaper with this one and that other man. Marry this one—he has a good job. So what if it is not his baby? More than one Greek man is raising someone else’s child.” The finger swung around yet again. “Tsk. You should make an honest woman of her.”
“I’m trying,” he said, “but she won’t have me.”
That was news to me.
To the old widow, that was an opportunity to hoist me onto a cross. “What is wrong with you, eh? You want to be an unwed mother? Where is your honor? Marry the man.”
Something inside me snapped. I slapped my napkin on the table, shoved back my chair and climbed up onto its square platform. It wasn’t a soapbox, but under the circumstances it would do the job. And what was a soapbox anyway? I’d have to Google that later.
Hands cupped around my mouth I yelled, “My name is Katerina Makris—with an S, and I’m not pregnant. DO YOU HEAR ME?”
All along the length of the promenade, life stopped. Waiters paused mid-street with their fully loaded trays. Diners froze, forks trapped in the empty space between mouth and plate. Heads turned. Just to make this an international announcement, I delivered the message in two languages, hoping I’d covered at least seventy-five percent of the audience.
The old woman shuffled away, accompanied by Elias, who had a firm grip on her elbow.
“Everybody hears you.” Melas grinned up at me. “This is probably on YouTube already.”
“I don’t even care. I just want everyone to stop thinking I’m pregnant. BECAUSE I’M NOT PREGNANT. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT’S BEEN SINCE I HAD SEX?”
“I’m guessing a while. We could change that. Tonight.”
My eyes narrowed to vicious slits.
On the table my phone shivered and shook. Melas handed it up to me.
“Hey, Katerina, guess what? You are on the Internet,” Stavros said.
My heart sank. “Already?”
“It’s streaming. Hey ... and there you are talking to me.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Stavros ... Are you waving?”
“How did you know?” He sounded sheepish.
I shook my head. “No reason. Did you want something?”
“There’s a man here at the front gate looking for you.”
“A man? What man?”
“How do I know? He said the two of you have a dinner date.”
Oh, brother. This had to be Grandma’s doing. Even safely ensconced on the hospital she was meddling with my love life, trying to auction me off to the highest bidder. Thus far she’d tried to marry me off to a middle-aged burnout named after a parrot, one assassin whose target at the time was me, and one of her enemies’ offspring. If you ask me, her judgment was flawed.
“What does he look like?”
I heard him making a face. “Not good looking like Elias but not ugly like Takis either.”
There was a snarl, then Takis’ voice bit into my ear. “Who are you calling ugly, malakas? You look in the mirror recently?”
“Tell Takis to shut his pie hole,” I said. Everyone was slowly returning to their food and socializing. Phones vanished back into their pockets. I was old news now that I’d stopped ranting. Something crazier was bound to come along soon, and by God, their phones would be ready when it did.
I smoothed my dress. Sat.
“Can you take a picture?” I asked my cousin.
“Of what?”
“The man.”
“Great idea,” Stavros said, “I should do that.”
A moment later my phone pinged. Incoming text from Stavros. I tapped on the photo, enlarged it. He was right, the guy in the picture was neither attractive or hideous. He didn’t look familiar to me, either. Reluctant relief washed over me; part of me thought it might have been Mario, hunting for his hostages and father, still sore about his shot foot. This guy wasn’t Mario, and he was clutching a bouquet of yellow roses. Nice.
“No name?”
Mumbled voices. Then: “He says his name is Petros Vlahos and that he is a doctor.”
A doctor of what, that was the question. “Probably a nickname,” I muttered, thinking along the lines of Doctor Doom or Doctor Death and Destruction. I shoved the phone across the table to Melas.
After a long look he said, “Yeah, I know him. He’s one of Baboulas’s doctors. He’s a good guy.” He passed the phone back.
Huh. A genuine physician. What was Grandma up to?
“Thank him for the flowers,” I told Stavros, “and ask him if we can reschedule, please.”
There was some back and forth, words I couldn’t make out clearly, then Stavros came back. “Tomorrow night?”
“Perfect,” I said. When I looked up Melas was sitting there, stunned. “What?”
“Are you actually going out with him?”
“Yes?”
“I thought we had a thing.”
“And I thought we agreed we couldn’t have a thing.” With my fork, I pointed to him then myself. “Policeman. Mobster’s granddaughter. We’re like Romeo and Juliet, except without the poison, death, and underage sex.”
“I wouldn’t say no to the sex,” he said.
Neither would I ... except that’s what I was doing, wasn’t I? Where was a wall to bang my he
ad on when I needed one?
“It’s a slippery slope,” I said. “A slippery sex slope. We could do the friends-with-benefits thing but it’s only a matter of time until things get complicated.”
He gave me one of his charming bad-boy smiles. “I’m as uncomplicated as it gets.”
“Wrong. There’s Hera, remember? If she gets even a whiff of us as anything more substantial than complete strangers, she’ll leap off the rails, stuff me in a cannon, and fire me into Morocco.”
“She doesn’t have to know.”
“She’ll know. Women always do. Women like Hera definitely do. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s watching us right now.”
Melas glanced around. He had the look of a man on his way to the proctologist. “I caught her bugging my house the other day. I went home early to grab something and she was there with a whole team.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “What did she say?”
“That she was worried about my welfare because of my association with your family.”
An unladylike snort popped out of my nose. “I’m sure.”
He leaned in close, gave me one of those seductive, bad-boy looks guys like him do so well. “So you want to come back to my place?”
“With your house bugged? No thanks.”
“It’s not bugged now.”
“That you know of. Hera isn’t exactly the kind of person who lets a little thing like discovery get in her way.”
He leaned back, folded his arms, delivered a smug smile. “I know. Which is why I had some of your family’s best come and scrub the place. It’s clean—guaranteed.”
“You know they probably installed their own, right?”
“They wouldn’t.”
I smiled.
“Would they?”
I said nothing.
“Ai sto dialo,” he said. Go to the devil.
“So that’s a ‘thanks but no thanks’ on coming back to your place. I don’t really want to be entertainment for my whole family.”
“You’re right,” he said. “You’d be very entertaining.” His soft, warm eyes grazed me from head to waist and before locking onto mine.
I swallowed. “You think?”
“And loud.”
“I’m as quiet as a mouse in bed.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Our food came. He waited until the server left, then he said, “With me you’d be screaming.” His grin was pure cat who got a big lick of cream. “And begging.”
Yowza.
CHAPTER 12
“Hey, Katerina, tell us: how long as it been since you had sex?”
Cackles echoed off the courtyard’s walls. Everyone in my family was a comedian. Lucky me.
“Not as long as it’s been for most of you,” I called out.
Beside me, Melas was laughing his ass off. Glaring at him only made his shoulders shake harder. “You were the one who had to announce it to the world,” he said.
“Want me to shoot them?” Elias said from behind us.
“No, it’s okay. If they’re dead I won’t be able to make their lives miserable,” I told him.
Elias grinned. “Great idea. You in for the night?”
“I plan to be sound asleep about ten minutes from now.”
He saluted and jogged off in the direction of his quarters on the bottom level.
Melas walked me back to Grandma’s yard, with its lush potted garden. Was I supposed to water the plants in her absence? I suddenly realized that as much as I’d learned about Grandma and my family, I still knew pretty much nothing. Everything reliable and real to me was thousands of miles away ... and yet it felt like mist—intangible and thin, dissipating every time I tried to recall how home felt. Greece was solidifying by the day. This reality was imprinting itself over the old. My plan starting out had been to stay as long as it took to find Dad and bring him home safely, then I’d get back to living my same-old life. It wasn’t a bad plan. I loved my old life. It was comfortable. A favorite pair of jeans and snuggly sweater kind of life. Lacking in excitement maybe, but that’s okay. Excitement wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was too unpredictable.
“Hey,” Melas said, “where did you go just now?”
My smile was tight, a rubber band holding back a torrent of tears. “Home.”
“It’s been an interesting summer, no?”
“Too interesting. I could use some predictability and certainty.”
He pulled back, scratched his head, mulled things over for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “I can work with that. Here’s something certain for you. Before I say goodnight I’m going to kiss you. That okay with you?”
“It’s a certainty and you’re giving me a choice? Yeah, it’s okay.” More than okay. For all my posturing about how this twain could never meet, I really wanted to lock lips with Melas again. He’d done it once and my toes had curled right up. This morning had involved poison ivy, near death, and helicopter rescues. I needed the day to end on a high note before I collapsed into an exhausted heap. “But you’ll have to make it soon before I pass out.”
He chuckled. “I’d tuck you in but I have no doubt there’s a gun aimed at my back.”
The family had more than one sniper whose job it was to hang out on the rooftops. “Probably your head.”
“Probably. Anyway, your reputation is safe with me—tonight, anyway—and I’ll be leaving here with my head on my shoulders. Are you ready?”
I nodded. Gulped.
Closing my eyes seemed like the right thing to do but I couldn’t do it. His gaze was too hot, too deep for me to break free. His face turned serious. Finger under my chin, he tilted my head up and lowered his lips to mine. It was sweet, soft, gently arousing, until he turned the heat up with his roaming hands. My body wanted to stand here and burn.
Then, mid-kiss, I yawned.
Melas chuckled. He touched his forehead to mine and folded his arms around me.
“It’s not the company, I swear.”
“You need sleep,” he said, low and deep. “And I need a cold shower. I’ve been taking a lot of those since I met you.”
“Good thing it’s summer.”
“Winter is coming.” He released me. “Maybe you’ll join me in a hot shower before that happens.”
I yawned again. The sandman was getting to be a real nag.
He kissed the tip of my still-bloated nose. “There will be other nights and other kisses. Good night, Katerina.”
#
It was stupid o’clock in the morning when two panic-stricken thoughts yanked me out of my sleep: earthquake or poltergeist?
My sense of logic was already on the job, having already eliminated several other possibilities, including a significant other spanking the monkey while watching porn on his cellphone under the covers, and a scratching dog.
I was single.
And I didn’t have a dog.
What I did have was a shaking bed, and, because of my proximity to the bed, a shaking body.
“Earthquake.” Without a shred of conviction, the word crept out of my mouth.
“Katerina ...”
My name floated over me like a garlic-scented shroud.
I closed my eyes. Poltergeist it was then. What was the Greek protocol for dealing with violent spirits? Rubbing alcohol or vinegar?
“Katerina?”
I opened one eye. The sun had barely scraped its teeth on the horizon, but it was enough to reveal pieces of a terrible face. One of the undead creature’s parents had been a Shar Pei, the other, the Colombia Gorge. Somewhere nearby, a bird screeched. It was a sound straight out of Hell. Greece: where every day had the potential to be a Hitchcock movie.
“Katerina,” the demon’s voice said again, “are you awake?”
Now it sounded familiar. I sat bolt upright.
“Papou?” I squinted at the ravines that formed his face. “Is that you?”
“Did you talk to the eagle doctor yet?”
“Eagle doctor?” I hoisted the she
et to my chin. “What are you talking about?”
The shaking stopped. I felt Papou plop back in his wheelchair. “The eagle doctor. Yiorgos still refuses to do eagle things.”
“What things?”
“I keep throwing mice at him and ... nothing.”
A small hammer began to bang around behind my eyes. It was too early for this, and I was too tired. “You mean the guy at the pet shop?”
“If he knows about eagles ... yes, that is who I mean. He needs to fix the broken eagle you gave me.”
“No, I haven’t talked to him yet. I’ve been a little bit busy, what with being kidnapped by the NIS and all.”
“They did not give you a phone call?”
“They didn’t give me a phone.”
He snorted with derision. “Law enforcement these days ... they have no manners, no honor. In my day they gave you a phone call. Too bad they didn’t give you a phone call. You could have called the eagle doctor.”
Yeah, because that’s what I would have used my one call for. “I’ll see him later, okay?”
“Later ... later ... always later. I don’t have later. I could be dead by then. I could be dead in the next five minutes—maybe sooner.”
Papou was a man a death wish. The truth was he had a lot in common with a cockroach: he and the bugs, they’d outlive us all in a nuclear winter.
“Five whole minutes?”
He shrugged. “It could happen, especially if I roll into the pool from the roof.”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and swung my feet out of bed. “I’ll go see the eagle guy when the pet store opens. Stay away from the roof until then, okay?”
“Okay.”
He rolled away in his wheelchair. A few moments later the screen door banged shut.
I was alone. Again. I couldn’t sleep after that, so I grabbed my phone and cruised my usual online haunts. Okay, mostly just Facebook. On Facebook I could read about other people’s normal lives. Facebook enabled me to live vicariously. I could be a soccer mom and a frazzled wife. I could blow off work for a sick day.
I lived vicariously for a couple of hours, until my stomach made noises about how it could eat.
Breaking Greek social protocol, I went to the kitchen barefoot.
And screamed.