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Was the man who gazed at him with wide, desperate green eyes the same one who’d written these symbols?
“Ed?”
Kairo’s voice jerked him from his wandering thoughts. He placed the paper on the table next to the sparkling scarab, allowing Kairo to photograph it as well.
Putting the phone aside, Kairo heaved a heavy sigh before initiating the video call. “All right, then. Here we go.”
On the drive back to Isidore’s house in Athens, Kairo had texted his mother to see if she was available for a chat. She’d specified a narrow thirty-minute window that would be after her university office hours but prior to her leaving to get an early dinner. The entire exchange left Kairo rolling his eyes. According to him, there was no simply talking to Dr. Janet Jones. It was always a production.
After two rings, a woman wearing thick glasses and hair piled on her head in a kind of messy bun with strands hanging around her face filled Kairo’s screen. She was wearing a heavy cardigan over a T-shirt even though it was summer. He could only imagine that the air conditioning in her office was cranked too high. Behind her was a wall of overloaded, disordered shelves. The eye constantly tripped over books and papers shoved at weird angles next to little statues and what appeared to be random artifacts.
Ed assumed they were all replicas. There was no way Kairo’s mother would have real Egyptian relics from digs placed so precariously with all those books and papers.
“Hello, Kairo, dear.” She paused and squinted at him. “You appear to be doing well. Still all in one piece.” There was a subtle note of surprise to her voice that left his friend sighing.
Ed immediately scooted closer to Kairo and leaned down so that his face was picked up by the laptop camera. “Hi, Dr. Jones! It’s good to see you.”
Janet’s expression defrosted and she smiled. “Hello, Edison. You’re there, too? I guess that would explain why my son chose to cancel his plans to visit me in England.”
Ouch.
Ed winced and retreated.
Isidore jumped in before he could pull together an apology. He pulled a chair close to Kairo and leaned into the screen. “Actually, my sister and I are the reason your son had to take an unfortunate detour. We desperately needed his help here in Athens. I’m very sorry that I disturbed his plans for a visit with you.”
“Mom, this is Isidore Panopoulos, my new boyfriend,” Kairo interjected. There was a hard warning in his voice as if he were trying to signal to her to be nice.
“Oh! You’ve finally decided to start dating.” She sat up straighter and pushed her glasses farther up her nose as she examined Isidore. “He looks a bit younger, but certainly more respectable than I was expecting from you.”
Ed was so grateful he’d stepped far from the reach of the camera because he had to press his hand to his mouth to hold in the bark of laughter. He loved Dr. Jones sometimes for her bluntness and ability to aggravate K with only a few words, but he was so very glad this woman wasn’t his mother.
Kairo groaned, but Izzie’s smile grew larger. “There are four years separating Kairo and myself, but I assure you that I am very respectable, Dr. Jones. I adore your son and would never want to do anything that would disappoint him.”
Lifting Izzie’s hand to his lips, Kairo brushed a sweet kiss to the knuckles. “You could never do anything to disappoint me, baby.”
Okay, now it was getting to the point of being nauseating, even for Ed. And he usually liked all the lovey-dovey stuff. He secretly watched all the romantic comedies when the others weren’t around, and he was so weak for those big dramatic scenes where the guy goes running to catch his lover at the last second so he can make the big confession.
Maybe in real life, it was a little too much.
This was all new for Dr. Jones, though, and she made a happy noise. “Oh, honey. That’s so wonderful for you.” She paused, her brow furrowing as she tapped a finger on her pursed lips. “Panopoulos. Panopoulos. Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Isidore is the chairman of the Panopoulos conglomerate. They are one of the largest communication companies in Europe,” Kairo said, his chest puffing up.
“No. No. That’s not it.” Kairo’s mother gave a dismissive wave of her hand.
Kairo growled at his mother, while Izzie giggled and bumped his shoulder against Kairo’s. He looked up at Ed and gave a wink. That was Izzie in a nutshell. He was a powerful billionaire, but he didn’t give a damn about any of it so long as the people he cared about were safe and happy.
“Oh! Panopoulos funded one of our digs!”
“Of course that’s what you’d remember,” Kairo moaned softly.
