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“I’ll try. I really will. But you know as well as I do that we can’t control everything. Especially when Don Pushkin thinks Cora is expendable.”
I flex my jaw, trying to drum up the words I know I need to say. Finally, I spit them out. “Isn’t she?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.” His voice is soft, solemn. “You like being around Cora. I can tell. Even Anya likes her, which is a small miracle. Your sister hates any woman who even looks at you. But I think she can see it, too: that Cora fits in here. With you. In our world.”
It’s strange, hearing my private thoughts spoken out loud by someone else.
Coradoesfit in here.
Coracouldhold her own in my world.
She belongs.
“None of it matters,” I say with finality.
“How can none of it—”
“None of it matters because this is a temporary arrangement,” I say, cutting him off. “This is a mission. Feelings can’t get in the way of a mission. Not mine. Not yours. Not Cora’s. This thing between me and her was always meant to end.”
Yasha sighs. “But it doesn’t have to. Not if you don’t want it to.”
“What I want is to do my job. That means I can’t have Cora falling in love with me and fucking things up.” I drop my feet to the floor. “This is all an act. A good one, if evenyoubought into it.”
Yasha is quiet for a few seconds before he speaks. “Are you sure, Ivan?”
“I’m sure that I have a responsibility to the organization and my father and my sister,” I tell him, “to marry someone who is actually suitable. Someone who can be what I need to do my job. And that person isn’t Cora.”
I sit tall and turn towards him…only to see someone else in the doorway.
“Cora.”
She blinks at me. Her eyes are glassy, filled with tears she is refusing to shed.
She lifts her chin and looks at me. “We’re leaving for the cake tasting in ten minutes. I just wanted to let you know.”
I start to stand. “Cora—”
Before I can get another word out, she turns and leaves.
50
IVAN
Slices of every imaginable cake combination are laid out on the glass counter in front of us, but Cora hasn’t touched a single one.
I lean in close, voice low and tight. “You basically made love to a lemon curd cheesecake two nights ago. Maybe drum up a fraction of that energy for this cake.”
She doesn’t move. She is a glacier next to me. “Things were different two nights ago.”
“We were pretending then and we’re pretending now. Nothing has changed.”
I know the words are a lie. Cora knows it, too. Two nights ago, we were out on a date, with the possibility of something swirling alluringly between us.
Now, I’ve gutted those hopes. One cruel word at a time.
I saw her in the doorway to my office. The shock etched into the lines of her face. The hurt. I thought the gut punch I felt then was the worst it could get.
Until now. The fire in Cora has gone dormant, replaced by an icy indifference I can’t seem to thaw.
