smile.
“I’ve got food at home, Jacosta,” he said.
“What’s wrong with the food we have here?” Jacosta’s smile shifted to a frown. “You’ve never turned down my souvlaki before.”
She lowered her gaze to half-mast and tilted up her chin, her expression wreathed in suspicion. He’d seen this look before. Mostly when his father had exploded about something ridiculous and Cailey had been present. Jacosta had always swiftly shifted Cailey behind her, literally protecting her from the verbal lashing, bowing her head, apologizing, taking every blow he unleashed.
He didn’t like being on the receiving end of that look. He wasn’t his father. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Cailey.
“Mama, it’s fine. Volunteers have brought food to the clinic. Why don’t we eat together later? As a family, when this is over. Then we will have a reason to celebrate, yes?”
“Paidi mou!” Jacosta threw her hands into the air in disbelief. “It’s not reason enough to celebrate that my daughter has come home? That her brothers still have life coursing through their veins? That your mama’s souvlaki is being devoured by all these good people who have escaped with their lives but my own flesh and blood won’t take even the tiniest of bites to add some flesh to her body?”
“Yes, of course, Mama, but...” Cailey pressed her thumbs above her eyes and gave her forehead a rub, surreptitiously appealing to Theo for help with a sideways grimace.
Theo swept a hand across his mouth to hide his smile as a glimpse of the teenage Cailey emerged.
“It’s been a long day,” he said placatingly to Jacosta.
“So she should eat!”
“I need to sleep, Mama!”
“Mama, let her go.” Kyros appeared through the crowd with two takeaway packets wafting the alluring scent of Jacosta’s souvlaki in their direction. He kissed his mother’s cheek, then handed the boxes to Cailey with a wink.
“Now, go!” Kyros made shooing movements with his hands as if he were clearing the area of chickens. “Get some rest, then come back and fix more people. I’m not going to bust my gut rescuing people only to find the clinic staff falling asleep on the job.”
His grime-streaked face turned from teasing to sober.
“My wife’s nephew is still missing. He went off to play before the quake and they haven’t seen him since. There’s a crew out there searching right now.”
Cailey reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. “I’m so sorry. How old is he?”
“Six.”
They all stood for a moment, weighed down by the ramifications. The weather wasn’t yet obscenely hot, but spring often saw the temperature gauge fly up unexpectedly, and the longer someone was trapped the more likely it was they’d suffer from severe dehydration. What happened next wasn’t worth considering.
“Fine.” Jacosta wiped her hands together as if she’d been behind the decision for Theo and Cailey to leave all along. “Off you go. Shoo! Get some rest. I’ll bring you some yoghurt and fruit in the morning.”
Cailey took a deep breath as if to protest, then clearly remembered it would do no good and surrendered to the hug her mother was drawing her into.
Another round of kisses were exchanged and then they were back on their way.
* * *
“Your mother is a force of nature.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Cailey replied dryly, then sucked in a sharp breath as first her spine and then her whole body responded to Theo’s touch when he replaced his hand on the small of her back to steer her onto a small tree-lined street that led away from the village’s main thoroughfare.
Who was this man?
He was much more comfortable with the villagers than she’d anticipated. No lofty heights. No clear social barriers up between him and them.
Had he really changed from that arrogant teen she’d overheard telling his friends about the heiresses his father had lined up for him to marry into this...this kind, generous-hearted, self-effacing man?
There weren’t any heiresses in sight now. And—not that she was obsessed or anything—but the pictures of Theo with some willowy blonde on his arm had dried up in the society mags of late.
She chanced a glance at him as he ruffled a child’s hair after the little one had run out to show him the bandage he’d applied earlier to her arm. He knelt down and gave it a studied look, then praised her for looking after it so well.
Crikey, that was sweet. He was sweet.
Just feeling Theo’s broad hand reassert itself on the small of her back relit a flame in her core she now knew had never really been fully tamped out.
As they continued walking she couldn’t stop the niggling thought that ten years ago she’d blown the whole “Nikolaideses don’t marry housemaids” thing out of proportion. Had she, a teen herself, taken umbrage for something she should’ve just laughed off? Or, better yet, should she have flounced out of the pool house she’d been cleaning, flicked a hip in his direction with a saucy follow-up that he didn’t know what he was missing?
Instead she’d been upset, hurt and offended. Leaving had been an easy way to protect her heart from feelings she’d thought would never be reciprocated.
Theo slowed his pace and dropped his hand from her back. She missed his touch instantly. How quickly she’d grown used to something she thought she’d never know.
He stopped in front of a large wooden gate and dug his hand round in his pocket, presumably for a key, his shaggy hair falling forward across his darkly stubbled cheeks.
Theo must have felt her gaze on him. He raised his eyes to meet hers and dropped a slow, dark-lashed wink in her direction as he pulled something out of his pocket with a flourish.
“Ta-da!”
She stared at the object in his hand. A mini-screwdriver?
“Man’s best friend.”
“A screwdriver?” she deadpanned.
“Absolutely.” Theo gave her a quick nod, then turned to the gate. “I lost the key about three years ago, and last winter it started jamming, so...”
He fiddled a bit with the screwdriver at an area on the doorframe that looked as if it had borne this routine more than a few times, then gave the door a swift kick. “Voila! Your boudoir awaits, mademoiselle!”
Trying to push aside images of Theo sweeping her off her feet and carrying her to said boudoir, she tried to wrangle her backpack off his shoulder.
“No, you don’t.” Theo swept his arm out, indicating that she should enter the small but incredibly lush garden where a smattering of golden sandstone slates led to a modest-sized whitewashed traditional home. “In you go.” He pulled the gate shut behind them as she entered the garden. “So. What do you think?”
What did she think? She thought it was the last sort of place a Nikolaides would live in. More to the point, she thought it was perfect.
The small house was precisely the type of a home she’d dreamt of living in before she’d left the island. Draped in bougainvillea, shaded by palms and...was that a pomegranate tree? It felt...cozy. It was about as far as you could get from the ostentatious steel beams, floor-to-ceiling glass and columns of the neo-classical mansion he’d grown up in.
There went a few more of her hypothetical conjectures about The Life of Theo.
“I think it’s beautiful.”
He squinted at her, the corners of his lips tweaking