AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
He hadn’t meantto startle her. He’d seen her watching him and thought she knew. But when he spoke, it was obvious she didn’t. To her, he’d been a nameless man sitting in the corner of the kafeneío terrace.
It wounded him. Yesterday he’d watched her from behind his newspaper, but today he’d put the paper down and let her examine him. Yet the shock was obvious. Until he’d said her name, she hadn’t recognized him at all.
“May I sit?” He waved at the seat opposite her.
She choked out a reply which might have been yes. He would have taken the seat anyway.
“Why are you here, Angelika?” It was what he’d called her, a variation of her name, but she’d always basked in its glow. “It’s not the fifteenth until tomorrow.” Thirty years to the day when they were supposed to meet again. “You were here yesterday as well. Just scoping out the clientele?” he asked, using the American colloquialism.
Eleni rushed from the cool interior of the kafeneío, a cloth in her hand to mop up the mess. “I am so sorry,” she said, as if it was her fault.
Finally, Angelika spoke. “I was clumsy. I’m sorry. At least I didn’t break the cup.”
She’d avoided the drips off the table, which would have stained her white knee-length pants.
“It is no problem,” Eleni said. “I will bring you a new cup.” She rushed off again, leaving him alone with Angelika even as tourists began filling the kafeneío.
“Why have you come?” he murmured.
She blurted out, “I envisioned you moving to Athens and becoming a businessman. I didn’t expect you to be here.”
He laughed, a big sound that echoed across the terrace. “You should know I would never leave my Santorini.”
She dipped her head, as if she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes, I should have known that.”
He had so many questions. What had she been doing for thirty years? There was no ring on her finger, so she wasn’t married. Divorced maybe. She would be fifty-three now, three years younger than him. And those years had been good to her, her figure lush and curvy, exactly the way he remembered. The lines at her eyes and her mouth only added to her beauty, and her skin was still peaches and cream the way it had been all those years ago. He’d seen older American women here, sunblock gathering in the lines of their leathery faces, hats with floppy brims on their heads. Her hat was now sitting on the table beside her, splatters of coffee on its khaki rim. But there was nothing leathery about her.
He said what was in his heart. “You are still beautiful, Angelika,”
Her skin flushed, so very visible on her peaches-and-cream cheeks. “I’m just old.”
He laughed, softly this time. “You think only the young can be beautiful?”
Her gaze roamed his face for long moments in which it felt as if her fingers were on him. “No. Beauty isn’t only for the young.” She blinked, looked down. “But age suits men better than women.”
He bowed his head slightly. “If that is a compliment, I thank you.”
What to say now? Should he ask her all the questions running through his mind? What she’d been doing, if she had lovers, if she had children, was she a career woman? There were so many things he wanted to know about her.
And so many things he was afraid to know.
* * *
He was so beautiful.She wanted to run her fingers through his thick hair, feel the silkiness against her skin. She wanted to stroke his full lips, put her mouth to his, feel the soft tickle of his mustache, taste him again.
She hadn’t known what she truly wanted when she came here. Was it a pilgrimage and a place to discover a closeness with Sienna where she could finally reveal the truth?
Or had she been hoping to find him again?
As she looked at him now, his strong, handsome face, the lips she wanted to feel against her skin, she admitted this was what she’d prayed for, hoped for, wanted, needed.
For him to find her again.
Her gaze dropped to his hand. He saw the look and answered her question. “Divorced.”
She couldn’t help the sigh that whispered from her heart. “I’m also divorced.”
