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“All right, calm down, Jane Eyre,” he raised both hands.
But she couldn’t calm down, she was much too far gone to calm down. She couldn’t even bring herself to smile at his comment. She was going to have to admit to her father that she’d almost chosen the Kuznetsovs over her own family. Would he understand that she’d done it to protect him?
“My father… He’ll take this as a personal slight,” she said.
“You can’t know that.”
“Oh, but I can,” she disagreed. “Wouldn’t yours?”
He grew quiet at that, but searching his face, she could tell that he was drawing conclusions about what the meeting with the ruling heads would most probably be like. And it wouldn’t be anything good, they seemed to be in agreement on that.
“Okay,” he said, getting to his feet as well, making her pause her step.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, frozen to the spot.
“I’m… getting up.”
“Oh, I’ll sit down then,” she said, as if only one of them was allowed to stand for any extended period of time.
She felt as stupid as she was acting, her fingers heating with the threat to glow their embers and let Zeke in on exactly how much he kept affecting her. He was looking at her a little strangely, but there was amusement there that cushioned her embarrassment somewhat.
“You okay?” he asked, giving her the impression he knew exactly how not okay she was, and he couldn’t help teasing.
“I’m fine,” she stated a little too sharply, blaming it on the conundrum still before them. “How do you suggest we tell them? We can’t just waltz into your father’s office and demand a sit-down.”
Zeke nodded, but his nodding slowed, his eyebrows lifting. Anna shook her head as he continued nodding, but for clearly opposite reasons.
“No,” she said.
“Yes!” he said, emphatically. “We’ll ask for a sit-down. It’s a show of respect, Anna. They’ll have to listen very carefully to what you have to say for yourself. And you’ll show them the texts.”
“What if…?” She trailed off, chewing the inside of her cheek again. “What if this triggers them? What if it brings on the war despite our union? It’s a probability, don’t you think? The Kuznetsovs have crossed the line. Conspired against them.”
“They crossed the line when they formed this alliance,” Zeke said. “I tried to talk to my father about it, but he shut me down, didn’t want to listen. Excluding the Kuznetsovs seemed like madness, but I think they did it with good reason. They’re sending a message because they don’t trust them, and this… everything you’re about to tell them will only serve to inform them their decision was the right one. It might be a good thing.”
She couldn’t believe he was so calm about it, but his words made an odd kind of sense, his steadiness beginning to transfer itself into her.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he repeated. “You were only trying to protect them. Nikolai and Vasili Kuznetsov are the ones they’ll direct their anger at.”
“I’m not so sure,” she murmured, wishing she could fully believe him, but knowing her father too well.
He would be disappointed in her.
And Pietr Aslanov wasn’t a man you wanted to disappoint.
“I’ll let you have your bed back,” she said, getting to her feet.
For a moment, they just stood there, the coffee table the only thing that separated them. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay encapsulated by his quiet conviction that everything was going to be all right, not retire to a bed where she would be alone with her fraught imagination. Alone, she would begin to paint all the worst-case scenarios. She wouldn’t sleep a wink. She’d be a ball of nerves the next morning. It would be weird if she asked to stay, wouldn’t it? She couldn’t invite him up to the bed, that was sure to give the wrong impression. Even if this was the night of their bonding; it wasn’t the night she’d wanted it to be. It wasn’t romantic… it wasn’t even that special. It had been twenty-four hours of dutiful compliance.
But she still felt they shouldn’t spend the night apart.
“Thirsty?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, grateful for the invitation to stay a bit longer.
“Water? Orange juice? Wine?”
She had to smile, raising one shoulder in a shrug. Something she did frequently and had begun to grow self-conscious of, so she let it drop almost immediately.
