Читать книгу The Summer House in Santorini - Samantha Parks - Страница 12

A couple of days later, Anna and Nikos were stood in line at Vodafone to get Anna a Greek cell phone. She was only going to be in town for a little while, but she had racked up an impressive phone bill for the month of May, so she needed to use a bit less data and make fewer calls. At the moment, she was scrolling obsessively through Instagram while connected to the WiFi, liking all the Memorial Day photos of people in the Hamptons and Nantucket.

“Are those people your friends?” Nikos asked, watching over her shoulder.

“Not really,” Anna said. “A couple of them are friends from high school or the city. But most of them are just bloggers and YouTubers.”

Nikos rolled his eyes. “I swear, Instagram is the best and the worst thing to ever happen to this island. We’re grateful for the business, but it’s a pain in the ass to be stopped every few meters in Oia because someone doesn’t want any people in their photo stood on top of someone’s wall.”

Anna laughed. “Tell us how you really feel.”

He shot her a look. “Honestly, don’t get me started. I could rant about influencers” – he made air quotes with his fingers – “all day long.”

It was their turn at the counter, so Anna set the flip phone she had chosen in front of her and let Nikos do the talking. She wasn’t about to get talked out of all her money because she didn’t speak Greek. When Nikos went to pay, Anna tried to press her credit card into his palm, but he shook his head and squeezed her hand in his.

“Why did you do that?” she asked him as they exited the shop, her new flip phone in her purse next to her iPhone.

“Your grandfather saw everything we bought the other day and told me to put anything else you need on the business account.”

“What? Really? Why would he do that?” Anna asked, though she knew the answer. She smiled as she thought about how excited he had been to see her.

“Not everyone is as upset as Eirini about a new generation of Xenakises taking up residence in the summer house.”

Anna frowned a bit. “My name’s Linton,” she said, realizing even as she said it how ungrateful she sounded. These people were her family, after all.

Nikos looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Clearly, he was as unimpressed with her comment as she was. “Whatever you are, your grandfather is really excited that you’re here. And I think his feelings would be hurt if he heard how quickly you disown his son and his family, two things he’s extremely proud of.”

Anna looked at her shoes as they walked. She didn’t like Nikos chastising her. But when she peeked up at him, he wasn’t frowning but smiling softly at her. She returned the smile with her own tentative version.

“That is, if he could understand you to begin with, which would be a miracle,” he said, breaking the tension. They laughed together for a moment the unease of his reprimand effectively diffused for the moment. They climbed into the truck, and Anna broached the topic again, less defensively this time.

“So, you knew Giorgos—” Nikos shot her a look from the driver’s seat. “Sorry, I mean, you knew my dad well?”

Nikos nodded. “Really well. My father was never in the picture, and my mother died in childbirth. They were really poor, and she couldn’t get to a hospital. But my aunt was there, and she raised me along with my cousins, even though she was a single mother as well. When she got sick, I came back from university to help out, and your father convinced your grandfather to give me a job. I had never even held a hammer before, and look at me now.”

He grinned and sat up straight, and Anna giggled. Nikos looked over at her and smiled.

“I love your laugh,” he said, and Anna felt her face flush immediately.

“You know you do that a lot, right?” he said, his gaze locked on her.

“Do what? Laugh?”

“No, blush when I look at you.”

Of course, all this did was make Anna blush even more. She turned away and looked out the window, rolling it down a bit to get some fresh air on her face.

“Anyway,” Nikos said, thankfully changing the subject. “Your dad took me under his wing. He trained me, not just at work, but also at home. He taught me how to cook for my aunt and cousins, and he showed me how to budget. He even helped me finish my sustainable agriculture degree online.”

“He did?” Anna asked, turning to him. “I wouldn’t have thought he would have known about that sort of thing.”

“That’s just it, he didn’t,” Nikos said. “He stayed up just as late as I did every night, reading the textbooks and quizzing me on the effect of nuclear power plants on the environment. And when my aunt died and I couldn’t get out of bed for days, he logged on and took one of my tests for me. Got an A, too.”

Anna looked down at her hands. This sounded like the father she remembered from when she had been little. Caring. Thoughtful. Passionate. Not like the man who had cheated on them and then left. “You make him sound like such a good guy.”

“He was,” Nikos said firmly. “The best. And an amazing father, no matter what you think you know. And the day his heart gave out was the saddest day of my life.”

Anna had been ordered her whole life to never talk about her father, never to bring him up around her mother, until she didn’t want to talk about him either. But now she was a part of his world; living in his house, with his parents. Hanging out with someone he apparently spent so much of his time with. And she found herself growing more and more curious about who he really was.

“Maybe you can tell me more about him sometime,” Anna said as they pulled up to the house.

“I’d like that,” Nikos said, smiling. He parked the truck and put his hand tentatively on Anna’s knee. It was warm, and she could feel his calluses on her skin. She froze at his touch, not ready to reciprocate it but not wanting to scare him off either.

“But for now,” he said, moving his hand away, “we have a bathroom to tile!” Then he turned, climbed out of the truck and disappeared through the gate. Anna could still feel where his hand had been on her knee.

Eventually, she got out of the truck and grabbed a pack of tiles from the bed, barely able to lift it herself. As she came through the courtyard, she could hear Nikos arguing with someone up ahead – a woman, in Greek. As she turned the corner, she nearly dropped the tiles on her feet at the sight of one of the most beautiful girls she had ever seen shouting at Nikos. Her hair was so long that a bit of it was caught in the waistband of her jean shorts, the colour the same dark brown as Nikos’s. She looked to be around the same age as him. Anna wondered who she was and why they were shouting at each other, but she had a sinking feeling she was walking into the middle of a lovers’ quarrel.