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“Come.” She grabs my elbow and tugs me down the hallway to her room, where she all but pushes me inside before turning to face me. “Okay, now tell me. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
She arches an eyebrow, looking disconcertingly like her brother.
I cave. “Okay, fine. There’s this young woman who’s just arrived, and—”
“You mean Masha?”
My heart sinks. “You know her?”
“She’s Valery’s newest find.” At my uncomprehending look, she says, “My youngest brother collects people with various useful skills. I have no idea what hers are, but I ran into her briefly at his place before we left Moscow, and unlike his other pets, she introduced herself.”
“His pets?”
She nods. “That’s what I call them. He inspires almost pathological loyalty in these people.”
Huh, okay. Maybe she’s not Nikolai’s hookup—or at least not only that.
“Has Nikolai met her also? Like back in Moscow? Or—”
“Chloe…” Alina hesitates, then says gently, “I don’t think you have to worry about her in that way.”
My face heats again. “I’m not—”
“You are, and I get it. She’s unusually pretty. But she’s not here to warm Nikolai’s bed.”
“So you know what she’s here for?” My relief is quickly eclipsed by anxiety-tinged curiosity. For some reason, this Masha’s arrival feels portentous, like a bad omen.
Alina hesitates again, then shakes her head. “Not really. You should talk to Nikolai about all this.”
“All what? Is it connected to your father?”
Her flinch is nearly imperceptible, as is her quickly hidden surprise. “I can’t say,” she says, her expression carefully veiled. “My brother is the one with all the answers.”
I stare at her, my mind churning. If this isn’t about her father… “Does this have something to do with me?”
She sighs. “Just talk to Nikolai, Chloe. Please.”
And before I can press her further, she shepherds me out of her room.
* * *
I don’t get a chance to talk to Nikolai until later that evening. He spends the entire afternoon in his office with Masha—I know because I walk past his door dozens of times. At some point, Pavel joins them, and the murmur of two voices becomes three, with the bear-man’s growl easily identifiable.
By dinnertime, Masha leaves—Slava and I watch her pickup truck depart through his bedroom window—but a family meal is not a good time to drill Nikolai about a potentially combustible issue, so I swallow my burning questions and wait.
My moment arrives after dinner, when Lyudmila clears the table and everyone gets up to go to their rooms. All dinner long, I have felt Nikolai’s intense tiger gaze on me, have sensed the speculation in his stare.
Whatever’s going on does concern me. I’m almost certain of it now.
As if wise to my plan, Alina grabs Slava and disappears up the stairs with record speed, leaving me and Nikolai alone in the dining room.
“Can we grab a nightcap?” I ask as he turns to leave as well. My voice is steady, even as my heart beats unevenly. This is dangerous in more ways than one. Not only am I risking an end to the peace and calm that’s reigned in my life over the past two weeks, but my gunshot wound is almost fully healed.
If Nikolai is still interested in me in that way, there’s little to stop him from acting on that desire.
He turns back to face me. His jaw is taut, his eyes gleaming like ancient amber. “A nightcap? I thought you weren’t big on digestifs, zaychik.”
I swallow against the dryness in my throat. “I’m in the mood for a little cognac.”
If nothing else, I could use it to bolster my courage.
Nikolai’s voice roughens. “All right. Give me a minute.” He disappears into the kitchen and emerges with a tray of crystal decanters surrounded by drinking glasses. Pavel must be off server duty tonight—that or Nikolai also wants privacy.
As he pours us each a drink, I sit back down, surreptitiously wiping my damp palms on the skirt of my evening gown. It’s made of a silk material in a coral-peach hue that, according to Alina, makes my complexion look “all golden and glowy.” I wonder if Nikolai thinks that too, or if all he sees when he looks at me now is his son’s tutor.
Which would be fine. Amazing, really. I shouldn’t want such a dangerous man fixated on me, making all sorts of unnerving claims about threads of fate and—
“What did you want to discuss, zaychik?” Nikolai’s voice is once again brushed velvet as he sinks into the seat across from me. Swirling the cognac inside his glass, he regards me over the rim, lids at half-mast. “I’m assuming you’re not here because you’re suddenly craving my company.”
My skin flushes all over. I actually am craving his company, as reluctant as I am to admit it. Ever since our flower-picking expedition, we haven’t spent much time together—at least not by ourselves. At mealtimes, Alina and Slava serve as a buffer, and Lyudmila and Pavel are always around in the background. Even the bandage changes, the one time he’d enter my room by himself, stopped once my wound scabbed over and no longer needed to be covered.
