Memories of Santorini, page 16
Climbing down, she immersed herself in the blue water. The swim was refreshing after the warmth of the sun. Carter stayed abreast of her even though he could have sprinted ahead. Reaching the rock, they hauled themselves up after the others, and she sluiced water out of her eyes. Carter held out his hand as they crossed the concrete landing to a set of wide stone steps she hadn’t seen from the shore.
At the top of the short flight, she marveled at the smallest church she’d ever seen nestled into the rock. It had a door, so people must be able to get inside. Did they have to crouch? Rounding the church, they came upon the plateau from which the teenage girl had jumped.
A short line of people waited their turn, with Carter’s group gathered at the end. An old lady stood on the precipice, catcalls rising from the sea below. Or maybe they were just cries of encouragement to Grandma. It struck Sienna that though she’d called the woman old, she was only her mother’s age. Was fifty-something really that old? The woman turned, walking back several paces, then took off at a run, jumping far out. The sound of her splash accompanied cheers rising up from sea level.
Carter held her hand. “Looks like a blast, don’t you think?” He gazed at her as if he was her cheering section. She wasn’t afraid, at least not much. She could do this. So what if she wasn’t a risk taker. This couldn’t be that much of a risk. Could it?
There were kids and teenagers and older couples holding hands. When it was their turn, Reed went first. He’d been on the university diving team, and he effortlessly arced through the air. Irene made a running jump and squealed as she went over the edge, then popped up in the water. Everyone below cheered as if they knew her. Bill went next, then Alyssa, followed by Jamal, who burst out of the water laughing and fist-bumping the others. Finally, only Tamryn, Sienna, and Carter remained.
Tamryn turned to Carter. “Sweetie, I can’t do it,” she cried, hands over her mouth.
A man in line behind them called out, “Just grab her up and throw her off! She’ll love it.”
But Tamryn looked as if she might burst into tears. “Carter, I can’t.”
Something in her voice made Sienna look harder at the glint in her eyes. Was she playing Carter?
He called back to the man. “You come and throw her. I’m afraid.”
Amid their jeers and laughter, Tamryn’s expression morphed into angry lines. She flipped the guy off, then ran to the edge and jumped.
Carter didn’t seem to care. “She’s a drama queen,” he said good-naturedly. “But she’s damn good at marketing, and she amuses me.”
Sienna found Tamryn irritating, but here was another thing she liked about Carter. Other people’s nonsense didn’t get to him. He never seemed to have a bad mood. He was kind to her mother, always including her. It brought back that day with Dylan and the bullies. Carter would save a kid from a bully without blinking an eye. Then he’d make that kid his friend.
As if he recognized her nervousness, Carter held out his hand. “Let’s jump together.”
She clasped her fingers around his. She couldn’t let Tamryn beat her. But as they stood on the edge, she saw the rocks and the clear blue sea below. It wasn’t as tall as a high dive, but you had to jump out, not straight down, or you’d hit those rocks just under the surface.
Carter squeezed her hand. “Let’s take a running jump.” His eyes glittered like an excited ten-year-old.
She felt his warmth, his comfort, his strength seeping into her. They backed up a few of steps, and he whispered, “Ready?”
And they ran. She screamed as they went airborne, but it was exhilaration rather than fear. It was the joy of her hand in Carter’s.
They hit the water, sinking deep into the blue sea, far from the rocks, Carter’s strong hand around hers, pulling her back up. They popped above the water amid a round of cheers from below and cries from above.
All except Tamryn, who watched Sienna with a glare.
Sienna scooped the hair out of her eyes and the water off her face, and shouted a laugh. “That was awesome. Let’s do it again.”
And as she jumped with Carter time after time, she grew fearless.
They lay deliciously entwined for long minutes after their lovemaking. When Xandros moved to relieve his weight off her, Angela clung to him. It had been so long since she’d luxuriated in the weight of a man, breathed in that musky male aroma, reveled in the feel of slightly rougher skin against hers. She was loath to let the sensations go.
He peppered her face with kisses, his mustache a delightful tickle, then her neck, her earlobes, her collarbones, hardening inside her the closer he drew to her breasts.
He rose above her, his arm muscles taut. “I’d rather make love to you in my comfortable bed.” His eyes were a dark blaze. “There’s so much more I can do to you when I have you stretched out beneath me.”
She leaned up to give him a long, delicious kiss. “And there’s so much I can do to you.”
They spent long, lazy hours in his bed. Exploring each other, renewing all the things they’d known about each other’s bodies so long ago.
Until her phone rang.
Xandros had given her a comical look, half sad, half winking-emoji, when she’d brought her phone downstairs with them.
“I really need to look.” She hadn’t checked in with Sienna all day.
The text invited her to meet them for dinner. But Xandros ran his hand down her flank beneath the covers, and she texted back that she was fine, to go ahead without her. She didn’t mention that she was in her lover’s arms and couldn’t leave him.
“Let’s take a dip.” Xandros pulled her from the bed, and they padded naked to the pool where the water was deliciously cool on her overheated skin.
She gave his body a long, lingering sweep of a look. “What if your son comes back?”
Xandros laughed. “We can hear anyone coming from miles away.” He kissed her sweetly, lazily. As if they had all the time in the world.
But Angela knew the clock was ticking.
He held her loosely in the circle of his arms, floating in the water, her legs wrapped around him, his body luscious between her legs.
“Let’s go down to Oia and watch the sunset.” He nuzzled her ear.
She tipped her head back to laugh. “You have a much better view from up here.”
He shook his head, water spilling from the ends of his hair. “It’s so much better with all the tourists.”
She snorted. “I thought you hated all the tourists.”
His swift kiss cut off her objections. “Tourists are my bread and butter, even if they’re a nuisance to us locals.” He rubbed noses with her. “But I feel the need to hug you close in a big crowd and listen to their exclamations while I bury my face in your hair and drink in your scent as we watch the sunset.”
It was so romantic her heart leaped.
They showered, giving themselves a bit of playtime. Until Xandros had her breathless up against the wall, pushing her over the edge with exquisite ferocity.
Once they’d dressed and gone outside, he announced, “We’ll take the quad bike. Much easier to park.”
True to his word, he found a narrow spot between two cars and backed the bike in.
Like the crows in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, the crowds were already roosting, filling up walkways, sitting on stairs, lining railings, leaning over balconies, and enjoying restaurants.
“There’s not a single spot,” she complained, but Xandros grabbed her hand, wending his way through the crowd, forcing breaks in the waves of people with his big body. He found a perfect spot and turned his back to the wall, pulling her in front, his chest warm and muscular against her.
Nature’s light show began as the sun fell toward the horizon, its rays streaming across the sky, yellows and oranges, streaks of purple. The facades of the houses lit up with a yellow glow, as if spotlighted by the sun. The windmills turned lazily, picking up speed as the wind blew while the sun set. As it hit the horizon, the colors intensified, and the oohs and aahs of its audience rose to a frenzy.
She’d often come to Oia with Xandros to watch the sunset. The crowds had been just as thick, the cries of delight just as fervent, and the brilliant colors threw her back to all those evenings with his powerful arms around her. With his sea-salt scent drifting over her, she understood he’d wanted to come here now for all the memories they’d left behind. Memories of magnificent sunsets, of their lovemaking, their laughter, their love for each other.
She imagined that the Santorini sunset, with its brilliant colors from yellow to orange to pink to purple to red, must be like what the northern lights were to the people in the north.
They stayed until the very last ray faded, until the fingers of light darkened into the twilight sky, until stardust sparkled on them and the man in the moon smiled.
The crowds dispersed, clogging the pathways out of Oia as if they were leaving a stadium after a Super Bowl win.
Xandros took her hand so they didn’t lose each other in the throng. “I know a trick to getting out of here.”
She followed him like a woman besotted or obsessed. Or both.
He entered the back gate of a packed restaurant, leaning down to her. “I know the owner. He won’t mind if we slip through.”
An older man, with perhaps ten years on Xandros, waved at them, and Xandros made hand signals to indicate their intentions. Yet the man came down the tiered patio, slapping Xandros on the back, then man-hugging him.
It was then that she saw them, Sienna and her new friends, Carter seated beside her.
Tamryn’s gaze pierced Angela, as if she could see all her secrets. The girl pointed, skewering her like the Grim Reaper’s bony finger. Carter turned then. And finally, Sienna did, her mouth an O of surprise, before she waved.
Angela took a step toward her, then a step back to Xandros, hissing to him, “I have to go. Talk to you tomorrow. Will you be at the café?”
As hard as she tried to get rid of him, Xandros had already picked up on the stares directed at them. “Is that your daughter?”
“Yes. I don’t want her to know I had dinner with somebody else since she asked me to go with them.” She threw the words at him as if yet another lie didn’t matter. Pleading welled up in her eyes. “Tomorrow?”
He nodded. She thought for a moment he might try to kiss her, and she flinched away.
She left him behind without looking at his face, feeling as awful as she had the day she’d boarded that ferry thirty-one years ago, as if she was leaving pieces of herself behind. She hadn’t known about Sienna then, but she knew now. And she was running from him all over again.
“Who was that?” Sienna asked.
Angela’s throat was parched as she waved a hand nonchalantly behind her. “Just a man I met when I came here before. He saw me and cleared a place to watch the sunset. There were just so many people blocking my view. Amazing to see him, isn’t it?” Feeling all eyes boring through her, she flushed with guilt.
“So,” Tamryn said, winking exaggeratedly. “You blew off dinner with us for a sexy silver fox you used to know?”
In that moment, Angela hated the girl. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but she hated her for saying aloud what everyone else was thinking.
Carter laughed, breaking the tension. “What an awesome coincidence.”
He looked at Sienna, and she smiled, though Angela thought suspicion glinted in her eyes. Then her daughter asked the most innocuous question. Or maybe it wasn’t. “How did you get here?”
“The bus.” The lie tripped off her tongue. “It was packed with tourists.”
“You should have texted me.”
“I’d have come to get you,” Carter added.
Angela felt yet another lie forming on her lips. “I forgot my phone back at the villa. Is that stupid or what?”
The hole she was digging got deeper and deeper.
“And then you just happened to see a friend,” Tamryn added, her voice as sweet and bad for you as processed sugar. “Did you have a drink with him? Maybe dinner?”
It was ridiculous, but the excuses kept coming. How would she keep them all straight? “Actually, I was going to ask him to give me a ride back. I didn’t want to get caught in the crowds at the bus stop.” She glanced over her shoulder. Still talking to his friend, Xandros’s gaze was as hard as diamonds.
As if he’d seen the truth.
But he couldn’t have. There were four girls at the table. He couldn’t know for sure which was her daughter.
Except that Sienna was a clone of his Juliana.
“We’re just waiting on dessert,” Carter said. “Then you can come back with us. Ride on the back of Reed’s moped.”
Reed’s eyebrows rose a fraction before his smile widened. “Sure. No problem.”
The waiter arrived with dessert and an extra chair for Angela. Taking the seat, she braved a glance at the second-tier patio.
Xandros was gone.
They drank black coffee and shared several Greek desserts. Maybe it was the delicious baklava, or the Greek donuts, maybe the custard tart drizzled with orange syrup or the almond shortbread. Angela’s blood pressure finally lowered. She could breathe again. Sienna wasn’t suspicious, talking excitedly about their day, the moped ride around the island, Akrotiri Lighthouse, the black sand beach, jumping off the rock into Amoudi Bay.
“And tomorrow we’re visiting the ruins at Akrotiri. Do you want to come?” Sienna was excited, buoyant, her eyes bright with enthusiasm, as if her work worries had melted away. Always focused and driven, this was a totally new Sienna.
It had to be Carter Ellis’s influence. Maybe it was even the beginnings of a romance.
“What time are you planning to set out?” She absolutely had to see Xandros at the café.
Tamryn, Bill, and Alyssa groaned.
“Please don’t make it the crack of dawn,” Jamal begged.
Carter shrugged, smiled. “Who knows with this gang? Probably not until noon. I’ve got to see about renting the mopeds again. Do you want your own or to ride on the back?”
“I’ll ride my own.”
Sienna’s eyes sparked, her gaze on Carter. “Can I share again?”
“Absolutely.” There was a sweetness in his smile.
Maybe they were both a little smitten. Or a lot.
At least when they returned home, there wasn’t a continent, an ocean, and an engagement separating them.
Not like her and Xandros. Even if he forgave her for ditching him tonight, there was still so much to keep them apart.
18
Before saying good night by the hot tub last night, Angela had told Sienna she’d go for her morning walk and be back in plenty of time for the trip to the ancient Minoan village.
She jogged along the path to Fira, feeling frantic, until her heel slipped on a stone and she almost turned her ankle. Yet she kept to a fast clip. By the time she rushed through the café gate, she was out of breath and half afraid Xandros wouldn’t be there.
But he was gorgeous in the early morning sunlight. He’d already ordered her usual coffee and bougatsa. The coffee refreshed her, but the sugary pastry made her stomach lurch.
And so did his first words. “Sienna is mine, isn’t she, Angelika?” He said her daughter’s name as if he knew her, though Angela thought she’d only mentioned it a couple of times.
The cream in her coffee curdled in her stomach.
Xandros pulled out his wallet, opened it to a fan of pictures, and pointed to one of his youngest daughter. “They could be twins.”
Angela’s heart jumped to her throat, choking her. Different from the one in his home, this was professionally posed, a graduation picture. It could have been Sienna’s graduation photo.
There was no hiding from it, no lying, no half-truths. She shouldn’t even want to lie. She nodded. “I planned to tell her on this trip. I wanted to show her the beauty of Santorini and hope she’d see how easy it is to fall in love here.”
Xandros raised an eyebrow, saying softly, almost deadly, “Easy?”
Her skin flushed. She couldn’t meet his eyes, gazing around the terrace café instead. Like usual at this time of the morning, it wasn’t full, just two couples, each sharing a pastry, a family, three kids with their parents, getting ready for a day of sightseeing, an old man reading a book, the photographer. Eleni filled his cup as she rushed by.
Angela turned back to Xandros, his thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, the grooves of his face that hadn’t been there when they were young but which added to his depth of character. “It was so easy to fall in love with you. Because of who you are, because of who I am, because we were meant to be together even back then.”
He didn’t agree or disagree. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”
She couldn’t meet the drill of his gaze, closing her eyes just to start the explanation. “It was the early nineties. We barely had email. The internet was still a mystery. There was no social media. And I didn’t have your phone number.” They were lame excuses.
He didn’t let her get away with it, his face stern, his features immovable. “You could have written me a letter. You could have flown back to Santorini and told me face to face.” All of it was true.
It was time to tell the whole story.
She concentrated her gaze on her coffee, hating herself for not being able to meet his eyes. “I told you about my mother. She could be so domineering, especially back then. I know I was twenty-two and I’d been to college and I was a grown-up, but it just seemed like when I got around my mother, I was a teenager again and unable to assert myself.”
The explanation sounded so weak, so pathetic, even fake, but she couldn’t deny him her gaze or her truth for long. It was up to him whether he felt sympathy or anger or disbelief. “I allowed my mother to undermine everything I felt for you. I take full responsibility for that. If I’d been older, more sure of myself, I never would’ve let that happen.” Then she confessed the worst. “I let my mother make me believe you were just a beach bum who went from woman to woman, finding someone on every tour. I allowed her to make me doubt you would even show up the next year. And that if you did, you certainly wouldn’t want the baby.”
