Michelle Vernal Box Set

by Michelle Vernal

  “Come here, I want you to meet someone.”

  Koula looked bemused at the sight of the vaguely familiar, good-looking man who had appeared at such a late hour in the tavern. She put the dish cloth she held in her hand down by the till and wiped her hands on her apron. She strode over and Alexandros kissed her on both cheeks while her father explained their association to her.

  “Ah, it is a small world, I think—our Annie staying with the Bikakis family. I can recall playing on the beach with you and your brother when we were children.” Her smile was warm. “I agree with my pateras—your family must come and eat out our taverna soon. They are most welcome.” She looked at Annie then with dancing, knowing eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Annie hadn’t intended to sleep with Alexandros. In fact, it had been the furthest thing from her mind as she kissed Georgios goodnight on his weathered, bristly cheek and tried to ignore Koula’s all-knowing smile. No, as she’d swung a leg over the back of Alexandros’s scooter, she was far more concerned with getting back to Eleni’s in one piece; she’d borne witness to his reckless driving on more than one occasion. However, as he gunned the bike’s engine and they took off down the darkened street at what felt like breakneck speed, something strange had happened. Instead of being frightened, she had been filled with such an intoxicating sense of freedom it had, quite literally, taken her breath away.

  She squeezed her eyes shut against the wind and thought about how a few short months ago, she had been contemplating marriage and mortgages. There, she had been so determined to squeeze herself into a wedding dress she could neither afford nor properly fit and now here she was with the balmy Grecian night breeze whipping her hair back as she rode on the back of an insanely gorgeous Greek man’s scooter. It was crazy! Her arms were wrapped tightly around Alexandros’s middle, and she could feel the promise of what lay beneath his T-shirt rippling beneath her fingertips as they whizzed up the darkened road.

  Annie felt alive—truly alive for the first time in—well, since she could remember. So many sorrows had been lifted from her shoulders in so many different ways since she had embarked on this journey. She walked a little lighter these days; sadly not literally, she thought, not with all the delicious food Mama kept plying her with.

  So, when Alexandros turned his head slightly to yell over the noise of the engine, “Do you want to go home or do you want to look at the stars down by the beach for a while?” she knew with an absolute certainty that she did not want to go home. Not just yet. She had yelled back, “Let’s go look at the stars.” She would shortly be doing something a tad more strenuous than star gazing.

  Alexandros had bumped off-road and braked to a stop under the arbour of a tall spruce tree and she’d let him lead her by the hand down the grassy embankment. They followed the scrubby path for a minute and as it came to an end, she heard the unmistakable sluicing of the sea directly below them. They were on some sort of cliff and he helped her to jump down on to a boulder a short distance below. It was pancake flat and still warm from the heat of the day despite the lateness of the hour. The spruce tree shielded it from the road. This was obviously a hidden spot Alexandros knew well, Annie thought as she took in the glittering invitation in his eyes as he asked her whether she wanted to swim.

  “But it’s dark.” She’d stated the obvious and nearly added and I don’t have a swim-suit but stopped herself just in time as she was mesmerised by the outline of his chest as he whipped his shirt off over his head and unbuckled his jeans.

  Oh what the hell. She took her own T-shirt off and unclipped her bra before she pulled her jeans down, taking her knickers with them, and kicked them all to one side. When in Rome... Only she wasn’t in Rome; she was in Greece but by the time this thought had registered she already held Alexandros’s hand and took a leap of faith into the black night.

  They surfaced from the cold waters below, laughing.

  “It is good, yes?” Alexandros laughed; his teeth gleamed white against the tan of his skin.

  “Yes!” Annie squealed. She splashed him with water before she swam a short distance away. He disappeared under the water and she bobbed about in the dark nervously. Her legs treaded water as she waited for him to surface nearby. Suddenly, she felt hands wrap around her ankles and before she had a chance to scream, she was pulled under. He let her go and she re-surfaced, ready for revenge, but he was already swimming away back to the rock shelf. She swam over and made to splash him again but he grabbed her arm and pulled him to her. His hands ran down the goosy flesh of the tops of her arms and caused a bolt of something she hadn’t felt in a long time to ricochet through her. She’d thought that he would kiss her then—she wanted him to kiss her—but instead he asked her if she was cold.

  “Nnno,” she replied through chattering teeth, unwilling to spoil the moment.

  “Come.” Alexandros heaved himself out of the water and found a foothold from which to hang onto the cliffside. He’d helped her up beside him before he led the way expertly upwards from jutting rock to jutting rock until they clambered back onto the ledge from which they’d jumped. As she stepped onto the ledge, Annie shook the droplets of water from her hair. If anybody had ever told her one day she would partake in a spot of naked night-time rock climbing, she would have told them they were crazy.

  Crazy times called for crazy antics, she thought, surprised at how uninhibited she felt as she stood there illuminated, milky white, with her arms wrapped round herself in an effort to keep warm. Alexandros busied himself making a bed out of their jumble of clothes. He sat down and pulled her down beside him. She wondered briefly whether he had come here with his buxom blonde friend Sharon but to her surprise she didn’t really care whether he had or he hadn’t because this was her moment and she was utterly lost in it. As he inclined his head to kiss her, she had let herself cast off the last of her cares just like the clothes she had discarded so casually a short while before.

  Alexandros fumbled as he tried to locate the condom in his jeans pocket. He obviously never left home without one, Annie had thought, amused, as he expertly slid it on. That had been her last coherent thought as he had moved on top of her and entered her. He had launched into a fast and furious rhythm before he moved it down a notch to become tender and sweet despite the hardness of the rock on which they lay. His knees must be made of stern stuff, she’d mused, because she didn’t think their makeshift bed would do much to protect them. The stars had twinkled down voyeuristically the whole time their naked bodies were entwined, occupied with the frantic business of love-making. It was a business that had been going on under those same stars since the beginning of time, Annie thought randomly, just before she climaxed. She held onto Alexandros’s shoulders as tightly as she could, tipped over into that glorious abyss and took him with her.

  He was a skilled lover, she thought as he collapsed on top of her panting a few moments later, but then she’d known he would be. She was under no illusions that he could probably pen the Greek version of the Karma Sutra but it didn’t matter. For her, this had been closure, as much as she hated the expression. She had just officially closed the door and put the latch on her relationship with Tony forever. There would be no going back from here and that was the way it should be, Annie decided as she looked up at that carpet of stars while Alexandros’s heavy breathing tickled her neck.

  He’d rolled off her then and propped himself up on one elbow so he could look down at her face. He traced a finger down her nose and trailed it off the tip. She could make out the intensity of those aquiline features as he moved his hand over to stroke her sopping hair back from her face. “Annie.” He crooned in that melodic voice of his, “You are wonderful, so wonderful but you must understand that I cannot give you my heart because it is not mine to give.” His eyes had bored earnestly into hers and despite her best efforts not to, she burst out laughing. Alexandros’s hand paused mid-stroke. “Why do you laugh at me when I am being serious? What is so funny?”

  “
Oh, Alexandros, how many times have you given that little speech.” Annie tried to straighten her features but her mouth kept twitching of its own accord.

  “I have never—”

  Annie cut his protestations off by putting her fingers to his mouth. “Shush, listen to me. I don’t want a relationship with you, Alexandros. I wanted to have sex with you, yes. But I don’t want a relationship, so you can spare me the you are wonderful but speech.”

  Alexandros was perturbed. “Why do you not want a relationship with me? The sex, it was good, yes?”

  “Yes, it was great! Tonight has been the stuff of dreams but oh, how can I explain it?” Annie looked up at that twinkling sky and thought for a moment about what she was going to say. “I think that tonight was part of me needing to cast off my past. Do you understand?”

  He nodded and sent a sprinkle of water down on her.

  “I needed to say goodbye to my relationship with Tony —”

  “Tony? Who is this Tony?” Alexandros glanced about nervously, as though he expected a jealous boyfriend to thunder down the path towards them.

  “Don’t worry.” Annie laughed at his concerned expression; he’d probably had to deal with more than one irate boyfriend in the past. “Tony is my ex-boyfriend and you can relax, he isn’t going to track you down. We broke up before I left New Zealand but I feel as though I have finally put that relationship to bed.” She realised how that sounded and giggled again as Alexandros raised an eyebrow at her choice of words.

  “What I mean is—oh, I’m not making a very good job of this.” She didn’t want to say I needed to get that first bonk with someone new out of the way in order to feel truly single. So instead, she finished by saying, “It felt right what we just did but I don’t want anything more from you. That’s what it comes down to really.”

  “Ah, now I see. It is you who has used me.” He feigned indignation and put his hand on his heart. “You have used my body and now I am wounded.”

  Annie stroked the contours of his chest while a smile played at the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry, Alexandros, but I am sure you will find a way to forgive me.”

  He grinned hungrily and rolled on top of her once more. As he lowered his mouth onto hers, he murmured, “Well, maybe I will let you use me just one more time then.”

  THEY HAD GOTTEN DRESSED into their damp clothes and Annie tried not to think how uncomfortable her jeans felt as they squelched their way back up the path to the scooter. “What do you think you will do, Alexandros?” He peered at her curiously in the darkness.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m curious as to where you are headed because I can’t see you staying at Eleni’s forever.” She shrugged. “You seem like a caged lion when you are there, as though you are pacing about, looking for a way out.” She was thinking how eloquently she had worded that when it was his turn to laugh at her. “You women—you always, how you say? Analyse everything with your flowery words. It is the difference between us, I think—like that book, what was it called?”

  “Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.”

  “Yes, you are all from another planet.”

  Thinking back onto some of her one-sided conversations with Tony over the years, Annie knew he was right. Men were easy to read most of the time: if they said they were tired, there was no hidden meaning lurking behind their yawn, like I don’t find you attractive anymore. They were as they had stated: tired. Poor Tony, she thought as she remembered her propensity to overanalyse everything. He had accused her of this once when he had made a passing comment that she could do with some new jeans. This he had dared utter because of the worn patch in the knee of her favourite jeans but what she had chosen to hear was your bum’s too big for them; you need new ones. Needless to say, much to Tony’s bewilderment, she had flown into a fit and accused him of saying she was fat and acted as though she were mortally wounded in her determination to over-dramatise the situation. Now, with the wisdom of hindsight and a vast distance between them, she could see his being a man of few words had been a continual source of frustration to her, just as her need for more from him than he was capable of giving must have been to him. How exhausting he must have found her at times, she thought as she filed her decision not to repeat the same mistakes in the future away and Alexandros wheeled the bike back up to the road. “I’m right though, aren’t I? You’re not planning on sticking around.”

  “I was trying to tell you earlier about my plans.”

  Annie frowned. How had she missed that?

  “When I told you that my heart is not mine to give.”

  Oh yes. She snorted and Alexandros muttered, “I still do not see what you find so funny about this.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just, well, who is using the flowery language now?”

  “Do you want me to tell you or not?” She could see the twinkle in his eyes as they glinted in the darkness.

  “Tell me. I promise, no more laughing.”

  “There’s a woman. I met her when I was in Brazil. She is an English lady who moved to Rio with her husband. He is a big businessman.” Alexandros shrugged. “He is always busy and never has time for her. She is lonely in a strange city, yes?”

  “Yes.” Annie gave the required response, knowing exactly how this story was going to play out.

  “And so when I meet her on the famous beach—”

  “Ipanema?”

  “Yes. She is like the song—you know?”

  “The Girl from Ipanema.”

  “Yes, except maybe she is not like in the song so young.”

  Annie bit her lip, determined to keep her promise not to laugh.

  “But still, one thing, it leads to another because she is not happy and I know how to make her happy.” He gave a few thrusts of his hips and Annie felt a bubbling rise up in her throat which she swallowed furiously because Alexandros was serious.

  “So we have a thing for a while and it is good but you know she is married and then one day she tells me she must try one last time to make it work with her husband. I am sad but I respect her decision and so I decide the time has come for me to go home and help my mama. She is telling me all the time, ‘Alexandrosaki, come home.’” His high-pitched dramatic pleading was such a good imitation of his mama’s voice that Annie couldn’t help but omit a laugh this time and he grinned ruefully across at her. “This is what she is like—you have seen her for yourself—and she is getting older, you know, so I feel guilty sometimes that I am not here. There is no longer a woman to keep me in Brazil, so I do what she wants and I come home.”

  Annie wondered if he meant “keep” literally as it dawned on her that he had come home under duress from his mama and not just to freeload as Kassia assumed.

  “I love my family and my home but I don’t want to be here. I am in the way. Spiros, Kassia, and the boys—they are making their life here but it is not for me. There is not room for me too.”

  “Oh, Alexandros, that’s not true!” Even as she said it, she realised he was right. He was a lot more insightful than Kas gave him credit for, Annie realised and he was in the tricky position of wanting to keep his ageing mother happy but at the same time wanting to live his own life.

  “It is fine, Annie. Don’t look so sad. I can visit and that is the way it should be.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “I will be the selfish son they expect me to be and I will leave. Mama, she will be fine with Spiros, Kassia, and her grandsons. I know this now so I can leave without a heavy heart. My friend, she has written to tell me it has not worked with her husband and the marriage, it is over. She has asked me to come back to Rio to be with her, so at the end of the month I will go to her.”

  Kassia had read her brother-in-law well, in so much as this was exactly what she predicted he would do. On the other hand, part of the reason he was going was to make an easier life for her and her family. It was something she needed to know.

  “Have you mentioned your plans to Mama?”r />
  “Mama-mou, no. I know I will make her sad.” His sigh came from deep down and Annie knew it was genuine. “I will tell her soon when I feel the time is right.”

  Annie wondered fleetingly whether his feelings for this woman went deeper than that of just a free ride. She suspected not and that the only woman he really loved was his mama. Yes, she thought, he would move on from his woman in Brazil when another offer came along but she harboured no bad wishes towards him. Alexandros was who he was, and at least he didn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t. Sure, he wrapped his words in pretty packaging but if you could see past the wrapping, he didn’t lie or make false promises, so good luck to him. She spontaneously kissed him on the cheek. He had revealed a hidden depth beneath the shallow surface tonight and she had a newfound respect for him.

  It was a very different journey back to Eleni’s from the exhilarating ride of earlier. Alexandros drove more sedately as befitted his spent mood and as they neared home, he slowed and came to a stop a few hundred metres away from the guesthouse, which was shrouded in darkness. The sea was a flat black blanket on their right and in the not so far distance, Annie could hear somebody murdering a Spice Girls song. Figures bobbed about in the brightly lit bar up the road where the karaoke was in full swing and she watched with amusement as a couple staggered out of the bar and onto the street illuminated by a street light. They’d both be under the weather in the morning, she thought with a stirring of sympathy. She’d been there, done that. As for Mrs Stop Right There, Thank You Very Much, she deserved all she got after she’d inflicted that earache on people.

  “I will wheel the bike from here so we don’t wake anyone,” Alexandros said as she got off and walked on the pavement alongside him.

  “Good idea, although how anyone can sleep through that ruckus I don’t know.” She, however, did not want to be responsible for alerting any of the guests or members of the Bikakis family as to her and Alexandros’s nocturnal shenanigans.