Page 34 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

“And?” he asked.

“And?” Demyan parroted just as sharp.

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

“You’re unbelievable,” the other man scoffed.

“Because I couldn’t care less if Vera chooses not to discuss personal things about me with her father?” Vaslav questioned.

“Da, her father,” Demyan spat.

Ah.

The defensiveness said it all.

“I get it,” Vaslav said, nodding more to himself than Demyan. He pointed a finger at the other man, saying, “Take that to her.”

“Take what to her?”

He wagged his still pointing finger up and down. “That. How you feel,” he explained, not hiding the disdain coating the final word. “Those sorts of things are not useful to or wanted by me.”

Demyan didn’t appear any more or less confused than he had only moments ago. “You don’t hear what I’m saying to you at all.”

It wasn’t even a question.

“Oh, no,” Vaslav muttered, pushing off the post and heading for the pile again, “I understand perfectly well that you have things to work out with your daughter, and while those same things may in some way involve me,” he said with a gesture toward his chest, “they don’t require me. Not my attention, or even a conversation. See, that’s the difference between how you feel and something I need to deal with.”

“Do you hear the way you talk?”

“Yes, like you’re a child.”

Who needed slow speech.

“It’s okay,” Vaslav told Demyan, “it took Igor a while to get the difference worked out, too. And now that I’ve pointed it out, I can get back to work.”

“You’re un-fucking-believable.”

Again with that.

Vaslav rolled his eyes so hard he thought he saw the back of his damn brain. “Get a new line, or get out of my face. I have things to do.”

He didn’t even hear Demyan come up beside him until the man’s foot landed on the next fence post Vaslav intended on picking up. He glared at the man’s expensive leather loafers. They certainly weren’t the type of footwear meant for the work they were doing, but to each their own. It wasn’t as if Vaslav gave the man the opportunity to properly pack for his trip.

“Move your foot,” Vaslav demanded.

Even he heard the dark edge to his tone.

The warning.

Demyan didn’t listen. “If you don’t give a shit that my daughter doesn’t care enough about the man she intends to marry to talk about him with her father, that’s your prerogative, but—”

“I will cut it off, Demyan.”

“I asked you a question, and the very least you could do is answer it.”

“With the mallet,” Vaslav uttered through clenched teeth.

And it would only be painful for one of them.