Then he figured that if Bethany was around and did say yes, he’d probably end up talking about the wild politician woman who had been unleashed on an unsuspecting Washington, DC. And he’d learned long ago that the last thing a woman wanted to hear about was another woman—even if he wasn’t Bethany’s type.
Instead, he walked softly by, slipped into his own place, and grimaced at the piles of boxes. It was mostly books—in Russian. Very few of them had been published after 1900. But first he had to assemble the bookcases. However, when packing, he’d dropped the bag of shelf hardware into one of the book boxes…without marking which one. And if he began opening boxes, there wouldn’t be any space to assemble the bookcases to put the books on.
Screw it! He’d been in Washington for all of three days. They could wait.
Valentin waded through the morass as if it was just another training course. He flopped down in front of the sliding glass doors and sighed contentedly. It was the only clear floor space, and Valentin had already learned that the morning sun shone right there.
Except today they’d been up and gone before the seven-a.m. sunrise. Tomorrow, too.
Alex’s sofa still had a blanket and pillow, but no sheets. And it wouldn’t matter if he did have the sheets, because he’d lost the hardware for the bed frame. He had a niggling feeling that it was still sitting in the corner of his old closet…in San Francisco.
“Moving sucks, Valentin.”
Valentin snored at him in response.
He checked his watch, six-thirty p.m. and almost full dark.
Yeah, so done. He called for a pizza and caught a quick shower.
In the mirror he asked himself what was Bethany’s type?
But his mind twisted the question and asked what was Tatyana Larina’s?
Bethany was the true all-American girl. Beautiful, athletic, talented girl-next-door looks—almost literally girl next door as she lived just down the row.
Tanya, despite her protests, drew him the way the Russian heroines had, from Pushkin’s Tatyana Larina to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina born half a century later. Amazing, driven women, trapped by circumstances outside their control.
Curiously, he had followed in their footsteps, after a fashion. In pursuing the unexpected, he’d forged his own path away from the family’s law firm. The eighth generation? Not him. His sister had fought the bit, and lost. Now she was San Francisco’s most ruthless family lawyer—with a vicious side that he barely recognized from their youth.
But she was also his only supporter in following his own path. “Hold out as long as you can, Alex.”
Listening to Tanya Larina throughout the day, he could see that she too was forging her own blazing path across the political landscape. That was even more attractive than her beauty.
At a knock on his door, he dragged on jeans and a USSS t-shirt, the only clean things he had handy, and hurried back downstairs.
He fished out his wallet and opened the door.
“You weren’t going to eat pizza without me, were you?” And there was Bethany with a pizza in one hand, two beers in another, and a dog on her heels.
“Hell no, woman. I’m not crazy enough to try and do that.” He held the door wide and waved her in.
Valentin raised his head eagerly, saw who it was, and flopped back out of sight with a soft growl of displeasure.
“Most pleasant greeting yet. Guess I’m making headway.” Bethany stepped in and he had his wallet half tucked away. “Hey! Keep that out. You owe me twenty.”
He pulled out a twenty and jammed it in her back pocket as she turned for the kitchen.
She sent him a dangerous look.
Then it struck him what he’d just done. Yeah, just one of the guys, so shove the money in her pocket. Except Bethany was a her and he’d just put his hand on her ass.
“Shit! Sorry. I didn’t mean to— Shit!”
“Not my type, remember? Just watch them hands, bub.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry about that. I—”
“Shut up, Cisco Kid.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Shee-it!” She gave it a good West Virginia drawl. Then she looked at the train wreck of his boxes. “Any idea where some plates are hiding?”
He tore the flap off the nearest box, ripped it in two, and handed one to her.
“Yeah, close enough.”
While she served the pizza, he stripped the blanket and pillow off the couch and kicked two boxes into place as side tables. One tinked as if he’d probably just broken one of his few plates. The other almost broke his toe, which meant the box was filled Russian literature with an attitude.
Heart of a Russian Bear Dog: Chapter 10
“Do you dance?” A woman’s voice on the phone asked him in Russian. Tanya Larina.
“Do I…dance?”
Bethany was looking at him strangely. They’d finished most of the pizza and both beers. Now they were at either end of the couch and talking about dogs. Big surprise there. He’d managed to avoid the protectee topic, mostly.
“Da. Ya tantsuyu,” was all Alex could think to say.
“Good. Your Lieutenant Carlton Tibbets does not run and I can not imagine that he dances. Is he even alive? My day is over and I need to drop it in the road. Leave your dog and pick me up in fifteen minutes. We are going dancing.” And she hung up.
He put his phone away and ran his hand through his hair, trying to figure out what had just happened.
“What’s up?” Bethany still sat on the end of his couch.
“Uh,” he wasn’t sure. It was his job to provide protection duty. And that meant he was on call. But…
He didn’t have anything to place on the other side of that. Tanya’s safety was his job.
He checked his watch. Nine-thirty at night. Tomorrow he was on duty at seven.
His protectee had just made it sound as if she was going out with or without him. He was actually impressed that she had called him at all. Yesterday’s attack must have spooked her more than she was willing to admit. But she also wasn’t going to let such a thing keep her from doing what she wanted.
“Uh,” he looked at Bethany again, then shrugged. “Looks like I’m back on duty.” He checked his watch again. “Actually, I’m already late.” Because even if he hit all the lights green, he was twenty minutes from her hotel.
“Welcome to the friggin’ Secret Circus,” Bethany pushed to her feet and scooped up the last piece of pizza. “Ain’t protection detail just so fine?” She walked out the front door.
He hit his gun safe and pulled out a slimline radio along with two concealed carry pieces.
He had the feeling it was going to be a long night.
Heart of a Russian Bear Dog: Chapter 11
Tanya was waiting when a brilliant-yellow, four-door Jeep Wrangler Moab pulled up to the door of the Fairmont hotel and stopped close in front of her.
A valet opened the passenger door for her.
“Let’s walk.” Though if there was a proper ride, in her opinion this was it.
Alex looked at her across the empty seat. “Let’s not.”
“Why?”
“Because without Valentin along, I want something big to run over the bad guys with.”
“Let’s walk anyway.”
Alex just shook his head. “Without Valentin, I’m going to limit attack vectors. That doesn’t include exposing you unnecessarily. You shouldn’t have even walked through the hotel lobby.”
She actually liked that he insisted. So many of the men during her day had been pushovers. Their jobs were to block her from reaching their superiors, just like any bureaucrat’s. None had succeeded. Yes, these had been all low-level meetings, but she’d managed to arrange meetings with next-level people in every case.
Not one had the spine to stand up to her. Not one had challenged her.
Even Carlton she’d been able to whipsaw back and forth…a little.
He also had no understanding of politics.
She climbed
up into Alex’s top-of-line Wrangler. A hundred-thousand euro in Ukraine, here in the United States it was just another SUV—one that fit her idea of what one should be. It was easy to image exploring the backroads of America. In warmer weather, take the top down, the doors off, and race away from her cares with the wind blowing through her hair. She could definitely imagine that as a lifestyle.
Alex had done more than stand up to her. She hadn’t noticed how helpful he was between meetings until he was off-duty and Carlton had replaced him.
“How do you know so much about Ukrainian politics?”
He shifted into gear and headed northwest across DC to the address the concierge had given her.
“I don’t. But I know Russian politics from the nineteenth century. I studied the literature against the backdrop of the Russian Empire that existed from Catherine the Great until the Soviet purges. The Crimean War, the first one, was right at the heart of the Golden Age of Russian literature and altered its shape in fascinating ways that carried on for decades after the 1856 defeat of… Sorry. I get a little stupid on this subject.”
Tanya considered his words as he drove in silence.
Alex’s insights had been helpful when she’d been thinking about the Balkans along the west of the Black Sea. But they’d been even more useful after her meetings with the Turks—the progeny of the Ottoman Empire who had led the fight against the old Russian Empire during the Crimean War. He didn’t know the current politics, but he understood the underlying dynamics of each people’s pride and power as clearly as her father.
Her father would like this man. There was a thought.
If only Alex wasn’t so irritating.
She thumped her head against the padded headrest as they rolled up in front of the DC9 club.
Was he irritating because her father would like him? He’d clearly shared Father’s pleasure for her Pushkinesque name. If that was part of the problem, she needed to do some thinking. Because if anyone knew what drove her, it was her father. Her mother always sighed when the two of them started on politics because they were so obviously of the same mind. No matter how fierce their debates became, they were over tactics and strategies, not underlying policies.
She wasn’t paying attention until Alex had parked and circled to open her door.
Sitting in the Jeep, she just looked at him. He was handsome in a remarkably blond-American way. Smart and good at his job—if she ignored his boss’ comments.
Yes, she could do far worse.
Ukrainian men knew who she was, and they cared deeply about that. In her foolish youth, she’d thought it was about her. In time she’d learned that dating the Prime Minister’s daughter was an obvious path to a bright future. It had made her drop many men on the road. Now her choices were taken with much more care.
Sergeant Alex Warren would have no such agenda.
Yes, tonight she would have fun.
Heart of a Russian Bear Dog: Chapter 12
“Tanya? You okay?”
She gave him an odd look, which he should be used to by now. Tanya Larina was one of the least predictable women Alex had ever been around.
Bethany was sharp, funny, and had a shield wall about a mile high.
Tanya’s emotions never showed in a meeting. Afterward all of the doubts and questions traveled across her face in a fascinating sequence.
But he hadn’t seen a look quite like the one that shifted onto her face as she inspected him while he continued holding the Jeep’s door open for her.
Except it wasn’t really her door.
It was usually…Valentin’s!
He looked down at her knee-length, white-wool coat and swore.
She arched her eyebrows at him in question.
“Uh. Valentin usually sits there. I didn’t brush off the seat before you sat down. I’m so sorry. I have a lint brush. Somewhere.” At the apartment in some unknown box. “I—”
She squinted at him, then down at the seat she still sat in. “I did say to leave your dog home.”
“I left…most of him home,” Alex did his best to smile. “At least the part that drools and barks.”
“But not the part that sheds.”
Alex sighed. “Not the part that sheds.”
“That is easy to take care of.” She shrugged out of the coat though the temperature was back down near freezing and stepped out of the Jeep.
He attempted to apologize once more, but didn’t manage it.
The lovely white lace dress, that earlier had been suitable for an updated Tatyana Larina, had been replaced. Now she wore cobalt blue leather. Short-sleeved top, a heart-stoppingly shorter skirt, and a deep-V cleavage that only a slender woman like her could get away with. Unless he missed his guess, it might be backless as well.
She ran a finger across his chest, underlining the USSS logo on his t-shirt.
“Best clothes I’ve got,” he did his best to recover though her touch had distracted him—badly. He scanned the street again to make sure nothing had changed other than his blood pressure.
“As they have already saved my life once, I’m inclined to agree. Let’s dance.”
Alex tossed his jacket in the Jeep, locked it, and escorted her to the entrance of DC9.
Heart of a Russian Bear Dog: Chapter 13
Tanya tossed back a Stoli vodka which lit a fire deep in her belly. She didn’t sip it because she didn’t want to get drunk. She wanted the heat.
Actually, she wanted to have an excuse for the heat she was already feeling.
The Regrettes was a garage-funk-punk rock-or-something band with three female leads and a male drummer. It didn’t matter what they were, they’d burned up the stage with two hours of totally danceable music without even a breath between songs. The DC9 hall was packed with the young people of Washington, DC dancing as hard as at any Ukrainian disco.
Alex didn’t just dance, he danced well. Very well, which was the real cause of the heat coursing through her. She’d expected a merely fun evening. But Alex was a man who knew how to lead, how to make any dance snap with tension until it felt like they were having sex on the dance floor.
And it wasn’t just the dancing that was adding to the fire.
Without once missing a step, he was always looking around the room.
At first, she’d thought that maybe he was watching the other women, because there were a lot of them and many…some…a few were dressed as high-end as she was. Most of those had hit the slut button and it seemed to attract every male’s eye. With the fifteen-centimeter tall “USSS” emblazoned across the back of his t-shirt, he certainly gained a lot of attention himself.
But it wasn’t the darkness or strobing of the lights that made him never focus on any particular woman. In fact, he spent more time watching the men. Assessing the competition?
No, he was doing the same thing she was—assessing possible threats.
They were dancing their hearts out, and still he was on guard, watching for breaks in the patterns of the crowd or something. For her it came from paranoia, but for him it was vigilant duty.
That was very attractive.
By the time the first slow-dance number came up, she hadn’t even hesitated, just stepped into his arms. There was a safety there. He guided her expertly, so that they didn’t bump a single couple despite the crowded floor. But he also kept turning them slowly as if it was completely natural, shifting through the crowd with a calm ease that would make them hard to pin down as a target.
She’d finally just let herself go and trusted to his skills. Instead she focused on appreciating the physical man as well as the protective one. He might not be as robustly muscular as his dog was, but she could feel that Alex Warren was whip strong. And after they’d sweat enough that he no longer smelled of soap, he’d become deliciously male.
He was not some Russian-speaking professorial type. He was a United States Secret Service agent, which meant he was also an elite warrior.
In Alex’s arms, that was now impossible t
o ignore.
However long had it been since…Sergey? Or was it Yegor who she’d been with most recently? Whoever, it had been too long.
The fire of the vodka after the heat of dancing made her just let go.
“Come on. It’s time.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the door.
The chill of the night air as they walked to his Jeep didn’t feel cold at all. After the heat of the dance hall, it felt wild and fresh.
“You are coming back to the hotel with me,” she informed him as he held her door and she climbed back into the Jeep.
“I…what? No.”
She closed the door in his face.
He circled around and climbed in the driver’s side. “Besides, I left Valentin at home.”
“Fine, we will go there then.”
“No, Ms. Larina. That’s not going to happen.”
“I will scream bloody murder if you try to remove me from this vehicle at my hotel.”
He glared at her, still not starting the engine. “Are you always this much trouble?”
“You must ask my father that someday.”
She laughed as he made a strangled sound, but he started the engine and drove off.
Heart of a Russian Bear Dog: Chapter 14
Alex actually had his key in the apartment door before he came to his senses.
“Uh, you can’t come in.”
“Because it isn’t right?” Tanya asked in disdainful Russian.
“Well, it isn’t,” he stuck with English. “But that’s not the only problem.”
She pushed him aside and turned the key. “Why? Do you have another woman in there?”
“No, I…” Alex gave up.
Tanya opened the door and stepped in. Then burst out laughing.
“Okay, so I haven’t really had a chance to unpack yet. Think of it as early U-Haul decor.”
“You are bohemian?”
Cupid to the Rescue: A Tail-Wagging Valentine's Day Anthology Page 44
