That's Amore! - Janelle Denison [44]
The bed, however … the bed was her dream, the water bed Nick had wanted having been ruled out because it was against the lease in the third-floor apartment. Efi let her purse drop to the foyer table then walked toward the door that hid the wrought-iron creation in the other room. Covered in white eyelet lace and tons of pillows of varying sizes and shapes it looked like a picture snipped out of a magazine. And considering she'd designed it from just such a picture, she couldn't have been happier.
And, of course, despite Nick's grumbling about it being too feminine, he'd quickly realized the other uses for the iron posts.
Efi smiled as she ran her palm over one of the iron posts in question. In twenty-four hours the place would be packed with relatives, but now it was empty. Tomorrow night was the official krevati, which in Greek literally meant "bed" but also symbolized the making of the marital bed by single women in the family and other traditions designed to bring the newly married couple happiness and fertility. Of course, the event would be followed by food and drink and dancing in the apartment.
No one need know that only a day before, the bride and groom had already "baptized" the bed in their own intimate way.
Efi began stripping out of her clothes, anxious for Nick to be there so they could have those all-important few minutes together they'd been trying to steal in what seemed like forever.
One whip of the coverlet and the decorative pillows went flying. She climbed between the Egyptian sheets, the material silky against her bare skin, then drew the sheet up to her chin. Changing her mind, she draped it to lie against her stomach, then struck a pose of lazy invitation, waiting for the moment Nick would walk through the door.
She heard his key in the lock and swallowed in anticipation. A quick crunch of her hair and she smiled in wicked pleasure.
Her cell phone chirped from where she'd put it on the bedside table. Damn, what a mood breaker. She groped to turn it off. Probably her mother. She flipped the receiver open to punch the silence button, only to find that it was Nick's name in the display screen…
And looked up to see her mother standing in the bedroom doorway…
CHAPTER FIVE
Day five
THE IRONY OF THE SITUATION wasn't lost on Efi, although she was hard put to find any amusement in it. Just the day before she had been caught by her mother in bed waiting for Nick, her excuse that she'd stopped by for a quick nap making not a dent in what she and her mother knew was the truth. Namely that she was hoping to finish what she and Nick had started in the pantry those days ago.
And now, some thirty hours later, in the same apartment, both sides of the family were crammed into the small place, on the same bed—however remade and minus her—the single women decorating it with rose pedals and koufetta, sugar-coated almonds. Efi wasn't all that sure how she felt about Aphrodite being one of those women, her long dark hair silky and swaying as she bent over the bed. She supposed it was a good thing her cousin didn't know which side of the bed she was going to sleep on or else she might find a series of strategically placed pins protruding from the mattress.
At any rate, Kiki seemed as tuned in to Aphrodite's suggestive intentions as Efi and thwarted the beautiful woman at every turn. If Aphrodite tried to make eye contact with Nick, Kiki stepped in the way. When Aphrodite tried to test Efi's perfume on the dresser, Kiki took the bottle out of her hands and put it back down. The moment Aphrodite positioned herself so she was in front of the women, Kiki edged her out of the way. At one point Kiki jostled Aphrodite so hard the other woman nearly fell headfirst into the connecting bathroom. Efi thought it good that she hadn't fallen, because Kiki likely would have locked her in for the duration of the krevati.
The krevati simply meant "bed," but in this context, the marital bed was prepared