by Nan Comargue
It was a stranger. No, not quite a stranger. A man with red hair. The one from the LayLaw office that morning.
“I’m Tim,” the man said. “Remember me?” He was turning his baggy hat in his hands.
“Yes, I remember,” Alexa said stiffly.
“The boss couldn’t make it,” Tim said, his eyes shifting away from her to a spot behind her shoulder. “He said he left a message on your phone but you didn’t call back.”
“The battery was dead,” Alexa said, gesturing futilely behind her. “I’m charging it.”
A message—and a messenger. Nik was certainly doing his best to avoid another face-to-face meeting.
“Perhaps I should have booked a conference call,” Alexa said wryly.
“The boss is really busy all the time,” Tim said in a rush. “I’m sure he really wanted to see you—”
“I’m glad one of us is sure of that.” She forced a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Tim. I’m sure Nik and I will meet up next time I’m in town.”
She didn’t mention that she was determined to make sure the next time was going to be never.
Alexa had taken the risk and made her final desperate play, trying to win over his body as a way to his heart, but it hadn’t worked. He didn’t love her. For him it was just lust after all. Or, if he had once thought he could care for her, a bit of time apart had shown him that he was wrong.
Well, it was better that she knew now…for some reason. Wasn’t that what brokenhearted people told themselves? That it was better to limit the time and resulting pain? That it was better to have loved and blah, blah, blah?
The long-dead poets were no doubt right. It was better that he break her heart today than a year or a month or a week from now. But, oh, it hurt so badly!
Chapter Seven
One year later
Another new year.
The world should have felt new and bright, instead of old and tired. Even the California sunshine didn’t lighten it.
Alexa was so exhausted that the plane trip, packed in between hundreds of other bodies—all sniffling or coughing or screaming—was a chance to relax and catch some sleep. Earbuds drowned out the worst of the babies, little children and the snores from the other passengers.
When she landed, she knew that a text message from David would be waiting. Something loving and subtly cheering, because he seemed to know by instinct when she was feeling down, which had been often over the Christmas holidays, wrapped in the warmth of his family, thinking only of her own chilly version of a home life.
After she’d received Val’s annual invitation for the Russian Orthodox holiday, she’d wanted to turn it down. In fact, she had. But David had convinced her to go. No matter how many times she told him that her family was nothing like his, he seemed to be incapable of believing her.
Dear David.
He’d so wanted to come with her to California, but good manners had stopped him from inviting himself. It would have made sense to have brought him. If nothing else, she should have reciprocated for his generous invitation to travel to Connecticut for Christmas.
Plus, his presence would have been a buffer between—
No, she wouldn’t think of him—not while the plane was landing, not even on the cab ride over to the house. She was determined not to spend another moment thinking about Nik until she was actually forced to face him in person.
‘Nikolai will be here, of course. Will that be a problem?’ Val, being tactful.
‘No, not at all,’ Alexa had answered. They had both known it to be a lie but a necessary one.
Unless she wanted to cut Val out of her life, she had to see Nik sometime. She just needed time. Nine months. A year. Maybe there wasn’t enough time in the world to get over him, but somehow she would have to try. David was a buffer, but he wasn’t a replacement. His presence in her life didn’t heal the old wounds but merely tied off the dead limbs, allowing her to cut the blood supply to them then limp on.
A year later and she was still the walking wounded, dragging an ugly, scarred heart behind her.
David didn’t see the wound that had almost killed her but it was there still, pulsing away beneath the clumsy bandages.
Alexa irritably registered the line of cars parked along the airport’s main driveway. It was always the same—people trying to drop off passengers with innumerable suitcases or pick up ones who required a dozen hugs before they could get into the car. They blocked up the No Standing zone so that cabs couldn’t get through and when one did, a group was already waiting to fight over it.
The afternoon was oppressively humid, with clouds threatening darkly on the horizon, adding to everyone’s irritation.
Alexa slipped on a pair of oversized sunglasses and resigned herself to a long hot wait.
“Hey.”
She stiffened at the voice, clutching the handle of her small suitcase. No, it couldn’t be… Val wouldn’t do that to her!
But Val had sent her son, and it was him Alexa turned to face.
“Uh, hi,” she said.
Nik maneuvered the suitcase away from her and took her limp and sweaty hand in his as he led the way to a vehicle parked squarely in the prohibited zone. It wasn’t the same Land Rover but a darkly tinted and very elegant sedan, too shiny to be anything but new.
He opened the door for her. She was glad to slide into the car and away from him, although he was back a moment later, occupying the driver’s seat beside her.
At this proximity, she was too overwhelmingly aware of him—of his height and the power of his body as it folded to fit behind the wheel, of his clean scent and aura of restless energy, of his strong hand on the manual shift, of his denim-covered thigh so close to hers. Small sexy things that distracted her from the all too fresh memories that this was the man who had given her the scars she would always bear on her heart.
The house was twenty minutes away. The distance stretched like a prison sentence.
“Mom told me you were seeing someone.”
God, why did that have to be his opening attempt at small talk? “Yes. David. He’s in IT.”
Nik kept his eyes facing forward. Only the curious lilt to his voice betrayed his interest—and that he’d asked the question in the first place.
“You didn’t bring him with you?”
“Of course,” Alexa said brightly. “He’s in my suitcase.”
He rightfully ignored that. “Mom led me to believe it was serious. That’s why I’m surprised you didn’t bring him along.”
“Val included him on the invitation,” Alexa admitted, “but I thought it would be awkward.” The big black sunglasses hid the fact that she was surreptitiously watching him but she didn’t need to look at him to sense when he turned toward her.
“Because of me?”
There was no way she was going to answer that. He’d made it very clear that he didn’t want to talk to her. Why this sudden interest in her personal life? Why was he at the airport anyway?
“Because of me?” Nik repeated, turning the question into an interrogation.
Alexa played with the straps of her handbag. “How was I supposed to explain to my boyfriend that my little brother is also my former lover?”
“I’m not your brother, Lexy.”
She was Lexy again. In spite of everything that she’d tried hard to push past over the last year, the nickname still touched her.
“I know that,” she said. She’d even done some investigatory work and looked up Val’s immigration papers to make sure that it was noted somewhere that she had been pregnant when she’d arrived in the States. It was. Then there was Nik’s birth certificate and blood type, both which made it clear that he was not her father’s child.
He was right. She hadn’t trusted him—or Val. Until she’d had the legal proof in front of her, she’d still suffered from that lingering doubt that maybe she was committing the worst of all sins by sleeping with her half-brother. No, that wasn’t even her worst sin. Her worst sin was being s
o overcome by lust for him that she’d had sex with him, even with that doubt.
No, wrong again. Her worst sin was in thinking her love for him could be enough to bridge the distance between them.
“I’ve never told anyone you were my sister,” he went on. “I’ve always said stepsister. Always.”
Alexa leaned her head back against the seat and closed her burning eyes. What was he trying to convince her of—and why? It almost sounded like he cared what she thought, but he’d made it clear in New York that he didn’t. Since then, she hadn’t heard a word from him.
“A lot of people would look at the fact that we grew up together as brother and sister and think the entire situation is just too weird.”
“Including David?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I’m including David in that ‘lot of people’. Maybe I don’t want to take the chance of telling him and finding out.”
“Maybe you just don’t trust him,” said Nik. He flipped on the windshield wipers as rain started to spit down on the glass. “Is there anyone you do trust?”
She remembered his arms around her after he’d delivered the news of their true relationship. She remembered his patience and his earnestness, even his insistence that she acknowledge who he was while they’d been having sex that first time.
Alexa trusted him. She knew it now. Too late.
Like Nik, she had her share of stubbornness. She was slow to trust and skeptical to believe. She knew now that he was stubborn too but even so, her lack of faith shouldn’t have mattered so much to him. Not unless…
“Let’s just get through the week,” she suggested. “We don’t need to dig through the past and make everything unpleasant. It’s the holidays. Happy Christmas, Nik.”
He tightened his lips in profile but he kept his eyes on the road.
“Happy Christmas, Lexy.”
* * * *
Val had decorated the house with festive fervor, stringing lights up all around the outside and scattering the interior with ornaments and icons.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Nik said, as he carried Alexa’s suitcase into the house, “this is now the worldwide headquarters for Orthodox Christmas celebrations. Schastlivogo Rozhdestva.”
His mother emerged from the kitchen to embrace Alexa and repeat the holiday greeting.
Val was wearing an apron covered in flour and although she had a glass of sherry in the other hand, she looked unusually domestic.
She sipped and stared at the younger pair. “It’s so good to have you both here this year.”
“We visit every year,” Alexa pointed out with a smile. Seeing Val so busy and happy, so different from her wistful phone calls, Alexa was determined not to ruin the holiday for her stepmother.
“Not every year,” Nik said softly.
“Don’t,” Alexa replied, equally quietly.
Val glanced from one to the other before draining her drink. “Come into the kitchen and put your thumbs into the cookies.”
“Thumbprint cookies? The kind with the almonds on top?” Nik perked up. “You haven’t made those in years.”
Val looked back over her shoulder. “Well, I’m making them now, along with shortbread and jam cutouts and—”
“Stop, stop,” Nik groaned. “Just let me at them!”
The granite and steel kitchen resembled a bakery with tray upon tray of treats in various stages of construction. The shortbread cookies, which were already baked, drew Nik’s attention and he stationed himself at the counter before them, cramming cookie after cookie into his mouth.
Val muttered but did not admonish him. She knew her son well enough.
“Press your finger into these,” she directed Alexa, indicating another laden tray. “You have such slender fingers—perfect for this job.”
Alexa did as she was told, anointing countless dozens of cookies before filling the tiny indents she left with a spoonful of jam or a single almond.
After an hour, she was sweatier than ever but content. The kitchen smelled of melting berries and toasted nuts. Even Val’s tuneless humming was somehow fitting.
Only Nik stood apart from the bustle, filling his face with cookies and emptying the pans almost as soon as they emerged from the oven.
“What are you contributing?” Alexa finally demanded, brushing away a dangling dark tress from her face with the back of her wrist. “Except the eating, I mean.”
Nik spoke around a half-chewed cookie. “You need someone to do the eating,” he told her. “Mom doesn’t like sweets, and you’ll eat a plate full then spend the rest of the night moaning about being too stuffed to do anything but lie on the couch. I’m saving you from yourself.”
Alexa’s cheeks, already hot from baking, grew fiery. “I don’t need saving,” she said tartly. “And if I want to eat until I overstuff myself, then I’ll do that.”
“What about our plans?”
Alexa looked from him to his mother and narrowed her eyes as Val quickly averted her head. “What plans?”
Nik put down the cookie he’d just picked up.
“Our date tonight. Mom said—” He stopped abruptly and laughed on a jagged note. “She made that up, didn’t she?”
Alexa dusted off her floury hands and reached for the glass Val had poured for her over an hour ago. She swallowed it without savoring the fine, aged sherry.
“Val, what’s going on? Did you tell Nik that the two of us were supposed to be going out tonight?”
Her stepmother shrugged one thin shoulder. “I thought it would be a nice idea. If you don’t want to go, don’t.”
Nik frowned. “What was the big idea of telling me that Lexy wanted to go out with me in the first place?”
“That isn’t exactly a lie,” Val said with a shrewd glance at Alexa. “Besides, I also told you that she has a boring new boyfriend. You can make of all of that what you will.”
He turned to Alexa, a challenge in his eyes. “What do you say?”
The last way she wanted to spend her first evening in California was alone with Nik, but they didn’t have to be alone, did they? They could go to a loud bar where they wouldn’t have to talk or to a movie where the actors would be doing the talking for them.
Except that last time they’d tried to go out, they’d ended up fucking in the car. Her idea, if she recalled correctly.
She turned the delicate crystal glass in her fingers. “I don’t know…”
“Chicken.”
It was so childish of him, so utterly ineffective…
“I’ll go,” Alexa heard herself saying.
God, she was as bad as he was.
* * * *
“So don’t go,” Jeanne said, very practically, over the phone.
“Then he’ll think I’m a coward.” Alexa clamped her cell between her shoulder and ear as she held up a blouse in front of the mirror and just as quickly discarded it. Too dressy.
“You’re a coward,” her friend told her.
“Not helpful, Jeanne.” She tried a long-sleeved T-shirt. Too casual.
“Sorry.” Jeanne chomped down noisily on what sounded like an apple. “So go and be as distant as you can. Freeze him out, just like he did to you.”
“Easier said,” Alexa spoke lightly to cover the swelling ache that the thought of time alone with Nik was creating in her chest. “The problem is that I get why he froze me out. At least, I get it now. When I accused him of just wanting to sleep with me, he saw it as a betrayal and he was angry with me for a long time afterward. Val sort of helped to make it make sense.”
“It still doesn’t make sense to me,” Jeanne said loyally. “If he really has been crazy about you his whole life, then why would he throw it all away over a petty argument?”
“It was more than that,” said Alexa, as she cast another top on the growing reject pile. “It was being out in public for the first time as something other than brother and sister. It was focusing on sex and never really talking. It was working out our feelings for each other private
ly, on our own. It was even seeing stupid Thomas Maitland.”
Jeanne stifled a laugh on the other end of the phone. “What does Tom Maitland have to do with anything?”
“Very little,” said Alexa. “It’s just… Well, we were at the beginning of things and we hadn’t talked it over yet—who we were to each other, how we would deal with going public. We just did it. And it ended badly. Very badly.”
“He overreacted.”
“Yes,” Alexa agreed, “but so did I. We hadn’t discussed our relationship and I was already making all these assumptions. I mean, we weren’t ever exclusive. At least, we never discussed it. Then I tried to bluff it out by making it all about the sex. I even tried to convince him that it was about the sex, so he was offended and hurt.”
Jeanne sighed loudly in her ear. “You had a right to make assumptions. He shouldn’t have made a move on you if he meant to take it so lightly. Let’s face it, you and him were never going to be uncomplicated.”
Alexa held up a thin black sweater shot through with silver thread. “We certainly haven’t been so far.” The sweater was a definite contestant, festive and fashionable without trying too hard. “Look, we both screwed up and we missed our chance—if we ever truly had one. Maybe it was doomed from the start.”
“Be careful, Lex. That stepbrother of yours scares me.”
Alexa snorted. “Nik? He’s not the least bit scary.”
“He is,” her friend insisted. “He’s all laid back and casual on the surface but he’s intense underneath. He plays the long game.”
Alexa, having decided on the black sweater, started folding up the discarded tops. “I don’t care what game he’s playing,” she said. “I won’t be here long enough to finish it.”
In a few days’ time, she and her scarred heart would be back in Chicago for another year. Seeing Nik was torture, but it would be over soon enough. If tonight reopened old wounds, well, she’d just have to be brave and start the healing process all over again.
* * * *
In the text message, David said he loved her, he missed her, he wanted to be with her.