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‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’
‘Two sisters,’ Annie groaned, ‘both perfect!’
‘Perfect?’
‘Perfect! ’ Annie confirmed glumly. ‘Bianca’s a lawyer and Jennifer trained as a journalist and is now...’ she pulled a little face, ‘and is now a senior political media advisor.’
‘Heavy title.’
‘Not a heavy woman, though,’ Annie sighed. ‘They’re both tiny, both gorgeous, both thoroughly together and focused and, unlike me, neither have given my parents a single moment of worry.’
‘Of course not.’ Iosef grinned. ‘They were too busy concentrating on their studies and careers.’
‘Nice try.’ Annie gave a resigned smile. ‘They’re also both extremely happily married, have perfectly tidy houses and occasionally pop out beautiful, contented babies with absolute ease and return to work six weeks later!’
He laughed, actually threw his head back and laughed—it was the first time she’d seen or heard him laugh and it gave her a tiny thrill to know it was down to her.
‘You have a great career.’
‘Not according to my parents. They have a similar view of nurses as you seem to.’
‘My issues are with myself, not my colleagues,’ Iosef said. ‘They didn’t like the idea of you nursing?’
‘I come from a long line of high achievers.’ Annie gave a tight shrug. ‘They seem to think I could have done better.’
‘I know how you feel.’ He nodded as she blinked her doubt—positive that he didn’t know. ‘My parents were both horrified when I told them I wanted to study medicine.’
‘Really?’ Annie frowned.
‘Really,’ Iosef confirmed.
‘But why? Any parent would be delighted.’
‘Do you know what my mother said?’ He leant forward just a touch, and as she did so too she felt as if she were leaning into his world just a little bit, as if she was actually being let in. ‘Her exact words—in Russian, mind you—were, “Why would you want to be a doctor, Iosef? There’s no real money in medicine.’”
‘We’re both black sheep, I guess.’ Annie laughed— she’d never expected him to understand. Never expected that someone as dashing and successful as Iosef could even fathom where she was coming from, let alone have walked along a similar road. ‘Families are complicated,’ Annie added, and felt her heart thud in her chest as his expression was suddenly solemn.
‘My family has always been difficult—and never more so than now...’ Eyes that had been holding hers comfortably as they spoke were darting now. ‘Things really are incredibly complicated for me at the moment.’
‘Because of your father?’
‘Because of many things.’
‘Such as?’ Till then it had all been going so well, like coming in from the cold and warming your hands over the fire, just this lovely glow surrounding them. But she’d got too close. Almost immediately she realized she’d crossed some line, saw the tiny shake of his head, and though she braced herself for pain, when it came it was way more brutal than she’d expected. ‘I can’t see you, Annie. What I said about not being available for a relationship—I meant.’
She didn’t know how to take it. She’d thought tonight had gone so well, but suddenly she felt as if she’d failed whatever test he’d just put her through, as if he’d decided to give her a second go and still she wasn’t quite up to scratch. But unlike this morning she was not going to roll over and just accept it.
‘I think it’s a bit early to be using the wordrelationship.’
‘Dating, then?’ Iosef offered. ‘It’s really not possible right now. As I said, things are just so complicated for me at the moment—I don’t see that it could work.’
Staring at him across the table, recalling last night— not just the love-making, the before, during and after, the laughter, the tenderness, theeverything—Annie couldn’t pretend not to care. ‘Why are you here, then, Iosef? If a one-night stand was all you wanted, why did you ask me out to dinner tonight?’
‘Because...’ He closed his eyes, held the bridge of his nose in his fingers for a second as he attempted to come up with a suitable answer, only he couldn’t. And the only response Annie could come up with on his behalf wasn’t very flattering—wasn’t flattering at all.
‘Because you felt sorry for me? Thought that after such a good shag, the least you could do was buy me dinner?’
‘Don’t be crude.’ He shook his head at her description, yet he didn’t say or do anything to refute it.
