Traded for Nine Boats, I Walked In Pregnant and Ran Their House novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Pledge Room

In the Astoria house Marigo sets the rules, Alex brings ginger toast at two in the morning, and the kitchen kiss ends with Ari climbing to the third floor.

The room Marigo Stavrou gave me in Astoria was narrow, with a brass bed made so tight a coin would have bounced on it.

An icon of the Virgin hung over the pillow, and a candle burned in a red glass beneath.

"The pledge room," Marigo said from the doorway.

"Fifty years nobody has slept here."

She was eighty-two, and the iron keys at her belt clinked when she crossed her arms.

"You eat at my table, you sleep in this bed, and I check the rooms at six every morning."

"And my dock?" I asked.

"Your dock stays yours.

"Your father signed what he signed.

"You said what you said."

She looked at my stomach and then at my face.

"My grandson asked for you by name, you know.

"He would not tell me why."

I said nothing.

She did not seem to need me to.

Supper was lamb and lemon potatoes at a kitchen table that could seat twelve.

It was just the three of us, and the smell of the lamb turned my stomach the moment I sat down.

I pushed a potato around my plate.

Alex Stavrou sat across from me and ate steadily with his eyes on his food.

"Four years," Marigo said to the candle on the sideboard.

"Four years I have lit a candle every Sunday and asked the Panagia for one great-grandchild."

Alex's fork stopped.

He did not look up.

"And now she sends me the Vlachos girl with a belly," Marigo said.

"God has a sense of humor."

"Yiayia," Alex said, very quietly.

"I am only saying it." She turned to me. "Eat the bread, girl.

"Dry bread will keep it down."

I ate the bread.

When the plates were cleared I stood at the sink beside Alex, and I said what I had been holding since the dock.

"Nobody touches my stomach in front of other people unless I say so."

He turned off the water.

"Understood," he said.

"Not you, not your grandmother, not a single cousin."

He dried his hands on a towel.

"Understood, Ariadne."

He was the only person alive who used my whole name, and he said it carefully, every syllable of it.

I went up to the pledge room and lay on top of the tight bed in my clothes.

I did not sleep.

At two in the morning my stomach rolled over and I gave up and went down to the kitchen in my socks.

The light over the stove was on.

Alex stood at the counter in a gray T-shirt and sleep pants with a kettle going, slicing ginger on a board.

He did not seem surprised to see me.

"There's dry toast in the toaster," he said.

"Sit."

I sat on a stool at the counter, and he put the toast in front of me and a mug of ginger tea beside it.

"How did you know?"

"My cousin's wife was sick for four months.

"The tea helped."

I took a sip.

It was hot and sharp and it was exactly right.

"Why did you say it was yours?" I asked.

"Because you said it."

"You didn't ask me anything."

"I was in that office eight weeks ago, Ariadne.

"I know what night it was."

His voice was steady, but he was holding the edge of the counter.

"You left at dawn," I said. "You didn't wake me."

"You were asleep.

"You'd been working for nineteen hours."

"You could have left a note."

"I wrote six," he said.

"I threw them all out."

I put the mug down.

He came around the counter slowly, and I turned on the stool to face him.

He stopped in front of me with a hand's width between us.

I could smell the ginger on his fingers and the clean cotton of his shirt.

"I don't know how to do this," he said.

"Do what?"

"Be in a house with you."

I took hold of the front of his T-shirt in my fist and pulled him in.

His mouth was warm and sure, and he tasted like the tea.

I made a sound against his lips I had not planned to make.

He caught my head in both hands and kissed me back until the stool tipped.

He caught that too.

My hands were under his shirt.

His back was hard and hot, and I dragged my nails down it.

He lifted me against the counter, and his mouth went to my neck.

Then he stopped and laid one broad palm flat over my stomach, over the little rise I had been hiding under sweaters for a week.

He held it there.

His hand was shaking.

"Mine," he said, to my skin, so low I almost missed it.

I put my hand over his and pressed it harder against me.

Then he took one step back.

"My grandmother's house," he said roughly.

"We can't do this here."

"Careful, Stavrou," I said.

My mouth felt swollen and my voice came out unsteady.

"You'll catch the pledge."

He laughed.

It was short and surprised and I had not heard it before.

He wiped his mouth with his hand.

"Third floor," he said. "The door doesn't lock."

He picked up the kettle, rinsed it and set it in the rack, and did not look at me again.

I stood in the yellow light of the stove, wanting him so badly my hands ached.

Then I took off my socks so the stairs would not talk, and I went up, past the pledge room, to the third floor.

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