Page 95 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

It was only once Demyan Avdonin was satisfied his wife wasn’t going to slip in the snow in her cream-colored suede boots that the two people headed Vaslav’s way. Bundled in jackets with light scarves and mittens, they murmured between themselves while Claire pointed at something high on Beauty’s Chapel.

The cross that stood another twenty feet higher than the sixty-foot peak.

“Wow,” was the first thing Claire said.

Vaslav chuckled, glancing up at the sight himself. “Yes, she would have liked that touch, I think.”

He didn’t offer the two a chance to ask who the she in question was as they came up to the steps. Instead, he smiled and said, “I heard the architect who designed and built the place used the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas as inspiration for the Krasota.”

“It almost makes you think we're going to freeze in there,” the green-eyed woman said. “You know I looked this up before we came, right? Vera had the nerve to act like it wasn’t a big thing.”

“She’s ... respectfully discreet about a lot of things.”

“Too many, maybe?” Demyan asked.

Vaslav didn’t think so.

“I like it that way. Anyway, the town certainly wasn’t willing to refuse such a ... valuable donation,” Vaslav said, choosing his words carefully in regard to the church and land that had come with it.

Vaslav figured out where Vera got her hair preening habit from when her stepmother tucked the brunette waves of her hair behind the shell of her ear, and smiled wide. Their first meeting had happened over supper the day after the couple arrived mid-week before the wedding. As sweet and kind as she was on the phone, Claire Avdonin didn’t change in the presence of a man she barely knew from Adam.

She even hugged him.

Vaslav had been too shocked to hug her back.

Today would not be the same.

Coming off the remaining step, Vaslav pulled Claire in for a quick hug and a kiss on the apple of her grinning cheek. She took the greeting as gracefully as she had the one he botched on the first go-round.

“You look like you’re feeling better today,” she whispered as he began to pull away.

If Demyan heard the exchange, the man pretended not to notice where he stood only a foot away. His gaze fixed on the looming face of the church and how it looked surrounded by a forest of trees and an endless white sky of falling snowflakes.

“I’m hoping to get through the day,” he told Claire quietly. “Plan for the worst—”

Claire smiled. “Yeah, and hope for the best, I know.”

Vaslav shrugged.

That first supper at the Pashkov home had not gone as well as he meant for it to, either. But when did a night that ended with him bent over a toilet ever go as he wanted?

Claire had been kind about that, too.

“It only looks like an open-air structure,” he explained. “It’s heated, and thankfully, air-conditioned in the summer. Don’t ask me how they clean all the windows, no?”

Demyan barked out a laugh. “A full-time job in itself, hmm?”

Vaslav nodded. “Exactly, comrade.”

He extended his hand then.

Waiting for a shake.

Demyan quickly took it in his own, glancing down to see the fresh ink that was hard to miss on the back of Vaslav’s hand. His old, faded spider had been turned around.

“I see you’ve made the choice about retirement,” Demyan noted.

Vaslav dropped Demyan’s hand and gestured wide. “I hear you’re willing to help Igor make a ... transition, no?”