“I wish, but no.” I purse my lips together, determined to hold my ground on this. “No extra money is coming my way, so although I love what you’ve done—and I’ll be dreaming about it for years to come—we need to keep it simple.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
I feel my nostrils flare. “No, you won’t.” I wave an arm at the rest of Agape. “You’re doing enough already, don’t you think? I’m not—I’m not a charity case.”
The balls of his shoulders practically bulge as he plants his weight on his fists and leans forward. His chin juts forward when he growls, “No one said you’re a charity case, Ermione. We have a deal, don’t we?”
I think back to the Celebrity Tea article Effie sent me, and I wonder if he’s seen it yet this morning. As much as I want to bring it up—and, better yet, discuss us—my stubborn streak boils to life, all to prove a point. At the end of the day, last night’s private moment was captured and posted for the masses. It wasn’t an orchestrated date, designed and premeditated to show Nick as someone moving on from the havoc of the show. No, we were spotted by a douchebag pap hiding out in a car or in the bushes, which means I effectively did nothing. He’s got Vince and Bill and Mark out here working day-in and day-out to finish off my salon, and I’m . . . well, truth is, I’m getting a whole lot more out of this deal of ours than he is. I can’t—I won’t—allow him to throw anymore freebies my way.
My pride can’t handle it.
And neither do I want to think of Agape and remember that it was built solely upon begged favors. It’s an acidic, toxic thought, and my fingers launch into a tap-tap-tap rhythm, even as my gut twists.
Keeping my voice low, I meet Nick’s gaze. “The deal is on, but there’s no room for addendums. A hydrotherapy room is off the table. Not open for discussion.”
A tick flares to life in his jaw. “We didn’t sign a contract, Mina.”
“An oversight, maybe, considering how much you love your rules.”
He keeps talking, as though I didn’t just hand deliver a jab. “No contract means we’re not legally bound to keep to the terms of the same deal.” His gaze falls to my mouth, and my core heats like he’s directly wired my body to respond to him and him only. Chris Hemsworth could walk into Agape right now and I doubt I’d be as needy for him, a Hollywood A-lister, as I am for Nick. It’s ridiculously unfair. “Adjustments,” he adds, “can be applied as necessary.”
No, they can’t. I bite the words back and ask instead, “What sort of adjustments are we talking about here?”
My mouth practically tingles under his intense, steady stare. “I’m sure we can get creative.”
Oh, my God.
He did not just insinuate that, that—
“I-I’m not going to sleep with you for a jacuzzi, you jerk.” I push against his chest and fight an eye roll when he doesn’t even a budge. “And, for the record, I would sleep with you. Actually, I’ve thought about sleeping with you for years, as you very well know because my best friend can’t keep her lips sealed, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just . . . just open my legs like some eighteenth-century socialite all for a pretty room.” I jab him in the chest again, right over the heart, and then proceed to emphasize every word with another finger-thrust. “End. Of. Discussion.”
I twist away, not even acknowledging the wide-eyed stares I’m getting from the guys, and head for the stairs up to my apartment. Nick Stamos may be my teenage crush, and he may be as hot as Hades, but I’ve got my pride. I’ve got my self-respect. And if he even thinks for one second that I’ll jump in bed with him for a massage room, then he doesn’t know me at all.
I don’t have room in my life for asshole men.
Not even him.
18
Nick
“Goddamn, you really have a way with women, Stamos.”
I barely take the time to flip Vince the bird before I’m storming after Mina.
“No, but for real, is this the sort of shit we can anticipate happening on that show you went on?” he shouts after me. “Your face was on Us Weekly this morning, by the way!”
Cutting a quick glare over my shoulder, I thrust a finger at my guys. “Lunch break. Take a fucking lunch break before—”
“He’s cursin’ in English,” Bill says to Mark with a shoulder-nudge and a flat, open palm that he curls in a come-hither motion. “Give me my five bucks, man. I told you he’d crack before noon today. I just had that feeling, like when my bones ache before a bad storm.”
“That’s called arthritis, you moron.”
I slam the door up to Mina’s apartment closed, blocking out the ribbing of all three morons who call themselves my friends. And what the hell did they mean my face is on Us Weekly? Doesn’t matter, I’ll deal with that later.
I take the stairs two at a time. “Mina!” My voice bellows out like a foghorn and I’m surprised the walls don’t tremble in fear. I feel at loose ends, like I’m on the verge of coming undone and all because of a fucking jacuzzi. I thought she’d love the idea. I thought I could ruffle any flared feathers by telling her she could consider it as my thank-you for accompanying me to the crazy shit show that will be Maine in two weekends.
I thought—though all my thinking doesn’t seem to be doing me any damn good—that she’d see I spent more time than necessary studying every pin on her Pinterest board and doing everything in my power to make her dream a reality.
Because I remember being in her position. The worry that it all would come crumbling down around me, should I even blink a little too long. The fear that my good luck was running on a timer, and if I didn’t soak it up quickly enough, it’d all be gone before morning came around. The nightmares, the stress, the unrelenting anxiety of striking out on my own and having no one to fall back on.
But at least I had my parents and Effie to keep me steady and trucking forward.
Who does Mina have? Her parents who I haven’t seen in years? Her siblings? From what I understand, Katya is living somewhere down south, attending graduate school, and her brother, Dimitri, lives in New York City. Besides Effie, Mina has no one.
Except for me.
Because you’re forcing your way in.
Damn straight I am.
“Mina!” I call out again. “We’re gonna talk. In no way was I implying that you’d pay me with sex. Who do you think I am? Some asshole out of a romance novel?”
I palm the wall and prepare to make the short, tight turn up to the next flight of stairs, only to have a dainty fist collide angrily with my shoulder. With fast reflexes, I catch Mina’s wrist to keep her from pummeling me. “Jesus, are you crazy, gynaíka?”
Her honey eyes turn to slits. “I don’t like that word.”
I swear to God this woman is . . . Gamóto. Every time. Every time I think we’re making headway, getting along, we revert right back to our perpetual role of frenemies. That’s what the kids are calling it nowadays, right? Frenemies? Hell if I know.
Refusing to cut her loose in case she turns those flying fists on me again, I stand my ground. “You don’t like the word for woman? Seriously?”
She tugs at her wrist to no avail. “It’s condescending.”
“How?” I pull her down to the stair rung I’m on, and yeah, maybe I do it because it gives me the advantage. I’m taller, broader, and, if I have to harbor a guess, I’m also the only one who’s thinking rationally in this dark, dank stairwell. “Women call guys ‘man’ all the time. Everyone under the sun says ‘dude,’ and that’s not even historically accurate because not all guys are cowboys.”
“It’s also a pimple on a cow’s butt.”
“What?”
“Dude,” she mutters, her eyes never moving from the wall beside my head, “it’s also another word for a pimple on a—”
“I heard you the first time.” I scrub my free hand over my jaw, all the better to keep the sucker from hitting the floor in shock. “How do you even know this?”
“Jeopardy.”
Of course she knows it from Jeopardy.
When she pulls at her wrist again, I unleash my hold with a flex of my fingers. Her back collides with the wall behind her, and I can’t even imagine how many splinters are baring their splintery teeth, ready to sink into her soft skin. Don’t touch her, and for the love of God, don’t set her off again. My hands ball into fists at my sides. “Back to the conversation, how exactly was I being condescending?”
Her arms fold over her small chest. “It’s all in the tone. Gynaíka, fold the laundry. Gynaíka, is dinner done yet?” Her tone turns snide. “If I count the number of times my father has turned to my mom and said that word, I’ll run out of the world’s lamb population.”
Trust it to Mina Pappas to make me want to laugh when she’s chomping at the bit for a fight. I give in, just in the off chance I can make her smile. “That’s a hell of a lot of lamb.”
The fire in her honey eyes banks to a slow roast. “I’d save every one if I could. No more lamb on the spit for Easter or finding a head bobbing in a steaming pot in the kitchen.”
“That happened to you too?” I ask, messing with her. Every Greek kid has been traumatized by smelling something amazing drifting from the stove, only to open the pot’s lid and come face to face with . . . well, yeah. Like I said, traumatizing. “Also, probably not the wisest move to keep Greeks everywhere loving you.”
Her nostrils flare at that, and she averts her gaze once again. “The Greeks aren’t always the end-all-be-all.”
“Don’t let my grandmother hear you say that.”
“Good thing I wouldn’t say it in Greek for her to understand.”
My lips twitch at her savagery. She’s entertaining as all hell when she’s spitting fire like this. “So, no gynaíka then.” I give a curt chin dip. “That’s fine with me. God knows I’m not trying to have you punch me again.”