by Maria Luis
“You look stressed,” she says, reaching up with two fingers to tug at the high-neck collar of her sleeveless shirt. A bow with long, flapping wings cinches the material closed like those old-fashioned pins Victorian women used to wear.
If she can tell I look on edge, there’s no point in denying it.
Briefly, I debate whether 8 a.m. is too damn early to break out the scotch I keep in my office. On a morning like today, when my head feels close to exploding, I don’t think there’s such a thing as too early. It’s always five o’ clock somewhere. Plus, if Mina has some with me then there’s no reason to feel like a total schmuck.
Right?
Right.
“Want something a little stronger than coffee?” I ask.
Her teeth sink down into her bottom lip. “Really, I shouldn’t.”
I should make a funny quip and tease the light back to her eyes, but if there’s one bonus to having known Mina my entire life, it’s that I don’t have to pretend. She may not know all that resides in my soul, but she still knows me. Just as I know her. Though I guess we only really know what Effie’s told us both.
Still, I make a last-ditch effort, more for her sake than mine. “I’ll even get you your own glass. You don’t have to worry about catching cooties.” I nod to the Dunkin’s cup on the desk. “Then again, if that was a concern, you shouldn’t have offered me your coffee.”
A slight laugh escapes her. “If it helps, this one was meant to be yours.” She pokes the cup with a gold-painted finger. “A peace offering, if you will, for me behaving . . . out of turn on Friday night.”
“Out of turn” implies that Mina hasn’t always loved to bust my chops, and we both know that isn’t true.
As though nervous about my contemplative silence, she hastily adds, “I’m sorry about the elevator incident, by the way. Sometimes I . . . sometimes I just—”
“Like to fuck with me.”
Her fingers drum a nearly silent beat on the desk. “I wouldn’t phrase it quite like that. It sounds so aggressive.” She smiles at me, wide and full like she’s innocence personified and not full of shit. “And I’m not an aggressive person. I’m all about the hugs and unicorns and kumbaya moments—”
“Admit it, Mina,” I murmur, barely leashing in a laugh as I struggle to maintain a straight face, “you love to mess with my head. Nothing makes you happier than seeing me thrown off balance.”
Funny how only five minutes of back-and-forth ribbing with this woman has pushed my own problems to the periphery. And that’s all before I have the satisfaction of watching her squirm in her chair. That dainty, ultra-feminine bow, black and lined with red seams, stands a direct contrast to her olive complexion. She plays with the end of one wing, rubbing the silky fabric against the pad of her thumb.
“But you make it so easy for me to . . .” She drops her hold on the bow and lifts both hands, palms facing out. “No, no, I will not let you distract me from the mission at hand.”
I lean forward, elbows dropping to the desk. “Which is?”
She swallows and sends a quick, searching glance up to the ceiling like the heavens will answer her prayers. If she wanted the angels doing her a solid, she should have gone to a priest. Instead, she’s here, in my office and seated on my chair.
In all the years I’ve known Mina, she’s never asked me for anything.
Independent may as well be her middle name, and my interest spikes as she drums her slender fingers and gathers her thoughts. Her mouth pulls to the side as she taps, taps, taps. “I came here planning to tell you the short and sweet version of recent events.”
Call my curiosity solidly piqued. I spread my arm wide with a flourish. “Floor’s all yours.”
A groan escapes her mouth, and the sound loops around me like a soundtrack of defeat. “I can’t.” She tugs at the bow again, and it comes a little undone. Against my will, my gaze zeroes in on the smallest hint of bare skin that she’s exposed with her fidgeting. “You’re going to think I’m a complete maláka. A naïve little idiot, and I’m telling you right now, you aren’t wrong. In my defense, I’m new at this.”
New at what?
“Ermione, I’ve known you since you were six. We’ve got history”—some, admittedly, that has been more than a little exaggerated by all the Greek mamas and grandmothers to something it never was in the first place—“and I’m telling you right now, there’s nothing you can say that’ll make me think you’ve got a loose screw under all that hairspray.”
“I hired a guy to renovate my hair salon and he took off with my money.”
Well, damn.
The words haven’t even left her mouth completely before I’m jumping up from my chair to grab the scotch. She looks likes she needs it—I know I’d welcome the burn, so I untwist the plastic cap and toss it onto the desk.
Looks like we’re both in a rough spot.
Knocking the Dunkin’s cup out of the way with my knuckles, I set the scotch down in front of Mina. “You sound stressed,” I tell her, using her own words, and she offers a pained grimace before wrapping her hand around the bottle’s neck. Rings decorate each of her fingers, some stacked one on top of the other. They clink against the glass as she lets out a short, defeated sigh.
“Stressed doesn’t even cover it.” Her eyes flutter shut as she takes a hearty swig, then comes up spluttering, swiping her lips with the back of her hand, smearing red lipstick like a lover might and I—
My cock twitches in my pants.
Oh, hell to the fucking no.
Not Mina. Not here. And most definitely not now.
Completely oblivious to the activity happening south of my belt, she tilts her head, bottle poised inches away from her mouth. From that smeared lipstick. God help me. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I want to point at my dick and demand, do I look okay? Because there’s got to be a rule somewhere about getting it up for your sister’s best friend. As in, it’s not done. Since I’d rather be castrated than confess to how far I’ve fallen, I gesture at my mouth. “You got a little something right”—I brush my bottom lip with the pad of my thumb—“here.”
“Oh.” Putting the scotch down, she angles her body in the chair for a little privacy. Then goes rummaging in her purse for what looks to be a small mirror. Good, that lipstick smear has got to go. Too erotic. Too dangerous. Too damn tempting.
Clearly you’re in a dry spell if lipstick is where you cross the line nowadays.
Desperate to erase the evidence that Ermione Pappas of all people just turned me on, I yank the hem of my T-shirt out of my shorts and drag it over the growing tent in my pants. I retreat back to my side of the desk and sit down.
I’ve never—not once—allowed myself to look at Mina as anything other than my sister’s best friend. Not during my teenage years when my parents sent Effie and I along with the Pappas family to Greece when they visited Mina’s uncle, her father’s brother, each summer. My parents were unable to afford to go themselves, but for their kids, they wanted us to be as Greek as possible. That meant three days a week quarantined to a classroom with other Greek-Americans learning the mother tongue; volunteering at the local ecclesia, or church, including at every festival known to mankind until we reeked of gyros and souvlaki for days after; and speaking the language as fluidly as my parents and their parents did before them.
We might have been American on paper, but we were Greek in blood and heart.
I spent my summers lounging on beach chairs next to Mina. Hours of time pretending that all her little verbal jabs at my “rigid” disposition never scraped at my youthful insecurities and made me retreat.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve always known, it’s that if I’m the moon, sullen in the darkness and content in my solitude, then she’s the sun, setting fire to everything in her path. Sister’s best friend or not, a girl like Mina would regret dating a “safe” guy like me. She lives for spontaneity, adventure, and if she’d been on Put A Ring On It, she would have been
the Dominic DaSilva of her season.
Larger than life, and totally out of my reach.
Forcing a light note to my voice, I attempt to ease her strung-out nerves. “Are you sure he took the money?”
Mina’s fingers erupt into another tapping sprint. “He took my lucky penny—the one your mom gave me.”
I lift a brow. “And?”
She plants her hands on the chair’s armrests and maneuvers her weight around. The bow at her neck teases open, revealing another notch of skin that tantalizes more than it satisfies. “And,” she grinds out, as though revealing this is beyond painful, “he left an IOU.”
A pin dropping would carry more sound than my office does right now.
I lift a hand to drag through my hair, the strands catching on my blunt, short fingernails. “That’s . . . courteous of him.”
“Courteous?” Mina’s normally husky voice grows to an uneven pitch. “An IOU, Nick. Who does that? Even my Thieo Marko, who we both know might as well have every loan broker in New England on speed dial, has never left an IOU. And my mom’s brother isn’t one for classy escapes when it comes to owing people some Benjamins.”
Understatement of the year, right there.
“You reported the guy?”
“Yes.”
I stare at her and begin to feel the weight of dread seep into my limbs. She’s watching me like I carry all the answers to her questions, like I may be her very last hope, and if I’m being honest—I’m not in the right mindset to have someone else place their hope on my shoulders.
Not when I’ve been away from my company for months and I’m up to my elbows in menial admin work that Carl did but not to my specifications, and then there’s the whole TMZ thing to consider . . . and whatever fallout comes with the news of Savannah Rose dumping both suitors on prime TV.
My phone vibrates on my desk, and I drag it close to see the sender. Dom. The pit of my stomach drops. If former NFL player Dominic DaSilva is texting me, then shit has officially hit the fan.
“Mina,” I drag out slowly, buying myself time, “it’s not that I don’t want to help.” My phone lights up with another text, this one also from Dom. Snatching it up from the desk, I drop it in the top drawer. I can only deal with one imploding catastrophe at a time. “But maybe, if you’re needing some cash to borrow, you could ask your dad?”
Yianni Pappas is a stick-up-the-ass prick, something I well remember from all those summer vacations years ago, but I’ve never known him to turn his daughters or son away. His children have always come first—his one, and only, redeemable feature.
Mina’s cheeks hollow on a rough exhale. “Óxi.”
Her accent isn’t smooth, more than a little rough around the edges, and I grunt out, in Greek, “What do you mean no? Aren’t you here to ask for money?” It’s not as though she can ask Effie or Sarah. They’re trying to have a baby, and even Sarah’s six-figure salary, working for an investment firm, hasn’t made the process any cheaper. “A loan so you can finish off the work that needs to be done?”
With a shake of her head, Mina lowers her gaze to the abandoned Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup. She reaches for it with both hands, and, aw, shit, but there she goes. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“Ermione.” I growl her name, a four-syllable warning that has her bringing the cup up to her mouth and draining whatever’s left. A thought springs up, dangerous and tempting—a way to solve both of our problems. It’s risky. And there’s a good chance she’ll tell me no, but it’d be . . . perfect. For now, obviously. Just a temporary thing.
A way to keep the press off my back while I help her with whatever she needs.
Assuming what she needs doesn’t require my firstborn, a kidney, and my 401k, I’ll have the better end of the deal, but I doubt she’ll complain.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Her voice, weighted with suspicion, breaks through my thoughts, and I jerk my attention back to her face. She’s studying me the way a scientist might a new discovery, like she’s not all sure that I won’t leap from my cage and sprout horns and a set of fangs.
No horns in the foreseeable future. Just a fleeting distraction that’ll keep the paps off my back and give them a reason to look elsewhere—like set up a stakeout in front of Dom’s house, not mine. Sorry buddy, ol’ pal.
Coughing into a closed fist, I clear my throat. Then ask, “If you don’t need the money from me, then what do you need?”
Tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
The silver rings on her fingers glisten under the florescent lighting overhead, and then she says the words I never anticipated:
“Nick, I just need you.”
7
Mina
Unreadable as his expressions often are, Nick’s an open book right now.
Oh, those pewter eyes of his seem to say to my blunt admission: oh shit.
Unfortunately, “oh shit” isn’t a viable option—and I’m prepared to push a hard bargain.
Before he can protest, I dig into my shoulder bag and pull out a manila folder with my budget plan. A budget plan that took me longer than it should have to draw up. Maybe if I had more in the budget, I could hire a financial analyst to help me move all the puzzle pieces into place.
But I don’t have money to spare, so it’s as good as it’ll ever get.
One by one, I move the papers around on Nick’s desk, angling them so the writing is upside down for me but clear as day for him.
I need this to work.
I can’t—can’t—fail. I won’t let that happen to me, to my dream.
“I have enough money to cover the remaining material costs. Maybe not as many of the high-end features I’ve been eyeing but Agape will look beautiful no matter what.” I’ll cry over my lack of slate floors another day. And the hydrotherapy room I’ve been dying to put in. Ugh. Floors can be replaced. Fixtures can be updated. Rooms can be altered later on. But I’ll never have another opportunity to get the ball rolling like I do now. “I can purchase the necessities—the sinks and the laminate flooring and mirrors and all that.”
And if my personal finances squeeze a little too tight over the next few months, then that’s just fine.
The dream makes it all worth it.
My chest tightens, heart skedaddling into an uncoordinated two-step, and I risk a glance up at Nick.
He’s as rigid as stone.
Keep talking!
The heel of my hand lightly taps on the desk, and I focus on my research. On my plans. And pointedly ignore the fact that Effie’s older brother looks like he’s planning to expedite my death just so I’ll get out of his hair.
His curly hair.
Hair I’ve cut only once—the day before his wedding.
Ruthlessly, I shove the thought aside and take a deep, steadying breath. “I was told the renovations wouldn’t last any longer than a month. Maybe less if longer hours are put in.” The expected timeline I printed out over the weekend mocks me with its set-in-stone punctuality. I’m already behind schedule. Yay. “I don’t know how to say this exactly, but I . . . I wouldn’t be here if there was an alternative.”
There isn’t one.
No other options that I can foresee except for Nick, a man I’ve known for decades, coming in to save the day.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone out of his way to help me, but overhauling Agape is a heck of a lot more time-consuming than a single dance spun around his mother’s living room on prom night. No one asked me to the dance, and he . . . well, Nick had made me feel special. That one dance spurred fantasies of the two of us for months after, each one rawer and more sexual than the last. Or as sexually explicit as any virgin eighteen-year-old knows how to get, at any rate.
“What’s in it for me?”
My chin jerks up, tongue pressing flat to the roof of my mouth to keep myself from asking what he means. Think before you speak, my tutor in school reminded me whenever I grew flustered in class, allow yourself the moment to truly t
hink about what’s been said.
I do that now, acutely aware of the fact that sweat beads on my brow and my spine has never been straighter in my life. What does he mean? What does he mean? Logic tells me that the romance novels I always listen to are misleading—he’s not asking for me, the woman, but something else.
I just don’t know what.
I drum my fingers on the desk and summon vague words to my tongue. “I have enough cash in the bank to buy anything we might need.” Leaning forward, I tap on the upper corner of one sheet, and wait for Nick’s gaze to drop to where I point. “I took out a bank loan to buy the place. The chances of them giving me another so soon is unlikely.” A hard swallow that feels like I’ve downed a sharp-edged boulder. God, it rankles to have to come crawling, metaphorically on my hands and knees, and ask this of him. Especially because . . . “I can’t pay you, Nick.”
I’d planned to bust in here with the reminder that he owes me for letting my reputation swirl down the drain of misrepresentation. After his wedding night, everyone assumed I slept with an almost-married man—and I let them believe what they wanted.
Because Nick needed me that night. He needed a friend, someone to sit beside him and offer comfort while he grieved the loss of the woman of his dreams . . .
And I’d hoped, in the deepest, most secret parts of my soul, that moment would be the one when he realized Mina Pappas—that I—was the girl he’d been searching for all along.
We didn’t kiss. Didn’t hold hands.
He slept atop the covers in his wedding tux. I burrowed beneath the sheets in my pajamas, pretending the warmth that surrounded me wasn’t 100% Egyptian cotton but the heavy weight of his muscular arms tugging me in close.
Hope dwindled to resigned acceptance as the little and big hands on the hotel’s grandfather clock mixed and mingled, signaling the passage of time.
When his yiayia burst into the room the next morning to check on her poor, heartbroken grandson, everything went straight to the shitter.
