Page 26 of Love on the Rocks
The stream that I’d followed down to the beach turned into a small waterfall at the end of the rocks. The water was an opaquegreen, and when I dipped my toes in one of the shallow pools I jumped back. Wow, that was hot!
I glanced around, making sure no one was lurking, and slid my sundress off, laying it out on the rocks to warm. After a moment’s hesitation, I took my bikini top off and slipped into the water, sighing with pleasure as the heat enveloped me.
Now this was heaven. I settled my head against the rocks and this time it was with real gratitude that I repeated my new mantra.
I’m opening a restaurant.
Chapter 11
“Miss Morgan, you have a visitor,” said the hotel concierge as Mia finished dusting the reception desk. She glanced over her shoulder and there he was: Angelos Mavromatis.
He was her father’s enemy, the man responsible for her family’s ruin. How could she feel anything but hatred for him? And yet, she trembled beneath the hot gaze of his longing.
She spun on her heel and headed for the door, crying out in dismay as a muscular arm snaked around her waist. “Not so fast,asteri mou, I have a proposition for you.”
- One Week with the Greek
NIKOS
The children were going out of their minds.
The new basketball I’d brought was stuck in the makeshift hoop I’d constructed from a blue plastic bucket. Engineering wasn’t my thing and the ball kept getting wedged inside, eliciting outraged cries from the tiny, frustrated players.
“Hey, Niko!” I turned around to find Samar, an eight-year-old girl from Syria, holding out her arms. I swept her up to the hoop as she giggled and agitated her skinny legs. She dislodged the ball and took another shot, bouncing the ball straight into the arms of one of the older boys.
“No!” cried Samar when the boy took off with the ball. I set her down and she crossed her arms over her new pink dress—a gift from one of the volunteer social workers on site.
It was the end of a very long day at the migrant camp where I volunteered once a week with Doctors Without Borders. Everyone was exhausted, except for the kids. If we’d let them, they would continue to play until all the lights were extinguished.
I squatted down and tousled her hair. “Hey, what did I tell you?”
“Practice makes perfect,” she repeated, staring longingly after the ball. I gestured to her older brother, who came running over.
“Don’t forget to pass the ball to your sister,” I reminded him as I walked back toward the social center, a portable building that had been established by a local NGO about a year and a half ago. Thank God it existed, there had to be something to take people’s minds off their living conditions.
This wasn’t the kind of place you could be ambivalent about. It enraged me. The camps were overcrowded with thousands of men, women, and children living in rows and rows of white sheds behind barbed-wire fences. And though this new camp was cleaner and safer than previous ones, the prison-like austerity of it all it only highlighted the failure of Greece and the EU to find solutions for the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
“Why do you keep going?” Panos had asked just this morning as I waited for the catamaran to pick me up at the port.
“Because it’s not something that I can ignore. Imagine, Pano, these people have escaped famine or war, risked their lives on the open seas, only to be stuck in this holding pen like animals. They need help and human connection.”
“Yes, but you’re always so angry and depressed afterward. Doesn’t it make you feel powerless?”
“If I wasn’t helping, then I’d feel powerless.”
People liked to point their fingers at the migrants as a threat to our way of life, but that was to distract from the real threat: billionaire corporations like Greystone that only wanted to plunder our resources to make a profit. They were the real criminals as far as I was concerned.
That’s why I was in an especially positive mood today as I examined new patients in the camp’s portable medical facilities—I’d found a way to stop the Greystone’s project from going forward, at least temporarily, thanks to my grandfather’s cup. Callie would be waiting indefinitely for a her permit next meeting.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and a notification flashed across my screen reminding me of the call I had scheduled with my mother. She was going to give me an update on the visa situation for Emmanuel, a political refugee from Sudan, who we were sponsoring for Columbia University’s displaced scholar program. My mom and Emmanuel were becoming fast friends, and I had my fingers crossed that it would work out.
Even though we’d spoken just a few days ago, my mom’s face lit up when she saw me, and I smiled. “Agori mou, how are you? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
“There’s been a lot going on.” I leaned back in the small, wooden chair. It was child sized and I was spilling over it, but it felt good to release some of the day’s tension.
“Still battling that hotel?”
“Mmm,” I grumbled, running my hand through my hair. I didn’t want to go into it with her. I couldn’t exactly admit to my mother what I’d done, putting a woman in an abandoned shack with no electricity, and lying to government agents. She cut me a lot of slack, but she definitely wouldn’t approve of this.
