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Stavros shook his head. “Very diplomatic. I guess that’s all I can expect when I pry into your personal life.”
“You haven’t divulged much about your personal life. Why should you know about mine? Besides, you already have my background check.”
“True. But that doesn’t tell me how or why you became the woman you are walking beside me. The facts are there. The life experiences that molded and shaped you are not. I want to know the answers to the mystery embodied in Rose.”
“Are you willing to do the same?” She quirked an eyebrow at him.
His gaze stretched ahead to the men and children. “I think I am.” Stavros turned toward her. “I’d like to ask you on a proper date. Will you come?”
“Yes,” she said. The expression on his chiseled face had her heart fluttering overtime. So much for not mixing business with pleasure. If Stavros didn’t see a problem with taking their friendship up a level, then why should she?
♥ ♥ ♥
Rose watched Adonis pick at the scab on his knee. He’d’ fallen halfway up the nine hundred and ninety-nine steps at the Palamidi castle, after they left the olive grove. Stavros carried him the remaining four hundred and three steps to the top.
The view was stunning. The city, the bay, the boats, and the trees all formed a glorious vista worthy of the gods. Adonis was delighted to learn Achilles had been there. Any Greek hero was Adonis’s hero.
“Leave your scab alone.” Rose gently removed his hand from his knee. “Let’s put some more medicine on it so it can heal and not leave a scar.”
“What’s a scar?” Adonis asked.
Rose opened the tube of antibiotic ointment and applied the gel to his skin. “A scar is a place on your body that gets hurt, and when the skin heals back together, it doesn’t quite look smooth after. You can always tell where the injury happened.”
“Like Papa and Stavros. They have scars.”
“Yes,” she said. Both men bore marks from their military days, though Mr. P had more than Stavros. “We’ve already been on a boat to see Bourtzi. I thought we might paint.” Mr. P had supplies delivered while they were on the boat.
“Paint?” Adonis scrunched up his nose. “I don’t know how to paint.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“And me too?” Nefeli popped up from where she’d been coloring on the bed.
“Of course. We’ll start with water colors. They won’t ruin your clothes.”
Nefeli set her paper and colored pencils aside. “What will we paint?”
“Anything we see that looks interesting.”
“An olive?” Adonis asked.
“The beach?” Nefeli inquired.
“Both sound great. Do you want to paint in here, out on the beach, somewhere in the hotel?”
“We can paint anywhere?”
“Sure. We only need cups of water. Your papa had all the supplies delivered while we were out.”
The children looked at each other. “Beach.”
After putting on sunscreen, they quickly gathered their supplies and headed out to the sand.
Rose helped the children set up their small easels and clipped paper to them. After a five-minute lesson on how to use the paint and how to use some simple tricks that might help them bring their intended subjects to life, she let them loose.
Adonis painted a beach ball, an olive, and a tree before Nefeli had completed her first picture.
Rose wasn’t surprised. She’d expected Nefeli to be more absorbed by the project.