Chapter Fourteen

Frankie lay in bed facing Nik. He’d made love to her tonight, and the previous few nights, with an intense passion, like he wanted their bodies to fuse into one, leaving her sated and her senses thrumming. Physically, she knew she had all of him. But emotionally? It niggled at her that she’d been feeling a distance very recently—that somehow a gulf had opened up between them. She perceived it had started after he’d seen her with Andrew. But she explained what had happened, and he’d assured her that they were okay. Or was it because she’d told him she would be paying him back for the villa when she could manage it? Had she hurt his pride? Then the memory of Ali talking about Natassia, his ex-fiancee, and how she’d jilted him and put him off commitment, crowded in with the rest of her doubts. She’d wondered quite a lot about Natassia since and had been waiting for the right moment to broach the subject with him. Perhaps that was making him wary when they were getting closer fast?

Her head rattled with all the possibilities. Maybe she was overthinking everything, and he was on edge simply because he needed to hear the results of the forensic tests on the skull and bones. Though the police were assuming they belonged to an older child, until that was proven, she could imagine how unsettled he must be feeling.

She reached out a finger to stroke his cheek. “Hey, what are you thinking?”

He turned his head on the pillow and gazed at her with hooded eyes. “How beautiful you are, pet hi mou. How perfect it is to make love to you.”

“That’s because it’s perfect making love to you.” Her finger trailed down to his chest, and she swirled it in the hair there. “But you seem preoccupied these days. Is it because of Marco?” she asked, hoping he would confirm that and dispel her other fears.

She felt his chest heave as he took in a deep breath. “He is in my thoughts, yes.”

She moved closer and snuggled up to him, feeling relieved and hoping to get him to open up some more. There was a lot she didn’t know. “I’d love to understand more about him, if you want to tell,” she said gently. “About how you and he, and Dimitri and Sergei, came to be adopted by Ian and Drusilla. Do you know anything about your birth parents or your brothers’?”

“Okay.” He curled his bronzed arms around her. “As you know, I am the oldest. My birth parents lived in Agia Kalamaros, but they were killed in an earthquake—”

“Earthquake?” Frankie raised her head to look at him in surprise. “Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were orphaned. Or that there are earthquakes in Greece.”

“Yes, agapimeni mou, there are. In the case of Kathos, a fault line runs just east of the island, where the European and Ionian tectonic plates meet. Have you ever noticed that many of the buildings in the village, though they are in the traditional style, are of modern construction?”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Now you come to mention it, yes. Though Ali and Pavlos’s place is old, and so is this house.”

“Not every building was destroyed in the earthquake, but many of the smaller, more simply built houses simply crumbled and many people were killed. My parents and my older brother all perished, but I was found alive in the ruins, still in my crib. Some of my father’s relatives survived too, but they immigrated to America after the quake, leaving me in the orphanage in Paragolis. Ian and Drusilla had not been able to have children, and when they heard about me through the local priest, they applied to adopt.”

“Wow, that’s really something. And what about Dimitri and Sergei? How did Sergei get from Russia to here?” She snuggled back against him and he held her tighter; this was the kind of closeness with him she adored.

“Their backgrounds are even more dramatic and heart-breaking than mine. Dimitrios will not mind me telling you that he was the son of a prostitute. She was originally from Agia Kalamaros, but lived in Paragolis near the docks. Dimitri thinks his father may have been an Italian sailor.”

“Goodness me. So why did his mother give him up? Or was he taken away from her?”

“She was murdered. He was found in her apartment, clinging to her body. He was two years old, and she had been dead for three days.”

Frankie gasped. “Oh, Nik, that’s awful. Poor Dimitri. So how did he come to Ian and Drusilla?”

“His mother’s family, who lived here in the village, didn’t want him because of how he’d been conceived. So the priest stepped in again and arranged the adoption through the church.”

She lay still for a few minutes, processing the deeply heart-rending circumstances that had brought Nik and the oldest of his brothers to their loving family. “Do you or Dimitri keep in touch with your surviving relatives?” she asked after a short while. “Or have those ties been broken?”

“I have traveled to America and been reunited with my uncles and cousins. And Dimitri is now reconciled with his maternal aunt. It helped that both of us have made money,” he added sardonically.

“I bet it did. And how about Sergei?” she prompted softly.

“Sergei’s journey to us was incredible. He was born in Moscow. His father was a soldier in the Red Army. After his father abandoned his mother, she became an alcoholic. The only loving influence in his life was his grandmother, but she died when he was eight, and he ran away, using money she had given him to buy a train ticket. Nobody noticed a small boy traveling alone, because everything was in turmoil after the Soviet Union had collapsed the year before. He went to the Ukrainian border and sneaked into Romania, where he was picked up by gypsies. He stayed with them until they got down here to Greece. But when they moved on, he was left behind on Kathos and fended for himself, until Ian found him living on a beach and brought him home. It took a long time and a lot of wrangling with the Greek and Russian authorities for him to be adopted. His mother demanded money for him.”

“That is incredible. Ian and Drusilla must have been amazing people.”

“They were. It cannot have been easy, bringing up three small boys from disparate difficult backgrounds. But they gave us so much love. We have all turned out okay, I think. Like many on this island, Dimitri has made a fortune from growing olives and selling their oil to the Italians, who then export it to the rest of the world, and Sergei is a successful music producer in Athens.”

“You certainly have.” She smiled, loving being in his arms and hearing him talk about his family history. She hesitated before asking, “Am I right in thinking that Marco was adopted by Ian and Drusilla as well?”

“You are. Almost twenty-two years ago in late December, an Italian girl arrived in Agia Kalamaros. She was a young teenager and pregnant. She gave birth alone to a boy and abandoned him on the steps of the church. The only clue to the baby’s origins was that he was wrapped in a plastic bag that carried the address of a grocery store in the port of Bari in southern Italy, from where ferries sail to Paragolis. The priest turned to Ian and Drusilla, who took him in as their fourth son and named him Marco.”

“He was with you for two years?”

“Yes.”

Hearing the heavier, emotional note that had entered his voice, she stopped her questioning and just let him be, not wanting to cause him more distress. She listened to his breathing even out as he settled into a doze, and pondered on what he’d told her tonight. Though he’d obviously had a wonderful, loving home with Ian and Drusilla, as had the other boys, what must it have been like for him growing up knowing his real parents had been killed, and that his relatives didn’t want him? Or for Dimitri and Sergei, one orphaned by violence, the other rejected by his birth mother and forced to wander through Russia and the Balkans at such a young age? And then they’d had to deal with Marco’s disappearance, and now the question that hung over the remains on the mountain. She shivered. Definitely, she could understand if Nik had baggage, as Ali had called it. She remembered the glass of Metaxa for the missing brother that had sat across the table at Artemis TZ. It had been poignant and touching but also, she understood now, a symbol of the guilt she’d only recently realized Nik carried. If only she could help him to forgive himself for something she felt sure nobody could have prevented.

She felt him stir and stretch slightly. “Mmm…” He sighed and pecked a kiss on the top of her head. “Sorry, pet hi mou, I feel asleep for a while.”

“I could tell that by your snoring,” she teased.

“I was snoring?” he queried huffily. “That cannot be right.”

“How do you know?” she teased. “You were asleep.”

“I know I do not snore.”

“Okay.” She giggled. “You weren’t snoring. I was pulling your leg.”

“Pulling my leg?” He looked down. “My leg is where it should be, and I do not see your hand on it.”

“It means I was teasing you.”

“Ah, okay. Another strange English expression.” He smiled. “If you would like to put your hand on me now, I can show you exactly where to place it.” He grabbed her fingers and guided them to his hardening arousal, then rolled over and positioned himself above her. “Make me ready for you,” he growled, his eyes blazing.

Frankie dawdled in the reception room of KATS, reliving the delicious lovemaking of the night before. Memories of Nik’s tongue, his touch, the feel of him inside her, the scent of his skin as it had moved against hers and the joy he’d given her, making her shudder with satisfaction, flooded her senses.

“What are you smiling to yourself about, missy?” Ali interrupted her pleasurable recollections.

“Uh? Oh, nothing,” she denied as breezily as she could.

“It didn’t look like nothing to me. If I didn’t know any better, I would say you were thinking about Nik.”

Frankie shrugged, unable to stop her smile getting wider. “Maybe.”

Ali rubbed her arm affectionately. “It’s love, isn’t it?”

She felt a rush of emotion at the older woman’s incisive question. “No,” she defended, knowing her cheeks were flushing up and Ali wouldn’t believe her. She sighed, but then admitted, “Well, not quite.”

“But you’re well on the way.” Ali gave her a sideways hug. “I’ve seen how you light up when you see him or talk about him. Does he return your feelings?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “I have a wonderful time when I’m with him, and we’ve been getting on really well together when it comes to buying and making plans to renovate the Villa Lemoni. I’m really excited about that—”

“But?”

Her smile faded. “But recently, it feels like he’s holding something back. When we first got together, he was totally present. Now, it’s like there’s a part of him that’s withdrawn from me. I asked him whether he was feeling preoccupied by the pressure of waiting to hear whether those remains on the mountain belonged to Marco, and he sort of said yes.”

“Perhaps. It’ll be a dreadful thing to have to deal with if it’s true. Let’s hope it isn’t.” Ali regarded her, her expression perplexed. “It hasn’t got something to do with the appearance of Andrew then?”

Frankie’s brow creased, Ali’s question causing her a little ripple of unease. “He accepted it when I explained Andrew had actually come to say goodbye. He said we were okay when I asked him afterwards. He hasn’t mentioned it since, and I’ve got no appetite for talking about it or the divorce any more than I have to. I can’t wait to put all that behind me.” She sighed again. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s to do with Marco. He’s just having a hard time talking about it.”

Ali nodded. “You’re probably right. Whatever it is, I think you need to be patient with him, give him time. He hasn’t actually had a long-term relationship for a quite a while, not since Natassia—”

“I had been wondering if that had something to do with it,” Frankie interjected. “Will you tell me about her?”

Ali frowned. “You’ve not asked Nik yet?”

She shook her head.

“I would have preferred it if you’d talk to him. But I guess you need to know. They’d been together since their teens. Their wedding was organized and everything, and then she jilted him for his best friend, Christos.”

“Nik, jilted? He can have any woman he wants!”

“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But it happened and he was totally cut up about it at the time. He lost the girl he loved and his friend from childhood, and he was betrayed by both of them.”

“When was this?”

“About ten years ago. He would have been twenty-four.” Ali gave her another squeeze. “Even love-gods suffer rejection. Like I say, give him time. I expect he’s feeling as wary as you did a couple of months back.”

“Okay,” Frankie replied. She wondered how she could get Nik to talk more about Natassia without appearing gossipy or nosy. He held such a lot about his past inside himself. “That’s good advice. Thanks for being such a great friend.” She paused, and then grinned. “Changing the subject, I’ve had an idea about further fundraising for the shelter.”

Ali’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes? That would be very welcome since the new boiler has taken all the donations that Nik and the fire station made.”

“Why don’t we have an open day here? It’ll have to be in the next two or three weeks, because we want to catch the tourists before the season ends. I thought we could ask Nik and Kostas if one of the fire trucks could be brought up here for the kids. We could have Até and Theo too, and we could serve traditional English tea, homemade lemonade, and cakes for a small price.”

“Oh, I see. Have I got to get baking, then?” Ali pulled a face.

“Well, you make the best cakes I’ve ever tasted. And I do believe Gladys isn’t bad either. That fruit cake she brought in for us was yummy.”

Ali laughed. “It was full of alcohol, I know that. I couldn’t walk in a straight line after I’d eaten a slice.” She clapped her hands together. “I like that idea very much. You get on to Nik and Kostas, and I’ll rope in Gladys, and ask Sally to order in what we need in the way of ingredients and tea and put up posters in the mini-market. Maybe Nik can display a couple in Artemis AK, and persuade a few other bar and restaurant owners on the strip to do the same.”

Frankie nodded her agreement. “Gladys’s daughter and her husband and family are here for the week. I’ll see if her grandchildren will help me post flyers in the hotels and holiday apartments. I’ll also update the website. Gosh, we haven’t got that much time to get it all organized. Think we’re going to be busy!”