Toula flashes me a quick grin. “I told you earlier, it’s all good. How else are you going to build clientele for your new salon?”
Not for the first time, I feel the sting of my current reality. It zaps me right in the heart before burrowing deep in my gut. It’d be all too easy to sink into the black blanket already clinging to my legs, all while subjugating myself to endless nights of Tito’s, cryfests, and more hours of reality TV than my brain can possibly digest. Crying isn’t a solution to my problem, though, and neither is alcohol.
I’m an entrepreneur, something I never once imagined might be possible years ago. A CEO, for heck’s sake. Me, Ermione Pappas, Cambridge’s Most Likely to End Up Flunking Out of College. Okay, so that wasn’t a real vote in the ballot senior year, but some asshole had scrawled it across the final printed sheet in the cafeteria for all to gawk at like lemmings tripping over each other to all rush off the cliff together.
If I’m a hot mess, I’ll own it. But the hot-mess express is about to embark on its grand finale voyage, if I have anything to say about it.
C.E.O.
I may need the three letters stamped across my forehead as a constant reminder to myself that I’m as kickass and well-deserving of success as anyone else.
“I’m scrappy,” I say to Toula now, refusing to let my voice quiver with nerves. “I’ll figure it out. And then my old boss can eat her damn words when Agape becomes the go-to hair salon in the Boston-metro area.”
“Is your construction guy back from vacation yet?”
My smile freezes like I’m the one caught squatting, naked, over the toilet.
Don’t panic. Don’t cry. And, no matter what you do, don’t laugh hysterically because you can’t handle the stress.
“We’re right on schedule,” I lie through a tight smile.
If by schedule I mean “we’re on track for the biggest shit show this city has ever witnessed,” then there’s never been a truer statement uttered in my life. Aside from Effie, who was with me when I first realized Jake took off with the money, no one else knows my ass isn’t just heated by the fire, it’s roasting in it. I can only imagine what my father might say—and all that he wouldn’t say.
“Your place is in the home with a husband, Ermione,” he’d rumble, crushing me with the disapproval in his voice, “not owning a business.”
Embarrassment for being so naïve and trusting has kept my mouth shut thus far, but dogged determination to prove them all wrong is what drives me. What’s always driven me.
When Toula eyes me skeptically, I wave away her concern. “I’m good, I promise. And enough about me—your husband is waiting for you.”
It’s the perfect distraction.
With a shimmy and a grin, Toula twiddles her fingers at me and throws the bathroom door wide open with enough force that it thwacks the wall with a dull thud. “Oh, husband!” she calls out, and I wince even as I laugh because Toula is just Toula. Crazy, outgoing, and so insanely kind.
Hooking my hand through the purse I abandoned on the bathroom counter during #PeeGate, I hold the door open with the heel of my stiletto and then head for the elevator that’ll take me up to the fifth floor of the Omni Parker House Hotel, where the wedding reception is being held.
The hotel itself is beyond exquisite. Oak-paneled walls. Gold-leaf accents. Bellmen dressed in smart, navy-blue suits. Men in tuxedos wander along the halls, crystal tumblers in one hand and fawning women tucked in close with the other. Their smug, masculine smirks are shadowed by the flickering of old-fashioned lamps, which offer an ethereal glow that even has my unromantic heart sighing.
Figures that the lamps would get to me while the men don’t inspire so much as a quickening of my breath. I prefer to keep my relationships simple, uncomplicated, and out of sight and out of mind. Agape is where my head’s at, and where it has to remain if I want to drag myself out of my current hellhole.
With a ping! the elevator doors open and I step in.
I knuckle the fifth-floor button, then lean against the outer wall of the elevator.
“You’re fine,” I mutter to myself, the base of my skull connecting with gold-embossed wallpaper as I release a heavy breath. “If anyone else asks about the salon, just—”
Just, what?
Lie and then lie some more? How long can I really expect to get away with the lying game? My mother watches us kids like a hawk, no matter the fact that we’re all grown and adulting to our very best abilities. My dad . . . Well, after the Nick-Brynn wedding incident from a few years back, I’ve managed to stay off his radar for the most part. When it comes to money and business, however, nothing escapes his notice—and I have no doubt he’s already standing by and waiting to announce each and every mistake I make.
No doubt about it, I’m fuc—
A masculine hand sticks through the closing elevator doors, cutting off my train of thought as I lurch forward to jab the KEEP OPEN button. I smack it once with a heavy, don’t-fail-me-now finger, then again, my gaze flitting to the doors that are inching closed like the gates of Mordor.
That hand balls into a fist and then a suit-encased forearm appears, followed by a long leg and a brown, leather dress shoe. The leather is so soft, so visibly supple, I wouldn’t doubt that they cost more than my mortgage.
“Gamóto.”
At the Greek curse, and the more than familiar gravel-pitched voice, my back snaps straight, and I yank my gaze up. Up past the lean waist not even a suit jacket can hide. Up past the barrel chest and the bulging, I-swing-hammers-for-a-living arms. Up to a face that’s as unforgiving in its aristocratic, angular bone structure as his hair is a wild, dark mop on his head.
Only that curly hair and a pair of full, pillow-soft lips—not that I’ve ever tasted them, of course—make him seem more human than rigid statue.
Bingo.
Has there ever been more appropriate timing? I don’t think so.
She who asketh shall receive—or however the saying goes.
For possibly the first time in six years, I smile at the man standing just inches away.
Nick Stamos stares down at me, his pewter eyes hard and narrowed with suspicion. “Trying to amputate my arm, Ermione?”
My smile slips, hackles twitching like a cat’s fur standing on end when stalked by a predator. Er-me-o-ne. His tongue rolls over the R in my given name, his Greek accent perfect and sultry despite the condescension dripping heavy and thick with every purred syllable.
Don’t let him get to you.
Only, he’s gotten to me for years now.
“If by amputate you mean save,” I murmur with practiced flippancy, “then sure. It’s not my fault if technology doesn’t want to work for you.”
Those slate-gray eyes, unlike any pair I’ve ever seen, drop to where I’m still pressing the KEEP OPEN button. When his dark brows rise, taunting me with their perfect arches, I follow his lead and glance down at the illuminated button.
CLOSE DOORS.
Oh. Oh.
Air puffs up my chest indignantly as I inhale swiftly. “You didn’t really need that arm, did you?”
Nick snorts derisively. Without sparing me another look, his big hand circles my wrist. His touch is bold, his skin hot. A shiver of something—revulsion, I hope—rolls down my spine, unwinding and unfurling until even my gold-painted toes curl in my heels. And, as though he fears I’m completely incompetent, he angles my still-pointed finger at the button to close the doors.
Pushes down and lingers, as though to taunt, see? This is how a contraption called an elevator works. Welcome to the twenty-first century, Ermione.
Ermione. Even in my head I can hear him slinging around the name I inherited from my maternal grandmother, knowing that it makes my mouth pinch and my hands clench.
My smile has, as it always does around him, completely evaporated.
The elevator pings shut.
Locking me in with Satan’s mortal sidekick, my best friend’s older brother.
4
Nick
Ermione “Mina” Pappas looks exactly the same.
Releasing her wrist, I shove my hands into the pockets of my slacks and lean back, shoulders to the wall, and ease my gaze over her familiar features. Thanks to my stint on Put A Ring On It, and life before that, it’s been a solid seven or eight months since I’ve seen her last.
But Mina is nothing if not predictable in her unpredictability.
She’s been Effie’s best friend since the two of them were in grade school and amputating their Barbies instead of dressing them up. I’ve had twenty-four years with Mina existing in the periphery of my life, darting in and out whenever the occasion called for it.
Like on the night of my almost-wedding to Brynn Whitehead, my college sweetheart.
My heart barely gives an extra thump in grievance for what could have been, all those hopes and dreams that were once tied up with Brynn now unmoored and wasting away in the waters of Never-Gonna-Happen-Again.
For a moment, Mina does nothing but stare openly at me. Her honey eyes, rimmed with the warmest amber I’ve ever seen, dodge downward and skate over my frame. They stop momentarily along the way, like she’s yielding at a four-way intersection, pausing at my shoulders and my stomach and my hips and my feet.
Her unconcealed perusal is an instant reminder that Mina, although I’ve known her since I was eight years old, has a reputation for flaying men alive with her tart tongue, even as she lures him into bed with her curves.
I’ve never been lured, and have no plans to be, thanks to her status as Effie’s best friend, and so I end her little intimidation tactic with a cough into my fist and a dismissive murmur that I know will goad her into the Ermione I’ve preferred for years: awkward and just a little off-kilter.
It’s the unofficial, dog-eat-dog game we always play: who can outwit the other?
I’ve worn the victor’s hat more often than not. Mina’s unpredictable, reckless, even, but she shows her cards before she plays them. Those amber-rimmed eyes of hers hold no secrets. At least, they never did when we were younger.