Page 48 of The Summer Show

“Except when I was in prison.”

Shoulders shaking, he cracked up again. “What were you in for?”

“I killed a man just to watch him die.”

“Yeah, you look like a stone cold killer,” he said, then he booped my nose. Booped it. Like I was a puppy.

“The boop that’s going to break the internet,” I said. “Or it would be if we were somebody.”

“That’s the thing. Whether we like it or not, we are now.”

eighteen

Once again, I was invited to lunch at Casa de Stamou. It was a thing now.

“You are family,” Yiayia said when I tried to offer her money. She curled my fingers around the cash and the conversation was over.

When I mentioned it to Ana, she said, “You wouldn’t know it from looking at them, but Proyiayia and Yiayia are loaded. They live way below their means on purpose to camouflage. If nobody knows they’re rich, nobody can steal from them. Nobody in this case being the tax office.”

The meal was stuffed peppers and tomatoes, served with Greek salad, thick feta slices, and chunks of still-warm bread.

Yiayia gave me a sly look. “How is the show, eh?”

The contract forbade me from giving out spoilers. “Fun.”

That tore Proyayia’s attention away from her meal. “Fun? What fun?”

It killed me not to be able to elaborate. “The fun kind.”

“Leave her alone,” Lina said. “She cannot talk about the show. Those are the rules.”

“Here comes my little Nikos.” Yiayia jerked her chin in the direction of the road. “He will tell me everything.”

Proyiayia touched a finger to her eye. “I see you and Nikos.” Her hand did a thing that might have been a fish. Or a neurological condition.

“Shh,” Lina said.

Yiayia brought out more bread. “Everybody saw them on the telephone. What are your intentions with my grandson?”

“Yiayia!” Ana was outraged.

Good thing I was already flushed from the heat because the mention of his name kicked my furnace up a notch.

Ye gods. I had a crush on my best friend’s brother. That was supposed to be a teen thing, not a thirty-year-old woman thing. Crushes for me these days were actors and my stable of book boyfriends.

And now here was Nick Merrick standing in the street, with his good looks and that body. But it wasn’t just the body and face that got me. It was the kindness and the intrigue. There was something happening with Nick that made me want to turn his pages and read on. Beneath the damaged surface, the man was funny.

He stepped through the gate, approached the table so the three elder generations of his family’s women could pelt him with kisses. Not Ana, though. She fake-punched his arm.

“What’s it like living in luxury?” she asked him.

“As long as I don’t order from room service, it’s fine.”

His mother lowered her fork between bites. “What’s wrong with the room service?”

Instead of answering, he went inside to get a plate. Or at least he tried. His grandmother shoved him into a chair and raced inside before he could help himself to her kitchen. She emerged with a mountain of food and dumped a slice of feta on top, then decorated the slopes with bread.

“It’s because of his penis,” Ana said.

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