Exotic Nights

Too late, just as she was pushing open the kitchen door, she realised that she wasn’t the only night visitor. Leo sat at the island in the middle of the kitchen, illuminated under a circle of low light from overhead. He looked up as she came in. He was eating something. Angel instinctively started backing away, feeling as if she was intruding on a private moment. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise you were up.’

Leo waved a hand, gesturing for her to come in. ‘You couldn’t sleep?’

Angel hovered awkwardly and shook her head, ‘No.’ She felt self-conscious in loose pyjama bottoms and a skimpily clinging vest top, but knew it was silly to feel self conscious when this man seemed to know more about her own body than she did. Not that he seemed inclined to be all that interested any more. Insecurity lanced her. ‘I just wanted to get some water.’

It would be ridiculous if she left now, so she went to the fridge in the corner and busied herself getting out a bottle, trying to ignore the way her pulse had rocketed. She hated to think that he might see something of how much she craved him.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Leo was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Angel glanced at him surreptitiously. He might have been working late in the study after he’d come home. She noticed that he had faint smudges of colour under his eyes and felt a spike of concern. Something else caught her eye then, distracting her. Despite herself she moved closer to where Leo sat at the gleaming counter, clutching the bottle of water to her chest.

‘Is that peanut butter and jam?’

Leo nodded and finished eating a mouthful of sandwich. Angel must have looked bemused, because Leo wiped his mouth with a napkin and said dryly, ‘What?’

She shook her head and moved closer to the stool opposite Leo, unconsciously resting against it for a moment. ‘I just … I wouldn’t have expected …’ she said inanely, feeling like a complete idiot. But there was just something so disarming about finding Leo like this that her stomach had turned to mush. Without realising what she was doing, she sat on the stool opposite him.

‘Want one?’ he offered, with a quirk of his mouth.

Angel shook her head, slightly transfixed.

Leo started putting lids back on the jars. ‘My ya ya was the one who introduced me to it. She used to say that peanut butter and Jell-O was the only thing that made living in the States bearable. We’d sneak down to the kitchen at night, and she’d make sandwiches and tell me all about Greece.’

Angel felt a strange ache in her chest. ‘Sounds like she was a lovely lady.’

‘She was. And strong. She gave birth to my youngest uncle when they were a day away from Ellis Island on the boat from Greece. They both nearly died.’

Angel didn’t know what to say. The ache grew bigger. She started hesitantly, ‘I was close to my ya ya too. But she didn’t live with us. Father and she didn’t get on, so she only visited infrequently. But as we grew up Delphi, Damia and I would go and see her as much as we could. She taught us all about plants and herbs … cooking traditional Greek dishes—everything Irini, my stepmother, wasn’t interested in.’

Leo frowned. ‘Damia?’

‘Damia was our sister. Delphi’s twin.’ Familiar pain lanced Angel.

‘Was?’

She nodded. ‘She died when she was fifteen, in a car accident on one of the roads down into Athens from the hills.’ Angel grimaced. ‘She was a bit wild, going through a rebellious phase. And I wasn’t here to …’ She stopped. Why was she blathering about all of this now? Leo wouldn’t be remotely interested in her life story.

But nevertheless he asked, ‘Why weren’t you here?’

Angel sent him a quick look. He seemed genuinely interested, and there was something very easy about talking to him like this. She decided to trust it. ‘Father sent me to a boarding school in the west of Ireland from the time I was twelve until I finished my schooling, so I could learn about the Irish part of my heritage and see my mother.’ Angel conveniently left out the part about how her father had basically wanted her gone.

She looked down for a moment, picking at the label on her bottle of water. ‘The worst bit was leaving the girls and ya ya. She died my first term there. It was too far for me to come home in time for the funeral.’

Angel looked up again, and pushed down the emotion threatening to rise when she thought of how she’d not been allowed home for Damia’s funeral either—hence Delphi’s subsequent clinginess and their intense connection.

Leo just sat there, arms relaxed, and then asked quietly, ‘Why did your mother leave?’

Immediately Angel bristled. She never talked about her mother to anyone. Not even Delphi. She felt so many conflicting emotions, and yet Leo wasn’t being pushy. Wasn’t cajoling. They were making bizarre late-night conversation. So with a deep breath Angel told him. ‘She left when I was two. She was a beautiful model from Dublin, and I think she found the reality of being married to a Greek man and living a domestic life in Athens too much for her.’

‘She didn’t take you with her?’

Angel fought against flinching. She shook her head. ‘No. I think the reality of a small toddler was also too much for her to bear. She went home, and back to her glamorous jet-setting life. I saw her a couple of times while I was at school in the west of Ireland … but that was it.’

It sounded so pathetic now that Angel told it. Her own mother hadn’t deemed her worth keeping. If it hadn’t been for the birth of the twins, their instantaneous bond, Angel didn’t know how she would have coped.

Leo, seemingly not content with that, asked, ‘What was the school like?’

Angel had the strangest sensation of the earth shifting beneath her feet. She quirked a small smile. ‘It’s in Connemara, one of the most stunning parts of Ireland, but very remote. It’s an old abbey, and it looms across a choppy lake like something out of a Gothic nightmare fantasy. When I went that first September it was raining and grey, and it was just …’Angel couldn’t help a shudder running through her.

‘A million miles from here?’