A Tale of Two Cousins Read online

  “Then I hope that seeing Athens tomorrow will bring you some pleasure,” he said with another pat on Valentino’s head. “What hotel are you staying at? I can meet you there about ... shall we say nine?”

  “Uh ...” I thought quickly. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I was staying at this hotel, but I didn’t want to lie to him. “It’s a small one; you probably wouldn’t know it. How about if I meet you here?”

  “As you like,” he answered, his voice smooth, but I felt like he’d just withdrawn from me. I realized with a stab of guilt that he probably thought I didn’t trust him, but before I could rally some sort of excuse for not giving him the name of the hotel, he added, “I should get back to it. I’m sorry again for bumping into you, although I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

  “So do I,” I said lamely, feeling even more awkward when he gave me a little nod and moved into the room, probably to pick up some of the empty glasses that had been left on the tables.

  It was if the sun had gone behind a cloud, dimming my joy a little. I badly wanted out of there, so I could sit and think about Dmitri, and remember the warmth in his eyes when he smiled, but knew Maggie expected me to be at her beck and call, as befitted a princess.

  “Oh, screw it,” I said after a few minutes of inner struggle, and went in search of her. I found her in the center of the room, surrounded by people, her face shining with pleasure. The satisfaction in her eyes gave me a guilty twinge in my belly, but there wasn’t much I could do about my regrets now.

  “Can I have a word?” I asked softly when Valentino and I managed to nudge aside a couple of men in expensive suits in order to get to her side.

  She shot me a look that was rife with a warning. “Someone on the phone for me?” she asked, giving another lilting laugh, and said with a big smile to the circle of men and women who were evidently hanging on her every word, “Unless it’s His Serene Highness—my brother, the crown prince, you know—I don’t wish to be disturbed.”

  I ground my teeth for a few seconds, managing to bite back everything I wanted to say in order to murmur in her ear, “I’m done.”

  “Thyra, no!” Her eyes filled with a plea that made me feel like a heel. “You can’t stop now. I’ve only just started, and you said we’d have several days. It’s unfair of you to expect me to walk away before I’ve had any fun!”

  “I don’t mean you have to go, too. I’m going to take the cat and go buy him a litter box and some food, and then go back to the hotel. You don’t need me here. Just please remember Beck, and don’t do anything that they wouldn’t like.”

  She beamed a smile at me that could have lit up half the city. “I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” she answered before turning back to the group of beautiful people. “So sorry about that interruption. Thyra is an excellent PA, but so moody. I think she’s just a bit overwhelmed.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said under my breath, hoisting the cat higher as I marched out of the room, my temper getting the better of me. “I’m so overwhelmed by you pretending to be me. How on earth am I going to stand another four days of this, Valentino? How am I going to get through it without cracking or yelling at Maggie to stop acting like she’s so much better than everyone else? What if word about her behavior gets back to Beck, and that just adds fuel to the fire Kardom is trying to start?”

  The cat had no answer. I sighed, feeling a kinship in that respect, and took us off before it got too late to visit a pet store.

  TWO

  “You’re welcome to borrow a car of course, although Harry and I will be flying up in a few hours, so if you could leave us the BMW—”

  “I’ll take the Jeep, then, if you don’t mind,” Dmitri said, looking out of the window at the people who bustled down the sidewalk, the view from the tenth floor making them look like tiny animated beings. Idly, he wondered what Thyra was doing at that moment. Was she one of the tiny beings who flowed past the building? Or was she still curled up in bed? It was only a little after eight in the morning—perhaps she was snuggled into bed, her long, glossy black hair fanned out on a pillow around her, while her beautiful amber eyes were filled with sleepy contentment. “Hell, I suppose I should just rent a car if it’s going to take long to repair the damage on mine.”

  Iakovos, his cousin and once employer, now partner, said abruptly, “Take the Jeep. Use it with my blessing. Harry would like to know how the interview went.”

  “What inter—oh, the one for that magazine with the bachelor list?” He allowed an irritated expression to pass over his face. “It hasn’t happened yet. I think it’s supposed to be tonight. Alexis?”

  The young man whom he’d employed some two years before as his assistant hurried into his office, a tablet computer in hand. “You bellowed, sir?”

  Dmitri fought the urge to smile. He’d found Alexis working in a legal department of Iakovos’s business, and recognized the same analytic sort of mind and love of order that had made him such a sterling assistant himself. Except now, he reminded himself, he was a full partner, and heading up the newest Papaioannou venture. “What’s on my calendar for the day?”

  “Er ...” Alexis tapped the tablet a few times. “Well, you canceled all of your meetings, so there’s just an interview with a journalist from the Noblesse International magazine, and later you said you will be having drinks with a woman who is a friend of Ms. Patricia Perry.”

  “Oh, that.” He made another face, waved off Alexis, and said into the phone, “You heard?”

  “Yes. Why on earth did you let Patricia set you up on a blind date?”

  “Is there any reason I shouldn’t? She’s not still trying to steal you away from Harry, is she?” Dmitri smiled even as he asked the question. He knew well that his cousin was head over heels in love with his wife, and not even the lovely Patricia could shake that devotion.

  “Not since you hooked her up with Bentson,” Iakovos answered. “I gather they are still together?”

  “So far as I know, yes, and I didn’t so much set them up as I mentioned to Bentson when he was in town pitching his new cooling system that I knew of someone who loved the opera as much as he said he did, and boom. They were off and running. Are you bringing the kids with you when you come up here?”

  “No, Harry needs a break. She’s been looking a bit tired. I thought a few days away from our brood would let me pamper her as she deserves. You’ll come to dinner tonight?”

  Dmitri hesitated. “I would, but I might have plans.”

  “With Patricia’s friend?”

  “No, that’s later. There’s someone I met last night, at the Georgio Foundation party.”

  “How was that? Harry wanted us to go, but changed her mind two days ago, deciding that if Patricia was there, then she would be happier being elsewhere.”

  “It was the usual—lots of people trying to impress each other. There was a princess in attendance, some minor European royalty swanning around like she owned the place. At one point she flung her hand out to make a dramatic statement and knocked my glass of red wine all over me, but luckily the hotel staff had club soda, and had the stain out and the coat cleaned by the time I left.”

  “And the someone you met?” Interest was rich in Iakovos’s voice. “What sort of a someone was she? Anyone I know?”

  “I doubt it. Her name was Thyra ... er ... damn. I didn’t get her last name. She said she grew up in Canada, but was from ... hell. I guess I didn’t ask where she lived, either, although she has a brother in Scotland.”

  “That sounds promising,” Iakovos said, humor lacing his voice. “What do you know about her?”

  “Not a lot,” Dmitri admitted. “Just that she wears those little round glasses that make me think of John Lennon, she has a soft heart—she’d found a big orange cat on the way to the party, and I suspect she’s going to end up keeping it—and for some reason, she didn’t want me to know where she was staying.”

  “If you just met, that’s hardly surprising.”

/>   “Possibly, although she didn’t seem to be reticent about other subjects.” He remembered the sting of the insult that was her obvious reluctance to tell him what hotel she was at. “I did think it was curious that she doesn’t have a mobile phone. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have one?”

  “No,” Iakovos said slowly. “That is a little odd.”

  Dmitri shook his head at the feeling that Thyra was hiding something from him, then chastised himself. Of course she was keeping things from him—they had chatted all of ten minutes. Still, he couldn’t shake the impression there was some point in their conversation where she had started to say something but stopped, and that intrigued him. “Perhaps I’ll figure it out today.”

  “The phone situation?”

  “No, sorry, I was talking to myself. I’m going to show Thyra around Athens this morning, so I’ll have a better chance to assess what it was that bothered me.”

  “There’s bothered, and then there’s bothered,” Iakovos said, a hint of humor in his voice. “I hope it’s the latter. Harry is starting to make noises about finding you a woman now that Theo is married, and given that her idea of the perfect woman for you is her aunt, I’d suggest that if you like this someone, you act on it.”

  “Just because you and Theo fell immediately for the loves of your respective lives doesn’t mean I’m going to do the same,” he said with a laugh.

  “You’re a Papaioannou,” Iakovos said. “It’s in your blood. Take my advice and don’t fight it. When the right woman comes along, of course.”

  “Of course,” Dmitri murmured, and after discussing how the newest arm of Papaioannou International was moving forward, he rang off, and did a little work reviewing notes from a building engineer and taking a couple of video calls with vendors in India. “I’ll check back in a few hours,” he told Alexis when he strolled out to fetch Iakovos’s Jeep. “Don’t forget to keep on the back of the local council in Anyi. We need those permits.”

  “Aye aye, mon capitaine,” Alexis said, saluting him.

  Dmitri reviewed the work done to launch Papaioannou Green, the branch that would focus solely on building self-sufficient, low-carbon-footprint housing, but found his mind wandering to the events of the past evening.

  He couldn’t help but smile at the memory of Thyra’s horror when she thought she had misinterpreted his light flirtation. The way she spoke, her thoughts appearing to tumble out unfiltered, reminded him of Harry, a woman he admired greatly. “But I’m not going to follow the same path,” he said aloud. “I might be a Papaioannou, but I have yet to fall in love at first sight, and I have no plan to change that.”

  Still, he had to admit that there was something to the thought of settling down with one woman, one perfect woman. Iakovos had been married for almost ten years, and Theo for almost a year, and Dmitri was very well aware of just how happy both of his cousins were. Perhaps if Patricia’s friend was as enticing as she’d hinted, that might be a possibility. She knew well that he had a weakness for redheads, and swore that her friend had a fiery personality that matched her hair.

  A vision of a laughing woman rose in his mind, her golden eyes smiling behind the little round lenses of her glasses, her hair as black and glossy as the wing of a raven. Thyra might be delightfully unconventional to talk to, but she wasn’t at all what he liked in a woman. He, like Theo and Iakovos when they had been single, preferred women who were what Harry once referred to as “ethereal little sprites who could easily be underwear models.”

  Thyra was very much not an ethereal little sprite. She was solidly built, with the high cheekbones that hinted of some Slavic blood in her ancestry, two thick black eyebrows that were almost perfectly straight, and a direct way of looking at him that bespoke a woman who didn’t know how to play the seduction game. He had no desire to get entangled with an innocent, one who didn’t understand the rules of attraction, and ultimately how to part ways with a minimum of fuss. No, she was not at all what he was looking for.

  He imagined her in his bed, that black hair spread around her, all her smooth, ample flesh waiting for him, the heat of her body calling to him, tempting him into exploring all her secrets. ...

  The honk of a horn at a green light recalled him to the fact that he was almost at the hotel where he’d agreed to pick up Thyra. He pulled into the front entrance, scanning the few people that were emerging from the hotel, but didn’t see her. “I just hope she’s not one of those women who feels she has to be fashionably late—”

  “Dmitri!”

  Just as he was about to hand over the keys to a valet attendant, he caught sight of Thyra waving on the other side of the street, the cat on a leash walking beside her while she stood waiting to cross the street. The wind ruffled her hair, lifting a few tendrils as if by an invisible hand, and Dmitri wondered if he wasn’t being too hasty in ruling out women with dark hair from his preferred type. Certainly the long, straight curtain of black that flowed around Thyra when she bent to adjust the cat’s harness wasn’t anything to dismiss. And then there were her soft rounded arms and shoulders that were exposed in a red-and-white striped sundress, not to mention the way her breasts—abundantly apparent in the tight bodice—drew the eye to their lush roundness.

  No, he definitely was being too restrictive in his view of the ideal woman. There was nothing displeasing about Thyra’s shape even if it was opposite those of his usual companions. It would be downright discriminatory of him not to broaden his horizons to include her.

  Damn, but the way her hips moved when she walked was almost sinful.

  “Sorry, Valentino doesn’t seem to know he’s a cat, and he wanted to smell everything, so it took a lot longer to get here than I anticipated. ... Oh, thank you.”

  He picked up the cat and, after a moment’s thought, set him in the back, and slid one side of the seat belt through his harness, effectively strapping him in while still giving him the ability to sit or lie down. “I think this ought to hold him.”

  “Smart thinking. They have a car seat belt for cats at the pet store that I went to last night, but ...” Thyra looked around her with pleasure, and changed the subject. “Isn’t it a glorious day? Not too hot, but boy, I could get used to having this sort of sun all the time. I put on tons of sunscreen, so if I smell like coconut, that’s why. I like your car. It lets you see everything.”

  “It’s my cousin’s, actually. He’s letting me borrow it.” Dmitri helped her into the front seat before getting in behind the wheel. “But what?”

  “Hmm?” She watched with apparent interest as a long limo pulled up, dispersing from its depths a Middle Eastern family.

  “You decided not to get the cat seat belt?”

  “That’s right. I have a list of places that I thought would be fun to visit.” She pulled a scrap of paper from a small bag strapped across her chest. “Let’s see. ... There’s the Museum of Greek Popular Instruments, and a botanical garden, and I heard it’s fun to watch the changing of the guard outside the parliament building, and there’s a museum about Greek costume that looks super fun, and another one at Athens University that covers history, and a postal museum, and one for an artist who was named Yorgos Gounaropoulos that’s supposed to be fabulous.”

  Dmitri laughed, amused by her choices of tourist activity. Why was he not surprised that what he was coming to realize was a very unconventional woman would want to see sights that many tourists didn’t care about? “That’s quite the list. I’m not sure we can fit in all of it in just one day. How about if we start at the Parthenon, and then perhaps see the changing of the guard, and then we could have lunch. After that, there’s an excellent archaeology museum, if you are interested in that sort of thing, followed by the Monastiraki flea market. It’s very quirky. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I would, but I can see a flea market anywhere.” There was a note to her voice that he puzzled over, not being able to place it. Was it disinterest? Reticence? If he didn’t know better, he’d say there was a t
inge of anger to the words, which made him wonder if she disliked him changing the plans she’d obviously made.

  “Do you like to sail?” he found himself asking, despite not intending on doing so. He didn’t have time to take her out sailing, not if he had to go to that blasted interview in the evening.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow we could go out on the water. We could go to—”

  “Oh!” Her involuntary exclamation interrupted his offer of taking her sailing. She twisted in her seat, her head almost out of the car in order to peer upward at the Acropolis. “Wow, this is just so ... is that the Parthenon?”

  “At the top, yes. The Acropolis itself is a complex of temples, far too much to see in the time we have, but I do recommend a visit to the Parthenon. I’ve been to it numerous times, and I am still amazed by its beauty. There’s a very good museum near it. Shall we start there?”

  “You know, I think maybe I’ll save that for another day,” she said, and once again, he heard that odd tone in her voice. This time, however, he got a distinct feeling it was embarrassment. “We could do the costume museum, if you like. Or the folk music one. Then maybe see the garden? Valentino will probably be ready for a potty break by then.”

  “I’m afraid he won’t be allowed in the museum,” he said, his mind busy with the puzzle that was Thyra.

  She was silent a moment. “Damn. I didn’t think of that. It’s way too hot to leave him in the car.” She chewed her lip, then sighed. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to do the botanical gardens.”

  “We could leave him at my apartment,” he offered. “My housekeeper loves animals, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind taking care of him for a few hours.”

  She bit her lip again, but shook her head. “That’s sweet of you to offer, but I wouldn’t feel right about leaving him with a stranger. He has to be grieving for his little girl, and the home he knew, and I wouldn’t want him to have any more anxieties than what he already has.”