When he couldn’t find her at her office, he’d chosen to feel injured. Her sincere note of apology had done nothing to mollify him. He walked up to her without hesitation, invading her space once more. “You were leaving to meet someone?”
One of the interesting aspects about Anatoly was that he never minced words, just came out with whatever was on his mind. It was fascinating, but also frustrating. He seemed to play by another set of rules.
“I was on my way to the store,” she said.
“I need to do some shopping myself. After we eat dinner—” he held up the bag “—and accomplish our business, I will take you to a place where I have a membership. It is open twenty-four hours, every day of the year.”
Gaby wasn’t particularly fond of enormous malls and warehouse shopping. But she could see why it would appeal to Anatoly. Though she might not have been to the former Soviet Union, she didn’t think American capitalism had managed to get its stranglehold on their poor unsuspecting culture to quite that degree yet.
“You can buy anything you want for a fifty percent discount.”
She gasped. “Fifty?” In a place like that, her forty dollars would go far.
“I know the owner,” he added. Oh, of course.
“Otherwise I would only get thirty.”
He didn’t need to say anything more to seduce her. Besides, at this point she was salivating over the divine smells coming from the bag.
“We can eat here, but my apartment’s horrible.”
“You mean it is ugly?” He asked solemnly.
“Let’s just say it’s temporary. I’ve been pouring everything into my office.”
“If you mean you do not have any furniture, that is not a problem. I am no stranger to hardship. When I first came to America, I slept in a bare apartment on the floor with thirteen other immigrants. Together we scraped enough money to live there a month until I received my first paycheck.”
She wasn’t surprised.
“I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t have a chair for you to sit on.”
“Then you do not want me to see the mess.”
He’d been around other women all right.
“The American female worries too much over details that are unimportant.” His bold gaze studied her features. “A man is not capable of noticing anything else when it comes to an alluring woman.”
In sweats and a ponytail? Gaby stifled the impulse to tell him the Russian male chose to be blind, as well as tragic. She turned to let herself back in to the apartment.
CHAPTER FOUR
“DID YOU CALL about your car?’ Anatoly followed her inside. The click of the door reminded her they were alone. Gaby hadn’t been this kind of alone with a man since her husband.
“Yes. They couldn’t tell me anything yet. What about the Audi?”
“It should be ready in ten days.”
To have Anatoly’s connections wouldn’t be a bad thing. “If you’ll put the food on the table, I’ll get the plates and cutlery.”
“I do not understand why you were worried. Your apartment is uncluttered. No technical toys.”
“If I want TV, I can watch it at work,” she called from the kitchen.
“I am happy you like these roses.” She watched him inhale their perfume. “A genius bred this variety of shocking pink in Germany. By their thick stems, you know they were grown and cut in South America just before their overnight flight to San Diego. You will find they last sixteen days.”
Everything he said either exasperated or fascinated her. “They’re exquisite, Anatoly.” The heat in the apartment had forced the heads open.
As she brought everything to the table, his eyes captured hers. “Don’t you want to know their name?”
“I was just about to ask.”
“Royal Dream.” The famous “r” was in evidence once more. “The way they stand out from the drabness around them reminds me of you.”
She sucked in her breath. “You’ve picked up a lot of knowledge working at that florist shop.”
“I find that I like growing things.”
“Did your family farm in Russia?”
“No. We always lived in the city. They died when I was seven, so my grandfather raised me. Until his death, he ran a shop importing gifts from all over the world.”
“How old were you when he died?”
“Eighteen.”
She swallowed hard. “I’m glad you had him for as long as you did.”
“I, too, am glad. Sit down and I will serve you. I hope you like chicken.”
“I like most anything.”
“As I said before. You are a special woman, Gabriella.” He pulled out several cartons of hot food and lifted the lids. Nestled in the wine and mushroom sauce lay tender breasts of chicken wrapped around cheese and spinach.
She stared up at him. “That’s chicken rollatini. You went to Salvatori’s Deli!”
He smiled down at her. “I see this pleases you.”
“It’s one of my favorite places.”
“Mine, too.”
“Even if you’re kidding, I’m not complaining.”
“I never say what I do not mean,” he reminded her in a serious voice. “But I regret that I did not bring any wine for you. There was a long line of people. I wanted to get to you as soon as possible.”
Drowning in a surfeit of emotion, she excused herself from the table. “I’m glad you didn’t, because I don’t care for wine, except in food, of course.” She pulled her last beer from the refrigerator, mentally kicking herself for draining the other one last night.
“Now you are the person who is kidding,” he muttered when she placed the bottle next to his glass.
“What do you mean?” Perhaps he preferred something stronger, like vodka. But she couldn’t imagine him wanting it with a meal. In any event, she had nothing else but water or milk to serve him.
He caressed the neck of the bottle as if it were a woman’s. “All my life I have preferred beer. More and more I am convinced the crash that brought you into my life yesterday was for a very great reason. Do you believe in destiny, Gabriella?”
Those green eyes shadowed by secrets had settled on her mouth, which was now full of chicken.
She shook her head.
“Kismet is an old Persian term my Turkish friend believes rules our lives. To think I once scoffed at him.” He opened the bottle and poured half the contents into her glass.
“We shall drink a toast, yes?”
Gaby raised her glass. “May my car be repaired as fast as yours!’
He held his glass away so they wouldn’t touch. “Nyet. I refuse to drink to that. May your car be stolen so that I will have the privilege of driving you to work every morning and bringing you home every night.”
After a resounding clink, she choked on her first sip while he drank the contents of his glass in one swallow.
“You are all right?” He reached out to rub her back until the coughing subsided.
No, I’m not all right. Don’t touch me like that. Don’t talk to me like that. Not ever again.
“The business about the stolen car wasn’t funny, Anatoly.” She put her glass down hard.
He stopped rubbing her back to reach for her hand. “I think we are having our first miscommunication,” he whispered. Like fire, she felt the brush of his lips against her skin. “When you know me much better, you will find out I never try to be funny.” He buried a kiss in her palm before letting her hand go.
She felt so weak, she feared she might slide right off the chair onto the floor. “Cars get stolen around here all the time,” she snapped to counteract her reaction to the intimate contact. “The parts are either used to repair salvaged vehicles, or else the thugs steal the vehicle identification number and place it on a ‘hot’ automobile.”
Anatoly’s eyelids had dropped to half-mast. “I agree it is a serious problem. But your insurance company will replace your car if that happens.”
“That’s true. Howe
ver, I’ve already received a citation for causing the accident. If my car gets stolen on top of it, they’ll pay everything, then tell me to look for another insurance company. My rate will be astronomical!”
The room fairly echoed with her diatribe. She felt embarrassed, suddenly, by her display of temper.
“I did not know my comment would upset you so much. Forgive me, Gabriella. Let me make this up to you by having your car towed to the body shop where the Audi is being repaired. It is very safe. I would have suggested it in the first place, but I did not want to seem like I was trying to take over your life.”
He had to be joking.
Except that he said he never joked. Anatoly was one of a kind, and she was beginning to believe him, beginning to… What was happening to her?
Coming out of mourning left her vulnerable in a new way. If she could go back to yesterday before the crash, Anatoly wouldn’t be sitting within touching distance of her right now. He wouldn’t be saying and doing things that seduced and frightened her at the same time.
She needed her psychiatrist, fast. But Dr. Karsh lived in Florida. A fifty-minute session in his office or over the phone cost two hundred dollars without insurance. Her health insurance paid only a pittance for psychiatric care.
“You are flushed.” Anatoly put the back of his hand to her cheek. “I think you should lie down and relax while I do the dishes.” He rose to his full height and started clearing the plates.
The situation was spiraling out of control.
She jumped up from the table. “I have a better idea. I’ll find my notepad and we’ll get busy on your fiancée’s problem.”
He paused in the midst of filling the sink with hot water. “You work too hard, Gabriella. You have no distractions here.”
I can see a great big huge one right in front of me.
“That’s the way I like it.”
MAX CLEANED UP the kitchen, aware he was enjoying the situation a little too much. If Gideon knew what was happening to him, he’d tell him to get out before things got any hotter.
That was the problem. Emotionally, physically, in fact, every damn way a human could be, he was already in too deep.
After all the years of working in law enforcement, this was the first time he could feel himself losing ground with every skirmish. Until he’d met Ms. Peris, he’d always dismissed the notion of bonding to the enemy. But her con was sucking him in.
Watch your back.
Gideon’s famous last words.
She’d put on her attorney’s hat and sat in the chair by the lamp with one leg tucked under her. On her lap perched the yellow legal-size pad he’d seen before.
With her coloring, she looked good in navy.
His eyes closed. She looked good in every outfit she wore. The thought of her without clothes…
Somewhere in the room he heard a phone ring. She reached into the purse by her chair and pulled out a cell phone. He could hear her voice, but she spoke in such low tones it was impossible to understand the words.
Max stayed where he was, wiping off the counter. Gideon had put her apartment and office under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Whoever was on duty at either site would get any conversations on tape.
Tonight a patrol car would show up at the building where she worked on the pretext of checking out a suspected burglary in progress. One of the guys would get inside her office and put a listening device on her phone wire.
Whenever she left either place to go anywhere else, there’d be a tail on her. That way everything was covered except her cell phone. Max would take care of that at the first opportunity.
Except for the time he spent delivering flowers, the next two weeks he would be in her face, watching every move she made. They would play attack and retreat until she had nowhere to run and he’d learned everything he wanted to know.
To his chagrin he wanted to know things that weren’t necessary to the investigation. He had a gut feeling his need was already insatiable.
“Anatoly? Forgive me for being on the phone so long. Come and give me the particulars on your fiancée.”
“Her name is Natasha Azarnova, born in Moscow January 19.” He sat down on the couch, stretching his arm along the top of it. “She has blond hair, blue eyes, is five feet nine inches tall and weighs a hundred twenty pounds. She came to San Diego four years ago on July 6. She is thirty-two years old and works as a secretary for a photographic company.”
He’d memorized the litany a long time ago.
Gabriella didn’t lift her head while she wrote. “When did she make the second application for a student visa?”
“Six months ago. The first week of February. Last month she found out it had been denied.”
“That must have been a terrible disappointment for both of you.”
“It is life. But we need to see each other one more time to discover if the fire still burns. You have been married, so you know what I am talking about.”
“Yes. Do you have a recent picture of her?”
“I carry one in my wallet.” He pulled it from his back pocket and removed the picture Karl had given him. “You can keep it. There are more at my apartment.”
She took it from his fingers. “She’s lovely.”
“I think so, too. The trouble is, she has been gone so long I have trouble visualizing her without the picture. I used to feel guilty about that.”
“I know what you mean.” Her voice betrayed the hint of a tremor. So far her acting was beyond comprehension. “Sometimes you need a reminder.”
“Gabriella, do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Do you mind if I do?”
“Not at all.” She jumped up from the chair and brought him a bread-and-butter plate from the kitchen cupboard. “Just let me get the fan and bring it in here.” In a second she was back and had put it on the kitchen table facing them. She turned on the switch.
“That feels good. I have cut down to one a week.”
“Do you mean a pack?”
“No. A cigarette.”
“That’s very admirable.”
“I am on the Nicorette plan.”
Her chuckle worked its way under his skin. “I wish there was a plan to get off Cracker Jack.”
“Is that something you smoke?”
Her lips twitched. “No. It comes in a box. A mixture of popcorn and crunchy stuff. I eat it when I go to ball games, another one of my many addictions.”
He’d wondered how long it would take her to get around to the pennant taped to her closet door. Obviously not long. He took another puff on his cigarette, a necessary affectation of his con that he could do without.
“You have just mentioned an aspect of American culture I find fascinating.”
“When we both know this nation has too many overweight people, you’re being very diplomatic.”
“I was not talking about the enjoyment of nonnutritious food. American women seem to enjoy watching sports as much as the men do. I like that. Natasha never had an interest. Tell me, are you a fan of football or basketball?”
“Depending on the team, I like just about every sport.”
“Except for bowling, I, too, am enamored of most sports on American television. The lady who owns my apartment house lets us watch them in the lounge room.”
“You don’t have your own TV set?’
“No. She does not allow us to keep one in our rooms because of the noise. It is a good rule for me. Otherwise I would stay in bed and flip the channels all day.”
“You’re catching on to the American way fast. You didn’t think I kept the TV at my office solely for my clients, did you?”
“I decided you must use videos to explain information to them in their native tongues.”
“That’s very perceptive of you, and of course, you’re quite right. But I ascribe to the theory that all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”
“I have heard that idiom before, but I think another name was used.”
; “Jack.”
“Jack! That is it.” He inhaled on his cigarette one more time for effect, then stubbed it out on the plate she’d given him.
“I believe I have all the information I need on your fiancée. In a few days I’ll let you know if I can get her temporary student visa approved.” She moved out of the chair and put the notepad on the table. “Thank you again for the delicious dinner.”
She was getting rid of him, and there’d been no mention of stickball. That would come later. Ms. Peris knew exactly what she was doing. Two steps forward, one step back.
He got up from the couch with the plate to take it into the kitchen.
“That’s all right, Anatoly. I can do that.” She reached out to take it from him, but he slipped past her.
As he dropped the cigarette stub in the wastebasket, then washed the plate, he said, “I did not come here to make extra housework for you. You are doing me a great favor. Tomorrow morning I will be here at five to seven. On the way we will stop at the place where they have taken your car. I will make arrangements to have it towed to the garage where the Audi is being repaired.”
She shook her head, causing her ponytail to swish. “None of that will be necessary. I plan to take the bus.”
He finished drying the plate and put it away in the cupboard. Then he turned toward her with his hands on his hips. “I have offended you in some way?”
“No, of course not.”
“Is it because I am Russian?”
“Your nationality has nothing to do with anything.”
“I will be a naturalized citizen very soon.”
“Anatoly,” she said in exasperation, “you are putting words in my mouth.”
“That is because you insist on hiding the truth from yourself.”
She frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You are in the business of helping immigrants, but you still consider us untouchables.”
“That’s not true!”
If he’d slapped her hard, her dark eyes couldn’t have looked more hurt or surprised. What a superb actress she was, letting him believe she was horrified by the accusation! In reality she was no doubt afraid she’d overplayed her hand and needed to rectify the situation so he wouldn’t get away from her.
Accidentally Yours Page 6
