The Summer Deal (19 page)

“That was why you drove like a maniac near the beach bar,” she said, rolling her tongue over her teeth.

“Yes. Then there was the accident and explosion at the bungalow. I can’t prove it, but I know he’s behind it.”

She rubbed her fingers in a circular motion against her temples. “I agree. I felt the same way. I was relieved when you told me the village history. Brad would stand out like a sore thumb here, but not in the city with the tourists.”

“Ah, so you were keeping something from me.” He looked relieved that she too had not been one hundred percent forthcoming with her thoughts. The corner of his lips seemed to smile.

“It’s not the same. I didn’t say much because I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to overreact.” She defended her silence.

“My sentiments exactly,” he said.

“Touché, Demo. Tell me the rest.”

“As I’ve told you, the authorities were about to arrest him, but what you don’t know is that he vanished with a fake passport. For some reason, Zoë urged Tony to search for a Daniel Bradley. Someone using that name entered Crete on Wednesday evening.”

She nodded her head, her intellect in control. “That makes sense. It’s something he’d do. A simple thing like transposing his first and last name. He’d want me to figure it out, and he’d want me to fear his next move.”

“And what do you think it will be?”

“I don’t know right now,” she said, sitting again.

“Sammy, you know him better than the rest of us. Try to get inside his head and see what he’s thinking. We need to stay one step ahead of him, and once we have him, we can turn him over to the US Embassy. The Greek government will probably want to deal with him on the fake passport issue first.”

“You’ve told Manoli and your other relatives about this?”

“I had to. It was the best way to make sure he doesn’t get close to you.”

“I understand.” At least she tried to. Logically, having knowledge gave them the best weapons. She should have known, too. She could have handled the information. “I do feel very safe here. I just wish I had known. No, I wish you would have told me, trusted me not to panic and for us to have worked as a team. I have an issue with other people making decisions for me. I don’t want or like it. My whole life has been about maintaining control. Each time somebody else has it, I get hurt. Demo, you can’t imagine what it’s been like. I’ve lost so much; I can’t stand to lose anything else.”

Despite the great deal of strength required for her to admit that, she felt relieved to have vocalized her fears and finally opened the door to let some skeletons out. Her anger and frustration dissipated. Her body relaxed.

Demo pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her. “I won’t leave you,
agape mou
. We’re a team in every sense of the word, maybe a mulish team, but a team all the same. You’re stuck with me.” Kissing her, he lifted Sammy in his arms, and carried her inside. “You’re not going to shake me,
koukla
.”

Sammy held onto him, felt his strong neck under her hands, and sank into the warmth of his chest. She wanted him. She needed him.

He placed her gently on the bed, and began to slowly unbutton her shirt. Pushing the material aside, he splayed his hands over her chest
and caressed the aching skin. She needed him. She wanted him. Never could she deny those facts
.

“Mine,” he claimed.

“Yours,” she whispered.

He then took her hand in his and placed it over his t-shirt. “And my heart is yours.”

Demo, the man she’
d
secretly loved for months, made slow, passionate love to her—the woman he’d been silently protecting for months.

*****

Her stomach growled and she laughed as he nibbled on the back of her shoulder, tickling her with the stubble on his chin. When her stomach rumbled again, she remembered the eggs sitting on the table on the balcony. What a waste of good food.

“I think someone is ready to get out of bed,” he said. Running his hands over her body, he played with the curls covering her most intimate area, wandering across her stomach on a sensuous march up her ribcage. He settled on her breasts and feathered the tender velvet tips, which peaked the instant he paid attention to them.

“I guess you’re tired then,” she teased.

“I’m never too tired for you,” he said, shifting to the left so that she fell on her back. “Never,” he repeated, and parted her thighs with his knees, plunging into her warmth.

She moaned with the unexpected ecstasy as he moved within her.

“I want to hear you cry out with pleasure.”

“Mmm,” was all she could manage as she her eyelids fluttered shut.

“Open your beautiful eyes. They get so big and dark when you give yourself completely to the sensations of your body. I want to see you. I want you to see me.”

He thrust deeper and she tightened to hold him there, inside her, filling her and making her come apart.

“Demo,” she cried, and the stars exploded as he let go and joined her in the rapture of their union.

“Wake up,
agape mou
. It’s time to eat.” He placed a tray of bread, feta and olives on the bedside table and sat on the bed to stroke her silky hair.

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Did you say food?”

“I can’t expect you to live on love alone.” He tore a piece of the crusty bread and brought it to her lips.

“Mmm, breakfast in bed,” she said.

“Actually it’s after lunchtime. It is almost four in the afternoon.” He laughed and licked a crumb off her chest.

She sat up abruptly and swatted his roaming hand. “Stop! Your family will be here soon. You invited them for afternoon coffee. I’m naked. They’ll see us.”

He chuckled. “Only if they walk into our bedroom.”

“Stop it.” She pushed his head away as he attempted to lower it to her neck. “We need to get ready.”

He was still laughing. “Relax. Afternoon coffee is no earlier than seven or eight. Dinner is at ten or eleven. Remember?”

“Oh, I forgot. Thank God,” she said, turning to settle against him. “In that case, let’s eat.”

They sat on the bed and fed each other, devouring the tray of food like hungry wolves. When their hunger sated, they laid together, looking at the ceiling.

“Brad won’t come to the village,” she said. “He doesn’t like direct confrontations. He thrives on head games instead.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the way he gets a thrill out of fear. He plays on people’s emotions and sympathies, striking a scar. An old wound, something that will hurt the most.” She pushed on her stomach. “He’s a coward when it comes to a physical altercation with someone his own size. And you’re bigger. Plus, you have the whole village behind you. His plan will be to divide and conquer.”

“Then you had better not leave my side. I don’t want him to find you alone.” He wrapped his arms and legs around her, leaving no distance between them.

“I don’t either.”

Feeling her shudder, he tightened his hold. No one would hurt her again. Never! Baffled at how she ever got involved with someone like Daniels, he had to ask, “What did you ever see in him?”

“I was naïve. He was a smooth talker and my first boyfriend. Once we...well you know, I thought I would be with him forever.”

“So he was your first?”

“Yeah. Too bad I didn’t have anyone to compare him to, or I would have known what a bad lover he was.”

This was too much information. Demo considered himself a pretty modern and progressive Neanderthal, but he didn’t want to hear her sexual history. These details were in the past. She was his now, and he was not going to let her go. Not ever.

“You were my first orgasm,” she said against his forearm.

His back stiffened. How could that be? The woman in his arms was like molten lava. Her passion ignited faster than rocket fuel.

“He said I was priggish and frigid. I couldn’t satisfy him, and that’s why he went with other women.”

“That’s despicable and an outright lie.” Demo turned her around to look into her glorious eyes, the entrance to her soul. Their usual sparkle dulled with self-doubt.

“Don’t you see what you do to me?” Needing to assure himself that she understood, he pushed her palm over the physical evidence. “Even when I’m furious, I want you. When I’m happy, I want you. When I’m terrified, I want you. And I’m constantly battling my libido when I think of you. Working with you, and not being with you, was torture. A sweet torture that I looked forward to every morning from the day I hired you.”

Her eyes grew wide and beamed with pleasure from the knowledge of his longing for her. Her rosy cheeks were warm to his touch and her mouth dropped open, but she did not speak.

He cupped her face. “As I will testify on a stack of bibles, you’re definitely
not
frigid. Now if you care to experiment with more adventure, I’ll be happy to oblige you. I’ll even offer my body as a sacrifice and let you ravage me in the
platia
if you wish, in the position of your choice.”

She laughed at his suggestion. “You’re something else, Demo. You make me feel so good.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to keep me around?”

“For the time being,” she teased.

“No,
agape mou
, not for the time being, not for a ridiculous summer deal, but forever. Marry me, be my wife, be the mother of my children. You’re my other half.”

Her body shivered and then she pulled away. She stared at him, a look of disbelief and dismay on her beautiful face. He held his breath in anticipation, and waited, giving her time to respond.

She cleared her throat. “This is very sudden. I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes,” he coaxed. He studied her expression, but could not read it. He swallowed the knot closing his air passage. “Unless you don’t feel the same about me.”

“It’s not that. I don’t picture myself as someone’s wife anymore, and I don’t plan to have kids. I don’t know if it’s fair to bring a child into this world.”

“Not s
omeone’s
wife, my wife,
yineka mou
. Mine. Why don’t you want to have children? They are a blessing.”

“I need time to think if I could be what you want me to be. I need to be sure I could do it, could give you everything you want.”

Her eyes were full of self-doubt again, her lips were tightly drawn on her face, and her chin jutted a bit too far out. He sensed a buried pain in her, and he feathered his thumb over her lower lip to soothe it.

“Take as long as you need. I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll be right here with you the whole time. Just say yes.” His finger lifted her chin and he looked into the mirror of her soul; she was in such conflict. “Can I try to influence the judge?”

She nodded silently, and he kissed her with a tenderness he didn’t know he had.

Sammy had worked hard to regain her self-confidence and achieve her independence. She didn’t think she could relinquish it ever again. Then how could she explain what she felt with Demo?

She didn’t need to. She loved him. And because she loved him, she’d have to leave him. The sooner she did, the better prepared she’d be for the heartbreak. Maybe she’d even manage to salvage a tiny bit of her heart when she left and went back to her empty personal life.

The doctor had told her all she needed to know last fall. He’d made her decision for her months ago. It wasn’t possible for her to consider marrying the man who had stolen her heart without doing him a great injustice.

Demo interrupted her thoughts. “Let’s get dressed and go to the bakery before it closes. When we get back, I’ll set up the coffee things, and you can study.”

“Study?” she asked, surprised at the suggestion.

“Yes, you’re not getting out of it. Don’t even think you can try. We have at least two hours before people start coming, and I know they won’t leave early. We’ll probably all go to the
taverna
for dinner. You can’t neglect your studying because of the family.”

“Okay,” she said softly. “Thanks.”

Sammy lived the next two days in an enchanted folktale. Making love, studying, eating, and laughing with Demo filled her every waking moment.

They walked through the vineyards, and Demo told her about the family’s co-operative for wine and olives. They had land across all of western Crete. They took drives to lower altitudes so that he could show her the olive groves.

Her favorite activity was target practice in the back of the house. She was surprised by what a thrill it was to hit a bulls-eye, and she did it often. Demo had joked she could add sharp shooter to her list of career choices.

The nights were spent in the comfort of the arms of the man she loved. Relishing each moment she had with him, and loving him more with each breath.

Sammy couldn’t bring herself to tell him how she felt, but she showed him in every way she could. She even tried to cook his favorite lunch. Placing the soupy concoction in front of him, she waited for him to taste it.