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“Welcome.” Spiro took her hand and raised it to his lips. “My son doesn’t come here often enough. Thank you for bringing him.”
Completely charmed, Drew said, “You have a lovely restaurant.”
Spiro grinned, and she caught the wink of dimples.
Then Kit put a hand on her arm and met his father’s eyes. Something passed between them. She wasn’t sure what, but Spiro finally nodded. “So that’s how it is.”
“Yes,” Kit said.
Then Spiro turned back to study Drew. “You’re not Greek.”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t remember—”
“She doesn’t remember who she is right at the moment,” Kit explained.
Spiro’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, a mystery woman.”
Georgy suddenly pushed himself between Spiro and Kit. He was breathing fast. “A man—” he paused to suck in air “—he got out…of the van…at the corner. Cato is stalling him, asking him if he has a reservation.”
Kit pulled a bill out of his pocket and handed it to the boy. “Good work.”
Then he spoke to his father. “Cato parked my car in the usual place. I need your ride. I’m taking Drew to the house.”
Drew saw curiosity bloom in Spiro’s eyes, but all he said was, “You know where the keys are.”
“Thanks.”
“Introduce Drew to Helena. And be warned, she may be on the warpath. There’s another critic going to give rave reviews to her food tonight.”
“So we heard.” Then Kit was pulling her away again through a door behind the bar and down a flight of stairs.
“Your father is charming,” she said.
“My father was flirting with you.”
“No, I mean…well, maybe a little.”
“Don’t pay him any heed. He’s having a minor midlife crisis. Philly graduated from college in January, and Dad decided the time had come for him to sew some wild oats. He took a month off, went back to Greece and came home with Helena.”
“Helena?”
“Yeah. My sister Philly believes that Helena came here because of Dad. She sees the whole thing in terms of Paris carrying off Helen—and it’s turning out to be just as disastrous.”
“Helena’s beautiful, then?”
“And talented and she has a very independent spirit. She may be Greek, but she’s not the traditional kind of Greek woman that my mother was. Dad convinced Helena to leave her job as executive chef at a hotel in Athens to come here and he’d help her open her own place. I don’t think that she knew until she got here that her restaurant would be an extension of The Poseidon. It’s led to a little friction between them. My aunt Cass agrees with Philly and thinks that they fell in love at first sight and that, because Dad hasn’t dated since Mom died eighteen years ago, his skills with regard to handling women are just a bit rusty.”
“So Helena followed her heart.”
“That’s the theory of the women in the family. And Dad was following his heart when he convinced her to come here. Philly claims that Dad had no intention of opening an upscale dining room until he met Helena. But they are two stubborn Greek people, and wherever their hearts are now, they’re not in San Francisco. She thinks that they’ve both developed a bad case of cold feet. The end result is that they’re engaged in a turf war over whose ideas are best for the restaurant. It doesn’t help Dad’s pride that Helena’s ideas are usually brilliant.”
The staircase emptied into a large, pristine and very efficient-looking kitchen. There were chefs in white suits and waitpeople in black trousers and white shirts moving quickly. Drew had the impression she was watching a well-oiled machine. Kit drew her along the edge of the room until they reached the spot where a woman with dark hair pulled into a bun was adding a delicately carved chocolate flower to a slice of cake.
“Perfect. There you go,” she said to a waiter.
Drew couldn’t take her eyes off the older woman. In profile, Helena was beautiful, tall and regal-looking with classic features. Drew guessed her to be in her late forties, and Kit’s reference to Helen of Troy wasn’t that far off the mark. It was little wonder that Spiro had come up with an excuse to tempt her to come with him back to San Francisco.
Helena stripped off her gloves and hugged Kit. “I thought you were going fishing.” She turned her smile on Drew. “Are you the reason he’s standing his brothers up?”
“I’m a client,” she said. “I hope everything goes well for you tonight. You don’t look a bit nervous.”
Helena shrugged as she clasped Drew’s extended hand. “I’ve done everything I can do. Now it’s up to the Fates. Why don’t you stay and see what you think? I’ll ask Philly to find you a table.”
“We can’t,” Kit said. “Drew’s in a bit of a jam. She’s going to change into Philly’s clothes and then we’re borrowing Dad’s ride.”
Helena’s eyebrows lifted. “He’s letting you borrow his precious motorcycle? You should feel honored. I asked him if I could borrow it, and he told me it wasn’t safe for a woman. What do you think of that?”
“I—”
Sensing that Kit didn’t want to get in the middle of any disagreement between Helena and his father, Drew said, “Isn’t that just like a man? If someone said that to me, I’d go out and buy my own.”
“Really?” There was a beat of silence. Then beaming a smile at Drew, Helena took her hands and squeezed them. “I like you. If you’re in a jam, Kit’s a good man to rely on. He’s competent and he has a knack for solving problems.”
“Ms. Helena,” one of the waiters said.
“Excuse me.” Helena gave Drew’s hands a final squeeze, then turned and strode away.
“You’re a brave woman,” Kit murmured. “One of the things that my brothers and I have learned is that it’s best not to take sides in any of their battles. Do you think she’ll really buy a motorcycle?”
“I hope so.”
He grinned at her. “Would you?”
She thought about it. “Maybe. If I’d followed a man to another country and he was getting cold feet.”
His grin widened. “Guts. I admire that in a woman. And you’re going to need them.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because you’re about to go for a motorcycle ride with a man who’s never driven one.”
10
“YOU’RE SURE YOU’VE never driven one of these before?” Drew studied Spiro’s motorcycle with a dubious expression on her face.
“Very sure.” After removing the helmets, Kit managed to fit the wedding dress along with his gun and the tote in the carrying case at the back of the bike. “This is my virgin trip. Dad’s only had this thing for a month, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to ride it.” He handed a helmet to Drew.
“Maybe we should reconsider this.” She glanced down the length of the alley. “There has to be another option.”
“Cautious. I like that in a woman, too. C’mon.” He took her hand and drew her down the short alley. A Dumpster blocked their view of the street. Carefully peering around it, he scanned the valet-parking lot that The Poseidon used and found what he was looking for. Then he squatted down and glanced back to Drew. “Stay behind me and take a look. See the van?”
He counted three beats before she said, “Yes. It’s just around the corner.”
“Good eyes. The driver’s watching the lot while his buddy is looking for us inside.” Kit paused as they watched a large, burley looking man approach the van and climb in on the passenger side. “Speak of the devil. I guess he’s decided that we got away.”
He barely got the words out before the van shot from the curb and turned the corner in a direction away from the restaurant.
“Are they giving up?” Drew asked.
“Looks like they are for now,” Kit said. “Which may mean that they have another way of locating you.”
“How?”
He turned to her. “If you left your purse behind at the church, one of them may have picked it up and they know where you live. If they figure we’ve given them the slip here, they can just go there and wait. In the meantime, we’ve got us a little reprieve.”
“So we can use your car?”
He shook his head. “I’d rather play it safe.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What you’d rather do is ride that motorcycle.”
He grinned at her. “Well, there’s that, too. And, now that we’re not being chased, it might be fun. What do you say?”
She hesitated a beat. “Okay.”
He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “The more time I spend with you, the more certain I am that you’re my dream girl.” And Kit was slowly realizing that he spoke nothing less than the truth. There wasn’t much about Drew that he didn’t like. Grabbing her hand, he urged her back to the bike.
She was lifting the helmet when he said, “Of course, it might help my driving skills if you kissed me for good luck.”
She met his eyes then, and he waited. He wanted to kiss her again, but he was giving her a choice. He hadn’t given her any the two times that he’d grabbed her and kissed her in the car. Caveman tactics weren’t his usual style with women. Normally, he was a very patient man. Not that he’d been patient with her in his office; neither of them had been that. He liked to think of himself as a skilled but gentle lover. But his reaction, his response, to this woman had been different from the start. She was different.
