I lean forward, elbows dropping to the desk. “Which is?”
She swallows and sends a quick, searching glance up to the ceiling like the heavens will answer her prayers. If she wanted the angels doing her a solid, she should have gone to a priest. Instead, she’s here, in my office and seated on my chair.
In all the years I’ve known Mina, she’s never asked me for anything.
Independent may as well be her middle name, and my interest spikes as she drums her slender fingers and gathers her thoughts. Her mouth pulls to the side as she taps, taps, taps. “I came here planning to tell you the short and sweet version of recent events.”
Call my curiosity solidly piqued. I spread my arm wide with a flourish. “Floor’s all yours.”
A groan escapes her mouth, and the sound loops around me like a soundtrack of defeat. “I can’t.” She tugs at the bow again, and it comes a little undone. Against my will, my gaze zeroes in on the smallest hint of bare skin that she’s exposed with her fidgeting. “You’re going to think I’m a complete maláka. A naïve little idiot, and I’m telling you right now, you aren’t wrong. In my defense, I’m new at this.”
New at what?
“Ermione, I’ve known you since you were six. We’ve got history”—some, admittedly, that has been more than a little exaggerated by all the Greek mamas and grandmothers to something it never was in the first place—“and I’m telling you right now, there’s nothing you can say that’ll make me think you’ve got a loose screw under all that hairspray.”
“I hired a guy to renovate my hair salon and he took off with my money.”
Well, damn.
The words haven’t even left her mouth completely before I’m jumping up from my chair to grab the scotch. She looks likes she needs it—I know I’d welcome the burn, so I untwist the plastic cap and toss it onto the desk.
Looks like we’re both in a rough spot.
Knocking the Dunkin’s cup out of the way with my knuckles, I set the scotch down in front of Mina. “You sound stressed,” I tell her, using her own words, and she offers a pained grimace before wrapping her hand around the bottle’s neck. Rings decorate each of her fingers, some stacked one on top of the other. They clink against the glass as she lets out a short, defeated sigh.
“Stressed doesn’t even cover it.” Her eyes flutter shut as she takes a hearty swig, then comes up spluttering, swiping her lips with the back of her hand, smearing red lipstick like a lover might and I—
My cock twitches in my pants.
Oh, hell to the fucking no.
Not Mina. Not here. And most definitely not now.
Completely oblivious to the activity happening south of my belt, she tilts her head, bottle poised inches away from her mouth. From that smeared lipstick. God help me. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I want to point at my dick and demand, do I look okay? Because there’s got to be a rule somewhere about getting it up for your sister’s best friend. As in, it’s not done. Since I’d rather be castrated than confess to how far I’ve fallen, I gesture at my mouth. “You got a little something right”—I brush my bottom lip with the pad of my thumb—“here.”
“Oh.” Putting the scotch down, she angles her body in the chair for a little privacy. Then goes rummaging in her purse for what looks to be a small mirror. Good, that lipstick smear has got to go. Too erotic. Too dangerous. Too damn tempting.
Clearly you’re in a dry spell if lipstick is where you cross the line nowadays.
Desperate to erase the evidence that Ermione Pappas of all people just turned me on, I yank the hem of my T-shirt out of my shorts and drag it over the growing tent in my pants. I retreat back to my side of the desk and sit down.
I’ve never—not once—allowed myself to look at Mina as anything other than my sister’s best friend. Not during my teenage years when my parents sent Effie and I along with the Pappas family to Greece when they visited Mina’s uncle, her father’s brother, each summer. My parents were unable to afford to go themselves, but for their kids, they wanted us to be as Greek as possible. That meant three days a week quarantined to a classroom with other Greek-Americans learning the mother tongue; volunteering at the local ecclesia, or church, including at every festival known to mankind until we reeked of gyros and souvlaki for days after; and speaking the language as fluidly as my parents and their parents did before them.
We might have been American on paper, but we were Greek in blood and heart.
I spent my summers lounging on beach chairs next to Mina. Hours of time pretending that all her little verbal jabs at my “rigid” disposition never scraped at my youthful insecurities and made me retreat.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve always known, it’s that if I’m the moon, sullen in the darkness and content in my solitude, then she’s the sun, setting fire to everything in her path. Sister’s best friend or not, a girl like Mina would regret dating a “safe” guy like me. She lives for spontaneity, adventure, and if she’d been on Put A Ring On It, she would have been the Dominic DaSilva of her season.
Larger than life, and totally out of my reach.
Forcing a light note to my voice, I attempt to ease her strung-out nerves. “Are you sure he took the money?”
Mina’s fingers erupt into another tapping sprint. “He took my lucky penny—the one your mom gave me.”
I lift a brow. “And?”
She plants her hands on the chair’s armrests and maneuvers her weight around. The bow at her neck teases open, revealing another notch of skin that tantalizes more than it satisfies. “And,” she grinds out, as though revealing this is beyond painful, “he left an IOU.”
A pin dropping would carry more sound than my office does right now.
I lift a hand to drag through my hair, the strands catching on my blunt, short fingernails. “That’s . . . courteous of him.”
“Courteous?” Mina’s normally husky voice grows to an uneven pitch. “An IOU, Nick. Who does that? Even my Thieo Marko, who we both know might as well have every loan broker in New England on speed dial, has never left an IOU. And my mom’s brother isn’t one for classy escapes when it comes to owing people some Benjamins.”
Understatement of the year, right there.
“You reported the guy?”
“Yes.”
I stare at her and begin to feel the weight of dread seep into my limbs. She’s watching me like I carry all the answers to her questions, like I may be her very last hope, and if I’m being honest—I’m not in the right mindset to have someone else place their hope on my shoulders.
Not when I’ve been away from my company for months and I’m up to my elbows in menial admin work that Carl did but not to my specifications, and then there’s the whole TMZ thing to consider . . . and whatever fallout comes with the news of Savannah Rose dumping both suitors on prime TV.
My phone vibrates on my desk, and I drag it close to see the sender. Dom. The pit of my stomach drops. If former NFL player Dominic DaSilva is texting me, then shit has officially hit the fan.
“Mina,” I drag out slowly, buying myself time, “it’s not that I don’t want to help.” My phone lights up with another text, this one also from Dom. Snatching it up from the desk, I drop it in the top drawer. I can only deal with one imploding catastrophe at a time. “But maybe, if you’re needing some cash to borrow, you could ask your dad?”
Yianni Pappas is a stick-up-the-ass prick, something I well remember from all those summer vacations years ago, but I’ve never known him to turn his daughters or son away. His children have always come first—his one, and only, redeemable feature.
Mina’s cheeks hollow on a rough exhale. “Óxi.”
Her accent isn’t smooth, more than a little rough around the edges, and I grunt out, in Greek, “What do you mean no? Aren’t you here to ask for money?” It’s not as though she can ask Effie or Sarah. They’re trying to have a baby, and even Sarah’s six-figure salary, working for an investment firm, hasn’t made the process any cheaper. “A loan so you can finish off the work that needs to be done?”
With a shake of her head, Mina lowers her gaze to the abandoned Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup. She reaches for it with both hands, and, aw, shit, but there she goes. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“Ermione.” I growl her name, a four-syllable warning that has her bringing the cup up to her mouth and draining whatever’s left. A thought springs up, dangerous and tempting—a way to solve both of our problems. It’s risky. And there’s a good chance she’ll tell me no, but it’d be . . . perfect. For now, obviously. Just a temporary thing.
A way to keep the press off my back while I help her with whatever she needs.
Assuming what she needs doesn’t require my firstborn, a kidney, and my 401k, I’ll have the better end of the deal, but I doubt she’ll complain.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Her voice, weighted with suspicion, breaks through my thoughts, and I jerk my attention back to her face. She’s studying me the way a scientist might a new discovery, like she’s not all sure that I won’t leap from my cage and sprout horns and a set of fangs.
No horns in the foreseeable future. Just a fleeting distraction that’ll keep the paps off my back and give them a reason to look elsewhere—like set up a stakeout in front of Dom’s house, not mine. Sorry buddy, ol’ pal.
Coughing into a closed fist, I clear my throat. Then ask, “If you don’t need the money from me, then what do you need?”
Tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
The silver rings on her fingers glisten under the florescent lighting overhead, and then she says the words I never anticipated:
“Nick, I just need you.”
7
Mina
Unreadable as his expressions often are, Nick’s an open book right now.
Oh, those pewter eyes of his seem to say to my blunt admission: oh shit.