Page 86 of The Lies Between Lovers

“That’s fine,” she interjected with a smile. “I’m not even that hungry now. Could you do me a favor?”

Vaslav arched a single eyebrow high. “Careful, my favors rarely come free.”

“Mmhmm.”

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know where my phone is, to start,” she said.

Vaslav lifted a hand and cut it through the air. “Kiril has it—took it back to your place. It was dead, the charger is there, and I told him to just leave it for the night, anyway.”

“Right, well, my mother needs a call.”

His gaze widened subtly. “Oh?”

“If I’m going to be in here for another day, then she needs a call because she was worried about me and told me to go into the doctor sooner than I did,” Vera muttered, fidgeting with the edge of the blanket.

“I’ll call her in the morning.”

Vera gave a little laugh at that. “Right, you’ll call my mother.”

“I will,” he said offering no room for argument with his tone. “Or I’ll get Mira to do it. Kiril won’t be back tomorrow. He’s busy with other things, I believe. Unless you want to call her with my phone right now?”

Vera considered that ...

It wasn’t a hard choice.

“When she’s worried, it makes me more anxious,” she admitted.

“All right, so I will call. I’ll get you something to write it down on in a minute.”

That left Vera with another thought.

And one last favor.

“Vas?” she asked, turning to look at him again.

He smiled back. “Hmm?”

“I want to pick my own engagement ring.”

She could tell by the way he turned to stone that he hadn’t been expecting that to be what came out of her mouth.

“Is that a yes, then?” he asked. “Are you finally agreeing to marry me?”

“By winter?”

He nodded. “By winter, kisska.” A laugh split his lips into a smile. “Hell, you can even pick the date.”

Vera prided herself on making smart choices and doing so all on her own. Without the influence of opinions from other people who wouldn’t be made to live with the consequences of said choices. Before Vaslav called her mother to deliver the news of her short hospital stay and learned that her father was probably already on his way to Russia—if not, Demyan would be soon—yes, it was an easy choice.

It wasn’t the ultimatum of her father’s safe arrival that made it, either. Or at the very least, she hoped when Vaslav put together the timing of her decision to the arrival of her father, he didn’t think so.

“Yes,” she told Vaslav, “I’ll marry you.”

24.

Vaslav didn’t wait until the morning to make the phone call to Vera’s stepmother all the way across the pond. So to speak. Once he knew she was sleeping in the uncomfortable-looking hospital bed, and the corridor outside the room was practically dead of any staff movement, he stepped out with the phone number she’d scratched onto a piece of paper with a half-dried pen he found in the bedside table.