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“It’s going to be fine,” Lucas murmured, earning him a narrow-eyed look that clearly said that Andrei was sure he’d lost his mind.
“This is the first holiday that I’m spending with you and your family.”
“You know them.”
“Yeah, but holidays are a big deal…” Andrei’s voice drifted off and his gaze left Lucas’s face to stare out the window to his right. The street was narrow and lined with older oaks and maples, their bare limbs reaching out over the sidewalk and toward the eclectic mix of modern buildings and red brick homes dating back to the early 1800s. “Do you think…do you think this is too fast? I mean, we’re still figuring this out. Do you really want my parents to get the wrong idea about us? Today, it’s Thanksgiving together. Tomorrow, my mom is picking out places to hold the reception for our wedding.”
Lucas flinched against the shaft of pain that sliced through his chest. Wrong idea? Too fast? As it was, Lucas was sure he wasn’t seeing enough of Andrei because of their damn conflicting schedules. Okay, so marriage was not really on his radar and merely the thought of it was enough to suck all the air from his lungs.
“It’s just dinner,” Lucas countered with a shrug, trying desperately to downplay the importance. “You’ve had dinner with all of them before. This isn’t any different.”
“It’s Thanksgiving. It’s a big deal.”
“It’s not—”
“I’ve been getting almost non-stop texts from Ian for two weeks about this. Hundreds of questions about food and allergies and Romanian customs. I’m from Kentucky. I’ve never even been to Romania.”
“He’s trying to make a good impression for your parents.”
“And that’s the other thing. My parents are here for this.” Andrei groaned again, shoving both his hands through his hair, tugging the long, dark strands loose from the ponytail at the base of his neck.
Lucas reached across and gently pulled Andrei’s hands out of his hair before capturing his lips in a slow kiss. “It will be fine. Your parents are amazing.”
Andrei’s eyes narrowed again and he said in a flat voice, “Rowe, Snow, and my mother in the same room.”
Lucas pulled back and cleared his throat. “It’ll be fine.” But he couldn’t ignore the fact that his own voice sounded a little less confident this time. Rowe was Rowe and he could always be counted on to tease and torment, but Snow…well, there was no telling what was going to come out of the surgeon’s mouth at any given moment, particularly if he was in a foul mood. And that was pretty much at every holiday.
He tried to think of something else to settle Andrei’s worries, but they were out of time. In the rearview mirror, he saw Milos park his SUV directly behind Lucas’s Mercedes. In the passenger seat, Sonja was talking with a flurry of hands as if she were overflowing with energy and excitement. And why not? She was meeting her son’s boyfriend’s family. If the woman had had any other expectations or hopes for her son in terms of him finding a woman to marry and giving her grandchildren, she never did or said anything to indicate it.
Of course that didn’t mean Lucas wasn’t at a complete loss with how to deal with them. He’d invited them to stay over the weekend at his penthouse so they could spend more time with Andrei, but they’d refused. He’d then offered to put them up in the nicest hotel in the city so that they wouldn’t have to drive the long distance back home late at night. Again they refused. Andrei spoke up and convinced them to stay the night, but they wouldn’t allow Lucas to pay.
Sure, he and Andrei weren’t supposed to be serious. They were just dating…and monogamous…and…oh, who the fuck was he kidding? He was completely lost over Andrei. He wanted the man living in his home, sleeping in his bed every night, at his side for public functions, and permanently embedded in every inch of his life. He wanted Andrei to feel comfortable with his family and he wanted to impress the people he viewed as his in-laws, but they were confounding him at every turn.
And now Andrei was talking about “too fast.” Lucas had been planning to ask Andrei to go away with him for a long weekend. Maybe just down to the Caribbean or the Maldives. Just the two of them, away from work and friends and life. It was going to be a difficult enough conversation considering how many disagreements they’d already had about how Lucas spent money on Andrei. Was it “too fast” to go away together, even for just a weekend? Hell, would the idea send Andrei running for the door? They’d felt so solid before today and spending Thanksgiving together had seemed like such a good idea when it occurred to him. Now it felt like Andrei was coming apart at the seams and Lucas was afraid that the slightest pressure might have him say “Fuck it all” as he headed for the door.
