Page 87 of The Lies Between Lovers

He could have gotten Mira to make the call—maybe he should have—but that would require an ignorance on his part that he couldn’t afford to have, really.

After punching in the long, international number, Vaslav put the phone to his ear and waited as the call rang once, and then twice. On the third, a soft-spoken woman picked up the call with a polite and cheery, “Hello?”

He considered hanging up.

Some men might take a personal call to their wife as a slight that couldn’t go unanswered. Given the state of Vera’s father’s business, he might very well be one of those men. Vaslav didn’t concern himself with the problem seeing as how it wasn’t a real threat now.

It took the woman speaking again to finally trigger Vaslav into responding.

“Hello, who’s there?”

“Do you often pick up calls from unknown numbers ... it’s Mrs. Avdonin—yes?”

It could have been the question he asked immediately that caused the woman on the other end to answer with silence. Or perhaps it was his clear, thick accent that made the woman pause.

“I prefer Claire,” she eventually said.

“A bit informal,” he returned under his breath. “Friendly, even.”

He never knew what to do with friendly people.

“I’ve been told I am quite friendly, actually.”

“Funny, I am not told the same,” Vaslav deadpanned.

At the reference to himself, the woman seemed to be reminded that she was talking to a stranger.

“Who is calling?”

Vaslav let out a sigh as his back pressed against the brick wall of the hospital corridor. Swathed in gray tones and dim lighting, only dancing shadows from various rooms proved there was any life left in the place. “Vera wanted to give you a call, but her phone is out of battery, and not with her at the moment. I offered to call for her.”

“Vera—”

“Your daughter, yes?”

“Is she okay?”

The rushed question made him flinch. He should have prefaced with the fact that Vera was fine, but hindsight was what it was.

“Seems the infection she had got worse, and the doctor she saw decided to keep her on IV for seventy-two hours,” he explained. “And other than being tired and grumpy that she can’t go home, she’s perfectly fine.”

“Oh—thank you for calling ...?”

The way the woman trailed off expectantly, waiting for him to give her a name to put to the mysterious voice calling from an unknown number, said the two were not on equal footing here. He could leave Vera’s mother in the dark, but he didn’t think that was fair.

“Most people call me Mr. Pashkov, but you’re welcome to use Vaslav, Claire.”

Just like her silence earlier had been a tell for him—it was in that second, too. It didn’t last nearly as long as the first had, though.

“Are you the man, then?” Claire questioned.

Vaslav arched his brow although the woman couldn’t see it. “What man?”

“The one Vera told me about when she called a couple of days ago. The one who has her father so worried that he’s twenty-something-thousand feet in the air alone just so he can see her? The one I don’t know very much about at all, but people who are important to me apparently know enough about to say I don’t want to? That man?”

He appreciated her frankness.

And her honesty.