She nodded, cradling her glass. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you want to know?’
‘Ah, you are guarded over your future plans,’ Kostas said, smiling. ‘That is not a bad way to be. It means no one can judge you or make comment on your progress, your success or failure.’
‘I asked why you wanted to know. I’m not guarded about my future plans, but you’ve just told me why you are.’
He leaned back in his seat that backed onto the sea view and spread his arms wide. ‘I am an open book, Faye. You ask me whatever you want to know and I will tell you something.’
Her brain was firing on all cylinders now. Should she ask about his business here? The ‘incident’ that led to the end of his career? If he really was a millionaire like Katerina had said?
‘You said you don’t have any family but Dimitria said she knew your mother so?—’
‘That isn’t a question,’ he answered quickly. ‘And everyone has a mother. That is how we get here, no? Ask me something else.’
‘You said I could ask you whatever I wanted to know.’
‘My mother died. I have no siblings. I focussed on my career. Here we are.’
‘Now who’s being guarded?’
The instant Faye said the words she wanted to pull them back into her mouth. She watched his demeanour switch up. That open spread of body and arms tightened, hardened, and his expression altered like a huge dark cloud eclipsing the sun. He was a VIP customer. She was overstepping here.
Kostas got to his feet, taut, angry. ‘So, we are the same. We have discovered something about each other. My family is non-existent and you want to spend the rest of your life working in a mediocre hotel wishing you had killed your husband instead of divorcing him. I will get the bill.’
And, as he headed towards a server, there was nothing else to say.
13
Kostas felt that sensation of loss of control racing through him like a hot drift car. He needed to stabilise, remember who he had made himself, not let this hotel employee get under his skin. Think that sentence again, Kosta. He never let anyone get under his skin.
He’d paid, left a generous tip and posed for a photograph with a customer who had asked him. It was proof that normality was coming back, that sense of duty to actively seem like you were doing the right thing, behaving how the world expected you to. But now he had to smooth things over with Faye. Because she needed to believe whatever he told her.
She was standing by the water, sandals off, toes in the sea. He could tell she was pissed with him. He didn’t blame her. He had created this situation. Perhaps he should have waited for Stathis to arrive before he did anything at all, just stayed in his suite and ordered more room service. He moved towards her.
When he reached her he spoke softly. ‘Lypame polý.’
The phrase wasn’t just ‘sorry’, it was a very deep apology.
‘Kai egó,’ she answered. Me too.
‘I was rude,’ he continued.
‘You get to be rude,’ Faye said. ‘You’re the guest.’
He shook his head. ‘That is not how it is.’
She shrugged. ‘Dhenbirazi.’
‘It doesn’t matter?’ Kostas asked. ‘Or you don’t care?’
‘I just think that ambitions can take different forms,’ Faye said.
‘Agreed.’
‘So, what might be a small ambition to you might feel like a big ambition to me.’
He smiled. ‘We are talking about small things and big things again.’
‘It seems to be a theme,’ she admitted, her tone softening a little.
