Aegean Intrigue (3 page)

****

Following Francie off the ferry, Alex cursed himself. He had nearly blown his cover back there. Francie's question about his other projects had caught him off guard. He thought he had done enough research and preparation to pull off this sting. But if he wasn't careful, she'd realize the only digging he'd ever done was for information.

Dimitri, as promised, waited at the dock. He held a sign bearing the name of the man whose land they were to excavate. The minibus he drove looked barely large enough for all the people and their luggage, but they managed to squeeze in, and the bus turned south toward the site. Alex sat next to Dimitri, rolled down his window, and took a deep breath. After ten years in Athens, he appreciated the freshness of the air on the islands. He thought back to his childhood home on Santorini. The endless summer days on the beach when not working in the kitchen with his father. Climbing trees with his cousins. The family celebrations.

The endless arguing, his mother's tears.

Giving himself a mental shake, he turned his attention toward the other occupants of the bus. Two others had joined the crew, volunteers looking to gain experience. They were Josh, an undergraduate archeology student from Colorado, and Willem, from the Netherlands. Alex had personally investigated their backgrounds before approving their applications.

The bus wended its way through the port city of Parikia, past the Church of the Hundred Doors and the produce marketplace, to the road encircling the island, and headed south. Alex drank in the cool breezes of the palm trees, the brilliant blue waters, the slower pace of the islanders. Finally, Dimitri turned the bus into an immaculately kept drive, protected from would-be travelers by an imposing wrought iron gate. A sentry got up from his perch, reviewed the pass shown to him, and allowed the van to go through.

The drive ran up a rocky hillside. Alex caught a glimpse of what was probably the main house, but Dimitri turned to the left before reaching it. He followed the dirt path around the hill to a beautiful beach area. Here, he stopped, and the group disembarked.

There was one wooden structure in the clearing plus two large tents and two smaller ones. The permanent building contained kitchen facilities as well as a shaded open area for dining. Alex directed the group toward their homes for the next two months.

“The women will share the large tent at the far end. The men will take the other. Professor, you and I will each take one of the smaller tents. There is a room off the kitchen we can use for an office.”

****

Francie surveyed the campground. The tents were new and furnished with cots and bedrolls. There was plenty of room for the three women and their belongings. It was more comfortable than some of the other accommodations she'd had to endure on digs. There had been times she'd slept on the ground in a sleeping bag, thankful for the mosquito netting around her. Once, she'd gone on a dig in Israel and stayed in a kibbutz with strangers. She had been a frightened pre-teen, thankful her father was with her.

After stowing their belongings, the crew quickly got to work. The dig area was marked with ropes, and the surface dirt had been removed. Professor Theo took charge of explaining the routine and job expectations to the newer members while Francie, Dimitri, and Yannis built two table screens to be used for sifting the dirt and sorting their finds. Dimitri was a quick learner. Once Francie explained what was needed, he simply nodded and went to work. Yannis, however, was content to stand back and wait to be told what to do every step of the way. Francie hoped he wouldn't continue this behavior throughout the dig.

Someone was staring at her again. She looked around her, but Alex was busy with the professor. Who else could it be? She turned her gaze up the hill, toward the mansion.

A tall lean man stood at the top of the hill, watching them work. His salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed in a professional style and his gray suit slacks fit him well. He held his jacket, his tie was loosened, and his white shirt was open at the neck. Though he was far away, Francie felt his gaze boring into her. This must be Zotis, the owner of the estate. She bent again to her task, though she found it difficult to concentrate with the man on the hill staring down.
Silly
, she told herself.
He's not looking at you. He's just watching over the entire crew.

But another glance upward confirmed his gaze still pointed her way. Alex ended his conversation with Professor Theo and climbed up the hill to meet with the newcomer. Their discussion was brief, and when Zotis turned away, Francie felt a sense of relief, as if a dark cloud had been lifted.

After the screens were assembled, Dimitri went to the food tent to prepare dinner. Soon, the scent of beef, onions, and tomatoes spiced with cumin, cinnamon, and garlic filled the air. Dimitri was evidently preparing stifado, a traditional Greek stew. Francie's stomach growled, and she remembered she hadn't eaten all day. She had been too excited about the trip to eat that morning, and lack of funds had prevented her from buying food on the ferry.

When Alex called a halt to the day's work, she was more than ready to eat. The dig site was set up, and they would be ready to begin work in earnest the next day.

Before heading to the dining cabin, the crew cleaned up. Tools were wiped off and put away. Francie noted that Yannis, again, stood off to the side, his ever-present Blackberry his only concern. She frowned.

“Something wrong?”

The man seems to be everywhere
. She nodded toward the preoccupied crew member. “Yannis spends a lot of time on that Blackberry. For a graduate archaeology student, he doesn't seem to know what he's doing. And he doesn't seem willing to pull his weight in the work and cleanup.”

“Perhaps he's preoccupied with a girlfriend he left behind. But you're right. He should be helping. I'll talk to him.” Alex loped over to the other man, his long legs covering the distance in no time.

Francie scolded herself for noticing the man's legs and turned her attention back to her own work. She cleaned off her trowel, wrapped it carefully, and stowed it in her backpack. Focus, she reminded herself.

 

The crew had been on site for three days, and Francie felt they had made good progress. Christina, Jane, and Josh were on their first dig, but had learned fast and easily adapted to the routine. She noticed Alex worked as hard as anyone else, even though as Project Director, no one expected him to do any heavy work. He spent all day in the sun, working side-by-side with the crew. In the evenings, he worked with Francie and Professor Theo, going over the daily reports. Francie noticed he read each report carefully, double-checking the figures and asking questions about each step of the excavation process.

He had seemed particularly interested in the system of cataloguing they were to use. The night before, he'd asked her to demonstrate it for him.

“Show me how you would record an item—say, a piece of pottery,” he'd requested. Francie had wondered why an archaeologist with enough experience to be a Project Director would need to be shown something as simple as the cataloguing procedure, but she had complied. Perhaps he simply wanted to see if the system they used suited him.

The crew seemed to work well together despite the wide variety of ages, native languages, and levels of experience. Francie believed part of this was because Alex insisted everyone always speak in English during the workday. One morning Christina began a conversation with Yannis, speaking Greek to her fellow countryman.

“Christina, please use English. There are some here who don't speak much Greek.”

“But Kyrie Leonidis, it is so difficult for me. And Yannis and I were having a private conversation.”

“Then you should save the conversation for later, in private. While we are working, or at mealtimes when we are all together, it is courteous to use a language everyone understands.”

The girl had scowled, but grudgingly complied.

Later in the day, Josh was the first to notice something wrong. “I don't smell anything cooking. Shouldn't Dimitri have supper on by now?”

An inspection of the dining tent confirmed Josh's suspicions. The kitchen looked exactly as it had after breakfast cleanup. There was no sign of Dimitri.

“Maybe he took a nap and overslept,” Christina suggested.

A trip to the men's tent brought bad news: Dimitri had contracted the flu and would not be able to prepare dinner. Francie knew what would come next, and had already started for the kitchen when Professor Theo spoke.

“Francie, since you work in a restaurant, could you—”

“Of course.” She was more than willing to fill in for Dimitri, but her steps faltered when she heard a deep voice behind her.

“I'll help.”

Help? She couldn't imagine Alex the Authoritarian helping with anything. But having another pair of hands would be welcome. Besides, he was the boss here. Better to bite her tongue and go along. If he faltered or showed any incompetence at all, she could take over.

Sure enough, as soon as they stepped into the kitchen, Alex took charge.

“Dimitri said he had planned to make spetzofai tonight. All the ingredients are here, so we'd better get started.” He glanced at her, and she nodded in approval. He hauled the sausage and vegetables out of the refrigerator. “I can handle the main dish. Would you like to make the rice and perhaps a salad to go with it?” Without waiting for her answer, he went to work, oiling the large saucepan and chopping the peppers and tomatoes for the savory sausage dish.

The man definitely knew his way around a kitchen. His movements were efficient and precise. She turned and measured out the rice, putting it on to boil.

“Were you a chef in another life?” she asked.

“My father's family owned a restaurant on Santorini. We all helped out in the kitchen.”

Francie thought about her father, so brilliant in many ways, but utterly helpless in domestic affairs. When he remembered to eat, he depended on someone else, or he went out. Alex didn't seem to be helpless in any situation, but most of the men in this country had definite ideas about division of labor between the sexes.

“Francie?”

She turned to him. “Yes?”

“Are you planning to do anything with that knife?”

She looked down. Her right hand was wrapped around the handle of a large chopping knife, but nothing was on the block in front of her. She'd been caught daydreaming. Her mother had often said, “You and your father both get so caught up in your other worlds, I might as well be living alone.” And then she would leave. Again.

Francie blinked, bringing herself back to the present. “Sorry, I was somewhere else.”

“Wherever you were, I hope it was a pleasant place. I'd hate to see you wield that knife when you're angry.” He went back to tending his grill.

Francie stared at him a moment. There had been no censure in his voice, only mild teasing. Her father, though he often “disappeared” in his own thoughts for hours at a time, would not tolerate the same behavior from his daughter. Leandros hadn't either. He had expected her total attention and devotion when they'd been together.

Now, she opened the cooler and found the produce. Dimitri had made arrangements with a local farmer for the food. The tomatoes and cucumbers nearly burst with freshness. Fresh feta cheese came from another local farm. They would have a nice Greek salad to go with Alex's main dish.

Francie washed the vegetables then cut into a ripe tomato. The juice from the fruit sprayed up into her eyes, and she instinctively backed away from the counter. She connected solidly with Alex, who had headed toward the sink to wash his hands. He reached out to steady her, and her temperature rose.

“Are you all right?”

Close together like this, his breath tickled her ear.

She answered with a nod and shivered at the loss of heat as he backed away. They completed the meal preparations in companionable silence, though she couldn't stop herself from glancing at Alex every so often. Though she knew Greek men who cooked, none stirred her senses like this one.

Since Josh checked in on them every ten minutes, they didn't have to notify the others when dinner was ready. The minute Alex pronounced the spetzofai done, the entire crew gathered at the dining area where the tables had already been set up. Everyone ate heartily. When thanks and congratulations came her way, she gave the credit to Alex, who simply waved away the praise and insisted Francie was the real cook.

His modesty was another surprise. In her life, Greek men did not hesitate to take credit for any good thing, whether it was their doing or not. After her parents' divorce, Francie had split her school vacations between Athens, with her father's family, and Montreal, the home of her maternal grandparents. Grand-pere treated Grand-mere as an equal, with respect and love. By contrast, her Greek uncles dominated their wives, expecting total compliance to their wishes. Since Alex was also half Greek, would he take after his father, or did his American mother teach him to be more sensitive to a woman's personal and professional needs? Surely there had been—or was—a woman in his life. How did he treat her? The thought of him with someone else brought an ache to her heart, and she forced herself to ignore it. She wouldn't go down that road again. She couldn't survive the pain.

****

Alex held up his paper cup of wine. “I propose a toast to a successful culinary partnership.”

Francie lifted her own cup and touched it lightly to his. “It was delicious, wasn't it?”

The setting is wrong
, he thought. He and Francie should be seated at a linen-covered table in a quiet, elegant restaurant. The cups they held should be crystal wine goblets, and they should be surrounded by the soft strains of string music. Yet here in this dusty camp dining tent, surrounded by their co-workers, he found the woman before him more entrancing than any society maven.

He brought his cup to his lips and sipped, using the moment to clear his mind of such traitorous thoughts. This was not the time or place for such nonsense. As always, concentrating on the job calmed his nerves. He needed to get to know this woman in order to find out how she operated. Hopefully, she would let something slip that would incriminate her.

“Tell me about your projects with the professor,” he began. “He told me you were in Turkey last year, assisting in the excavation of an ancient Assyrian city.”

He watched as Francie's eyes glowed with excitement. Her entire demeanor changed as she warmed to her subject. Her smile widened, her voice became more animated, and her hands gestured as she described the trip. Had any man been able to bring her as much excitement as an archaeological dig?

“It was such an honor to be included in the project,” she insisted.

“What kinds of things did you find?” he asked.

Her brightness faded a bit, and her features scrunched into a thoughtful frown. “I can't talk about the specific finds,” she admitted. “I signed a contract of confidentiality—for security purposes. If someone were to talk about something really valuable we had uncovered, it might encourage thievery.”

Confidentiality agreements were standard procedure for archaeological digs, but it wasn't uncommon for bits of information to leak out. A persistent reporter or an adversary could usually cull some information from a dig participant. Francie apparently had enough experience to understand the ramifications of releasing too much information. Was she being cautious, or was this a measure of her integrity?

But he wasn't as interested in the finds as he was the woman in front of him. “I understand,” he insisted. “Tell me about Turkey. Did you enjoy your time there?”

The brightness returned, and Alex felt his heart lighten in response. When she was nearby, he had to work to keep his face from sporting the goofy grin of a love-struck teenager. His voice became higher pitched, almost like that awkward stage in his early teens. Why did she have such an effect on him? He half expected his face to break out in pimples. He put his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands, feeling his cheeks. There were no blemishes, but his face felt warm. Blasted woman.

As Francie chattered away about her time in Turkey, Alex listened with half an ear. He had spent time there, so he knew about the places she described and could nod at the right times. He watched her eyes glow as she described the colorful bazaars, the delicious foods, the friendly people. Her hair escaped from her ponytail and framed her lightly tanned face. She looked young, healthy, and oh so desirable.

His senses sharpened as he she mentioned some of her colleagues, members of the crew she had worked with.

“Who was that?”

“Andre? He was a graduate student, I think. The professor knew him. Why?”

Andre Barrineau was no graduate student. He was suspected as a member of an internet crime ring but had never been convicted, due to lack of evidence. He waved a hand, encouraging her to go on with her story.

“Never mind. I used to know someone by that name, but it must have been someone else. The Andre I knew is much too old and too independent to be a graduate student. Tell me about the restaurants in Izmir. How do they compare to those in Athens?”

While she chatted, he made a mental note to find out why Andre's name had not appeared on the list of crew members working with Francie and Professor Theo on their previous digs. He couldn't work effectively if the information he had was incomplete or incorrect.