Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (32 page)

N
IKOLAI watched
Samantha and her cop on the porch having what looked like a very intimate conversation as he approached the shelter. The cop’s hands were on her shoulders and his forehead rested against hers. Only for a few moments, but even when he stepped back, his hands never left her, and by the time Nikolai got all the way to the porch’s bottom step, the cop was still touching her. Touching Samantha. Touching what was his.

Nikolai had to work hard to hold himself exactly where he was. She was still with the cop, he realized, his chest filling up with something he recognized all too well as despair. Still with him, despite…

He abandoned that thought, feeling like a fool.

Of course she was still with him. Why had he expected anything different? Just because he hadn’t so much as thought about another woman over the past month, and had buried himself in work to keep from obsessing over Samantha and the thought that she could be carrying his baby—no, that didn’t mean she had spend the past month doing the same.

After all, he thought darkly, as scared as his mother had been of his father, that hadn’t stopped her from seeking out other male company when he pulled one of his disappearing acts. He of all people should know that sleeping with a woman, even possibly impregnating her, didn’t guarantee her fidelity.

Samantha suddenly turned, as if just now realizing Nikolai was at the bottom of the steps. And when the cop saw him standing there, his hands dropped to his sides. But even as he stepped away from Samantha, Nikolai’s mind continued to burn with the memory of what he’d seen. The cop had been touching her, stroking her hair, making her smile.

Basically doing all the things Nikolai wasn’t allowed to do in his current position as a much-regretted one night stand.

They both regarded him for a few silent seconds. Her with wide-eyed confusion. Him with petulant anger.

“What are you doing here?” the cop asked, his arm twining round Samantha’s shoulders like she belonged to him. Like he was now protecting her. From Nikolai.

Rage flared up hot as a blue flame inside Nikolai’s usually icy soul. But somehow he kept his voice level when he answered, “I am here to talk with Samantha. About a personal matter.”

Marco turned to Samantha. “You let him call you Samantha?” he asked.

“No, I don’t…” She rubbed her temple like the situation was giving her a headache. Then she said, “Marco, I need to talk to him. And then I need to get back to work.”

Marco looked at Nikolai, and Nikolai didn’t bother to keep the smug satisfaction off his face. Samantha had chosen him over Marco, and that seemed to make Marco even angrier than Nikolai’s unexpected interruption.

He put Nikolai in the mind of one of the pampered Rustanov children in that moment. He had been to a couple of family events since Alexei had legitimized the family’s business and insisted on bringing Nikolai into the fold. The current crop of Russian-born Rustanov children had grown up in the lap of legitimate luxury, untarnished by the old mafia family’s shame. They tended to be perfectly pleasant—until they didn’t get their way. Then came the Chernobyl-style meltdowns.

For a few moments, Nikolai suspected Marco might throw a temper tantrum over Samantha’s brusque dismissal. But in the end, he just said, “That’s okay. I’ll see you later, Sammy.”

He said it to Samantha, but aimed it at Nikolai.

Nikolai responded with a stony stare, his eyes locked on their iciest setting as he waited for the other man to leave,. At least he didn’t kiss her before he left, Nikolai thought. He didn’t trust himself to stay still if that happened.

Not today. Not after thirty days of either being ignored or avoided by Samantha during waking hours and haunted by her whenever he closed his eyes. No matter how much he tried to put her out of his mind during the day, he couldn’t keep himself from dreaming about her. And the dream he’d had the night before had been the worst one yet. Them making love in his bed, her belly large and round with his baby, his ring flashing on her finger.

He’d never wanted a wife, or kids, or anything remotely approaching what he’d seen in that dream, but dammit if he hadn’t woken up hard as a steel pipe. And he’d felt like an idiot, stroking himself off, unable to stop thinking about those dream images of her naked and pregnant as he did so.

That was why he was here now, using every ounce of his icy resolve to keep from exploding with rage. After a morning of barely being able to concentrate on his work, he’d gone out and bought a pregnancy test and headed over to Ruth’s House—only to find her canoodling with her boyfriend.

He’d be damned if he let this go on another day. As he waited for the cop to get back in his car and drive away, he made a solemn vow. If she wasn’t truly pregnant, he wanted her gone. Gone from his house and gone from his mind.

As soon as the cop’s car was out of sight, he came up the porch steps and held up the bag.

She eyed it and he had the feeling she knew what it was just as his mother had when he’d held up a similar bag to her many years ago. But unlike his mother, she didn’t immediately take it.

“It is pregnancy test,” he informed her. “Thirty days are up.”

Understanding shadowed her eyes, but still she didn’t take the bag. Instead she folded her arms across her chest and said, “I know it’s been a month. But I’m in the middle of a work day and I can’t invite you to have this discussion in my office, since no males over sixteen are allowed inside Ruth’s House. So how about if I shoot you an email?”

His eyes narrowed. “Shoot me email,” he repeated, wondering not for the first time if the woman he’d been near obsessed with over the past month was indeed crazy.

“Yes, an email,” she said, backing away toward the door. “That’s way better than doing this here on the steps, don’t you think? So yeah, I’ll do that right after I handle this very important call I need to return—”

He caught her sweatered arm, his hand manacling around her wrist. “Tell me. Now.”

“No, seriously, it can wait,” she said. “And it’s probably better sent over email. That way you’ll have all the details and be able to digest the information in your own time, at your own pace…”

She tugged on her arm, but Nikolai easily kept her there, his voice colder than icicles as he intoned, “Right now.”

“Ms. McKinley? Everything all right here?”

Nikolai looked down the steps to see a little man who had to be in his sixties or seventies. He had his hand on top of a baton, as if he planned to do something about the scene in front of him. But he didn’t look like he could fend off Pavel, much less keep Nikolai from getting the information he wanted from Samantha.

S
AM used
the interruption to gain her freedom.

“Please let me go, right now,” she whispered to Nikolai, low enough that Danny, their security guard, wouldn’t be able to hear her. “This isn’t a good look for me or Ruth’s House.”

To her surprise, Nikolai instantly let her go. He even took a step back, like he didn’t know what had come over him when he grabbed her.

Relief flooded her heart. Good, good, this was good. A long, detailed email was the perfect way to handle this. It would take the weird energy out of the situation, she reasoned, and put some distance between her and Nikolai so they could both think about how to handle this turn of events without angry words or hurt feelings.

Resolved, she turned toward the door.

“Please, tell me. I must know,” came Nikolai’s voice, harsh and choked, like he was both embarrassed and desperate to be pleading with her to tell him the truth. “You promised.”

She inwardly cursed, guilt overtaking her completely reasonable decision to send him an email. Why? She had no idea. It wasn’t like they were together in any kind of capacity and she was planning to keep her promise to let him know if she was pregnant… just not in person.

Yet guilt kept her from punching in the security code and pulling the door open. Even more guilt than she’d had while she was putting the kibosh on Marco.

And maybe that guilt wouldn’t have been enough to get her to do this here at her place of work—and let’s face it, her place of respite. But when she turned back to assure him an email was truly the best course of action, he said it again.

“Please, tell me,” he said. “I can’t work. I can’t think.”

Nikolai Rustanov didn’t strike her as a man who said please very often. And she couldn’t help but notice the lines around his eyes. Tight, worried lines that made him look not like the impassable mountain she’d painted him to be, but like a man. A man who might have had as many problems sleeping over the past month as she had.

“Ms. McKinley, everything all right up there?” Danny asked again.

She’d been so caught up in the moment with Nikolai that she’d forgotten the old security guard was still down there at the bottom of the steps. She’d forgotten everything but her and Nikolai and the life they’d unwittingly created together.

Damn my soft heart, she thought to herself. Then out loud she said, “It’s okay, Danny. I was just about to walk Mr. Rustanov to his car. He’s a friend of the shelter.”

Code for big donor—not an out of sorts husband. Which wasn’t exactly true, but Samantha couldn’t think of a less awkward way to let the security guard know Nikolai wasn’t a threat.

Danny visibly relaxed, letting his hand fall from his baton. “Alright then. I’ll just take my lunch break, if you don’t need me for awhile.”

Sam forced a smile to her lips. “That’s a great idea, Danny.”

After some awkward goodbyes, she made the silent trek with Nikolai back to his Escalade. The entire block in front of Ruth’s House was zoned as ten minute loading and unloading parking only. Apparently the Russian thought this would be more than a ten-minute conversation, because unlike Marco, who was always parking in the intake spots for convenience, he’d parked much further down the street in the regular parking zone. All the way on the next block, which meant they’d be able to talk in semi-private with no worries about being seen by anyone at Ruth’s House.

Still, Sam felt beyond self-conscious when they reached his car and Nikolai’s eyes zeroed in like lasers. Waiting.

She took a deep breath and just said it. “I’m pregnant.”

Nikolai went still as a statue, his expression so neutral, it was impossible for Sam to even guess at what he was thinking. So she kept on talking.

“I still have to go to the doctor to get it confirmed, but I took three tests. All positive. So… I’m pretty sure.”

Still no reaction from him. And Sam rushed on, feeling like she had to get it all out, if only so she could escape back to the safety of Ruth’s House.

“But what I would have said in my email is you don’t have to worry about any of this. I’m not going to ask you for anything. I have a good job and lots of resources. I’ll take care of everything—”

He suddenly came back to life, his gaze narrow and suspicious.

“You are sure it is mine?” he asked.

Sam blinked. “Am I sure it’s yours?” she repeated.

Now he outright sneered at her. “You and cop? Did you use condom with him?”

For a moment, the engine inside Sam’s mind stalled out, choking on indignation. It took a few open and shuts of her mouth before she was able to say, “Okay, let’s get a few things straight here.”

She put a finger in the air to make her point. “A month ago, I was
upset
. I’d had a very bad experience followed by a very bad nightmare. I never would have let you anywhere near me if those two things hadn’t occurred. Understand, you are the only guy I’ve ever not used protection with, and I feel pretty damn stupid about that. Especially now with you acting like I’m up in here getting pregnant all the time by guys I don’t know. Like you think this is how I get my kicks and giggles. But trust me when I say, I’m just as unhappy about being pregnant with your baby as you are. If it had been up to me, this is the last way I would have chosen to get pregnant.”

He flinched, like her words had more than insulted him. Like they had caused him pain. But then his jaw clenched, and he said, “It was necessary question.” He gave her one of his ugly frowns. “You will keep it? Because you—how did you say—are too old to make other choice?”

Sam shook her head, feeling the usual disappointment when it came to guys and relationships beginning to set in. No, she hadn’t expected a romance novel or anything when she told him the news. But she hadn’t expected him to ask if it was his either or whether she was still against aborting it, which would make his life a whole lot easier, she knew.

The whole situation made her feel dirty. But she stood her ground with him.

“I’m not happy about the circumstances, but I’m happy about being a mother,” she told him through gritted teeth. “And I’m keeping this baby, no matter what.”

She waited, giving him a chance to try to convince her otherwise, but he just stood there, with no expression whatsoever. Like a block of ice. Nope, this wasn’t a romance novel situation at all. She wasn’t that kind of girl and Nikolai wasn’t that kind of man. She’d known that about him from the start, so there was no reason for the piercing hurt now radiating through her body over his total lack of reaction.

Suddenly Sam felt exhausted. Completely and utterly exhausted.

“I’m going back to work,” she said, having to put real effort into keeping her voice strong. “Like I said, I’m more than cool with doing this on my own.”

Then she walked away, disappointment in him and the situation and herself dogging her heels. And she wasn’t surprised when this time, he did nothing to stop her from leaving.

T
HAT day
, Nikolai came home from work early. Not because he didn’t have plenty to do. The Polar were due to go out on the road at the end of the week, and though they were nowhere near contention for the Stanley Cup this year, it was imperative that Nikolai observe them on the road and off this season, so he could figure out how to make them great next season.

However, as the Polar’s new owner, he couldn’t just worry about the team, he had to worry about the entire franchise. So he had meetings with not just his coaches and general managers, but also with PR professionals and ad companies.

Maybe he was a Rustanov after all, because he didn’t mind the business aspects of the job as much as he’d thought he would. Nevertheless, not being able to play the game nearly every single day was beginning to take its own kind of toll. No longer could he take his troubles and thoughts down to the rink or take out his aggression on teammates and opposing hockey players. No longer could he “ice out”—playing and playing until all his cares froze away.

Paperwork and meetings just somehow didn’t provide the same release. Nor would he turn to drugs like his brother had. So that only left one thing: sex. In the past, he would have welcomed a road trip and the availability of women who only cared about who he was and didn’t mind letting him use them as stress relief.

But in this case, he couldn’t see himself employing that option on this next trip. First of all, he was the team owner now, no longer a player. And even if he had been in the position to pick up groupies, the thought of sleeping with one made him feel dead inside, even more numb than killing those Russians.

It was hard for him to admit this to himself, especially after what he’d seen on the porch of Ruth’s House, but he didn’t want any other woman. Not like he wanted Samantha.

And now she was pregnant. With his child. Unhappily so, he’d reminded himself the following day. Then he’d had to keep on reminding himself, over and over again, during the morning practice and the meetings he took that afternoon. But those harsh reminders hadn’t been enough to stop him from telling Isaac to cancel the rest of his meetings at five and leaving early for home.

He cursed himself all the way to the house. It was like the compulsion he kept having to check on Pavel every night before he went to bed, even though he knew the boy was fine, knew the threat of the Russians had been eliminated. Knowing Sam was pregnant with his baby made him want to be close to her. Physically close. And as foolish as he felt about the whole thing, he kept his foot firmly on the gas pedal, driving faster than he should to get to her.

When he arrived home, he followed the sounds of laughter to the kitchen, and what he found there stopped his heart.

Samantha sitting next to Pavel at the island counter. Their heads both bent over a textbook, Samantha’s arm resting across Pavel’s shoulders. They looked like… a mother and son. A real mother and son. The easy way they laughed together, not even a total stranger happening upon them would have doubted how close they were or known they weren’t family in every sense of the word.

Nikolai was not prepared for the ache of longing that hit him upon seeing Samantha like this. An ache followed by a piercing wish for her to stand up and come around the island to greet him. Like a wife. Like someone who was happy he was home.

And in that moment, he regretted, truly regretted what he’d said to her when he visited Ruth’s House the day before.
Da
, he’d had every right to ask the question, especially after the scene he’d witnessed between her and Marco. He’d still been angry about that when she told him the news, his mind reeling with the revelation that she hadn’t broken up with the cop. And he hadn’t been able to get past it. The sight of them together. The idea of Samantha letting the cop touch her. Maybe more.

At the time, he’d felt completely justified in lashing out. Had, in fact, been aiming to hurt her with his accusation.

But now, he felt like an idiot. Seeing her like this with Pavel, all he wanted was for her to be same way with him. A memory of Alexei’s parents came to him then. The way they would sometimes kiss, soft on the lips, if Alexei’s father had been away for a long time. The way his aunt’s eyes had glowed with tenderness when she looked across the room at his uncle.

He wanted Samantha to look at him that way.

He did not get his wish. Back Up came trotting over to get petted, alerting the boy and Samantha to Nikolai’s presence in the doorway. Upon seeing him there, Samantha’s smile went away, as if a dark storm cloud had suddenly rolled in on her perfect picnic with Pavel.

Pavel immediately stopped laughing, too. But at least he said, “Hi, Uncle. You’re home early.”

Pavel’s tone was pleased and Nikolai wished it wasn’t so hard for him to look directly at the boy. But he couldn’t make himself do that often. Even with the much darker skin and the hair texture difference, his nephew looked too much like Fedya at that age. For Nikolai, it was like looking directly into a sun made of memories. Impossible to do without feeling like your eyes were burning.

So instead of looking at Pavel, he bent down and patted Back Up, who immediately flipped over on her back. Samantha’s dog was the worst kind of manipulator, he was discovering. Give her even the smallest of strokes and she took you for a belly rub.

“Why were you laughing?” he asked Samantha and Pavel, as he rubbed his hand across Back Up’s pink belly. The question came out harsher than he meant it to.

But there was a smile in Pavel’s voice when he answered, “Because Mama is really bad at math. I didn’t want to do my homework and Mama told me she’d do my homework for me, but I keep on having to correct it and put in the right answers.”

“Luckily we’re using pencil,” Samantha said. Her voice had a different kind of smile in it.

“Luckily,” Pavel agreed, cracking up again. “You’re so bad at math!”

“And you’re getting so good at it.”

Nikolai stood there, rubbing Back Up’s belly longer than necessary, awkward as a moose at a deer party. Obviously Pavel had no idea Sam was only pretending to be bad at math, and he could barely fathom such a scenario in his own past. Growing up, his mother had only to threaten to tell his father he wasn’t doing something he was supposed to do, and Nikolai would do it. Right away.

But apparently Pavel had to be tricked into doing what he was supposed to do. It made him feel… he didn’t know. Sometimes it felt like Pavel was a duty, something to be managed until he reached his majority. And sometimes… sometimes it felt like he was a conduit to memories Nikolai didn’t want to have—memories he’d done a good job suppressing until the little boy had shown up in his life.

“Would you like some dinner?” Sam asked, her tone gracious but automatic. He got the feeling she would have offered anyone passing through the kitchen something to eat, even a servant.

“Mama and me made the noodles ourselves with your pasta machine!” Pavel told him, with great excitement in his voice. Like making noodles from scratch was the most exciting activity in the universe.

“
Da
, I will have spaghetti,” he said quickly. Happy for the change of subject.

The careful smile fell off Samantha’s face when he went over to the restaurant grade sink to wash his hands. And out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her hesitate before she went over to a cabinet, grabbed a bowl, and started filling it with pasta.

He sat down at the counter and watched her ladle meat sauce on top of the noodles before she came back over and set the bowl in front of him with a flat, “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” he answered, not knowing exactly why he’d agreed to eat a second dinner, even as he twirled the noodles around his fork.

Sam sat back down and said, “If we’d known you were coming, we wouldn’t have eaten.”

“It is okay,” he answered, taking a bite of the spaghetti. It was good. Really good. Somehow better than what he was used to because it was plain and homemade. Not perfectly spiced to his exact specifications, like the meals Isaac delivered to his office.

He could feel Pavel and Samantha’s eyes on him as he ate, as if a monster had entered their midst. And he had the feeling the quiet, filled with nothing but the sound of him eating the homemade spaghetti would have gone on forever if Pavel hadn’t chosen that moment to ask, “When you were kids, did you have birthday parties?”

“Are you asking me or your uncle?” Samantha asked him.

Pavel became very interested in the problems on his math worksheet as he answered, “Both of you, I guess.”

Samantha cleared her throat. “My mom made me a cake every year, and sometimes she took me out to dinner someplace like McDonald’s and she’d get me a Happy Meal,” she answered. “But no, never like a full on birthday party. How about you, Nikolai?” she asked. “Does Russia do the whole kids birthday party thing?”

“
Da
, we have these things, but I did not growing up,” he answered.

“Why not?” she asked, looking at him directly for the first time since he’d arrived home.

He thought about the true answer, which was because at the end of the day, he was a bastard with a generally depressed mother and a father who wouldn’t have shown up to a birthday party for him even if one had been thrown. And then he answered, “It is silly custom.”

Pavel’s cheeks reddened. “Yeah, you’re right, Uncle. Birthday parties are kind of stupid. I don’t know if I even want to go to the one Mateo invited me to.”

A reasonable conclusion on the boy’s part, Nikolai thought, but for some reason Samantha threw Nikolai a murderous look before saying to Pavel, “Birthday parties aren’t so bad. We throw them for our kids at the shelter all the time and they’re always a lot of fun. Maybe you should go to one and see how you like it.”

But Pavel quickly glanced up at Nikolai and answered, “No, that’s okay.”

And so the matter was settled. Or at least Nikolai thought it was. A soft knock sounded on his study door a couple of hours later.

“Come in,” he said, looking up from the work he’d brought home with him.

Sam stuck her head in. “Hey, got time to talk?” she asked.

Her voice was friendly and calm, like that scene in the kitchen hadn’t been awkward at all. He frowned. He was beginning to suspect friendly and calm was Samantha’s default for when she was anything but.

Nonetheless he took off his reading glasses and indicated she should sit down, which she did, looking around his study, a more somber affair than the rest of the house with dark wood paneling and a statesman like desk, so big, it had necessitated the interior designer and his crew break it down into pieces before rebuilding it inside the room.

“Wow,” she said. “This is… maybe fifty times bigger than my office at Ruth’s House. Sweet!”

A compliment, Nikolai realized after mulling her words over for a few moments. “Thank you,” he said.

“So,” she said, folding her hands on her lap. “How’s it going? Everything good with the job?”

“
Da
, it is fine,” he answered, knowing how Americans enjoyed their small talk. He awkwardly added, “I have much paperwork.”

“Paperwork is the worst, right? I always say I enjoy everything about my job, except the paperwork. It’s a real beast.”

“
Da
, it is beast,” he agreed, his voice stilted.

Why was it so hard to talk to this woman? He’d never had any problems talking with women before her. But everything about Samantha unsettled him, made him feel like he was once again the unacknowledged bastard of Sergei Rustanov. Not even good enough to warrant his parent’s marriage.

“I came in here to talk about Pavel…” Samantha introduced the new subject like it was a delicate object, one she carefully set down on the desk between them. “He really admires you. He’s very proud to have a hockey star for an uncle.”

Having no idea how to answer that, Nikolai remained quiet and let her finish.

“I think that’s a nice change of pace for him, because he’s been embarrassed by his living situations for so long, feeling like there was something he had to hide. And now he can be proud of where he’s living and who he’s living with. In many ways, it’s a dream come true for him.”

None of these emotional truths ever would have occurred to Nikolai, but he said, “Yes, if I were Pavel, I would think so, too.”

“And how about you? How do you think it’s going with Pavel?”

“How do I think it’s going with Pavel,” he repeated, not quite understanding her meaning.

She talked slowly, like the ESL tutor he’d been given when he first joined the Polar. “Do you like how your relationship is progressing?”

He thought about this question. “It progresses fine,” he answered. “Pavel is clean and fed and back in school. As you said, now he is very proud of his home and his family.”

“Yes, but…” She reset, putting on another one of her bright smiles. “I’m happy that you came home early. Really happy. And I want to apologize for not giving you positive feedback on that action earlier. I wish I had responded better, I was just so surprised to see you come in. And I wish I had known you were coming home earlier so we could’ve all eaten dinner together.”

Nikolai had to work hard to keep his face expressionless, to not let her see the pathetic soar of emotions her words sent off inside his chest. She was happy he’d come home early. Her vision about how she should have responded to it was nearly the same as his wish. Them all eating dinner together, like the happy families he’d only ever visited, but had never been a part of. The knowledge that she, too, wanted this, made the hot ache inside his chest gentle into a quiet warmth.

“It is okay,” he told her. “You did not know I would come home early. I should have told you.”

She leaned forward. “Is coming home earlier something you might be able to pull off more often?”

His heart nearly stopped beating. She wanted him to come home earlier more often.

“
Da
,” he answered, wondering if he was in the middle of some kind of dream, if he shouldn’t pinch himself to make sure. “I can come home earlier. Not on game nights or when I am on road with team, but other times, I can come home earlier and work here.”