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I broke his gaze and fastened my seatbelt for landing, but it took my shaking fingers three attempts to slot the buckle. I wasn’t used to anyone looking at me like that. I’d been in mom mode for years: all that had mattered was Cody. But it was more than that. Being a mom was just an excuse. I hadn’t felt attractive since Adrian left me.
I risked a glance across the aisle to JD. I liked him. More than liked him. He was hot as hell, he had an old-fashioned charm and he made me feel safe like no one else. He grounded me in the physical world, making my brain spin down and stop for a while: he balanced me. And for some reason, he liked me. But then why did he keep pulling away? I bit my lip. Cody already liked him. I didn’t want him to get close to JD and then have him up and leave: he’d already lost his dad and his grandfather. I wasn’t sure if he could take losing JD and I wasn’t sure if I could, either.
At the airport, we climbed into an SUV and a driver was soon speeding us through the countryside. It was a cool, crisp morning and shafts of golden sunlight were chasing pools of mist out of the valleys. With the mountains in the background, it was unspeakably beautiful. My dad had spent a lot of time here when he was setting up the dam project and I could see now why he’d loved it so much.
Then the dam came into view, a two-hundred-foot sloping wall of concrete that would one day hold back millions of tons of water and bring clean power to this whole area. As we started to descend into the valley, the wall grew and grew, until we felt like mice looking up at a refrigerator. JD craned his head out of the window and cursed in amazement.
The head of construction was waiting for us, a big Polish guy in his sixties called Michal with white, mutton-chop sideburns. He took me to the small site office. JD waited outside, watching for trouble.
Michal took me by the hand. “I was sorry to hear about your father. Russ was deeply respected by the whole team.”
I nodded, trying to stay composed. I should have expected this: the project had started almost forty years ago. When my dad had first come over here, he’d been a young man. It had taken many trips and over thirty years to finally get the Polish government to sign off on the project and then there’d been five years of construction. Of course Michal and my dad would have been close. Michal brought out a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. “A toast,” he said. “To Russ.”
I didn’t generally drink at eight in the morning but I clinked glasses and we drank, the vodka icy-smooth but with a long, fiery tail.
“Your English is very good,” I told Michal.
“It’s got better,” he said modestly. Then he chuckled, remembering. “When your father first came out here, I could only say hello and very good.”
“How did you manage?”
He froze. Then, “We had to get someone in to translate. A local woman.” He stood up and busied himself putting the vodka away. “Now to business—”
But my mind was spinning, remembering the photo I’d found. “What was her name?”
Michal blanched. His jaw tightened determinedly. I recognized that look: the look of one man protecting another.
“Please,” I said, my voice a little strained.
Michal cursed under his breath. “Maria,” he said at last. “Maria Burski.”
It was her. I stared at Michal. Go on. He rubbed the back of his neck, then sighed in resignation and sat back down.
“Your father was here for some weeks. Maria translated for him, not just with me but with the government officials. The two of them became…close.”
Jesus. It had that sensation again, like I was plummeting into space. My dad had cheated on my mom, while he’d been in Poland. Why would he… How could he?!
Michal saw my expression and shook his head viciously, muttering something. “Don’t worry about that czarownica.”
“Czarownica?”
“Witch,” Michal said darkly. “Russ was a good man. Maria, she…” He mimed clawing at something, sinking talons into it. “She was trouble, right from the start. Beautiful, but she drank, she used drugs. She was…unstable.”
My mind was spinning. I’d never thought of my dad as the sort of man who’d have an affair. I wanted to run. Get the hell out of that room and go somewhere I could be alone and just process. Instead, I had another problem to solve. “Let’s go talk to the workers and try to get things worked out.”
Michal nodded. “I will get their negotiator to come in here.”
He reached for his radio but I put my hand on his. “Stop, no. I’ll go to them.” I needed to make peace with the guy, not summon him to the office like a naughty schoolboy.
