The Greek’s Cinderella Deal by Carol Marinelli

CHAPTER FIVE

‘HOWWASYOURBIRTHDAY, Mary?’

Sitting opposite her father on her regular Monday afternoon visit, she thought that precious time with Costa seemed light years away.

‘It was fine.’ Mary pushed out a smile.

‘What did you get up to?’

She tried to come up with something, but no words were forthcoming. ‘Just...’

Mary couldn’t explain to her father, let alone herself, what had transpired. Not the awful part, nor the job offer, not even the cake...

‘How’s work?’ Her father broke into her thoughts and perhaps read them a little. ‘No luck with the apprenticeship?’

‘No.’ She told him a little of what was going on in her world. ‘Coral gave it to the daughter of a friend.’

‘You’ve still got a job, though?’ he checked.

‘Yes...’ Mary took a breath. The glimmer of confidence she had found in speaking with Costa felt almost snuffed out now, but she was fighting to reignite it. ‘I’m applying elsewhere, though. I went to the library this morning and found a book on writing a CV.’

‘That’s good.’ Her father looked at her. ‘Mary, you know I love seeing you, but I don’t want to hold you back...’

‘Dad, please don’t.’

She did not want to hear again how he’d prefer it if she didn’t come and how he loathed her seeing him here.

There was a dreadful stretch of silence then, and still a full fifty minutes to go. Both knew what the other was thinking.

About that fateful night.

‘I’m so sorry, Mary...’

‘Dad, please...’ Mary shrivelled into herself, for it was something she simply could not think about, let alone sit and discuss.

And so they sat in silence.

Yet as she looked at her frail father, once so dependable and strong, every moment of that night played like a magic lantern on the walls of her mind.

Her grandmother had come over to babysit while her parents attended a function. Mary had been in trouble again, and was to have been sent to bed early with no treats.

‘No treats!’Granny Farrell had exclaimed. ‘Why not?’

‘Because Mary has to learn,’her dad had said. He’d come over and knelt down beside her and taken her clenched hands in his. ‘You can’t just go running off like you did.’

‘I know.’

‘Mary, what you did was extremely dangerous...’ He’d looked over to her mum. ‘Perhaps we should give tonight a miss.’

‘She’ll be fine,’her mum had said as she’d picked up the car keys. ‘Anyway, we won’t be long. We’ll just put in an appearance.’

‘But Mary’s upset.’

‘Then she needs a night with Granny. Come on, darling, or we’ll be late.’

There had been the swirl of her mum’s dress as she’d crossed the room, the familiar floral scent as she’d bent over and kissed her pinched face, which had been blotchy from crying.

‘There are some treats,’her mum had whispered as she’d wrapped Mary in her arms. ‘Let Granny think she found them. I love you, darling.’

Fourteen years on, Mary could still feel the tender, fragrant shelter of her mother’s embrace, which was denied to her for ever now.

It was a relief when visiting time ended.

There was no sign of spring as she stepped out into the rain, just grey upon grey. Even the red bus looked grimy as it approached, and Mary was jostled as she stepped on. There were no seats, so she stood holding on to the back of one, jolting with each stop-start lurch. As they turned into the high street and neared her stop, all Mary wanted to do was get in the shower and... Not just wash away the prison smell, but to cry in a way that she hadn’t since her mother’s funeral.

But Mary was scared that if she started she might never stop.

She was still so very hurt by and cross with her father, but there could be nothing gained by revealing that to him. Mary knew he was depressed, and blamed himself for the accident, and knew of the downward spiral he had fallen into afterwards.

The worst part—the unsaid part—was that she also blamed him.

How she wanted to be back there in the lounge of that hotel now, sipping hot chocolate and talking... Being listened to.

Costa had actually sat down with her and taken the time to consider her options—had offered her work.

In that slice of time she had felt seen.

But even before that thought had been properly processed Mary amended it, for suddenly all she wanted to do was remain unseen. She wanted nothing more than to hide.

For Costa Leventis was stepping out of a luxury car similar to the one that had taken her home the other night.

Mary didn’t exactly dress up when she visited her father in prison, and she was horribly aware of her thick black tights and the even thicker jumper over a denim skirt—all drenched, of course.

Naturally he looked stunning, in a long, dark coat and shoes that made her think of Sir Walter Raleigh putting down his cloak for the Queen. He was rakishly unshaven, Mary noted uncomfortably. It was as though the devil himself had come to her door—except it wasn’t terror that had her stomach tightening as he approached.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I booked in for a trim.’

‘We’re closed on Mondays,’ Mary said, and took out her keys.

‘So how come you’re working?’

‘Just catching up while it’s quiet,’ she responded, too embarrassed to admit she lived there. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on.’

‘I have a proposal to put to you.’

‘I said no.’

‘A different one.’

‘No, thank you!’ Mary answered tartly.

She couldn’t bear it that he thought she charged by the hour. Except she didn’t unlock the door and go inside. Costa challenged her at every level. He was the most perfect sight for sore eyes, and the most exciting, unexpected moment of her dreary day.

‘It’s a serious proposal. If you would rather I don’t come in, of course that’s fine, but can we at least go somewhere more conducive to conversation? I don’t have much time...’

She knew she should just end this now—except it was as if her heart had been waiting to see him again, and she was curious as to what he had to say.

‘Very well.’ Mary nodded and unlocked the salon door. ‘But just for a moment...’

She felt as if she should apologise in advance for her rather tawdry living conditions, but then she remembered he didn’t know that she lived there.

Eftelis.

That was Costa’s first thought as he entered the salon to the jangle of a bell and looked around. It was tacky, garish, and everything Mary was not.

She does not belong here, was his second.

‘May I sit?’ he asked politely.

‘Please do.’

And although he sat in a chair in which perhaps a thousand others had also sat, Costa did not blend in. He was just too much man for the salon. She imagined the flurry if he were to walk in from the street on a work day...

‘Please don’t make this a habit,’ Mary told him. ‘I doubt my boss will be pleased if I have friends dropping by.’

‘I am glad you consider me a friend,’ Costa answered smoothly.

‘I meant—’

‘I know what you meant. Don’t worry—I have no intention of ever coming here again.’

Mary felt her nostrils pinch, for there was a slight warning behind his words that told her this man would never make a pest of himself.

It told her, too, that she had better listen—that this opportunity, this ‘proposal’ would not be made more than once. Costa Leventis was not a man who repeated himself.

She chose to stand as he angled the faux leather chair to face her. His coat fell open and beneath it she saw he was wearing a dark suit and crisp white shirt with a gunmetal-grey tie...

Quite simply, he thrilled her.

‘You have created quite a stir online,’ Costa told her. ‘I assume you’ve seen the gossip?’

‘What gossip?’

‘People are asking “Who is she?” because there is a photo circulating online of us outside the hotel. You really haven’t seen it?’

Mary gave a slight shake of her head. ‘I don’t have a mobile phone. I told you.’

To Costa it was as if she were in some kind of time warp, separate from the world around her...

Her arms were folded and at any moment, Costa knew, she would be ready to tell him to get the hell out.

Mary confused him: she was well-spoken and evidently clever, and yet she could not secure an apprenticeship. And she was so wary... Yet given the nature of her second job she was clearly adventurous too.

Her blonde hair was dark from the rain and unbrushed today, but her blue eyes were so vivid that each time they met his there was an element of surprise. For they were the colour of the Aegean Sea. Not the Aegean he could see from his Athens high-rise—her eyes were the colour of the Aegean on a summer’s day in Anapliró.

‘Your name is apt,’ he said now.

‘Is it?’

‘I remember when I learnt English at school there was a rhyme—“Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary”. I was eight or so, and had no idea what contrary meant.’

He looked at her innocent and yet not so innocent eyes, her full lips and her absolutely unspoiled beauty, and he knew that she kept secrets.

‘I am starting to understand the meaning a little better now...’

‘I don’t think you came here to discuss nursery rhymes.’

‘Of course not. I am here because I have just found out that I am to return to Anapliró at the weekend for my mother’s fiftieth...’

‘Fiftieth!’ Mary said. ‘Gosh, she must have had you—’ Costa’s deliberate eyebrow raise served to halt her. He did not need the all too familiar judgment as to how old his mother must have been when she’d had him.

‘Yolanda has suddenly decided she wants a party, and naturally wants me there.’ He noticed her frown as he referred to his mother by her first name. ‘I’ve been giving it some thought and I have decided it would be easier all round if I bring someone...’

Costa was being so direct that there was no room in Mary’s mind for any flight of fantasy that he was asking her on a date.

‘There is an ex of sorts,’ Costa went on. ‘And my return will raise expectations—not just from my mother, but from the islanders too. They all want to get involved in my life and I just want them off my back. My bringing you to the party would achieve that. At the very least it would shut them down for a while.’

‘Don’t you have a lover you could take?’

‘Not one who wouldn’t read too much into it—whereas you and I have no romantic history, so there are no illusions to shatter.’

Mary chose not to correct him, or to reveal that she’d actually been spinning romantic illusions about him since they’d parted on Saturday night.

Not now.

For there was nothing romantic about what he proposed.

He hadn’t even prettied things up by arriving with flowers. Instead, he had no issue in getting straight to the unsavoury point.

‘You would be well compensated.’

‘I thought you never paid for company?’

‘I don’t,’ he agreed. ‘But on this occasion there is definite appeal. Yolanda is a white witch—she would spot a fake date a mile off.’

‘I would be a fake date, though.’

‘Of course, but you are...different,’ he said.

It was exactly what people tended to whisper behind her back—or at times said outright to her face. Except he did not say it unkindly...so much so that she wondered if it was the smooth silk of his voice that made it sound almost like a compliment.

‘Different?’ She checked the word again, just in case he might want to amend it.

‘Refreshingly so,’ he admitted, and swung a little in the chair.

Costa was trying to fathom what it was about Mary that muddled his brain. Her beauty was a given, but if that were the sole criteria there were many beautiful women he could take.

There was something about her that intrigued him. Like a magazine quiz he might take in an idle moment, only to find the answers torn out when he turned to find them at the back.

‘Okay, I need to bring more than a date,’ Costa said. ‘It needs to look as if we’re serious—and, thanks to the photo now circulating in the media, you’re already the talk of Anapliró.’

He held out his phone and she took it and stared silently at the image of them on the screen.

‘Your face is obscured, so don’t worry.’

Right now, Mary wasn’t worried about being recognised. She was entirely consumed by how the image had captured the moment, and the look in Costa’s eyes as he stared down at her.

It must be a trick of the light, she told herself, or the angle of the camera, but they looked so intimate...as if they were lovers indeed.

‘It’s not possible.’ Her voice was a little croaky as she handed him back his phone. ‘I’d be fired if I took time off at short notice. We can’t all drop everything in our lives to hop onto a private jet.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Costa said, ‘but I don’t believe in private jets. You’d be flying commercial.’ His voice softened. ‘If your boss would fire you merely for having a life, might I suggest that you need this more than ever.’

His words gave her pause.

‘I have thought about what you said about feeling adrift,’ he continued, ‘and I understand that you might not want to move to Greece to work, but a long weekend in Anapliró could mean a whole new start.’

He told her the whole deal then. How her wardrobe, travel and accessories would ‘naturally’ be accounted for. But it was the cash figure he offered that had her frowning.

‘Not enough?’ Costa checked, as if this was a negotiating tactic.

But she watched his cynicism dim with her next words.

‘Costa, it would change my life.’

It truly would. For it was enough to pay for accommodation while she looked for other work. Enough to get the hell out of this place and for the first time in her adult life to breathe without fear. But...

‘You yourself warned me to be more careful,’ she told him. ‘How do I know that I’m not just walking straight back into trouble?’

‘I can have it all put in writing if you so choose.’

‘As if that would help me!’ Mary gave a hollow laugh. ‘I’m sure you have a team of lawyers at your disposal.’

‘Perhaps, but although this is strictly a business deal, I have ensured that it benefits us both.’

For so many years Mary had chosen to stay quiet, but with him she more easily found her voice, and now she said what she guessed few would ever dare. ‘I imagine you once said the same to Eric Ridgemont. Have you told him yet that you’re pulling out of whatever deal it is you agreed with him?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Actually, it is.’ Mary watched a muscle leap in his cheek, but he didn’t scare her the way Eric had, or Coral did, or the way life tended to at times. ‘Isn’t a gentleman’s word supposed to be his bond?’

He nodded curtly.

‘From where I was sitting the other night, it looked as if Eric was about to get badly burnt.’

‘Forget it,’ Costa said, and abruptly stood up. He felt as though she had her teeth lodged in his Achilles’ heel. ‘It was just a suggestion. Thank you for your time.’

But Mary was a brand of trouble he had never before encountered, for instead of stalking out he found himself pausing. Then he turned around.

‘I have just come from meeting Ridgemont and, yes, I have told him. I don’t generally go back on my word.’

‘I can only go on what I’ve seen.’

‘I have my reasons.’

He was aware that she had seen him poised with a wrecking ball on Saturday night. The same wrecking ball he had delivered this very afternoon. But while she was right to question him—and he admired her for it—Costa was hesitant to answer her.

‘I have never discussed this with another living soul,’ he said at last.

Mary knew that feeling only too well. ‘We all have our secrets.’

He looked at those stunning blue eyes and knew she was asking him to trust her. He felt compelled to find it within himself to do it.

‘You were right about us going back further than fifteen years.’ He paused, still so loath to share his sordid past. ‘What you don’t know, and neither does he, is that he walked over my mother.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Exactly that. I was working at a marina. My mother worked there too, and she had an attack.’ He saw Mary frown and explained. ‘She has MS, and for the first time she had lost her vision. It was temporary—not that she knew that at the time. She collapsed. Your boyfriend just stepped over her body on the ground.’

‘Please don’t call him that.’

‘Your client, then.’

And now her eyes were as blue as the midday sky of home, and he was right back there, reliving that day.

‘He just stepped right over her,’ Costa repeated. ‘I called for water and he didn’t even turn. In fact, he and his friends laughed. Their yacht had a doctor, its own helicopter, and yet they just let her lie there. And then, when no help arrived, they had Security move her because their guests were arriving. She messed with the aesthetics, I suppose. I have hated him for a very long time.’

‘Yet you do business with him?’

‘I do,’ Costa agreed. ‘Or rather, until this afternoon I did. There are a lot of deals made on those yachts, and I taught myself to play his filthy game in order to beat him at it.’

So far this experience was proving less cathartic than he had hoped. Instead it was making his guts burn.

‘I was always going to cut loose, though, and I was very much looking forward to severing all contact the other night. But then, dear Mary, I’d have left him all to you.’

Mary blinked, taking it all in, yet still wanting to know much more, but clearly Costa had already said way more than he’d intended to.

‘It’s one long weekend,’ he told her. ‘And you’d have most of it to yourself.’

‘To myself?’

‘Friday we’ll be on Thira, sorting out your wardrobe and getting our stories straight...’

‘Thira?’

‘Santorini.’

‘But I thought you lived in Athens?’

‘Santorini is where we will sort out the things a serious partner would know—for, believe me, the whole island will be watching me with my outsider...’

‘Outsider?’

‘You.’

Mary shrugged, despite how much it hurt to be described this way. ‘I am always an outsider.’

‘Not to me. And I’ll be with you.’

‘How would we say we met?’

‘We’ll deal with that later...’ Costa said dismissively, but then appeared to give it some thought. ‘Best we stick close to the truth and say you were dating a mutual acquaintance...’

He shrugged.

‘Friday evening we would fly to Anapliró, to say a quick hello to my mother.’ He held up one finger. ‘You can spend the day as you like until the party on Saturday night.’ He held up another. ‘I am spending the day with her on Sunday.’ He did not raise a third finger. ‘There’s no need to for you to come along.’

‘I might want to come along.’

Costa actually gave a half-laugh. He obviously thought she was joking.

‘You would have the entire day to yourself.’ He raised a third finger. ‘We’d fly back to Athens on Sunday night, and from there you would return to London.’

While he made it sound so straightforward, clean and above board, Mary hated how much it made her sound like a paid escort. Inwardly she laughed wryly at the fact that she’d never so much as been kissed by a man, save for that wretched slobber from Eric the other night...

‘Look, I know you must think...’ She didn’t know how best to put it. Her cheeks were scalding. ‘I mean, when we met—’

‘I understand that you are trying to change your life,’ Costa cut in. ‘I really mean it when I say that I am only paying for your acting skills. I need a devoted girlfriend in public. The fact we have chemistry only serves to make it more believable...’

‘Chemistry?’ Mary checked, because that was the very thing she had been attempting to hide, yet he simply stated it upfront.

‘Élxi,’Costa stated it in Greek, for her bewilderment had him momentarily wondering about his choice of word in English. Certainly he did not doubt for a second the energy that thrummed between them. ‘Lure’ was what he settled for. ‘I find you beautiful, and there is no denying that we are attracted to each other. I mean, look at the photo!’

Though Mary stood stock-still, there was no denying it. And she didn’t need to see the photo again to confirm the something that had nearly occurred the other night.

Was still occurring.

His scent was subtle, yet its notes were already familiar, and she felt an odd craving to move closer to him. And although his eyes never left her face, the effect of his silvery gaze set off an internal cascade, as if plump velvet dominos were quietly falling. She felt each pump of blood in her veins and the spread of warmth beneath her damp clothing, as well as a choking awareness that she had never encountered before.

Until him.

‘However...’ Costa broke into her dangerous thoughts ‘...I am certainly not paying for sex.’

‘Oh.’

She felt suddenly and most curiously deflated. As if every fizzing cell that had been happily bounding towards unknown and uncharted territories had suddenly ground to an abrupt halt.

‘And you don’t have to worry,’ he continued blithely. ‘I loathe PDAs, so I won’t be all over you. We would have to dance, of course, and they would expect that we’d kiss now and then, but that would be all.’

‘And no sex?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

He looked right at her then, and the look was so potent that it stripped her. Not just of her clothes; she felt suddenly translucent—as though he could see right inside her and witness her tightening desire.

‘I’m not sure I know what you mean...’ Mary croaked.

‘Then I’ll make it very clear: apart from when we have an audience present, I won’t lay a finger on you.’

‘And when the audience is not present?’

‘The same,’ Costa said. ‘You either want me or you don’t.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘I have a guest suite in my villa.’

‘Wouldn’t the maids think it odd...?’

‘I don’t give a damn what they think. Maybe that I snore?’

‘And if...?’ She felt a little giddy, baffled that she was even attempting to say what she was about to. ‘And if I do...?’

‘Then you come to me.’

Her throat squeezed tight on the breath she tried to drag in, for Mary could not fathom ever being so bold.

And yet...and yet...

‘Any other questions?’ he demanded, perhaps a little sarcastically.

Hiring an escort should surely not be so complicated, he thought. Still, he had done his best to put her at ease, but now he really did need to get on.

‘I can arrange an airport hotel for Thursday, and you’d depart early Friday morning.’

‘We wouldn’t fly together?’

‘Fly together?’ He gave a bemused frown. ‘No. I’m heading to the airport now.’

‘But you said you were here all week.’

‘Mary, if we do meet to get our stories straight, there is one thing you should know about me: I don’t run my plans, nor any changes I make to them, by anyone.’

‘Poor her, then,’ Mary said to his departing back as that awful bell jangled when he opened the door.

‘Poor who?’

‘Your real partner,’ Mary said, and he turned around. ‘The one who has to keep the “for future reference” book on you.’

‘There will never be one.’

‘Never?’ Mary asked.

‘Never, ever,’ Costa said and, eternally wary, decided to make very sure. He closed the door. ‘You are clear that there is nothing more to this than a temporary arrangement, aren’t you?’

‘I’m just...’ She looked up at him. ‘I’m just interested, that’s all. You really don’t want someone in your life?’

‘I don’t,’ Costa agreed. ‘Being beholden to no one is my sole aim.’

‘Wow!’ Mary blinked. ‘That sounds a whole lot better than being adrift. I might have to try it.’

‘Do,’ Costa said and, although he really should have been long since gone, there was a certain pleasure in her company that made him linger just a little while more. ‘There is a saying in Greece—gia parti mou. It’s my party. It means doing something for yourself, taking care of yourself, putting yourself first. I highly recommend it.’

‘I shall take it on board,’ Mary said, and this time it was she who opened the door for him.

‘Try it!’ Costa said as his driver jumped out of the car and walked at pace to open the door and then hopefully get Costa to the airport in the nick of time.

He lingered for a fraction of a second too long, and then gave in to the thought that had been ruling his head since Saturday night.

Her hair was almost dry now, and bunched in unruly waves—just the way it might look on his pillow.

Ifshe ever came to him.

He still could not read Mary. He had seen her gorgeous eyes light up with desire, and he had seen her turn, ready to run, that first night when she had thought he offered sex.

There was so much going on beneath the surface, Costa knew. But there was a lot at stake for him this weekend, and he needed to be sure that their arrangement would work.

‘Perhaps we should try a couple of practice kisses,’ Costa said now. ‘Just so we know that you won’t do a Ridgemont on me...’

‘A Ridgemont?’

‘You flinched when he touched you. We can’t risk that happening...’

‘When he kissed me at the table, you mean?’

‘That wasn’t a kiss,’ Costa corrected. ‘That was gross.’

Mary swallowed. She had no point of reference, but she was glad to have confirmation that her instinctive reaction had been appropriate.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked as he tugged down the bell on the door and it clattered to the floor.

‘It fell,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps tell your boss she’s incredibly lucky that a customer wasn’t hurt when it did.’

Now there was the bliss of silence when he closed the door.

‘My jumper’s wet...and your shirt...’

Why she was worried for his shirt, Mary wasn’t sure.

‘It’s a kiss,’ he said, and for the second time in their short history he took her face in his hands.

She stared up at him and watched that gorgeous mouth.

‘I don’t detect any flinching.’

Mary was trembling on the inside, though. His palms were at the edge of her jaw, his gorgeous fingers lightly over her ears, and then his mouth found the spot, the exact spot, where the awful Eric had kissed her.

She closed her eyes at the softness of his mouth and it was as if the fairies had been again, wiping the spot clean, annulling that kiss from history. Because, with the lightest of touches from his velvet lips, Costa Leventis kissed her first.

‘Would you like me to fetch a towel so you can wipe your cheek?’ Costa asked, and she smiled, for he had clearly noticed what she’d done at the table.

‘No need.’

And then the world went silver as his mouth moved to hers, and with the weight of his lips Mary amended everything.

Thiswas her first kiss.

It was like being stroked with a feather, soothing and tautening her simultaneously. The brush of his lips made her ache for more, and as she opened her mouth to gasp there came the shock of his cool tongue and the slow slide of it in her mouth. It made her want to lean deeper into him, to brush the wedge of muscle with her own. Yet all she was capable of doing was standing there, as she was very slowly, very delectably, very deeply kissed.

And then it ended.

From his expression she thought she was the only one affected.

‘I think we’re good to go,’ Costa said.

‘I haven’t said yes yet.’

‘But you are thinking about it.’

Oh, she was. Her mind was darting, exhilaration returning as he held her.

‘I really do have to go,’ he told her and let her go.

Good, because Mary needed to think.

‘I shall see you on Thira,’ Costa said.

And as she opened her mouth to remind him that she hadn’t yet made up her mind, he spoke over her.

‘Or not. It is entirely up to you.’