6

ICRUNCHED ONE OF THOSE pills between my teeth, hoping for relief, and then dug through my duffle bag for my phone. That is, until I remembered it was in my coat pocket, which currently lay in a frigid Russian alley. It was surprising they hadn’t found it considering my bag must have been a couple of blocks away, and my coat should be near their back door.

Aknock sounded, and a redhead no older than seventeen, wearing a plain white dress, entered the room. She kept her eyes lowered as she set a bowl of soup and a slice of bread on a side table near the couch. I thanked her and asked if she knew what time it was, but from the way she didn’t even acknowledge I spoke before she turned and walked out of the room, I guessed she must not speak English. Or at all.

The soup smelled so good it made my mouth water, but it looked like solyanka, which meant it contained meat. I’d been a vegan since I watched a meatpacking documentary in junior high. Borya hated it, but he always made something special for me. Regardless, I never could eat much when I was stressed. And now I was alone with my thoughts, I wondered if the attack was randomor if it had something to do with Ivan’s fear of my coming here.

Could my papa really be in trouble? He might be an adulterer and do business with some unsavory people, but he didn’t gamble or drink in excess. Heck, he didn’t even jaywalk. He couldn’t be any more law-abiding if he tried. I brushed the thought off. I was a lone woman walking through a rough part of Moscow. What did I expect, a parade ride to the Ritz?

With that worry out of mind, I realized I really needed to use the restroom.

Avoiding looking at the dried blood on my skin, I swapped my ruined blouse for a yellow Beach Boys tee. Down the dimly lit hall, the clank of pots and pans and an occasional Russian curse came from a bright room to the right. It was a large industrial kitchen, and I wondered how long I’d been unconscious, because it was closing for the day.

After finding the bathroom and doing my business, I headed to the sink, where I scrubbed my hands and stomach with the bar of soap, growing queasy as I watched red run down the drain. I shuddered at the thought my attacker might carry some disease. Other than psychopathy anyway.

In the mirror, I stared into my ice-blue eyes. I always thought they lacked spark, their shine, even though I’d been told they were striking by a model agent who approached me on the street and slipped me his business card. I was intrigued. Models got to travel, to see the world beyond a television screen, but Papa shut down any idea of that real fast.

I started to head back to my temporary room for the night, but a voice—his voice—wrapped around my body and drew me to a stop. I should mind my own business, as Ms. Marta would say

when I interrupted our lessons by peeking out the window to see who’d come up the drive. But temptation tightened its grip, pulling me in the opposite direction.

As the hallway’s shadows grew darker, one phrase came to mind: Curiosity killed the cat. I brushed off a shiver.

A bartender stood behind an old wooden bar washing glasses. White dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, suspenders, a skull and crossbones tattoo on his forearm. He glanced my way and stopped to stare while wiping his hands on a towel.

I swallowed and swept my gaze away fromhim, over the round tables and booths in the timeworn and mostly empty restaurant. I found Ronan easily because the three men sitting across from him roared with laughter at something he said. He rested a lazy armon the back of the booth, a cigar in his mouth. Russian Gypsy music played quietly over the dim room as I watched him blow out a white cloud of smoke, a smile touching his lips.

He glanced over, dark eyes settling on mine.

Madame Richie’s voice pulled me back to that overly warm trailer parked at the carnival, a gaggle of preteen cheerleaders frowning at the décor behind me. Eyes closed, she rested her hands on her purple crystal ball, a cigarette dangling precariously from her lips. She peeked one eye open to look at me, then closed it again in concentration. As her crystal ball filled with smoke and who knows what else, a frown knitted her brows. I let out a gasp when she grabbed my palm, pulling me halfway across the table to look at it. And then she saw something that made her laugh. And laugh.

She sat back, rested an elbow on the table, and took a long draw on her cigarette. “So vat do you vant to know?”

The fact I put any weight into what she told me should be alarming, but I’d never been able to let her words go. I wanted more than tepid caresses and French conjugations. I wanted more than Sperry loafers and soft hands. What I wanted was someone like this man, with Russian on his tongue and tattoos on his fingers.

He bit his cigar between his teeth and winked at me.

That wink settled into a tight ball of heat in my stomach as I headed back to his office and changed into a pair of shorts. The bowl of soup sat untouched on the side table while I curled up on the couch and pulled the new mysterious blanket over me. It wasn’t how I thought I would spend my first night in Moscow, and I shivered at the idea of how badly it could have gone . . .

If not for a nautical star necklace. Arestaurant.

And a man wearing black with secrets in his eyes.

 

 

 

The scent of cigar smoke woke me. It invaded my senses, mixing with the deep, masculine scent embedded in the walls forever.

I sat up on the couch and met Ronan’s gaze from behind his desk, self-consciously running my fingers through my long hair. I straightened it religiously, but every time I slept, those unruly curls

came back with a vengeance. They were too wild, too rebellious to fit the cultured mold I forced myself into.

My skin tightened at the awareness of how short my high-waisted shorts were. I didn’t think I’d be sleeping in a man’s office when I packed my bag yesterday.

He rocked back in his leather chair, tossing a stress ball between his hands. Toss.

Squeeze.

Asmall smile. “You’re a heavy sleeper.”

Nobody had to tell him it was inappropriate to watch someone sleep. He knew. That much was evident by the roguish flicker in his eyes.

Maybe not so much a gentleman at heart?

The deep sleep I fell into after the grumpy redhead woke me a little after four a.m. had dulled my short memory of him. His presence was larger than life; a shadow where a shadow shouldn’t be. He was still black from head to toe, no tie, but today his hair was slightly messy, as if he’d run those inked fingers through it, and judging by the twirl of smoke rising from an ashtray on his desk, he was smoking a cigar in what had to be the early morning.

I never had a problem with talking, with pushing words past my lips, but with this man’s full attention on me, I found anything I wanted to say caught in my throat. So, with a blush I deeply resented, I turned my head and said nothing at all.

He chuckled softly, reached for a phone on his desk with a cord, and dialed a number.

I groaned in my mind. He thought I was amusing. Meanwhile, the mere touch of his gaze on my skin warmed me like the heat of the sun. And his voice, lightly accented and holding an experienced edge . . . I could listen to it all day and never tire of it.

I got to my bare feet and folded his wrinkled jacket and the blanket neatly, which evoked a quirk of his lips mid-Russian sentence to whoever was on the other end of the line. His stare slipped over my skin as I padded across the room to view the photos hanging on the wall. One showed a few smirking and smoking men, but the focus was a teenage Ronan with a rifle in his hand and a dead deer at his feet.

I’d never seen a gun in my life. And I didn’t want to.

Another black and white photo showed two kids, maybe twelve or thirteen, standing in the street. A smudge of dirt marred Ronan’s cheek, his arm loosely around the neck of the other kid, whose unsmiling face was turned away from the camera. But it didn’t hide a sliver of his eyes that were sharp enough to pierce through the picture.

They looked poor. Maybe even homeless.

My gaze slid to Ronan, from his suit to the black watch on his wrist. I always shopped for my papa since he had no care for it and no wife—or so I thought. He would only wear the finest of the finest, so I’d become an aficionado in expensive men’s clothing, and this man was wearing a Dormeuil Vanquish.

From rags to riches . . .

I wondered what he did. He was obviously more than the owner of this restaurant, which was far closer to a hole-in-the-wall than a five-star establishment. I found it surprising, though also endearing, he displayed his past for the world to see.

“Sit down and eat, kotyonok.”

I warmed at the nickname, even knowing he probably came by it because I reminded him of

something cute he might pat on the head. I sat on the couch and dug into a bowl of kasha and fresh fruit.

Ronan was still talking on the phone, that cord wrapped around one hand, stress ball in the other, but the heat of his curious gaze warmed every inch of me. I set the half-eaten meal on the side table and received a disapproving look from him. If I’d gotten the look from my papa, I would have forced down every crumb, but I was testing out a sturdier resolve. And I simply didn’t want to finish it.

He hung up, shrouding the room in thick silence. I rubbed my hands on my bare thighs and searched for my voice, as it seemed to lose itself in his presence.

“You didn’t happen to find my coat, did you?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, rocking back in his chair like a newspaper editor lording over his domain. “You’re lucky we found your bag before it was stolen.”

That was a no.

I chewed my lip. “My phone was in the pocket.”

“Was it?” was all he said, not offering to let me use his.

I didn’t feel like being more of a nuisance, and I also wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of sharing what happened last night with Ivan, so I pushed the need aside. I’d buy a disposable phone and let himknow I was okay later.

Ronan stared at me. Toss.

Squeeze.

The man was always doing something with his hands, and it was distracting. I swallowed when silence filled the room once again. He seemed perfectly content to just sit in it, but it tunneled under my skin and made me itch to fill it.

I cleared my throat. “This place . . . it’s nice. Very warmand . . . inviting.” It was far frominviting for a girl like me, and we both knew it.

His slow smile could devastate cities. “What about it makes you feel so comfortable? I shall have to rectify it as soon as possible.” He watched with some form of dark interest as another stupid flush rose to my cheeks. If there was a God, he would have surely taken pity on me and opened a hole in the floor to let me fall through. I felt like Duckie in Pretty in Pink, and we all know how that ended up.

“The music. My papa listens to the same music.”

“What a coincidence,” Ronan drawled. His voice was indifferent, but also laced with something that evoked a shiver beneath my skin.

“Maybe you’ve heard of him?” It was a long shot, but with nothing else to go on, I might as well try to find another breadcrumb. “Alexei Mikhailov?”

Squeeze.

“Can’t say I have.” Disappointment filled me. “What does your papa do?” “He’s an investor.”

That was all I knew. Papa never talked about work around me.

“Huh.” After a moment of studying me, Ronan said, “And what brings an American cheerleader to Moscow, alone?”

I glanced at my bag with “CHEER” across the front. “I was a cheerleader in high school, not anymore.”

“So a solid year ago then?”

“Of course not,” I said, like he was completely off the mark. “Ayear and a half.” He smiled. “Ah, my mistake.”

After a beat of silence, I told him, “Moscow’s secrets.” The quiet words filled the room. “I came for its secrets.”

He watched me for a long time—so long, my heart slowed beneath the weight of his gaze—and then he stood and came around his desk. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

I shook my head.

“I will have Albert find you a room.” With that, he headed to the door.

My manners rebelled against accepting his generosity, but a greater part of me was thankful. My head still hurt, and I didn’t want to wander aimlessly around Moscow looking for a ride and a place to stay. Though something else inside, something curious and breathless, wouldn’t allow him to walk away yet.

I got to my feet and blurted, “Do you have a fondness for opera?” He stopped and slowly turned to me. “How did you guess?”

It took a moment to realize he was teasing me. I opened my mouth to respond but ended up pulling my bottomlip between my teeth to hold in the genuine amusement. His eyes flicked to my lips for just a second, and my pulse dropped into a vat of gasoline and fire.

I swallowed. “Do you happen to know of an opera house nearby?” I wasn’t going home without knowing more about my mother and her family. Maybe I could find some information at her previous place of employment.

“There are several, but the Moskovskiy is the closest.” “The Moskovskiy,” I repeated, so I would remember it. “It’s not in the best part of town anymore.”

His restaurant wasn’t exactly in the best part either, but I didn’t voice the thought.

Ronan regarded me for a second, and, seeing the determination on my face, something obscure clouded his eyes. “I will take you. Tonight, at eight.”

Then he left me without another word, and I couldn’t help but think . . . Maybe Moscow wasn’t so bad after all.