Page 9 of Footprints in the Sand (Coleman #13)

Chapter Nine

D imitra couldn’t figure out what to wear on the night of the reading.

Splintered with anxiety, she tore through what she’d brought—mostly sweeping blue-and-white outfits that seemed better suited to Greek living than anywhere else—and finally opted for a dark blue dress that made her look slightly mysterious and slightly glamorous, but hopefully, more than anything, approachable.

She needed to feel a part of the community, sooner rather than later.

She didn’t want to drive herself crazy with loneliness.

Dimitra’s rental car glinted in the driveway in front of Eva’s house, bright white and far too clean for Dimitra’s liking.

She’d rented it that morning from a small shop near the port and been surprised to find the automatic was far easier to drive than her one back on Paros, but with less control.

She knew Americans started on time, and sometimes even earlier, which boggled her Greek mind.

Because of this, she got in her rental car and parked outside the bookstore a full forty minutes before the start time.

This was overkill.

When Dimitra entered the bookstore, she found only a middle-aged man behind the front counter and another woman in her fifties, writing notes to herself on a pad of paper and drinking a cup of coffee. Thirty-plus chairs were set up in the corner, but nobody else was there.

“Hello!” the man behind the counter said with a smile. “Welcome to the shop.”

“Are you, um, Daniel?” Dimitra asked, surprised that she remembered the name of Meghan’s best friend.

“I am.” Daniel stepped around the front corner and extended his hand. “And this is my girlfriend, Margorie.”

The woman writing notes waved and smiled broadly.

“Dimitra,” she introduced herself. “Meghan is a new friend of mine, sort of. We just met. I’m staying in her daughter’s place this summer.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped. It was clear he’d heard all about her. “You’re from Greece! Of course. Yeah. Meghan said you were like nobody she’d ever met around here.”

Dimitra’s heart swelled at the compliment (at least, she hoped it was a compliment). She hadn’t thought Meghan liked her, not at first. But ever since they’d gone swimming together yesterday, Meghan had texted several times, reminding her that she was just down the road.

“She’s been very welcoming,” Dimitra said. “Everyone has been.”

This wasn’t entirely true, of course. A woman at the grocery store had yelled at her because she hadn’t bagged her vegetables in plastic. The car rental agent had treated her like just another tourist, which she was, she supposed.

She was an island girl on the wrong island. She didn’t have any of the benefits of being “from here,” the way she did back home.

“You’re here for Estelle’s reading?” Margorie asked, getting up and walking over to them. “She’s really wonderful.”

“Margorie’s doing a reading of her own after Estelle,” Daniel explained with a smile. “They’re both romance novelists.”

Dimitra said she was really excited about it. “I hope I can follow your English well enough. Sometimes it can be difficult to hold all the words in my head at once.”

Margorie nodded in understanding. “I tried to learn Spanish for a while, but I was helpless. I’m impressed with anyone who speaks even a little bit of another language, and your English is fluent.”

Dimitra felt nervous and timid. She smiled. “I can see that I’m early. “I might walk around the block for a bit until the shop fills up.”

“There’s a fantastic ice cream place just up the road,” Margorie told her. “It’s the one with the red roof right next to the sailing bar. You can’t miss it.”

Dimitra thanked her. “See you later!”

Dimitra wandered toward the boardwalk, where she got in line for ice cream and ordered herself a strawberry with chunks of frozen fruit.

She then leaned against the boardwalk railing, eating her ultra-creamy ice cream and watching the sailboats as they shifted gently in the breeze.

It was a scene she knew well from Aliki, but with a different set of characters.

She wondered about Meghan having said she was unlike anyone she’d ever met and wondered how many islanders were gossiping about the “strange new Greek woman” who’d come out of nowhere.

She knew for a fact that plenty of Paros islanders were gossiping about Eva, too.

What does she think she’s doing? A young woman like her, traveling halfway around the world?

What is wrong with her? Why doesn’t she have a husband?

Suddenly, a new boat came toward shore, its sails shifting and tightening as the sailor aboard willed it to slow.

She looked up to see a handsome guy with sandy hair and broad, tanned shoulders, moving easily and athletically.

Nobody else was aboard with him save for a golden retriever, who padded around happily, his tongue lolling in the wind.

It was a perfect scene of an American man and his dog. Dimitra had to fight the urge to take a photograph.

But then, everything about the scene changed.

So excited to be near shore, maybe, the golden retriever leaped off the boat and into the water.

The man on board gasped with surprise and nearly lost control of the sails.

The golden retriever was doggy-paddling toward the boardwalk, but there was nowhere for him to take hold of, nowhere easy for him to leap onto.

He was trapped. Dimitra saw the panic on the dog owner’s face and felt it in her soul.

Because she was closest to the dog, she had to do something.

Dimitra threw her ice cream into the trash.

The dog was nearing the wall of a nearby dock, where it looked like he might be pinned between the dock and a sailboat.

She could hear him gasping for breath, panting, and nearing exhaustion.

What had gotten into this dog’s mind? Weren’t they supposed to be smarter than this?

Have instincts? Then again, humans were supposed to have instincts, and they often did things not in their best interest.

Dimitra wished that others had intervened when she’d done stupid stuff in the past. She wished that someone had stopped her before she’d let Kostos go on that fishing expedition too late in the season.

“Let him” was a difficult way of putting it, of course.

Kostos always did exactly what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. At least, he once had.

At the corner of the dock and boardwalk, Dimitra could see the dog really struggling, his eyes searching for a way out of the waves.

There was no other option but to leap in and guide the dog to safety, or at least hold on to something and keep the dog’s nose in the air.

“Silly baby,” she said to the dog in Greek. “I’ll help you.”

Dimitra took off her dark blue dress, leaving her in only her underwear and bra. This was probably scandalous to most Americans. But she was a proud Greek woman. Let them gossip as much as they wanted to. They were going to, anyway.

She leaped into the water.

In a moment, she surfaced, making eye contact with the gorgeous golden retriever.

He looked overjoyed to see her, like he’d already decided he’d never see a human again.

He whimpered as though to ask for help. Dimitra beckoned for him to approach, calling out to him in both Greek and English until he paddled his way to her.

Then she strung her arm beneath his belly to support him and held the ladder directly beside her, a ladder that led up to the dock.

The dog stopped his frantic paddling but kept splashing every now and again.

He was smiling, and his breathing was softer.

“It’s okay, baby,” Dimitra kept saying in Greek. “You’re going to be just fine.”

As she said it, she half imagined she was talking to herself.

She half imagined it was Kostos, telling her that instead.

Suddenly, there was the thudding of feet on the dock, and Dimitra raised her chin to see the sandy-haired owner of the dog gazing down at them, incredulous.

“He’s okay!” she called up to him. “He’s just scared, I think.”

“He’s the dumbest dog I’ve ever owned!” the guy said. “But he’s also my favorite!”

“Funny how that happens,” Dimitra said, smiling wide.

“How can we get him out of there?” the owner asked.

Dimitra shrugged and laughed. “I didn’t think that far ahead, to be honest with you.”

“Ugh. Okay. One second.” The sailor disappeared for a minute or two, leaving Dimitra to say sweet nothings to the dog, a dog she was starting to fall in love with. A dog who jumped blindly into the nothingness and prayed everything would go all right.

The sailor returned with a full-body collar that Dimitra slowly slipped over the dog’s neck and back, looping his legs carefully to secure him. “What’s his name?” she called.

“It’s Cash,” the sailor said.

“Cash the dog!” Dimitra said with a smile.

Now that Cash’s collar was on, they were able to loop a couple of ropes through said collar and gently, gently lift him out of the water.

Dimitra remained in the water, holding Cash’s back legs for support until his front ones found the dock and he howled with joy. He licked his owner and whimpered.

“I think he’s saying he’s sorry!” Dimitra said.

The sailor laughed. “Should we use the pulley system for you, too?”

“I think I can manage on my own.” Dimitra used the ladder to pull herself up to the dock, revealing herself to be in only her bra and underwear and soaking wet.

A few tourists on the boardwalk stared at her, but she didn’t care. She picked up her dress and held it loosely over her, not wanting to drench it. She smiled down at the dog.

“I can’t believe you jumped in like that,” the sailor said. He looked mystified. “Where are you from? I can’t place your accent.”

“I’m from Greece.”

“You’re like a siren or something.”

She laughed. “I think sirens are supposed to bring men to their death, not save dogs.”

“Right. Yeah. I always get my mythology mixed up.” He still held Cash’s make-do rope leash as though he were frightened Cash would run away again. “Maybe Cash saw you and thought he needed to meet you as soon as he could.”

Dimitra blushed and reminded herself that men liked to flatter. It wasn’t always the truth.

“I’m glad it worked out,” she said.

“Are you a tourist here?” he asked.

“Sort of. I’ll be here for a few months,” she explained. “But I really have to get going. I’m supposed to go to a reading, and I can’t very well go like this.”

She gestured to her drenched hair.

“You look spectacular,” he said. “Tell me your name.”

“It’s Dimitra,” she said, because she couldn’t see anything wrong in giving it. “And yours?”

“Harrison,” he said. “Harry for short.”

He paused for a second, confused and soft-spoken. And then he asked, “What’s this reading you’re going to? Do you mind if Cash and I come?”

Dimitra hadn’t come to Massachusetts to cause a scandal.

But when she appeared outside the bookstore twenty minutes later with wet hair and a handsome sailor and golden retriever beside her, all eyes were on her, burning with curiosity.

The golden retriever was still wet and frequently shaking his body, splashing droplets every which way.

“You need to stop that, Cash,” Harry told him, laughing. “They won’t let you into the bookstore if you keep it up!”

Dimitra smiled nervously and touched her hair, wondering what kind of mess of curls it had dried into.

Each time she let herself think that Harry was handsome, so achingly handsome, like an American cowboy in an old movie, she reminded herself that she hadn’t come to the United States to fall in love.

She was still devastatingly in love with Kostos and had no plans to remarry.

She could carry the flame of her love forever.

And then Harry showed her that crooked grin. “It’s a romance novelist?”

Dimitra realized there was a poster out front advertising “Estelle Coleman, Harlequin Romance Novelist.” A photograph of the woman, Meghan’s sister-in-law, smiling beautifully, hung in front of what looked to be the Sound Dimitra had just swum in.

Dimitra’s cheeks were hot as she realized what she’d done: brought a handsome stranger to a romance reading. She decided to play it cool. “What’s wrong with romance?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’ve read a few romances myself.”

“Have you? Which ones?”

“Mostly older ones,” he admitted. “ Jane Eyre was my mother’s favorite book, and she made me read it when I was younger. I read a few westerns with love stories in them. But my favorites were actions and adventures on the open seas, with plenty of beautiful heroines.”

“I imagine those heroines were incapable of doing anything, waiting around for their men to come home?” Dimitra asked.

“Never!” Harry said. “The ones I liked the most involved women who were far more capable and intelligent than the men.” He looked momentarily bashful. “But yeah, it’s just because of my mom. She raised me and taught me to think like that. I couldn’t stand anything overly misogynistic.”

“Dimitra!” A voice rang out from the gathering, those awaiting Estelle’s reading, and Dimitra turned to find Meghan hurrying over to them.

Her brow was furrowed with worry and confusion.

Behind her was a woman Dimitra had never seen before, a woman with features very similar to Meghan’s.

“Why are you all wet?” Meghan asked with a laugh.

Dimitra threw her head back. She had too much attention, too many eyes on her. “It’s a long story.”

“She saved my dog’s life,” Harry interjected. “You should have seen her.”

Meghan bent down to sweep her fingers through Cash’s damp coat. “Can he not swim?”

“He can. He’s just overeager and got himself in a bad spot,” Harry said.

Meghan smiled and straightened up. “I recognize you. Do we know each other?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m usually here in the summertime. We might have seen each other.”

Meghan looked thoughtful, like she wanted to tell Harry he was wrong about that.

The woman beside Meghan introduced herself. “I’m Oriana, Meghan’s sister,” she said. “Meghan was telling me you’re an artist? I’d love to see your work.”

Dimitra hadn’t managed to pull out her paints or sketchpads or pencils since she’d arrived, and she couldn’t say why. Maybe she was too tired, too jet-lagged. Too overwhelmed.

“Oriana’s an art dealer. Most of her clients are in Manhattan,” Meghan said.

Dimitra immediately went on high alert. Although she’d always worked as an artist, she’d never had the kind of high-rolling deals that often came with the New York City art scene.

Was this her big break?

She didn’t want to overthink it.