The Unwilling Bride

by Jennifer Greene

  Her sister’s visit was like going back in time. They bumped hips in the bathroom, bickering over sink space, talking ten for a dozen through all the nightly female rituals of face washing and brushing teeth and putting away clothes. Abby drew the curtains; Paige flicked off the lights. No different than when they were kids, they dived under the blankets and yelped at the freezing-cold sheets.

  Gradually, though, the sheets warmed up, and their eyes became adjusted to the pitch-dark room. Both of them were studying the dust motes in the ceiling, not looking at each other, when Abby started talking again. Paige was already mentally braced. A bookie would never bother with odds on her sister forgetting the subject of Stefan entirely.

  “He’s adorable,” Abby said thoughtfully.

  “I know he is.”

  “Sexy. Smart. And a good man. I don’t run into many good men, not in my line of work, so I recognized one of those rare breeds right away.”

  “He is. The rarest of good men.”

  Abby carefully picked her words. “But I think it has to be tough for a man to know how he really feels about anything, with so many changes going on in his life. Everybody moves. Everybody changes jobs. But he’s doing it all at once—different job, different home, different country. That’s a pretty big emotional uproar.”

  “Believe me, I’ve told myself those things a dozen times.”

  “It’s just so damn easy to confuse loneliness for something else.”

  “I know.”

  Abby turned her head. “And I’m sure you realize how badly he wants to become an American.”

  “I know.”

  “Paige?”

  “What?”

  “I’m pretty sure you know this, too—that it’d be a hell of a lot easier for him to become an American with a U.S. wife. Not that it can’t be done through other channels, but an American wife would make it a ‘for sure.’ He might not mean to. But he could be using you.”

  Paige closed her eyes. “I’ve considered that.” All evening, the issue had nagged on her mind like a toothache. Stefan had specifically chosen to bring her all those legal papers—ostensibly to seek her help. Through the history of their relationship, though, he’d asked for her help a ton of times when he needed it like a hole in the head. And her Russian had to know she would run across that citizenship information about American wives.

  Stefan never did anything without a purpose. And as much as she loved him, it was usually a sneaky purpose.

  Abby was just winding up for the punchline of her advice. “I’m just saying be sure, sweetie. Be very sure of what you feel before you do anything. I think he’s one hell of a special man, but I think both of you could really, really be hurt…unless you are absolutely positive of your feelings for him.”

  Paige opened her eyes. For some reason, her pulse was clattering at a thousand miles an hour…matching the mental wheels clicking in her mind. There was nothing odd about her sister’s voice, nothing unusual about Abby being intuitive, but it did seem down-right amazing that her sister was raising every exact fear she’d privately worried about herself. Amazing to the point of miraculous.

  Stefan, of course, had the chance to talk alone with her sister earlier.

  Paige stared hard into the darkness. She couldn’t get it off her mind—his motivation for showing her those papers, his reason for feeding her sister all those fears and concerns. Like when she was carving a cameo, it seemed the answers and real truth were under the surface. Where only she could find them—if she were honest with her heart.

  As soon as her sister left the next day, Paige hiked across the road to return his mountain of files. She had no trouble getting into Stefan’s house—he’d left his back door unlocked—but he was gone. There was no sign he’d even been there that morning except for a coffee mug in the sink.

  She’d just catch him later, she thought, which would work out better because she really wanted to take a trek into town. Only when she returned at noon with a mountain of parcels and an exhausted Visa, Stefan still wasn’t back.

  He never came home on Tuesday at all.

  Or Wednesday.

  By Thursday, she’d paced a flat spot on the carpet in front of her living room window. She’d tried working; she’d tried eating; she’d have tried chants and charms if superstitions would just make the lights pop on in his house. There was no chance of her concentrating on anything—but him. Stefan had never, even for an afternoon, just disappeared on her without a word.

  Anything could have happened to him. He was a hopeless idealist who gave freely and openly from his heart. She’d never met a more vulnerable man than that damn Russian. Anyone could hurt him.

  Worse yet, she was afraid she had. Badly. Maybe irreparably. Her worst fear had always been of hurting someone through her own bungling insensitivity, and the thought kept stabbing through her mind that maybe he’d tired of hearing doubts from her. Maybe he’d given up on her. Maybe he’d taken off for the sheer relief of getting away from her.

  Sooner or later, she kept promising herself that he had to come back, if only to reclaim all his stuff. But the morning dragged into the afternoon, then slowpoked into the evening and still his car hadn’t appeared across the street. By nine o’clock, it was coalblack and sleeting rain outside, and she finally gave up hoping for his return that night.

  After switching off the downstairs lights, she climbed the stairs and ran a long, hot bath. She was submersed to the neck when she heard the muffled sound of pounding below. Pounding—and then an insistent doorbell. Then more pounding.

  It wasn’t as though she was napping—she surged out of the tub—but she still barely had time to stand up and reach for a towel before she heard Stefan bellowing from the foot of the stairs. “Are you up there, lambchop?”

  Odd, how her heart stopped. Odder yet, it seemed too scared to start up again. Her chest felt as if a fist had squeezed panic-tight around her heart and just wouldn’t let go. Possibly she’d been that afraid of never hearing his voice again, of never hearing him call her lambchop.

  Or possibly her heart recognized exactly that this was it. Her one chance to take the biggest risk she’d ever taken. The one she’d been terrified to take all her life…and still counting.

  “Paige? You there? Lambch—?”

  Initially her voice emerged as a squeak, but it gained some volume on a second try. “I’m here! And I’ll be down in two seconds! Don’t you go anywhere, Michaelovich! Just sit down right exactly where you are!”

  Stefan sat exactly where he was. On the stairs. Holding a velvet sack that he shifted from palm to palm as if he were weighing it. Waiting.

  He waited more than two seconds. More than two minutes. When five minutes passed, though, he ran out of patience and lurched to his feet.

  He’d just twisted around and intended to bound up the stairs when he saw the vision appear at the top. The vision had bare feet, a bare throat and was wearing a long nightgown in scarlet silk. Nothing more than two skinny straps holding up the whole thing, and the slinky fabric faithfully outlined every ripe, voluptuous dip and curve. She’d brushed her hair simply back from her forehead, no style, no artifice, but it flowed down her shoulders in a lustrous waterfall. The vision had her chin up, her shoulders straight and proud, a sensual woman reveling in her sensuality… but he couldn’t help but notice the shine of panic in her eyes, or the vulnerable unsureness implied by her trembling fingers.

  He’d learned a ton of American vocabulary, yet for several seconds, he couldn’t seem to make his throat work long enough to push any of those words out.

  He’d been prepared to track her down, to find her, to make her talk with him no matter what he had to do. He’d been prepared for reluctance. He’d been prepared for fears. He’d even come prepared with the offering in the velvet sack to bribe her into listening. But there was just no way, no how, he’d been prepared for this.

  When more seconds of silence spilled past and he still failed to say anything, she either seem
ed to lose her nerve—or find it. Because she pelted down the stairs and launched herself into his arms.

  He only had a micromoment to stash the velvet sack on the stairs. And then he reeled back from her jetpropelled launch…but he caught her. His fingers slid along the slippery silk at her waist, securing her steady. Her arms noosed around his neck, tight and hard, and her mouth slammed on his with the pressure of a bullet. The force was caused more by projectile momentum than actual passion, but the second kiss from her blew all the physics laws out of the water. So much for gravity. So much for the speed with which solid objects were supposed to fall.

  As if she’d bathed in roses, her skin carried that feminine, fragile scent. She tasted warm and yearning, far softer than the silk-nothing she was wearing, far sweeter than spring. She was shivering from head to foot—no doubt from wearing that catch-her-death-of-cold outfit in the drafty hall—yet beneath that silk, her body was warm. Impossibly, vibrantly warm. The source of her trembling seemed to be vulnerability alone, and her kisses were perilously rich with the same emotion. His lyubeesh would seem to be offering him all the vulnerability of love, as freely as the wind and a thousand times more wild.

  He kissed her back until their lungs both ran out of oxygen. Then he kissed her again, because he wanted to be very sure he was tasting hope instead of despair, and when he’d walked in that door, he’d never, never believed this huge a hope was even possible.

  Eventually he pulled his mouth free. His hands, he discovered, had magically slid up all that wicked silk and tangled in her hair. They both just practiced breathing for a second, their lips only separated by inches, and her eyes, as liquid as dark sweet tea, locked on his.

  “I’m getting the craziest feeling that there’s a slight, remote chance you missed me,” he murmured.

  He hoped to coax a smile, but she was in no mood for humor just then. There was an ocean of anxiety in her eyes. “I missed you,” she said fiercely. “I missed you for the past three days. And I missed you for the two weeks before that, when damn you, Stefan, you cooled down and made out like you were perfectly happy with us just being friends.”

  His shaggy eyebrows arched in question. “This was not what you wanted? To be just friends? You told me and told me—”

  “I know what I told you. That we were wrong for each other. That your life was in too much upheaval and change to possibly be sure of how you felt about me. And dammit, you acted like you agreed…and you were a real rat for putting those citizenship papers in front of me. What did you think? That I’d fall for that horseradish about your using me to have a convenient American wife?”

  “Horseradish?”

  “Horseradish. As in bologna. As in ridiculous nonsense. You would never use a woman like that, Stefan.”

  She sounded sure—furiously sure—sure enough to insult him and loyally defend his honor at the same time. If she wasn’t careful, his heart was going to take off and soar. “Da. This is true. But if I had to explain this—if it were a question in your mind—I had to believe you did not know me at all.”

  “I know you plenty, buster. Well enough to figure out that you put my sister up to having a talk with me. A big, hairy talk so she could raise every doubt and worry I’d ever had about you, about us.”

  “I liked your sister.” He cleared his throat. “And possibly it occurred to us both that a little push was required to force your hand. You were swimming in doubts, my cookie. You were swimming in fears. To heap a little more on your head seemed the only way to make you confront these things. You are the only one who knew the truth of your heart.”

  She loosened the clasp on his neck. “You were never confused about your feelings for me.”

  “Da. This is also true. I beat to my own rhythm, which I admit is not always good. But I know what I feel for you. My life being in upheaval is a nuisance, but I am old friends with chaos. There is no relationship to my being unsure. I know my own heart.”

  “Well, I didn’t know mine so easily.” She swallowed, hard. “I wanted you to think well of me, Stefan. I wanted you to think I was…good. A woman worth respecting, worth caring for. I spent a ton of years feeling ashamed of the girl I’d been. It was so important to me to be in control of my feelings, my life, and especially my hormones. I haven’t been in control of a hormone since I met you, lyubeesh.”

  She’d called him lover in the Russian way, although he wasn’t sure if she realized it. All he knew was that her lips were starting to curve in a smile. A soft promise of a smile, not a full-fledged one yet.

  “You know what?” she asked him.

  “What?”

  “I don’t have to be in control when I’m with you.”

  “You are just now coming to this conclusion?” He bent down, picked up the velvet sack and wrapped her fingers around it. She wasn’t paying any attention. She was still looking straight into his eyes, even as he lifted her, hiking her long slim legs around his waist, and started climbing the stairs. He had no idea where her bedroom was, but he’d bet dollar for ruble he’d find it.

  “I’m not ashamed when I’m with you.” She didn’t seem to notice or care where they were going. Or even that they were traveling at all. Her eyes were still talking to him. He might just fall into those liquid, dark beautiful eyes and never come out. “I was trying to be ruthlessly honest with myself, and somehow missed the truth. I love you, Stefan. I never felt ashamed of anything when I was with you. I love you so much my heart takes wings when we’re together. So much that I feel like I’m more when I’m with you. I’m more than the woman I was, more of the woman I could and want to be.”

  He paused at the top of the stairs, and used an elbow to switch off the glaring hall light. Two other lights still spilled a yellow glow, one emanating from a bathroom. The other had to be her bedroom. It took him three seconds to figure that out. And four solid minutes to kiss her, right there, while her arms were laced around his neck and he was holding her, breathing her in as deeply as his own heartbeat. “Could I hear that part again about your loving me?”

  “No. I have to warn you first what a bad bargain you’re getting. I don’t express my feelings as well as you, Stefan. That’s nothing I can change overnight. I’ve been a stuffed shirt straight arrow too long. I’ll have to work on the inhibitions—”

  “I haven’t noticed any particular problem with inhibitions when we are together, lambchop. But I wouldn’t worry this too much. We could have an awful lot of fun working on this if any of them show up.”

  “I’m also a little on the absentminded side—”

  “No kidding?”

  “I can’t balance a checkbook. Can’t talk physics with you.”

  “More fatal flaws.” He kissed her for each of them. And she exuberantly kissed him back, her eyes full of star shine now, and her skin flushed. Yet she pulled back—almost dislocating his spine—and her expression was suddenly serious again.

  “I have a ton of real flaws, Stefan. But I also believe in loyalty the same way you do. There has to be something, someone, you can count on when the lights are out and life gets tough. I’ll be there for you, love. We may not make a life by anyone else’s rules, but we’ll make a good life by our own. It just took me a while to figure out I had the right—the right to love you, the right to say it. The power to know I was strong enough to fight for you, with you, for a life together.”

  “Ah, Paige, you always had that power. It was always in you. You just had to believe in yourself.” He sank back onto the four poster bed, with her collapsing intimately on top of him. Yet she frowned suddenly—as if just then realizing there was something hard and obtrusive between them. It wasn’t him. She really hadn’t seemed to notice until that moment that she’d been holding that velvet pouch. Now she looked questioningly at him. “Open it,” he coaxed her.

  The scarlet nightgown gaped enticingly when she raised up to get enough leverage to untie the silken cords. Her face mirrored a quizzical expression as her fingers connected with somethi
ng smooth and cool—and familiar. She pulled out the jade cameo, stared at it for a long moment…and then at him. “This is where you were for the past three days? You went after my cameo?”

  “Yes. I drove to New York. I went to find Harry. A nice guy, your Harry, maybe a brilliant market man for you in the art world—but not too life-smart. He’d sold it. I came close to killing him, but not to worry. We parted friends—as soon as he tracked down the new owners so I could buy it back.”

  Stefan took a long breath. “I wanted it for you. To show you…this is always how I’ve seen you, my lambchop. Strong. Beautiful. An innocence in all the wonder you discover in life. A woman who delights and takes pride in her sensuality, who has love that shines from her, inside, outside, all over. When you carved away all the doubts and fears…this is you. This has always been you. You’re the only one who didn’t see it.”

  Her voice softened to a butter whisper. “Ya tebya lyublu, Stefan.”

  “And I love you back. For now. For tomorrow. For the birth of our children and the years we are in rocking chairs. I give you my love, my loyalty, my heart.”

  She set the cameo on the bedside table. And forgot it. Just then, she thought her Russian badly needed seducing. He had some hopelessly romantic ideals about her. She planned to live up to every one of them.

  She knew this man she loved. Knew him well. He was stubborn and unpredictable and emotional, a man incapable of backing down from his values and ideals, the most vulnerable of loners. The only thing ever standing between him and loneliness was love.

  It would take a strong, gutsy woman to protect such a man. It would take a powerful and enduring love.