by Cait London
He walked to where she was sitting, struggling with Danya’s hug, and bent to lift her to her feet, giving her another hug. Riveted by the open affection, Ellie stood very still in the single room filled with big men, and tried to find her bearings.
“She’ll have enough of you, by the time you eat everything,” Mikhail said quietly as he came to sit, easing her onto his lap. “Feed me, woman.”
Instead, because she needed to react from the big male hugs, she kissed him. “Take that.”
The growling noise he made only for her caused her to laugh, because she knew that when alone, they would both be taking—
This was a family, Ellie thought later as the big Stepanov men cuddled and cooed and exclaimed over Jarek and Leigh’s baby, delighting in how strong her tiny hand gripped their fingers. Jarek’s photographs had captured Katerina’s expressions; his love for his wife as she held their daughter seemed to fill their home.
Fadey beamed as he held his granddaughter. “Now I have two, Tanya and Katerina.”
When tears came to Ellie’s eyes, she turned her face to Mikhail’s shoulder and his arm held her close. He held her hand as the family talked quietly—Viktor loved ranching, but he also missed making furniture with his brothers and the ocean.
Mikhail rocked her against him. “Missing Tanya?”
“Very much.”
“It’s only for a little while. She’s enjoying herself from the sound of it. She called me today. Apparently, there’s a pony she’d like to bring home,” he said as Bliss passed and patted him on the head. Her color was high and beads of sweat were on her forehead.
Ed was brooding in a corner, a sign that Bliss’s midlife moods had changed and she’d zapped him.
“You said you weren’t staying long?” she asked Alexi as she served him a large piece of Leigh’s double chocolate cake.
“Just overnight and then we’ll be on our way. We can’t be gone too long from the ranch. Dad needs us.”
The men looked at Mikhail, who shook his head as if to stop further explanation.
“So you had a few days off and you came to visit Mikie?” She couldn’t help the tease.
Jarek, Alexi and Danya were on Mikhail’s nickname instantly. “Oh, Mikie…” they chorused together, grinning at him. “Mikie, Mikie, Mikie.”
He groaned and shook his head. “You’re going to pay for that,” he murmured to Ellie.
When Mikhail slept, holding her later that night, Ellie knew she had to protect him and his family. Just as he’d protected her and hers….
“You miss Ellie already, eh? And she’s only taking a weekend away.” Fadey reached to turn off his saw and then the vibrant accordion music he liked while working in the shop. He ran a loving hand over the walnut cabinet that Mikhail was building and bent to critically inspect the drawers. “She will like that and the new sewing machine you got—so many gadgets and far more difficult than your mother’s old machine. But I think you should give her that one instead. She has nothing of her mother. Such a sad story…. Use the new hardware for the drawers. It is more suitable. More like a woman.”
“She’s gone to see Paul.” Mikhail removed the red bandanna he had been wearing across his forehead and brushed the sawdust from his face with it. He tested the wooden dowels into the holes he had drilled and fought the memory of the bitter argument he’d had with Ellie as she’d packed to drive to Seattle.
In the end, they’d settled for an uneasy compromise. Because her car was fine for short distances, but wasn’t in top repair, she would drive his BMW.
“He is her father. That little one is torn apart by love, and by you, too. Have patience. Do not be so angry—she is not JoAnna. Trust her.”
Mikhail threw down the wooden dowel he had been measuring. He wanted to go after Ellie, to protect her, because Paul didn’t have his daughter’s ability to love. And because the memory of Hillary striking Ellie was too fresh.
With a tender smile, Fadey opened the plastic container Mary Jo had sent. He lifted it to inhale the clove and cinnamon scent as though it were heaven. “Here, have some of your mother’s cookies. No one makes them like her. They are like little kisses, eh? From your mother?”
Mikhail looked at the clock and knew that by this time, Ellie was in her father’s mansion, battling for Tanya and for him.
“I don’t like her doing my fighting for me.”
Fadey offered the cookies to him, and Mikhail ate one without tasting. Fadey’s big hand rested on his son’s shoulder, shaking him gently, affectionately, in the way of a compassionate father and a man who also missed his love. “She came to you because she needed help. Now, she looks at you with love and sometimes with sadness. Women are different, Mikhail. She has raised her sister and still loves her, in spite of her selfishness. Ellie remembers Hillary as a baby, as a little girl, and so those memories tangle around her, even as she fights her sister. But she loves Tanya like a mother would a child, and she is emotionally torn between everyone, including you. Let her do what she must. You cannot interfere or protect her this time. She has strengths, that Ellie, or she could not have kept Tanya safe this long.”
“Ellie hasn’t called.” Mikhail needed to hear the sound of her voice, to know that she was safe. He rubbed the ache in his chest, the loneliness without her.
“She wants this ended. She wants her daughter to come to a safe home with no problems.”
“A man like Paul knows how to wait for just the right moment.”
“So she is a woman, trying to protect her nest and her loves. Understand that. She’ll come back to you,” Fadey said as he gave Mikhail a big hug and kissed his cheek. “She’ll come back to you, and meanwhile you are making something nice for her. It is hard to wait, but she is doing what she must—just as you are doing what you must.”
She’d only been gone two nights—staying Friday night in her father’s mansion and then Saturday in a hotel, putting herself back together.
Yet as Ellie carried her bag up the steps to the small cabin on Sunday evening, she felt as if a lifetime had passed. Tired and worn and aching, she had to come back to the cabin instead of the Amoteh. Of all the places that she had lived, this alone was home.
She couldn’t face Mikhail just yet. Facing Paul, tit for tat, the bitterness running between them, she didn’t like herself. An aging playboy, Paul didn’t like the reality of how empty his life was, despite the women and the parties.
Most of all, he feared the loneliness of old age and no one really caring for him.
Ellie knew that, and in the heat of an argument, she’d used it. “You can pay all the girlfriends, and nurses and companions you want, but you’re going to end up alone.”
In that instant, she saw the first fear in Paul’s face and regretted her thrust at him.
The battle with her father raged in her mind, his accusations, her brittle defenses gathered from years of fighting and surviving. He’d said that Hillary had no one to organize her upcoming birthday party and she needed to make an impression on her Wall Street fiancé… Tanya was young; she would forget Ellie as her mother, and the girl would have everything—
Hillary. Ellie’s little sister, now grown and on a path of self-destruction, taking others with her—that wouldn’t be Tanya, Ellie promised.
She stepped inside the cabin’s shadows and closed the door behind her, dropping her bag. She leaned against the door and closed her eyes, letting the dark warmth and safety enfold her.
Tanya could have everything that Hillary and she had had, but love and patience wouldn’t be in the mix.
Mikhail was going to lose everything—
She touched the new cabinet beneath the window overlooking the beach. All the Stepanov furniture in the cabin was heavily built, but this cabinet seemed like a small desk. Obviously new, the walnut wood carried the scent of the Stepanovs’ furniture polish and drawers ran down the sides, the hardware pulls more feminine that the usual heavy metal designs.
The shadows stirred and the
overhead light blinded her. “Mikhail?”
“It’s for you,” he said coming toward her. “The new sewing machine is on the floor, and my mother’s old one is in the cabinet. You can have your choice. Leigh said that sewing relaxes you. I thought you might need that now.”
In a dark red sweater and jeans and a heavy growth of stubble on his jaw, his hair mussed, the waves standing out in odd peaks, Mikhail had never been more appealing.
Aware that he was studying her, Ellie tried to smooth the tendrils that had escaped her ponytail. Her dark sweatsuit looked as though she had slept in it, which she had—if she’d slept at all. She fought tears as Mikhail drew her against him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t need to.”
Ellie struggled back from his arms. “Because of me, you might lose everything. Paul wasn’t in a listening mood, and I wasn’t sweet. I’m his daughter, after all.”
Mikhail framed her face with his hands. “You’re the woman I love. And you have said that you love me. Isn’t that enough?”
She slashed away the tears on her cheek. “This is an uncommon situation, Mikhail. Your resort, your life’s work and ambition and Tanya’s welfare—”
His head went back as though she’d slapped him, those green eyes flashing. “I will provide for you. Trust me.”
Ellie took a deep breath and served him news she knew he wouldn’t like. “I made a deal with Paul. He wants the Lathrops to look like a family—appearances matter, you know, the perfect picture…and Mikhail, I do love my sister. These things are so important to her.”
“And you are important to me.” Mikhail’s open hand hit the table, and the salt shaker and peppermill rattled. “Paul couldn’t wait. He called the instant you left. You agreed to arrange Hillary’s birthday party, and the engagement one, too. I told him you might reconsider once we’ve talked. The question is, where have you been since you left him on Saturday afternoon?”
“I tried to talk with Hillary—”
Mikhail’s hand shot out to capture her face, turning it for his inspection. “Did she hit you?”
“No…. She’s my little sister,” Ellie heard herself cry, echoes of the bitter argument cutting her like icy sleet.
“And you love her. You love everyone, don’t you? And it’s tearing you apart,” he murmured, his deep voice soft and curling around her. “You’ve been a mother to them both, a selfish father and a sister needing you, and most of all, you’ve given an unloved child your heart. And you want to protect me. Are you going to let me hold you now?”
“Don’t you see, Mikhail? Paul is going to ruin everything—”
He shrugged and smoothed her hair back from her cheek, his thumbs brushing the earrings he had given her. “I don’t think so. Where did you stay last night?”
“At a hotel. I just couldn’t face—” Mikhail picked her up and sat, holding her in a big rocker.
“If anything had happened to you, my life would have been so empty,” he said unevenly against her temple. “I ask that you do not tear yourself apart even more, that you allow Hillary to chose her own path and only help her when it doesn’t hurt you so. I ask that you do not act as Paul’s hostess.”
“I had to give him something to make a tentative truce. He can be horrible, Mikhail—you know him.”
“Do you not know me?” he asked gently.
“What can you do?”
“Love you. Hold you. Organize all the managers of Mignon International in a walkout.”
She sat up, staring at him. “You can’t do that.”
His eyebrow lifted in a challenge. “Can I not?”
Ellie eased to her feet, terrified that the nightmare had grown to touch others’ lives. “Mikhail, you wouldn’t. Those people have worked so hard to build their own careers. So have you.”
He nodded and watched her pace the length of the cabin. “Top people who can get top jobs instantly with a brand-new rising company, already in place and searching for managers. The offers for me to take over other chains have been coming in since the Amoteh’s success. I can run a competing chain from right here. I have old friends who will back me, too. And there is damage I can do before leaving Mignon. I know the infrastructure better than Paul. It would all be legal, of course. He knows that.”
Mikhail stood and placed his hands in his jeans pockets. “The main problem now is if you like the sewing machine. If you don’t want Mom’s old one, then the new machine can be easily fitted into the cabinet. I needed something to do while you were gone—otherwise I would have come after you. I had already started it, but—”
“He’s jealous of you.” Ellie’s outburst surprised her, an understanding that came on that heartbeat.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Mikhail slowly ran his hand over the smooth wood of the sewing cabinet. “Because he senses that he doesn’t have you anymore. He is afraid.”
“He told you that?”
“No, but I know how I would feel, if another man took you away from me.”
Ellie scrubbed her face as she tried to fit all the pieces into a sane picture; it seemed that Mikhail had compassion for a man who had none, for a man who threatened to take everything from him. “Bliss sent him love beads and Ed sent him a worry stone. They were on his desk. He was actually rubbing that worry stone.”
“That’s what they do—Leigh’s parents love. So do you.” He frowned slightly and added, “Are you going to make me wait for you? Tell me what you think of this cabinet, mmm?”
Mikhail studied his work and lifted a chair to place it in front of the cabinet. “Is it too tall? Here, sit in this chair. I can shorten the cabinet’s legs or make a chair that suits you—yes, that is what I’ll do, make a chair for you.”
As if just remembering, he turned suddenly and lifted the portable sewing machine from the floor and placed it on the cabin’s table, opening the case. The deluxe sewing machine, complete with electronic buttons and gadgets she’d probably never use, seemed to fascinate Mikhail. Ellie struggled to move from the trauma of the past two days, the emotional homecoming to Mikhail, to his admiration of the new sewing machine. He leaped over major problems to the simplest one—did she like the gift he made for her? “I—it’s beautiful.”
“It is truly beautiful wood,” he stated critically, a man who had helped his father build the furniture company and who enjoyed textures. He ran his hand over the gleaming wood, caressing it. “It’s walnut. I thought of cherry, but walnut was at hand and I needed to work with my hands as I thought of you. But what do you think of the cabinet?” he asked sternly, his arms crossed.
Ellie sat very carefully in front of the sewing machine. There was a formality about Mikhail that she recognized as boyish eagerness, disguised as only a man would. She smoothed the wood with both hands, adoring the gift, and the man. “I love it. No one has ever made anything for me before—except for Tanya’s drawings and her macaroni necklaces.”
“Those are important gifts.” He moved quickly, opening the lid to flatten into a shelf beside the machine. “Here. That is my mother’s old machine, and it does a few things…good for denim, she says. When Jarek and I were young, she was always patching…there wasn’t that much money. She likes her new machine better…it’s like the one on the table, but not good for the heavier weight. I can change them easily, whichever you prefer—or…”
“Your mother’s old machine?”
“Jarek, Dad and I talked. You have nothing of your mother’s, and it might appeal to you more to have something of my mother’s. Foolish, yes, but we meant well.” Mikhail’s deep voice had that lick of accent that said he was deeply emotional. “You should have something of a mother, Ellie, something handed down to you. If not this, then something else.”
She could have cried then, shattering so easily. But then Mikhail would have worried. “Thank you,” she managed humbly.
Mikhail grinned and lifted the machine head to stand upright. “See?”
&n
bsp; Ellie couldn’t breathe, her emotions swirling around her. In another minute, she would turn into sobbing mess. Deep within her, she’d always ached for the mother that was never there, for some small part to remember…. “It’s lovely.”
Mikhail kneeled to open and close the drawers on either side of the leg space. He lifted out a small basket, filled with sewing goods. “Mom said that she and Tanya went shopping and are sending you all the things you’ll need. Meanwhile, Leigh brought a few things—some material, scraps that she said you’d need to play with, her sewing scissors, some thread.”
He looked longingly back at the super model on the table. “I can change them easily. It was only a thought to put Mother’s in the cabinet, instead of the new one. Which one do you like?”
“The one and only—you,” she whispered as she framed his face with her hands and bent to kiss him. Mikhail’s arms circled her legs.
“Did you miss me?” he asked rawly between her tiny, hungry kisses.
“Only this much,” Ellie said as she fused her lips to his.
Mikhail awoke to the smooth whir of the sewing machine and turned slowly on his side to watch Ellie sewing by candlelight. By her random actions, the testing of the tension and thread, he knew she was testing the machine and making it hers—
Lying in the shadows, he knew she was struggling against her fear for the Amoteh and his family, and her love of her father and sister.
Then she turned as if sensing him, attuned to his heartbeat as he was to hers. Ellie blew the candle out and rose, taking off his T-shirt as she walked toward him. In the dim light the earrings he had given her swayed and gleamed.
Mikhail held his breath as the moonlight outlined her body, the dip and curve of waist to hip, the rounded shadow of her breasts, the darkening between her thighs. Hidden by shadows, her face was framed by the tousled lengths of her hair.
