But it was impossible. He’d played his hand too well. Stepped to her better than any other guy ever had, including himself a few months ago. It was like a new Nikolai had taken her on this date, and this new Nikolai had found the special key. The one that unlocked all her doors, so he could just let himself into her heart. Easily. And now he was making himself at home, as if he’d always belonged there.
What had changed, she wondered. Why had he done all of this for her? It was like after telling her love was a silly custom and standing by that conviction when he asked her to marry him, he’d done a complete 180 and spent the last twenty-four hours practically forcing her to fall head over heels in love with him. But why would he do that? Why would he—
“Da, I did what you said, exactly what you told me.”
Nikolai’s heavily accented voice floated up to her, as if called forth by her panicked questions. Sam looked all around, but couldn’t see him.
“Da, it worked. Exactly like you said.”
Nikolai’s voice again. Sam realized it was coming from below. Nikolai must have gone down the stairs to make the call, not realizing she’d be able to hear him if she came out to the balcony. But of course, why would he think she’d be on the balcony when he’d left her in the hotel room with enough food to provide all of Ruth’s House with a morning brunch?
An unfamiliar sound suddenly split the air, deep and almost growly. Laughter, Sam realized after a confused second. Nikolai was laughing at something someone was saying on the other side of the phone!
“Da, she now acts like real wife in all ways, just as I wanted.” Nikolai sounded smug, like he’d just won the sex lottery. “You are better business man than me. Thank you for your good advice. I think I have no more problems with her. She is how you say—in my pocket now.”
Sam stumbled back from the railing, pain exploding inside her chest and head as complete understanding set in. With sudden clarity, she recalled Pavel’s birthday party. Watching Nikolai talk with his cousin, the expert businessman, with such a grim expression that she’d been somewhat concerned there was something terribly wrong with the team.
Shortly after she observed that conversation, Isaac had asked her about clearing her schedule. And two weeks later, they’d flown to Greece in his cousin’s jet.
It now dawned on her that it hadn’t been the team they’d been discussing with such grim faces, but her. How to fix it so Nikolai got exactly the kind of wife he wanted. One who put out. The perfect piece of ass.
How to make her surrender.
And despite the fact that he was long dead, she could hear her stepfather’s cruel laughter ringing across the gorgeous Greek sky.
38
Nikolai jogged back up the stairs with an unfamiliar lightness in his heart. A lightness that made him want to whistle. A lightness that made him wonder if he had time to keep the long delayed promise to his wife before the next leg of their trip. The one about making sure she liked how he would eat her for breakfast.
But the scene that greeted him when he opened the door brought him up short.
“Zhena, what is this?” he demanded.
Instead of sitting at the table as he’d expected, he found his wife fully dressed in a short-sleeved blouse and pencil skirt. Her purple suitcase was out on the bed and she was throwing things into it. Her things from last night, including the designer gold dress, which she crumpled into a ball before tossing it into her case.
She didn’t answer his question, just went into the bathroom and came out with a bunch of toiletries.
“Why do you pack?” he asked.
No answer, and the toiletries joined the dress inside her suitcase. She went over to the couch and came back to the bed with her wedged heels from the night before. Still not answering him. Still not looking at him.
But this time he went over to the bed, closing the suitcase flap before she could put in the shoes. “Talk to me, zhena. What is this?”
She stopped, her heels in mid-air, her lips pressed into a thin line that made her look older than she was. Older and more weary.
She fixed her eyes on the view beyond the balcony’s French windows as she said, “I miss Pavel and Back Up. I’ve never been away from them this long. I’d like to go home now.”
She said this in a dull monotone, as if they’d stayed too long at a party. Nikolai shook his head, not understanding her. Or any of this for that matter.
“We have one more day,” he reminded her. “Plan is for us to go to Poros.” He pointed out the picture window. “An island across sea. We will rent scooters, eat at café, go to beach, and watch sunset from famous clock tower.”
He didn’t know where this new Sam had come from. Brusque and dismissive, as if last night had not happened. As if what had happened between them this morning hadn’t happened either. But he wanted the woman he’d woken up with. His Sam. His zhena.
He came around the bed, desperate to make her understand what he had planned for them.
“On Sunday morning, we will wake up early. I will keep my promise to eat you for breakfast, we will come back to Athens after that, and then we will fly home. Please, Sam, let us eat breakfast. Go to Poros.”
She glanced at him, her eyes conflicted.
But when he tried to take her hands in his, she snatched them back, taking a stiff step away from him as if he were a poison she didn’t want to touch.
“I’m sorry, but you asked for one day and now it’s been two,” she informed him in that same dull monotone, her lilt completely missing. “I wasn’t planning on making it three, so if your cousin’s jet isn’t available, I can make my own way to the airport and you can go to Poros. But I’m going home.”
He stared at her. Stared at her and willed her to look at him, to give him some clue as to why she’d suddenly turned on him like this. After all they’d shared, why was she acting so coldly toward him, as coldly as he used to act toward women he cared nothing about? Why was she now acting the exact opposite of a real wife?
His long, silent stare seemed to push her over the edge of her tolerance.
She cut around him and went over to the phone on the nightstand. “Fine, I’ll just ask the concierge to call me a car or something—”
She gasped when his hands landed on her shoulders, spinning her around so her back was to the wall.
“You are pregnant,” he said to her, placing a hand on the wall on either side of her head so she was trapped. “With my child.”
She gripped the receiver, which she’d hung on to, tight in her hand. “Let. Me. Make. My. Call,” she commanded. Not backing down. Not showing an ounce of fear beyond that initial gasp.
Myriad possibilities for keeping her here, for making her stay long enough for him to recast the spell that had finally brought them together the night before, ran through his head. And if that didn’t work, there were always threats. Threats that would make her wish she had never dared to cross him. He could have Marco transferred again, refuse to let her adopt Pavel. He could…
…stop this, he thought, a sad realization sweeping through him. Because none of those threats would make her want to be his real wife. They would only prove to her that he was the same as his father.
He stepped back and let her out of the trap he’d set up with his arms. “I will not let you make own way home. Of course I will make sure you return safely. I will make arrangements. Can you wait small time for me to take shower?”
Her nose flared with defiance, like she wanted to argue further with him, but in the end she nodded. “Okay,” she said.
And that was the last thing she said to him before they left Greece.
NIKOLAI TRIED TO KEEP HIMSELF from staring at his wife while they ate lunch on the plane ride home, but found he couldn’t. She looked like a portrait in the seat across from his, her eyes on the window to the left of them, so far away they didn’t seem to track the white clouds below, or notice that Dave, the flight attendant, had set down a plate of food in front of her.
He should have been enraged, and he was a bit. The way she’d cut off the trip with such a weak excuse—that had been salt on the old wounds he’d cut open last night. For her. He’d taken a chance and finally opened up to someone, a woman of all people. And for a moment, he’d felt truly rewarded when she’d come to him, called him muzehnek—only to knock him from her sky the next morning, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.
He gripped his silverware tight, thinking about her demand to come home this morning. He wanted to punish her for what she’d done. For cutting the trip short. For not eating enough breakfast then or enough lunch now.
But mostly he wanted to punish her for making him feel like this.
Watching Sam look out the window made his entire chest ache. Something between them had died this morning, he realized, and he had no idea why.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” Dave asked, his return breaking through the heavy cloud that had settled over the silent table.
The attendant blinked with surprise when he saw Sam’s untouched plate of flat iron steak, smashed potatoes, and kale. “Was the meal not to your liking?” he asked.
Sam, who always seemed to have a kind smile for everyone who wasn’t him, rushed to reassure the distressed attendant. “No, I’m sure it’s fantastic. I just had a lot to eat back at the hotel.”
A total lie. She’d only nibbled on her breakfast back in the hotel room. He’d watched her not eat enough as he made the arrangements for them to come home early, and now Nikolai had to resist the urge to command her to finish her meal.
Instead, he handed his own empty tray to Dave and said, “Leave her tray on table.”
Dave nodded, picked up Nikolai’s tray only, said something about being in his small attendant cabin toward the front of the plane if needed, and then he was gone. Leaving Nikolai alone in the large main cabin with his wife…
Whose eyes went straight back to the window as if they had a rubber band attached.
A fresh torrent of rage surged through him. And for a moment, he regretted everything about going along with this silly plan to fix things with her, for ever trying to convince her to look at him differently.
He gripped the sides of his chairs, deciding he didn’t have to put up with this. He would go back to his seat. Devise a new plan. Figure out how to get back the woman who’d come to him last night. Make her talk to him, tell him why she was behaving this way.
“We need to talk.”
The unexpected sound of Sam’s voice lifted his eyes back to her, and he was surprised to find her now looking back at him from across the small table.
“Da, zhena. Let us talk,” he agreed. “Tell me what this is about. Please.”
Her gaze shifted away for a moment, as if his impassioned words were embarrassing. As if she were embarrassed for him.
“I have a little experience with international break ups and I know they can be… messy. I didn’t want to have this talk with you in the hotel room, in another country where I didn’t know the laws or have any recourse if you decided to, um… use your resources against me.”
He shook his head at her, confused. All he really heard in all she said were two words. Break and up. “You want to leave me. Again.”
She sighed. “Nikolai, last night. Was any of that real? Like, were you serious when you told me you wanted to be a good father to Pavel and this baby?”
“Da, of course. How can you doubt that?” he answered.
Her lips twisted as if he’d said something extremely naïve. “I get that a lot of what you said is probably true. Your background and the fact that you’ve had no therapy whatsoever probably makes it hard to distinguish between right and wrong. I’m a friend to people like you, Nikolai, and I will always do my utmost to understand what you’re going through. I’ll always try to be the best friend I can to you considering the circumstances. I hope you understand that.”
She was acting like he was some kind of lost cause. Someone who couldn’t be fixed, even by her.
“I don’t want friend,” he answered. “I want wife. You are my wife.”
“But I don’t want to be,” she said, quick and to the point, like a doctor delivering bad news. “Not anymore. Not like this. I want a divorce. And I want you to prove you meant what you said last night, by not siccing Kevin on me. I want you to agree to split custody and I want you to let me stay in Pavel’s life because he needs me, and I love him, and it would be wrong on your part to punish him because you’re angry at me.”
Nikolai blinked. It was like she’d pulled a grenade out, set it down on the table, and casually pulled out the pin.
“No,” Nikolai said as something inside of him blew up.
“Nikolai. It’s the healthiest thing to do,” she said, clasping her hands together tight. “The best thing for all of us. Please just let me go. I’m not the one to make this perfect family obsession you have happen, and there are plenty of woman—”
He picked up her tray and threw it across the cabin. “I don’t want other woman. You are my wife. You!”
“But I don’t want to be!” she screamed back at him. “I don’t want to be. So let me go! For the good of everyone, including you. If you really meant all those things you said last night, just let me go.”
She wanted a divorce. She didn’t want to be his wife. Nikolai breathed hard, his heart constricting, because he didn’t know what to do, how to handle this.
The problem was she was right. He’d do anything for Pavel. Anything for this baby. And the only way he could make her stay involved hurting her and her career irreparably.
But she was the mother of his child and at the end of the day, he must not have been as much like his father as he feared, because the thought of hurting her in any way—no he couldn’t. He let out a heavy, sad sigh.
“Okay… okay,” he said. “I will give you divorce. Split custody. Whatever you want, I will do.”
His words of concession made her close her eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief, as if her most fervent wish had just been granted.
Seeing her do this cut Nikolai to his fucking core.
“I’ll just… I’ll just clean up the tray,” she said. “Before Dave comes back.”
“Did you have nightmare, zhena?” he asked before she could turn away from him.
His question brought her eyes up, and she frowned at him. “Nikolai, don’t…”
“I will give you divorce, but first you must answer my questions. Did I have nightmare?” he asked.
She shook her head, refusing to answer.
“If you want divorce, zhena, you will answer me,” he said. “Tell me truth, what did I do? Why don’t you want to be my wife anymore? Whatever it is, I will fix it.”
She looked at him for a hot, angry second before saying. “You can’t fix it. It’s unfixable. I can’t make you—”
She stopped and shook her head again.
“What?” he asked. “Tell me.”
Ignoring him, she went across the cabin and busied herself with picking up the tray. But he didn’t give up. He continued to fight for her even though she didn’t seem at all interested in fighting for him.
“Last night meant nothing to you, zhena?” he asked.
No answer.
“It was you. You who came to me.”
She rubbed a hand over her eyes as if she were exhausted, as if this entire conversation had made her weary. “Don’t,” she said quietly. “I already feel like enough of a fool for doing that. Don’t use last night against me….”
She seemed on the verge of saying more, but then she trailed of, and he could see her taking deep breaths. Purposefully calming down. But he did not want her to calm down. He wanted her to talk to him.
“You will not breathe,” he told her. “You will not make yourself calm. You will talk to me. Yell at me. Say whatever it is you don’t say this morning in hotel. Give me words. I deserve them.”
This only made her breathe even slower and deeper, and a few
seconds later, when she stood up to face him again, she was the very picture of calm.
“No,” she answered. “You don’t deserve anything from me. We’re getting a divorce. We’re splitting custody of this baby like adults, and we will work out an arrangement for Pavel. You’ll agree to this because you’re not a sociopath, and that’s what a non-sociopath would do in this situation. So that’s the end of this discussion.”
She was right. She knew it. And he knew it. He wasn’t going to hurt his children, and he would agree to the divorce. He would agree to split custody. Later.
But right now, he’d be damned if he was just going to let her cut him up and walk away with a few yoga breaths.
Now it was he who became calm. Deadly calm as he closed the space between them and said, “You should have eaten your lunch, zhena.”
She threw him an annoyed look. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“This would be easier if you had eaten your lunch.”
Before she could ask the next obvious question, he had her trapped against the door that led to the rear bedroom cabin. Then he began his torture. With a single kiss.
39
Sam cursed herself for letting her profession cloud her instincts. She’d been prepared to stand strong against any argument Nikolai might offer against letting her file for divorce. She’d readied herself for yelling, threats—and though she suspected deep down in her soul that Nikolai would never lay a hand on her, there was a part of her that always braced for possible punches. Seventeen years with her mother and over a decade working in domestic violence shelters. There were just some things you couldn’t unlearn.
But she’d never learned how to deal with being kissed. At least not kissed the way Nikolai kissed her. Hot and urgent, like it was the end of the world and they’d both be blinked out of existence if she didn’t return his erotic overtures.
It screwed with her senses, never failed to take her reasoning skills offline. And instead of pushing him away, she found her hands clutching at his sleeves, bunching the material in her hands as his mighty body pressed hers hard into the cabin’s rear door.
HER RUSSIAN SURRENDER Page 25
