Those eyes saw right through her question. He looked at her, a grin that looked downright dangerous tugging at his face. “Not yet. I’m still looking for the right girl.”
“Oh.” A lump the size of Niagara Falls lodged in her throat. She fought to swallow it down, aware that her face had turned hot and that he was now openly grinning at her obvious discomfort. Where was her wit when she needed it? Her mind went blank.
“And what about you, Kat Moore? Have you found the right man to settle down with back in New York? Do you have anyone who waits for you there, who makes you laugh, who calls you maya doragaya?”
His soft endearment sent warmth in a wave to her toes. But she blinked at him, afraid of what she saw written in his eyes. “I,” she swallowed hard, “thought we were talking about you.”
A shadow crossed his face, his expression wary. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I guess we were.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured, but something heavy settled on her chest. She hadn’t traveled to Russia to find anything but her past. But she’d seen, very clearly, her future traced in the gaze of the FSB cop, and something about it sent a tingle of fear up her spine.
She liked it way too much.
Chapter 7
The Moscow sky glittered like a cache of diamonds poured out on velvet, a perfect canopy of romance as Vadeem walked Kat to the Hotel Rossia. He carried, rather than dragged, her suitcase behind him. Kat had balled her fists at her sides, her jaw tight. Anger rimmed her eyes.
So much for romance. Not that any cop in his right mind would consider it after Kat’s dash-and-dodge at the train station.
The sneaky vixen had tried to ditch him. As they’d climbed down from the train, he conveniently wrestling with her suitcase, she’d started wheeling through the crowd like an American football player. It felt like a knife in the gut. Especially after he’d actually begun to trust her, well, at least he cultivated the desire to trust her. Especially when she dug up his past, then acted as if she cared. Her soft words, her tender expression—they unearthed his long buried feelings and made him feel… safe.
His throat grew raw just thinking about it. A guy with his past should have an ironclad heart. Instead he’d let Kat’s laughter and counterfeit honesty in her eyes creep under his guard. He’d even started flirting with her. Flirting! More than that, he’d spent about a hundred kilometers cataloguing ideas on how to ease her pain over sending her packing. A fancy dinner had been at the top of the list.
Her fifty-meter dash put a foot through those budding hopes. He’d caught up to her halfway through the train station, and their seedling friendship died an ugly death. Even with an accent, the words “bully” and “creep” stung. And when he’d reminded her that she could easily be wearing handcuffs, she gave him a look that might melt nuclear waste.
Oh yeah, she’d yanked up by the roots all tendrils of trust.
Life would improve about three-thousand percent when he shoved her on an airplane for America.
Despite the June air, Vadeem shivered. Beside him, Miss Catch-Me-If-You-Can didn’t even acknowledge his presence. Or the fact that he hauled her bag through Moscow like an underpaid porter.
Egoistaya Americanka.
He wasn’t going to give into her tears either, although he felt nearly pummeled by her sobs—Plan B on her list of crafty escape methods. But he wouldn’t even consider pulling her into his arms—to lift his weapon, or perhaps worse. And, gauging from her white-faced response to the Russian endearment he’d murmured on the train, even if she wasn’t an international con artist, and that was a big if, she’d obviously rather suffer alone than let a Russian cop soothe her pain.
If only for a moment under the soft canopy of the train lights, he thought he’d met the one person who could understand his demons. “You can’t possibly know what you are destroying,” she’d said. Oh yes, he knew. Better than she could imagine. He knew all about the longing to belong. To have a family. He understood how it felt to stare at the ceiling, conjuring up parents. Conjuring up love. Pain coiled around his chest and squeezed as he glanced at her, stomping along, her frustration audible in occasional gut-wrenching sighs. Oh, he knew exactly what he was making her give up… destroying, as she put it. If she was, truly, simply an American on a personal mission, he understood exactly why she’d tried to ditch him, twice. If he wasn’t tied up thwarting an international thug, he might even help her shake the truth out of the skinny monk.
Who was Timofea, indeed? And what exactly did Kat’s key unlock?
More than that, if she was innocent, what did Ivan Grazovich want with a beautiful Americanka from New York state?
Some questions would have to remain unanswered.
The last thing Vadeem needed right now was a distraction with caramel colored hair and eyes that dug a hole through a man’s walls. It pained him more than he wanted to admit that, when he’d called her “my dear one,” somewhere deep inside he wanted to mean it.
Down, boy. Vadeem drew in a calming breath. He kept his eyes ahead, off her profile, off the way she walked beside him, resolute, waves of anger rolling off her shoulders.
For the first time in two days, he wished his instincts were dead wrong.
The din of evening traffic had settled to a low murmur. The clang of trolley cars occasionally dented the air and mingled with the rumble of late night buses. The smell of baking bread wafted out of a nearby factory and found a hole in his stomach. It groaned, and he grimaced. She must be starved as well.
“Would you like to stop and get something to eat?”
She shook her head.
So she wouldn’t even look at him now. He clenched his jaw.
Red Square loomed ahead. The walls of the Kremlin, a fortress from the past, rose shadowed and jagged against the navy sky. On the other side of the square, Hotel Rossia sparkled like a casino. He’d called ahead and reserved a deluxe room. He was still debating whether he should post a guard.
“Do you think I can trust you to stay put until morning?”
She pursed her lips.
Yes, definitely a guard. Maybe two.
They stopped at the streetlight. Ahead stood Lenin’s museum, dark and foreboding with its grandiose czarist architecture. The brick building cast a bulky shadow across the street, through puddles of streetlights. Vadeem took Kat’s arm. She tensed, but he pulled her across the street into the envelope of shadow, towards the hotel.
He stepped onto the sidewalk, and released his grip.
He heard a crack as pain exploded in his head. Hitting the ground, knees first, he caught himself on his palms. He felt like the top of his head had come off. The world swirled in darkness and light.
Somewhere distant he heard screaming.
The next blow drove his chin into the cement. Darkness crashed. Swallowed. Took him deep, flooding him with memory. And nightmare.
The wind howled like a spirit, moaning, clawing at the house as snow piled against the door. Vadick felt no fear. The two-room shack radiated warmth—in love and in temperature. Fumes and heat crept out like watchmen from the coal furnace in the center of the room to every corner of the house, playing sentry against the frigid Siberian blizzard.
“Borscht tonight, Mama?” Vadick slid onto a bench, his woolen valenki boots now touching the floor. He’d grown three centimeters just this fall, and was proud to see the chip on the door that marked his progress edging closer to Max’s tally.