by Olivia Gates
Aristedes cleared his throat, his baritone soaked in amusement. “Just letting you know that we can hear this failed attempt at a private aside. And that the soup is congealing.”
Cali relinquished Maksim’s maddeningly tranquil eyes and turned to her equally vexing brother. “Oh, shut up, Aristedes.” Then, she rounded on the rest of them. “And all of you. Just eat. Or I swear...” She stopped, finding no suitable retribution to threaten them with.
“Or what, Cali?” Thea wiggled her eyebrows at her. “You’re going to pull one of your stunts?”
Phaidra turned to Maksim. “Did she ever tell you what she used to do when she was a child when we didn’t give in to her demands as the spoiled baby of the family?”
Maksim sat forward, all earnest attention. “No. Tell me.”
From then on, as her siblings competed to tell Maksim the most “hilarious,” aka mortifying, anecdote about her early years, the conversation became progressively livelier. Maksim was soon drawing guffaws of his own with his dry-as-tinder wit, until everyone was talking over each other and laughing rambunctiously. Even Aristedes got caught up in the unexpectedly unbridled gaiety of the gathering. Even she did.
It was past 1:00 a.m. when everyone got up to leave, hugging Maksim as if he were a new brother. Then Cali waited with Aristedes and Selene as Maksim went to fetch Rosa and Leo. He came back carrying everything, to Rosa’s continued objections, with a sleepy Leo curled contentedly in his embrace.
As thanks and goodbyes were exchanged, she watched the two towering male forces shake hands and almost laughed, sobbed and stomped her foot all at the same time.
Aristedes’s glance promised Maksim that live skinning if he didn’t walk the straight and narrow, and Maksim’s answering nod pledged he’d submit to whatever Aristedes would inflict if for any reason he didn’t. The pact they silently made was so blatant to her senses, as it must be to Selene’s, that it was at once funny, moving and infuriating.
She barely held back from knocking their magnificent, self-important, terminally chivalrous heads together.
They left, and after dropping Rosa off, Maksim drove back to Cali’s apartment. In her building’s garage, he enacted the ritual of taking her and Leo up, shouldering all the heavy lifting, and accompanying her to put Leo in his crib. Then without attempting to prolong his stay, he walked back to the door.
Before he opened it, he turned to her, his eyes molten gold in the subdued lighting. “Thank you for this evening with your family, Caliope. I really enjoyed their company.”
She could only nod. Against all expectations, she’d truly enjoyed the whole thing, too. And it just added another layer of dismay and foreboding to their situation.
“They all love you very much.”
She loved them, too, couldn’t imagine life without them.
She sighed. “They’re just interfering pains with it.”
“It’s a blessing to have siblings who have your best interests at heart, even if you have to put up with what you perceive as infringements.” Maksim sighed deeply. “I always wished I had siblings.”
Her heart contracted so hard around the jagged rock she felt forever embedded inside it.
Did he mean what...?
Before the thought became complete, forming yet another heartache to live with, he swept her bangs away, his gaze searing her as it roamed her face.
She thought he’d pull her into his arms and relieve her from her struggle, end her torment, give her what she was aching for.
He didn’t. He only looked at her with eyes that told her how much craving he was holding back. And that he wouldn’t act on it, except with her explicit invitation.
Then he said, “Will you come to Russia with me, Caliope?”
Six
Maksim saw the shock of his request ripple across Caliope’s face. This had come out of the blue for her.
It had for him, too.
He could feel an equally spontaneous rejection building inside her, but he couldn’t let her vocalize it.
Her lips were already moving when he preempted her. “My mother lives there. It would mean the world to her if she could see her grandson.”
At the mention of his mother, the refusal she’d undoubtedly been about to utter seemed to stick in her throat.
She swallowed, the perfection of her honeyed skin staining with a hectic peach. “But...Russia!” He waited until the idea sank in a bit further. Then she added, “And you’re proposing...we go right away?”
Relieved that he’d stopped her outright refusal in its tracks and that they were already into the zone of negotiation, he pressed his advantage. “It would be fantastic for her to attend her grandson’s first birthday.”
It took a moment before the significance and timing of that milestone hit her with their implications.
And she exclaimed, “But that’s two weeks away.”
“A trip to Russia shouldn’t be for less than that.”
“But if it’s for Leo’s birthday, we can leave a day or two beforehand.”
He bunched his hands into fists, or he would have reached for her, crushed her against him, kissed her senseless until she said yes to anything he asked.
He held back, as he now lived to do. “I know she would appreciate as much time with Leo as possible, and I’m sure she’d love to prepare his birthday celebration and host it in her home.”
That made her eyes widen. “Her home? Not yours, too?”
“I don’t live with her, no.”
That seemed to derail her meandering train of thought, bringing that gentle, curious contemplation he was getting used to to the forefront. “Then where do you live? I never got around to asking. When you’re not traveling on business and staying in hotels?”
“If you’re asking if I have a home, the answer is no.”
He almost added he’d only ever wished for a home with her. The only home he wanted now was with her and Leo.
He didn’t. She’d already told him she wouldn’t be his home. And she had every right to refuse to be. Her first and last duty was to protect herself and Leo from his potential for instability and premature expiration. He should be thankful—he was thankful she was allowing him that much with her, and with Leo. He shouldn’t be asking for more.
Not that what he should feel and what he did feel held any resemblance. He went around pretending tranquility and sanity when he was going insane with wanting more.
Considering his answer about having no home a subject ender, she resumed her unease about the original one. “This is...so sudden, Maksim...and I’m not prepared. I have work....”
“Most of your work is on the computer, and you can work anywhere. And I’ll make sure you regularly have the peace and quiet you need to.”
“But Leo...”
“He’ll be with me while you work, and with my mother. And she has a lot of help. And we’ll take Rosa, too.”
The peach heat across her sculpted cheekbones deepened. “Seems you have this all figured out.”
It was all coming to him on the fly. But it didn’t make it any less ferocious, the need that was now hammering at him to whisk her away, to rush her and Leo to his mother’s side, to connect them before he...
Exhaling the morbid and futile thought, he shrugged, hoping to look calm and flexible about the whole thing, so he wouldn’t scare her off. “Not really. I only thought of it right now.”
Her gaze became skeptical. “You mean you didn’t plan to eventually take Leo to see his grandmother before?”
The strangest thing was that he hadn’t. Now, as she confronted him with the question, the truth suddenly dawned on him. “No, I didn’t. I no longer plan anything ahead.”
Her pupils expanded, plunging her incandescent heaven-hued eyes into darkness. No doubt rememberin
g why he didn’t.
He hadn’t brought up his condition since he’d admitted it to her. But as Caliope’s and Leonid’s closeness infused him with boundless energy and supercharged his life force, he’d almost forgotten all about it. He felt so invincible now that most times he couldn’t believe there was anything wrong with him. But he had been told it was a silent danger.
Now her unspoken turmoil was more unbearable than sensing that ticking time bomb she’d said he had inside his head. He had to take her thoughts away from this darkness.
The only way he knew how was to give her back the control that his condition, something so out of anyone’s control, deprived her of. “Or I still make plans, but only in work. With you and Leo I can’t, since it’s not up to me to make any plans.”
As he’d hoped, the terrible gloom that had dimmed her vibe lifted, as her thoughts steered away from the futility.
She lowered her eyes while she considered her verdict, and that fan of lashes eclipsed her gaze and hid her thoughts. His lips tingled, needing to press to their silken thickness, closing those luminous eyes before melting down those sculpted cheeks, that elegant nose, to her petal-soft lips. Just looking at those lips made his go numb with aching to crush them beneath his, with clamoring to tangle his tongue with hers, to drain her taste, to fill her needs. For he could feel them, and they were as fierce as his. But he knew she wouldn’t succumb to them. The price was too high for her, when she had Leo to think about.
He understood that, accepted it. He could barely function with suffering it, but he’d known that if he pushed through the boundaries she needed to maintain, she’d slam the door in his face. And he would put up with anything to have whatever she would allow him of herself, of Leonid.
But now that the idea had taken root, it was no longer about him. It was about his mother. And he decided to use this as a point of persuasion, since it was true.
A finger below Caliope’s chin brought her now-turbid gaze up to his. “I didn’t feel I had the right to ask this before, when I thought my admission into your lives would be short-lived. I couldn’t risk letting my mother know of Leonid only to lose him again when I lost my unofficial visitation rights. If you feel you’re not going to end those, or that even if you do you wouldn’t cut my mother off from Leonid’s life by association, let me take you to meet her.”
“Maksim...don’t...”
At her wavering objection, he pressed on with his best argument. “I always thought nothing could possibly make up for what she’d lost and suffered. But if there’s one thing that can heal her and make it all up to her, it’s Leonid.”
* * *
She hadn’t been able to say no.
How could she have when Maksim had invoked his mother?
She actually felt ashamed he’d had to, that she hadn’t been the one to consider the woman and her right to know Leo, her only grandson. She’d known Tatjana Volkova was alive, but she’d shied away from knowing anything more about her. What Maksim had told her of his mother had been so traumatic she’d avoided thinking of her so she wouldn’t have to dwell on what the woman had gone through. It had to have been so much worse than what her own mother had suffered, though that much less abusive experience had undeniably altered her own attitude toward life and intimacy. She had too much to deal with what with her situation with Maksim, and she couldn’t add to her turmoil by introducing more of Tatjana’s sufferings into her psyche.
But not only was Leo Tatjana’s only grandchild, she was the only grandparent he had. He had a right to know her, just as Tatjana had more right to him as his grandmother than any of Cali’s own family.
There had been no saying no to Maksim in this. Nor could she have played for more time. The timing was very significant. A first birthday was a milestone she couldn’t let his mother miss. And she’d also bought his argument of going there ahead of time and letting Leo’s grandmother share the joy of preparing that event.
This meant that she didn’t have time to breathe as she threw together a couple of suitcases for the two weeks Maksim had said they’d stay. And the very next morning, she found herself, along with Leo and Rosa, being swept halfway across the world, heading to a place she’d never been or ever thought she’d be: Maksim’s motherland.
The flight on his private jet had been an unprecedented experience. She was used to high-end luxuries, from her own financial success, and Aristedes’s in-a-class-of-its-own wealth. But it was Maksim’s pampering that went beyond anything she could have imagined. She squirmed at how much care he kept bestowing on them. Though he remained firm when needed with Leo, seamlessly keeping him in check with the perfect blend of loving indulgence and uncompromising discipline.
So she couldn’t use spoiling Leo as a reason to demand he dial down his coddling, and he insisted that since she and Rosa were responsible adults, his efforts wouldn’t spoil them and they should just sit back and enjoy it.
She couldn’t speak for Rosa, but he was definitely wrong in her case. He was spoiling her beyond retrieval, taking her beyond the point where being without him would be impossible.
And self-destructive fool that she was, she’d only put up a token resistance, as halfhearted as all those other instances over the past ten weeks, before finally surrendering to his cosseting and reveling in his attention and nearness.
And now here she was. In Russia.
They’d landed in a private airport an hour ago. They were now in the limo that had been awaiting them at the jet’s stairs, heading toward his mother’s home. Rosa and Leo were in the limo’s second row, while she and Maksim sat in the back.
And to top it all off? The city in Northern European Russia that they were now driving through was called Arkhangel’sk. Archangel.
How appropriate was that? For it to be the hometown of the archangel who was sitting beside her and acting the perfect guide?
“The city lies on the sides of the Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea...” he pointed at the river they were driving along “...and spreads for over twenty-five miles along its banks and in its delta’s islands. When Peter the Great ordered the creation of a state shipyard here, it became the chief seaport of medieval Russia. But in the early eighteenth century, the tsar decreed that all international marine trade be shifted to St. Petersburg, leading to the deterioration of Arkhangel’sk. The decree was cancelled forty years later, but the damage was done and Baltic trade became more relied on.”
Her gaze swept the expansive stone sidewalk running by the river, trying to imagine how the city had looked all those centuries ago when Russia was an empire. She had a feeling it hadn’t changed much. It had an authentic old-world vibe to it, echoes of long enduring history in every tree and stone and brick forming the scene.
“So did Arkhangel’sk’s economy revive at all before you put it back on the map?”
Clearly gratified with her interest on his account, he nodded. “It did somewhat, at the end of the nineteenth century when a railway to Moscow was completed and timber became a major export. And until fifteen years ago, the city was primarily a center for the timber and fishing industries.”
Her gaze melted down his face as she marveled yet again at his beauty, at the power and nobility stamped on his every feature. “Until you came along and turned it into the base for Russia’s largest iron and steel works.”
His lips twisted. “That implies that I switched its historical focus from timber and fishing to steel, when I only added that industry to the existing ones.”
“And revived and advanced the other two beyond recognition.” His dismissive shrug was another example of how he never took any opening to blow his own horn. She persisted. “I’ve been reading up on your contributions here. People no longer say this city is named after the archangel Michael, who’d been designated as the city’s protector centuries ago, but after your nickname here as its cur
rent and far more effective benefactor.”
His eyes glowed. Not with pride at his gargantuan accomplishments, which he treated with a pragmatic, almost indifferent matter-of-factness. His gratification seemed to be on account of her investigating said accomplishments and finding them—and him—worthy of admiration. It seemed to be her own opinion that counted to him, far more than what he believed of his actual worth.
This explicit reaction, whenever she lauded his actions or complimented his character in any way, always left her with a knot in her throat and a spasm in her heart.
To realize he needed her validation was at once delightful and heartbreaking. She’d lost so many opportunities to show him her appreciation during their year together, when she’d been so busy hiding the extent of her emotional involvement that she hadn’t given him his due in fear he’d suspect it and it would change everything. Now that she had stopped pretending that she didn’t see his merits and freely expressed her esteem, they were in this impossible situation....
She turned her eyes to the scenery rushing by her window, of that resplendent subarctic city draped in a thin layer of early November’s pristine snow, and saw almost none of it as she wrestled with another surge of regret and heartache.
After an interval of silence, Maksim resumed his narration, continuing to captivate her with anecdotes of the city and region.
Then they turned onto a one-way road flanked by trees, their dense, bare branches entwining overhead in a canopy.
“We’re here.”
Her heart kicked into a higher gallop at his deep announcement.
This was really happening. She was going to meet Maksim’s mother, and spiral further into the depths of his domain.
Swallowing the spike of agitation, she peered out of the window as they passed through thirty-foot-high, wrought-iron gates adorned with golden accents into a lushly landscaped park. She’d been to stunning palaces that had parks of this magnitude before, but those had been tourist attractions. She’d never seen anything like this that was privately owned.
