Tempted by Her Greek Tycoon

by Katrina Cudmore

  She lifted the glass again and took another gulp, liking how much it hurt.

  Sokratis, her building contractor, had emptied his glass in one go. ‘Will you be okay here on your own, Georgie, now that we’re finished?’

  Why did every person on the island ask her that question?

  ‘I’m looking forward to the peace!’

  You’re such a liar, Georgie.

  Well, what do you expect me to say? The truth? Something along the lines of, Well, actually, Sokratis, I’m really going to miss the noise and confusion of you four arriving every morning. Now I’ll have no distraction from my thoughts and my guilt.

  ‘And Loukas?’

  Her attention turned to Theofanis, the carpenter in the group. His quiet, gentle nature and mastery with wood so at odds with his giant frame and shovel-like hands.

  She smiled and tried not to look bothered by his question, but it hurt just to hear Loukas’s name said out loud. ‘What about him?’

  ‘You’re together, no? I saw you together in the square at the Easter Midnight service.’

  She took another swig of her ouzo. The fiery liquid did nothing to numb the ache in her throat. ‘No.’

  Theofanis shook his head and looked at her sadly. ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s brought a lot of employment and prosperity to the island,’ said Giourkas, another member of the building team, with a hint of accusation.

  All four men considered her coolly.

  Oh, great. Now she’d upset the locals. No doubt they wouldn’t take kindly to her breaking up with their local hero.

  She stared down at the dusty boots of the four men.

  ‘He’s even fought for regional funding. It was Loukas who secured the subsidy for the new marina in Talos Town,’ Sokratis said.

  All four men nodded in silence, clearly privately reflecting on the wonder that was Loukas Christou.

  Georgie clutched her glass tighter. This was the man who had said he loved her.

  ‘He looked after my cousin Kyriakos when he was ill. He works as a gardener at the hotel. He kept his job open and paid him all the time he was undergoing treatment. Well over a year. He even gave his family the use of his own private boat to take them to Kosta when he needed treatment,’ Theofanis added.

  Alexandros, Sokratis’s son, shook his head in amazement. ‘Wow, that’s a powerful boat.’

  Georgie let out a sigh. ‘Okay, I get it. The man’s a saint.’

  Theofanis lifted an eyebrow. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far. He can be stubborn, and more headstrong than a herd of goats.’

  ‘And competitive,’ Alexandros said with relish. ‘We were at school together. He had to win everything. One year he even entered and won the embroidery competition.’

  Giourkas lifted the blue and white baseball cap he always wore and scratched his thatch of thick black hair. ‘Now, that’s just strange.’

  ‘His father drove him hard,’ Sokratis said, shaking his head disapprovingly. ‘When the hotel first opened I was the maintenance manager. Loukas, even as a very young boy, used to be up and working in the hotel before sunrise. Even on the soccer pitch he pushed him hard. Thee mou, that man could yell. He would leave Loukas to walk home alone when his team lost...sometimes even when they won and Loukas hadn’t scored.’

  Alexandros grimaced and ran a hand along his bristled jawline. ‘He didn’t score full marks in an exam at school once. We all thought he was joking when he asked the teacher to check his paper again. Maybe he was nervous about going home?’

  All four men looked at each other uncomfortably, and then down at their now empty glasses. Georgie’s glass was still half full, but even looking at the ouzo made her feel ill. Loukas had told her of his relationship with his dad, but hearing about it from others made it all the more real. No wonder he pushed himself so hard.

  She was startled when Sokratis cleared his throat noisily and said, ‘It’s time we headed for home.’

  Georgie followed the men out through her garden door. Sokratis untied his dapple-grey horse from where it had been sheltering under a tree and placed a harness on its broad back before attaching it to his cart. The others had retrieved their bikes and she waved goodbye to them.

  Sokratis, now seated on the wooden bench at the front of his cart, drew level with her and regarded her solemnly from beneath his bushy eyebrows. ‘It’s a gift in life to be able to recognise when you’re not happy and to do something about it. Be brave, Georgie.’

  Georgie stared after Sokratis as his cart moved up the track, totally taken aback. She had thought she was coping. For the past four days she had risen before dawn and worked until late into the night. Refusing to think. Determined to get the villa ready for her first guests. She was proud of what she had achieved. Her dad would be too. The house and gardens had been transformed into a cosy and welcoming guesthouse.

  She was proud...but Sokratis was right. She wasn’t happy. The truth of the matter was that she didn’t even know if she could bear to stay here on Talos for the summer months.

  Only days ago she had harboured the fantasy that she and Loukas would be able to remain friends whatever happened between them. But that had been before they had made love...before they’d clung to one another and stared into one another’s eyes.

  She had been wrong to allow what they had between them become so serious.

  Back inside the house, she dropped down onto the new sofa Sokratis had transported to the house earlier that day and stared at her phone, sitting on the coffee table. All day she had refused to look, but now with a sigh she grabbed the phone and scanned her social media newsfeeds.

  She paused at the selfie Angeliki had taken in a limo on her way to the movie awards last night, and laughed into the empty space of her sitting room at Angeliki’s bright-eyed, thumbs-up picture.

  Angeliki had visited on Wednesday, bluntly telling her she wanted to know what was going on between her and Loukas. Georgie had tried not to wince when Angeliki had asked if what Loukas had said was true—that it was all over between them.

  When Georgie had said it was, Angeliki had at first stormed around the house, proclaiming that they were both idiotic, but when she’d calmed Georgie had seen just how disappointed she really was. Georgie had spent the afternoon with her, slowly and gently reassuring her that they would remain friends despite everything.

  She scanned some more posts, and closed her eyes for a moment when she came upon a picture of Loukas, standing with his three siblings on the red carpet inside the hotel’s reception area. The three brothers were all wearing tuxedos, Loukas in the middle, his arms around Nikos’s and Marios’s shoulders. Angeliki was in front of him, leaning back against him, her beaded full-skirted white ball gown stunning against her dark skin and hair.

  She stared at the image of Loukas on her phone, at the strength of his expression, the cool pride in his eyes, her heart aching for him. And slowly it finally dawned on her that this was it. It really was all over between her and Loukas. He was moving on with his life. And it was time that she did too.

  It was time she left this island.

  * * *

  Loukas’s head felt as if it was about to explode. He had the headache to end all headaches, and now he had Nikos, Marios and Angeliki going off-message again, thinking with their hearts and not their brains.

  He leant back in his boardroom chair and said, with as much civility he could muster, ‘Run that by me again. I think I must have misheard you.’

  Angeliki cast a nervous glance at Nikos. Marios rolled his eyes.

  Nikos leant towards him and flashed him one of his killer smiles. ‘You heard right. We’re not going to sign off on the purchase of the Amalfi hotel until you get back with Georgie.’

  They had to be kidding him.

  ‘We’ve spent a fortune setting up th
is deal—we have competitors keen to snatch it away. Are you all out of your minds?’

  He leapt up and paced the boardroom floor. The purchase of the Convento San Francesco was already in tatters, thanks to his ill-judgement and the fact that, despite Zeta finding some promising candidates, he just couldn’t bring himself to go on a date at the moment. There was no hope of him finding a wife anytime soon, but this deal had to go through.

  ‘This isn’t how you run a business.’

  Angeliki winced, but she had a determined glint in her eye that frankly scared him.

  ‘We’re not asking you to negotiate a UN peace agreement, Loukas, simply to sort things out between you and Georgie.’

  ‘There’s nothing to sort out.’

  Nikos tapped a pen against the glass top of the boardroom table. ‘I have no idea what she sees in you, as you’re so bloody-minded and cranky, but she liked you, Loukas. She really liked you.’

  Nikos threw his pen on to the table and regarded him with a mixture of pity and disappointment. ‘I thought you were going to sort things out with her... I do hope you realise what a mistake you’re making—she’s the best thing to ever have happened to you.’

  Right then Loukas’s head exploded. ‘Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know that she’s the most beautiful, annoying, fun, uplifting, wise person I have ever met? The one person I can talk to.’

  He stopped shouting. Looked at the shocked expressions of the others. Dropped to his seat and looked at his siblings helplessly. For the first time ever he was reaching out to them emotionally...no longer caring about looking weak in front of them, no longer caring that there was no dignity in what he was about to admit.

  ‘I’ve told her that I love her... It was Georgie who ended the relationship, not me.’

  All three stared at him, and the only sound in the room came from the air conditioning unit.

  Angeliki was the first to speak. ‘I’m sorry, Loukas.’

  Then, taking the sale contract for the hotel, she signed it.

  Marios silently reached for it and signed it too. When he was done he nodded towards Loukas. It was a nod full of allegiance.

  Nikos then signed the document and walked towards Loukas.

  Handing him the contract, he placed a hand on Loukas’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to the heartbreak club, brother.’

  * * *

  A week later Georgie found a quiet spot on the deck of the ferry that would take her to Athens. From there she would catch a flight to Stockholm.

  The past week had been a blur of organisation—arranging for Ourania Riga, the head chef at the Koozina Restaurant, to rent her house from her, organising her own accommodation in Stockholm.

  Thankfully she had been able to transfer all her booked guests to another guesthouse on the island, and Marios had agreed to add the sea-swimming tours to his business.

  It hadn’t been easy to persuade him. And she had received an equally frosty reception from Nikos and Angeliki when she had visited them at their apartment to say goodbye.

  Beyond the white railings of the ferry Talos Town glistened in the early-morning sun. She ran both hands tiredly over her face.

  Leaving was different than she had anticipated. Where was the excitement for her new adventure? Why did she feel so lonely?

  Sitting on the hard plastic chair on the ferry, her suitcases crowded at her feet, she felt the reality of her situation, the reality of what she was about to do, hit her for the first time.

  It was as though she had numbly spent the past week in a cloud of self-delusion. Believing foolishly that she could just move on—yes, she’d miss Talos and the Christou family...she’d miss Loukas, but she’d done this time and time again. Moved on. Created a new life for herself.

  Believing this was no different.

  But it was different.

  Talos, this island of fragrances and emerald seas was different from anywhere she had been before.

  The friends she had made here were different too. Vasilis had almost cried when she’d called to say goodbye to him last night. Nikos, Marios and Angeliki, despite their coolness, had all tried to persuade her to stay. When she had said no they had hugged her generously and wished her well.

  And then there was Loukas.

  Has he really meant it when he’d said he loved her? Her mother had been supposed to love her, yet she’d left. How could she believe that he loved her?

  She stood and walked to the railing. Stared up towards the church where they had watched the Easter fireworks together with his arms wrapped tightly around her.

  When they had first met he had been so serious and closed. But as they had grown closer she had seen the integrity, the kindness, the honour inside him.

  Her mind looped back to her conversation with Sokratis and his team. Their description of his relationship with his dad. No wonder he was so closed and wary. No wonder he drove himself so hard.

  Her eyes widened.

  How much must it have taken for him to open up to me?

  And then it hit her. Loukas wouldn’t admit to love easily. He wouldn’t say those words unless he meant them. She had been totally blind. She had been so taken up by the fears inside herself that she had ignored every single fact she knew about the man who’d told her that he loved her. His loyalty and integrity, his honour, the way he had unselfishly spent the past eight years focused only on protecting his family. How tenderly he had made love to her. The love that had shone in his eyes when they had teased one another.

  The ferry’s horn hooted—the traditional call to any straggling passengers up in Talos Town that it was going to depart in five minutes.

  She was two floors up.

  She had to make a decision.

  But how could she make this right?

  Where would she even start?

  She closed her eyes for a moment, felt all the loneliness and pain inside her sharpening in the momentary darkness.

  She had to talk to him.

  This unsettled feeling, the way she ached to be with him again, was a thousand times worse than any of her fears.

  She grabbed her suitcases and pushed her way down the two flights of stairs as the cases careened off the railings and smacked into the back of her legs.

  She made it to the gangway just before they pulled it away.

  On the quayside she loaded her luggage onto a carriage and asked the driver to take it to her friend Stefania’s jewellery gallery. She sent Stefania a quick text, asking if she’d store it in her office for a few hours.

  And then she walked towards The Korinna, her heart performing somersaults and her legs so weak as she walked up the pedestrian alleyway that one of the elderly residents passed her by on the steep climb upwards with a cheery ‘Kaliméra!’.

  What if Loukas wanted nothing to do with her now? What if she had blown it with him in her disbelief when he had told her that he loved her?

  She walked down the hotel avenue, through the orchard, and at the villa’s garden door paused, her entire body shaking. Would he even be at home?

  He was. In fact he was standing at the edge of the terrace, close to the rocky outcrop, staring at the ferry as it left the harbour.

  He was dressed in a charcoal suit, his broad shoulders taut, his stance alert and controlled. A modern-day Greek warrior.

  He must have sensed her, because he slowly turned around, brief surprise flashing in his eyes before he crossed his arms on that powerful chest she had so many times laid her head upon and eyed her coolly.

  She gave an automatic nervous smile.

  His grimace tightened.

  ‘I was supposed to leave for Athens today,’ she said.

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘On the ferry this morning I realised that I couldn’t leave.’

  His only response was an impatient re
settling of his arms on his chest.

  She dragged in a long, slow breath. Though it terrified her, she knew she had to open herself up to him, tell him everything that was inside her. It was time she showed him that she loved him.

  She moved towards him, her breath hitching when she was within arm’s reach of him and saw the guarded expression in his eyes.

  She dipped her head, suddenly realising, now that she was standing so close to him, just how much she had missed him physically over the past two weeks.

  Her hands itched with the need to touch him. She wanted to place her lips against his skin. His mouth. To touch the silky softness of his hair, the hard lines of his shoulders. To have him tuck her into his side the way he liked to do, so that her belly was pressed against his hip. Most of all she wanted him to look at her with the same love and tenderness, fondness and wonder with which he had gazed at her every time they had made love.

  She lifted her head, her heart in her throat, and said, ‘I’m sorry for the way I reacted...on the day you told me you loved me.’

  He looked beyond her, towards the house. ‘I thought we had something.’

  She winced at the coldness in his voice. ‘We did. We still can...’

  He gave her a sceptical look.

  She rubbed her hands on the denim of her jeans, feeling hot and clammy. ‘I should have seen how much courage it had taken for you to tell me you loved me. I should have believed you. Instead I pushed you away.’

  He raised an eyebrow at this, as if to say, Tell me something I don’t know.

  She bit the inside of her lip, trying to dredge up the courage to tell him everything he needed to know, all the while fighting the deep fear inside her that she would be exposing herself to future pain.

  She inhaled a quick breath and started to talk before that fear took control. ‘Every relationship I’ve been in, whether romantic or a friendship, I’ve run away, afraid of growing too close, afraid of being hurt. I’m tired of running, but I find it hard to believe that you love me... What can I give you? I’m not the tough career wife you want. And you said yourself that you don’t have time in your life for love. I panic that you’ll leave me. I panic so much that I just want to run away before I get hurt...again.’