Vadeem’s blue eyes widened. “That can’t taste good.”
“Try it.” She handed over the fruit, and the bag of candy.
Vadeem had strong hands, fingers that were clean. He tore off a piece of banana and made his own treat. She laughed at the grimace he made as he swallowed it down.
“Oh, it’s been putrated!” He gulped down a healthy swig of apple juice. “How do you stay all trim and leggy with this kind of diet?”
His compliment left her speechless.
His smile dimmed and he held up a hand. “No, don’t answer that.”
Kat wrinkled her nose at him, hoping to reclaim the light moment, desperately needing it after the last twenty-four hours. “I supplement with Diet Coke. It cancels out the calories due to fruit.”
His deep, melodic laughter filled the train, turning heads. Kat let it absorb her and soothe her fraying nerves.
“I’ve met a true junk-food junkie,” he said, shaking his head.
“What? Do I look like a potato chip?”
He studied her with a smirk and tease in his eyes. “Not in the least.”
Her heart thumped hard against her chest as his gaze held hers, reached out, and drew her in.
“I would never mistake you for a Pringle.”
Oh, her heart fell down to her knees. She forced herself to breathe, and found a smile. “No, just an M&M, huh?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Hard and crusty on the outside, sweet on the inside?”
She fought another smile. The last thing she wanted to do was truly enjoy this man’s company. He stood between her and her past… and she had serious plans to ditch him the second they got off the train. She couldn’t afford to leave behind a piece of her heart—
What was she thinking? She‘d known the man for less than twenty-four hours.
It seemed like a decade.
Kat shifted on the hard bench seat, suddenly weary to her bones. The smell of diesel, churned up from the wheels and drifted through the open windows of the train. She sat facing the rear of the car, watching wooded scenery stretch out as they traveled east. The low sun sent streams through the windows, across the bench seats in shafts of golden-orange light.
Vadeem finished off his juice. “Done with that?” He gestured to her crumpled box. Kat nodded mutely and handed him the trash. He took both cartons in one hand and stood up, in search of the garbage can.
Kat took the chance and really looked at the man who had protected her from bullets, helped her dig for answers at the monastery, dragged her like a sack of potatoes to the train, and finally made her laugh. The wind ruffled his chocolate brown hair, which curled deliciously at the nape of his neck. He had good balance in the swaying train, his presence filled the compartment like someone who knew how to walk into a room, grasp the situation, and take immediate command. He tossed the juice cartons in the trash, turned, and started back. A five o’clock shadow had begun to accrue on his face, adding a hint of rogue to his already powerful aura. Dressed in a black leather jacket, a black shirt, and dark pants, he reminded her of a gangster, something out of an “Escape from New York“ movie. He sat down, his feet planted, his powerful hands on his knees, as if ready to pounce. She knew, from first hand experience, he could—and would—spring to action like a panther. The memory of his chest, rock hard and tense as he protected her from bullets, shuddered through her mind. He didn’t have the build of a man who spent off-hours at the gym, but of one who worked hard, his muscles lean and solid. She wondered what he did in his time off. Biked maybe, or even swam.
Captain Vadeem Spasonov emanated strength and confidence. He wore it in his stride, in his hands, in his eyes that didn’t back down despite her tears.
Then why had he nearly crumbled at the monastery? Something had turned him inside out, and left him ragged. Something roamed around his memory like a lion, waiting to devour.
Perhaps it already had.
She put out a hand and touched him on the knee. He startled. “Vadeem, what happened at the monastery? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”
His eyes widened, and the raw look that entered his face swiped the breath clean out of her chest. “I… I can’t talk about it.” He drew in a deep breath and looked away. She could have sworn she heard a door slam. “I won’t.”
Oh, how she suddenly longed to do what he’d done to her—throw him over her shoulder and muscle him into telling her what he was running from. Instead, she sat back, took a breath, and settled into her role as an adoption coordinator. “So, where did you grow up?” She kept her voice light, not wanting him to know she was digging. She added a smile to her question, sweet and concerned.
He instantly relaxed. For the briefest moment, she wondered if his walls-up response had been her imagination. But she saw the way he played with his fists when he spoke, cracking the knuckles one by painful one. “There isn’t much to tell. My parents died when I was eight. I grew up in an orphanage.”
“Ouch,” she said, “I’m sorry.” She squirmed under the thought of him without someone who loved him, someone like her grandfather. How had he survived? She knew what loss was all about, had buried her own parents. But at least Grandfather Neumann never let her feel the full brunt of that pain. “How did they die?”
He looked away, his face taut.
Kat backpedaled, found a new course. “How did you get to be a police officer?”
He drew a deep breath, as if exorcising some nightmare, then he leaned forward, hands clasped, elbows across his knees, and looked up at her. “You’re pretty curious.”
“I want to know the man who risked his life for me.”
A definite blush crept into his face, and it made her smile. She didn’t soften the compliment any with a giggle, just let it sink into the budding relationship.
He looked away and she thought she’d lost him when he suddenly replied, “Actually I’m not a cop. I’m a part of a counter-terrorist unit in the Russian secret service, part of the FSB.”
She wanted to stop him there, wrap her brain around that information and the questions that rose like an inferno, but Vadeem continued, as if she met spies every day. “I guess it started when I went into the military—right after high school. Most kids from the orphanage don’t have the chance to go to college. But that was okay. I liked the military life. It wasn’t so different from what I’d grown up with.”
She tried to imagine him spit poor, owning nothing but the clothes on his back, lining up for bowls of food with big eyes like the children she’d seen on the adoption tapes their field workers sent in. She ached for what he’d been forced to overcome. No wonder he was such a health-food fanatic.
“The military and I got along well enough that I was promoted and asked to join the Red Berets.”
“Red Berets?” Kat echoed.
“They are similar to your Army’s Green Berets. We were the elite, trained for special operations.”
Her eyes widened at the image of him dressed in fatigues, holding an AK-47, black grease smeared across his rugged face. No wonder he carried himself like a soldier. She had no doubt he’d been one of the best. “Did you see any action?”
He shook his head, his smile crooked, his eyes etched in secrets when they caught hers.
Okay, so maybe she didn’t need to know that. “So how did you get into the FSB?”
“This I can answer.” He leaned back, settling both arms across the seatback, visibly relaxed. The gesture made her smile. “I was in special ops for ten years. It was good work, but I just felt like it was time to… get out.” He ducked his head. “I thought I might want to find someone to, uh, maybe, settle down with. And you can’t do it when you travel all over the planet two hundred and eighty days of the year.”
Settle down. Was he… her heart wobbled on the edge of a surprisingly painful fall. “And, did you?” she squeaked, horrified at her tone.