by Megan Hart
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Afternoon delight, nothing better. Niko stretched and yawned, drowsy beneath the blankets. Alicia sighed from beside him and nudged her head against his shoulder. Her hand, flat on his belly, toyed with the curly hairs below his belly button until, chuckling, he had to grab it to make her stop. “Ooh, you’re ticklish,” she said. “I’ll have to remember that.” He turned his face to kiss the top of her head. “Don’t you dare.” “It could be fun,” she told him. “Kinky, even.” Niko laughed but kept her hands from teasing him again. Alicia laughed, too, and kissed his bare shoulder before rolling onto her back. She kicked at the covers, pushing them down. When he protested, she knuckled his side gently and rolled over him to get out of bed, then walked naked to the chair in the bedroom corner so she could grab her robe. “Don’t.” He pushed up on his elbow. “I like to see you walking around naked.” “I’m sure Theresa wouldn’t appreciate it.” Niko fell back onto the pillows. “I tho
CHAPTER NINETEEN Ilya had brought in the mail, a handful of bills addressed to him, and the rest mostly junk. He’d opened the slim letter and shaken out the check made out to his mother in a nearly illegible hand without paying much attention to it until he realized it had not been meant for him. He looked it over. Fifty bucks, no change. The weird thing was it had come from Barry Malone. “This is yours,” he told her and set the check and envelope in front of her. It was nearly three in the afternoon, but Galina was eating a buttered English muffin and drinking coffee. She snorted softly as she slid the check toward her. She shrugged, maybe at the amount, and tucked it in her pocket. “Thank you for opening my mail. Apparently I’m so old and decrepit I can’t be trusted to do it myself.” “It was by mistake.” He wasn’t going to let her get to him. “Why’s Barry sending you money?” “We were married,” Galina said, like that made sense. Ilya snorted much the way she had moments before. “Sure,
CHAPTER TWENTY Ilya and Niko had gone together to pick up the pizza while Alicia and Theresa dug through the cabinets in the den to pull out a selection of old board games. If Alicia or Niko was upset that Theresa had invited Ilya to join them, neither showed it. Still, she thought she’d better make sure. Theresa swiped dust off the lid of an ancient version of Clue. “I should’ve asked first if you’d be cool with me asking Ilya to come.” “No problem.” Alicia shrugged and held up Monopoly. “We used to play this for days.” “I’m not sure why I did,” Theresa admitted as she set a battered game of Stratego on the table. “He called me to follow up on the offer, you both had just asked me to hang out . . . I don’t know. I guess it felt like I should. Kind of like . . .” “Old times?” Alicia nodded. “Yeah. I get it. Don’t worry. Really. Ilya’s the one who has to deal with me and Niko being together. It’s not like I’m holding on to any lingering romantic feelings for him.” “That’s good.” She’d s
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Meet me at the diner at one today. The message had pinged his phone about an hour earlier, but Ilya hadn’t heard it. Now he had only twenty minutes or so to take a shower and get over there, and even if he rushed, he was going to be a few minutes late. He shot Theresa a message in return letting her know he was on the way, but he stalled out in his bedroom, not sure what he ought to wear. It wasn’t a date, he reminded himself. They weren’t going to do that. Even if he was interested in dating anyone on a regular basis, which he wasn’t and hadn’t been for a long time, it couldn’t be Theresa. “You look nice,” Galina said when he stopped in the living room on the way out to tell her he was leaving. “You always did clean up well, Ilyushka.” She sounded drunk, although there was no evidence of her drinking. The pet name was a sign, though, as was the way she lolled on the couch watching daytime television. Ilya ran a hand over his hair, damp from the shower, and looked do
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Then “There’s been an accident.” That was what Galina had told them. Not much more of an explanation than that. Jenni had been missing for a day and a half before they found her body in the water at the quarry. In their swimming spot. Now it had been nearly a week and a half since then, and finally they were allowed to bury her. Theresa had overheard her stepmother talking to her dad. Jenni hadn’t drowned. She’d fallen off the ledge where they’d so often laid out their towels. She’d hit her head on the way down. Broken her neck. She’d been dead before hitting the water. Drunk. On pills. The murmured conversation between Galina and Theresa’s father, huddled together in the living room, shot out small, suggestive nuggets that left Theresa’s head buzzing with unanswered questions. “Listening at doors, you never hear good things.” Babulya shook a finger at her, though she didn’t look angry. Only sad. “Come away from there.” In the kitchen, Babulya pulled out baking sheet
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Theresa had been thinking about Ilya’s suggestion that she work at the diner, re-creating and preparing Babulya’s signature recipes to give the restaurant its own unique menu. It made no sense. She could cook, but not on that scale, and it was something she did for love. Not as a career. More important, aligning herself with him, tying herself to him, even in the least personal of ways—that could not be something she was considering at all. Could it? Staring at the ceiling of the room in a bed that did not belong to her, in a house she did not own, and in which she was only a guest by the grace of a woman she’d known long ago, Theresa folded her hands on her chest and took a long, deep breath. Agreeing to this would be insane, but she hadn’t stopped turning over the idea in her head since Ilya had offered it. With the money from her commission, she could pay off a good portion of the credit-card debt, making the rest manageable. She could continue her freelance wor
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Then There was shouting going on, muffled behind his mother’s bedroom door. Galina and Barry had been going at it, on and off, every day since the funeral. Ilya didn’t care what was going on with them; he didn’t care if they were breaking down or angry or grieving or in the depths of despair or anything else. His whole world went dark, and nothing else mattered. Still, the constant rise and fall of their angry voices drifting through the wall between their two bedrooms made it hard to sleep, and that was all he wanted. To sink into oblivion. He would get drunk again, if the thought of taking even a single sip of booze didn’t make his throat convulse and sour spittle fill his mouth. He wouldn’t be able to drink a sip without puking at the reminder of how hungover he’d been. Not enough to get a buzz, much less hammered the way he wanted. That left sleep, and he couldn’t find it. He put the pillow over his head, crushing it against his ears, but that didn’t help. Tossi
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Theresa’s father didn’t look good. Pasty. Circles under his eyes. He’d lost weight. Still, his gaze was clear, and he met hers unflinchingly as she took the seat across from him at the coffee-shop table. She hadn’t hugged him when she came in. “It’s good to see you, Ter.” Her father was the only one who’d ever called her that, and she’d never liked it much. Theresa flashed back to how different it had felt when Babulya had called her Titi, an endearment, a nickname born of affection and not simply a truncating of her name for the sake of convenience. She’d never told her dad not to call her that, though, so it was her own fault that he still did. “Thanks for coming,” she said. Her dad looked faintly surprised. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” The last time she’d seen him had been at Babulya’s funeral, when it would’ve been out of line for her to cause a scene. Before that, though, the last time had been brutal. Her father had wept in a way she hadn’t seen him do since J
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Ilya hadn’t been this nervous about meeting a woman in a long time, and the fact that it was Theresa Malone meant his anxiety made no sense. Still, he paced. If he’d been a smoker, he’d have gone through a pack already. She’d said she wanted to go in on the diner with him, but that she had to work out some things first. He knew that meant something with money. She’d been up front about not being able to cosign a mortgage with him, that she’d be a liability, and although it had been obvious there was way more to the story than she was tel
ling him, he wasn’t worried about that. Or about getting a mortgage. With the money he had from selling the quarry, even after paying off his portion of the debts, he had plenty to put down on the diner, and despite years of skating on the edge of losing everything, he and Alicia had always paid their bills on time. He’d get a loan, no problem. He could do it without any help from Theresa, if he had to. He didn’t want to, and he could
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Ilya wasn’t late to the meeting with the lawyer, although waking up this morning had been hell. He’d tried to get drunk last night and hadn’t been able to stomach more than a single glass of whiskey. He’d tried to get laid, too—something that should’ve been even easier than getting hammered. When it came right down to it, though, Amber’s blatant invitation had left him unsettled instead of turned on. “Let’s go back to your place,” she’d offered first, and Ilya had told her they could not. His mother was there, and his brother. It would’ve been weird, he said. By the way she wrinkled her nose, he could tell that Amber agreed. She made another offer. “My place?” At that point, after a few hours of his hand on the small of her back, her shoulder, his fingers trailing down her bare arm to settle on her wrist, a casual tug of that spiraling lock of hair tumbling so artfully over her breast . . . after all that, he was sure that he could take her into the backseat of his
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Niko had taken his lunch to eat at the café table in what had once passed for the backyard garden but had now become a patch of scrubby grass littered with weeds. The garden shed had never been in good repair, but over time the roof had partially collapsed, and the door hung on one hinge. If it were his decision, the whole thing would come down, but he wasn’t up to the task right now. He’d have to get Ilya out here with a couple of sledgehammers. It would be fun, the brothers knocking down the rotten wood. For now, though, he was content to sit in the warming spring sunshine and enjoy a thick sandwich of sweet Lebanon bologna on white bread slathered with mayo. The combination was as disgusting and delicious as he’d fondly remembered from childhood. He’d traveled around the world and eaten meals ranging from basic to gourmet, but nothing had ever matched the satisfaction of the local delicacy. He hadn’t been looking for his mother, but she was there. Incredibly, be
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE She owned a diner. Theresa grinned to herself as she pulled into the parking lot, then walked around the back and up to the kitchen doors, the ones not for public use. She could use them because she owned the diner. Owned. The diner. Well, she didn’t actually own the diner. She’d simply agreed to help run this diner, with the potential to eventually own part of it, so long as she kept up her part of the payments they’d agreed on. She and Ilya Stern: partners. This thought sobered her a little, her smile fading. It had all happened so fast her head was still spinning a little. This was crazy. Beyond insane. Yet she’d couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so excited to be part of something. Maybe she never had. The door creaked open before she could even knock, revealing Ilya. His grin was as broad as her own. “Hey.” He stepped aside to let her in, then danced beside her as she stepped all the way into the kitchen. Such a kid, she thought, but fondly, letting his
CHAPTER THIRTY Alicia had pulled up a website that offered home-away rentals in exotic locations. The trip she’d taken on her own had been spent in hotels, hostels, and bed-and-breakfasts. She’d spent no more than a few days in each place, eager to the point of excessiveness to experience as much as she possibly could. But now she wanted to spend some real time in one place, getting to know it. “I like this one.” She pointed at the picture of a stone cottage surrounded by a garden of wildflowers. “Scotland. Near Loch Ness. Have you been there?” Nikolai leaned forward to look. “Nope.” “One of the few places you haven’t been,” she said. “It would be fun to explore someplace brand-new with you.” “I won’t eat haggis,” he warned. Alicia made a face. “Yuck. Me neither. But . . . Scotland? Is that a yes? This says it’s close enough to town to ride bikes. There’s a pub there.” “I think that’s a requirement, isn’t it?” Nikolai shifted on the couch to let his arm run along the back of it so his
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Theresa had always been good with lists. Checking items off a list had made her feel accomplished, in control, and confident. She wasn’t sure a list was going to help with this—the crawl space in Alicia’s house. It was first on the list of things to do in order to get the place in shape to be put on the market. “This is that last thing I want to do right before I leave to go to the other side of the world, but it’s not going to happen by itself. And I didn’t want to wait until I sold the house to have to deal with all of this,” Alicia said. “There’s so much of it. The furniture and stuff like that I can handle. Some of it’s going to go with me, and I’ll sell the rest. But all of this . . .” Theresa laughed as she peeked into the long, dusty corridor festooned with spiderwebs. Boxes, some labeled but most not, lined the space, along with odd things like an old laundry hamper, some ancient baby toys, and a high chair. Other things she couldn’t identify in the shadows.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Then Jenni hadn’t said more than a word or two to him in two weeks. Ilya tried to act like he didn’t give two shits about what she did or whom she did it with, but the truth was, he’d been going crazy. She knew it, he thought, watching her from the back booth in the diner while Jenni moved from table to table, refreshing coffee and taking orders. Maybe she didn’t know he was there. More likely, she was ignoring him on purpose. It would be easier if they’d had a fight. Something he could blame this on, the slow but inexorable distance growing between them. It wasn’t even a cold shoulder—that he could handle. He could think she was a bitch and blame her for pushing him away, but the truth was that Jenni hadn’t been cold to him. Or mean. She’d simply been . . . gone. Looking at her now, he studied the faint dark circles under her eyes. Her cheeks seemed hollower. Her blonde hair was tied in a high ponytail but looked messy, all the same. She looked tired, even when she
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Theresa had been sorting through one of the crawl-space boxes when she found the pictures. The Harrisons had been big fans of their camera. She remembered every hallway in their house being lined with framed family portraits as well as candid snapshots. She’d been lucky if her dad remembered to send money in on picture day so that she could come home with a single eight-by-ten. And the wallet-size photos all the kids passed around like trading cards? Forget it. The photos in her hand now had been tucked inside the original paper envelope, along with the negatives. Alicia had gone through them to pick out the ones she wanted to keep—only one, a snapshot of the five of them in the Sterns’ backyard, sitting around the old picnic table with platters of hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato salad in front of them. The ones of her sister and Ilya she’d looked at without comment and tucked back into the envelope, then put them into the pile of stuff she planned to toss. The id
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Ilya had been looking up restaurant equipment on his laptop. He’d been surprised to find that the search for interesting items he could use to decorate the diner was not much different from the time he’d spent looking up quirky items to sink in the quarry. It required vision, he thought as he scrolled through several pages of vintage diner booths and neon signs that could be had for surprisingly reasonable prices. At the soft knock on his door frame, he slid the laptop to the side and sat up. “Hey. What’s up?” It did not feel right for his heart to beat faster for a few seconds at the sight of Theresa’s smile, but that didn’t mean it felt . . . wrong. The waft of her fresh perfume sent a now-familiar tingle through him as she sat next to him on the bed. He stopped himself from leaning closer to sniff her. A flashing memory of her heat surrounding him sent a shiver through him. That had happened, he reminded himself sharply. But he didn’t have to be stupid about it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE With her trip to Scotland only a few days away, Alicia had gone a little into overdrive on cleaning out the crawl space. She didn’t have a job to keep her occupied, and the more she got r
id of or cleaned up, the better she felt about her decision to unload this house and start moving forward with her life . . . and Nikolai. “I haven’t even started looking for someplace new,” she said as she and Theresa started tackling a new set of boxes. “Part of me thinks that if he doesn’t take that job with the Mutters, we could end up traveling around the world or back on a kibbutz or something like that.” Theresa pulled a box closer to her, flipping open the lid. “Would you like that?” “I don’t know. I’ve only gone on one trip.” Alicia shook her head with a laugh. “It seems like fun, doesn’t it? Roaming the world, doing things . . . I don’t know what I’d do for money, though. Teach English maybe? Dig wells? Cook dinner on a kibbutz? Hell, I have no idea. I’m just going to enjo
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX I believe you can do this. Theresa’s voice, quietly confident, echoed in Ilya’s head every time he used his keys to open the diner doors. He had monthly payments to the bank, utilities set up in his name, new equipment ordered to replace the few things that had been bad, and a small construction crew taking care of the interior renovations. He was doing this. Alicia had been the one to handle the day-to-day crap at Go Deep. Ilya should’ve appreciated that way more than he had at the time. Now, faced with a shadowed and quiet diner left empty but smelling of sawdust and varnish, his head was bursting with plans and ideas he was discovering needed more than enthusiasm to implement. He needed Theresa. He hadn’t seen her for the past few days. The last time, they’d argued lightly, over takeout food eaten at the prep counter, about whether they should even bother to try for a liquor license. Since the diner’s original owners hadn’t had one, Ilya had said they didn’t need
