Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (23 page)

“
E
XCUSE me
, miss. Sorry to interrupt. Is this your jacket?”

Sam McKinley turned from her conversation with a cater-waiter named Husik to see a young man wearing circular glasses. Like many of the men at the Hockey Ices Cancer Gala, he had on a tux, but unlike those other men, his face still had a bit of pudge to it, the baby fat that dogged some guys into their twenties.

He extended her coat, a banged up, brown leather number she’d scored at a thrift store for thirty bucks back in grad school. It didn’t really go with the emerald floor length gown she was wearing, but hey, at least it did its job. Nearly ten years later and it was still keeping her warm, even here in Indiana with its brutal winters.

“Yes, that’s my jacket,” she answered without embarrassment. “Is there something wrong?”

Sam fully expected to be kicked out of this party. She’d only been here for thirty minutes, but she hadn’t exactly been invited. Unless using the name of your best friend’s husband’s former teammate to get inside could be considered an “invitation”—because in that case, she totally was invited.

But she knew not everyone would consider her presence at the event legit, so she braced herself, hoping the man’s polite tone meant he’d let her go quietly without calling security.

“No, no, not at all,” he answered quickly, his face flushing. “I just wanted to make sure. The woman at coat check assured me this was yours, but I, ah…” He seemed to be searching for a polite way to say that most people didn’t attend galas in beat up jackets that were probably older than he was. “I wasn’t sure,” he finished weakly.

He then rushed in to say, “But there’s nothing to be worried about. I’m actually here to extend an invitation. Nikolai Rustanov would like the pleasure of your company on the balcony. I retrieved your jacket so you’d be warm.”

Sam breathed a mental sigh of relief that she wasn’t getting kicked out but…

“Who’s Nikolai Rustanov?” she asked, scanning the room from side to side.

The man’s eyes widened as if she had asked him who the President of the United States was.

“Nikolai Rustanov? One of the best hockey players the NHL has ever seen? The new owner of the Indiana Polar?”

The young man seemed to be waiting for Sam to make the connection, but she shook her head with an apologetic shrug.

“Sorry. Never heard of him.” She turned to look at Husik, the Armenian cater-waiter she’d spent most of the party talking with so far. “But the Indiana Polar is the state’s hockey team, right?”

Husik winced as if he was just plain embarrassed for her.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “Nikolai Rustanov--they call him Mount Nik--owns it, and you should probably know… this is his house.”

“Oh!” Sam took a closer look around the large, opulent room. The ceilings were covered with intricately carved crown molding, and the ivory walls were filled with luxurious gilt pieces Sam couldn’t have pegged on a specific era or design, but they put her in mind of words like “baroque” and “rococo.” Every room she’d seen in the place so far was done up in this way, and ever since she’d walked in, she’d felt like she was standing in the middle of a set piece for one of the historical romance novels she used to read back when she was a teenager.

Whoever this hockey player was, his home was beautiful, but way over the top, like Peter the Great and Josephine Bonaparte had hooked up and decided to build a home together in Indiana.

“Wow! Well, thanks for the invitation to join your boss…” Sam smiled at the bespectacled representative of the hockey player with baroque tastes.

“No, need to thank me,” the man assured her, lightly cupping her elbow. “If you’ll just follow me, the balcony is right this way.”

Sam didn’t budge. “As I was saying, thanks for the invitation but…” she carefully removed her elbow from his grasp, “…please tell Mr. Mount Nik the answer is no.”

The young man blinked. “The answer is no?” He was clearly not used to this response.

“Yes, the answer is no.” She held up her coat. “But thanks for the coat! I’ll probably be heading out soon anyway, so you saved me a trip.”

“But… I don’t understand!” the young man’s eyes traveled from her ragged coat to her bare ring finger as if he were trying to piece together the answer to a complex puzzle.

“I don’t really think there’s anything to understand,” she answered. “He invited me, and I’m saying no. It’s really pretty simple. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was in the middle of a conversation with Husik.”

Having nipped that in the bud, she presented the younger man with her back. But she waited until he’d moved away to say, “Actually, I’m glad that guy brought me my coat because I left my business card holder in it.” She took out the flat metal case and handed Husik one of the small cards tucked inside. “If you think your niece is in trouble, give her my card. It doesn’t have anything but my name and number on it, so even if her boyfriend finds it, it shouldn’t cause her any problems. Sometimes just having my card at the right time is enough to get someone out of a bad situation.”

Husik took her card with the hand that wasn’t holding a tray of appetizers, his eyes running over her name, “Ms. Sam McKinley,” before he pocketed it.

“Thanks, but…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t believe you just turned down Nikolai Rustanov!”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because he’s Mount Nik!” The man seemed genuinely perplexed.

Sam resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. So yeah, the hockey player with the hyperbolic nickname was probably a big deal in Husik’s mind. And obviously the representative he’d sent over wasn’t used to women turning down his boss’s balcony invitations. But Sam wasn’t here to meet up with hockey players on balconies. She was here to start making contacts, like she promised her partner, Josie, she would. And in her experience, athletes preferred to sponsor splashy causes like cancer and homelessness. Domestic violence, not so much.

Husik was still babbling on. “I mean, he dominates at a face off, and he gets to rebounds faster than anyone you’ve ever seen. Plus, he leads the league in shots on goal. But you turned him down!”

Sam really had no idea what any of that meant, and she was a little dismayed Husik seemed more concerned that she’d rejected some hockey player’s advances than he was about his niece’s relationship, which he’d been telling her he suspected had turned violent before they’d been interrupted.

But keeping judgment on a minimum setting was part of her job, so instead of chastising him, she smiled tightly and replied, “Yes, well, I’m just not interested, even if he’s really good at hitting balls with his stick.”

“Pucks,” a deep, heavily accented voice said behind her. “I’m very good at hitting pucks with my stick.”

This time when she turned she had to look up, then up some more, to find a pair of cool, green eyes staring down at her from under heavy lids. And suddenly, she understood why the young man he’d sent over had been confused about her response. Nikolai Rustanov was insanely, outrageously gorgeous, with a face and jaw that looked like it had been hand carved by someone with a high appreciation for asymmetry and a body so large, she knew immediately it was muscle and not padding filling out the shoulders of his tuxedo. Suddenly, the nickname “Mount Nik” didn’t seem quite so hyperbolic anymore.

And yes, she admitted to herself, any woman would be happy to receive a balcony invitation from a man who looked like this. At least at first glance. But she wasn’t like most women, and quickly zeroed in on his faults. His eyes, she noticed, where a total blank, and his lips had a hard twist to them, like they we’re in permanent prep mode for sneering.

Cruel. The word appeared inside her mind like a poisonous warning label. He had icy eyes and cruel lips. And even though his hair was light brown, falling in tousled strands past his ears—not military short and bleach blond like the only Russian she remembered from her childhood movie days—the
Rocky IV
theme song totally went off inside her head

N
IKOLAI stared
down at the woman who—much to his cousin, Alexei’s, amusement—had spurned his balcony invitation. She was even more beautiful up close than she’d been from across the room where he’d been standing when he first spotted her, dressed in an ethereal, deep green evening gown and talking to one of the cater-waiters. Her hair—which he could see now consisted neither of dreadlocks nor braids but some kind of long twists—was pulled back into a large bun, giving her face perfect visibility. Wide set eyes, shining with good humor, flawless dark brown skin that seemed to glow as if she were lit from the inside, dimpled cheeks, and—his eyes drifted downward—lush curves, very lush curves that were making the dress work hard to keep her contained.

The dimples were a little much, he thought, now that he could see her up close. His usual conquests, who tended to have sharper cheekbones and more skillfully applied makeup, didn’t usually sport indents in their cheeks. But in this case she’d sparked his curiosity enough to overlook them. Also, he wanted to see what was underneath that dress. In fact, he decided then and there, he wanted her. In his bed. Tonight.

“You have something else you should be doing,” he informed the cater-waiter without taking his eyes off the woman.

“Yes, sorry,” the cater-waiter mumbled. “Big fan by the way!”

Nikolai didn’t answer, just waited for the smaller man to go away so he could make his next move on the woman in the green dress. She looked slightly disconcerted as she watched the cater-waiter leave. Like she didn’t know quite what to do with Nikolai. Or herself.

Good, Nikolai thought. It served her right for turning down his balcony invitation. Apparently, even though she was at a hockey fundraiser, she didn’t know enough about the sport to distinguish a ball from a puck. Or him from any of the average, anonymous suitors she might have encountered before.

“Hello,” he said now that he had the woman’s full attention. “I am Nikolai Rustanov, and you are very beautiful.”

He waited for her to preen, but his words only seemed to fluster her more.

“Thanks! So are you… I guess.” She had a soft lilt to her voice that made her words sound almost overly cheery.

“Beautiful?” he said after a moment of confusion. Even after nearly two decades in the States, his English was still not the best. Maybe he was misunderstanding her. “You think I am beautiful?”

“Yes, really beautiful,” she answered with a nod. “Good job on that front!”

Nikolai faltered a bit. Had she just congratulated him on being beautiful? Like a woman? He reset.

“I’m glad you think so. You and I have—how you say—mutual admiration.”

“Oh, well, kind of, but I mean… maybe not really,” she answered. She now looked around the room as if she were desperately searching for someone else to talk to. Anybody other than him. “I’m not really into that kind of stuff.”

English was his second language, true, but every single thing that came out of this woman’s mouth so far had only served to confuse him, making him wonder if it wasn’t her first language either.

“Beauty—you don’t like it? You are not ‘into’ it?” he posed the question very slowly just in case, like him, she was still having trouble with the English language.

She shrugged. “I mean beauty can come in handy. Like when I’m arguing with a man and he’s all hyped up and security’s not available, sometimes he won’t act as much of a fool because I’m pretty, I guess. But a few times it’s made things more difficult. Like sometimes men underestimate me because of it, and that’s no good.”

Her answer brought up so many more questions that Nikolai’s mind temporarily stalled out. Why was she arguing with so many men to the point that she had to call security? And why did she care if anyone underestimated her?

She glanced up at him. “Do you feel like that too, sometimes? Like being all hot and hunky gets in your way?”

“No,” he answered truthfully. “It only helps. Especially with women.”

“Woooow! That must be so nice for you!”

She gave him an impressed look, but it felt to Nikolai like she was laughing at him. He did not like this feeling.

“It is,” he replied. Usually, he added silently with grim annoyance.

“Your calendar’s stuffed with dates I bet. How great!”

He regarded her coolly for a second, trying to figure out if he was really supposed to respond to that. But Black Americans, he knew, could be different. His cousin, Alexei, was married to one who insisted on calling him Nikki and conversations with her were often confusing like the one he was having with this woman now.

“I do not go on dates,” he informed her, deciding to indulge the conversation topic, more out of curiosity than anything else. The woman was strange but she was engaging, and Nikolai found himself wanting to stay in her company despite the many bizarre things that had come out of her mouth over the course of their short conversation.

“Seriously?” she asked. “Why not?”

“Dates are not necessary. They are silly custom. If a woman wants one, I say to her, we are both adults, why waste time with silly custom?”

She looked enrapt now, like she was hanging on every word he was saying. “And what do they say?”

“They agree of course, and then we have very pleasurable time together.”

The look she gave him now was the opposite of impressed. In fact, he could have sworn he saw pity in her eyes.

She shrugged and said, “I guess we don’t have much in common then. When I’m working late, I’m always like, wouldn’t it be cool to be one of those people who goes on dates? Seriously, how nice would that be? To like, you know, go to dinner and a movie. But here you are with plenty of women to date, and you don’t even take advantage of all your opportunities.” She shook her head. “What a waste.”

Nikolai narrowed his eyes at her, not knowing whether to be confused or insulted or both. “You are…” he informed her, “strange. Very strange.”

“Yes, I know,” she answered with that odd lilt of hers. “But it sounds like you’ve got a little strange going on yourself. Like, is that seriously all you do? Not go on dates with the women you invite out to your balcony? How does that work out for you love wise?”

“I do not love,” he answered. “Love is another silly custom. I don’t—how you say—believe in it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Love?
Love
is a silly custom you don’t believe in? You seriously just said that? How can you not believe in love?!?!”

Nikolai inwardly grunted, happy he only wanted this woman for a one-night stand. She was obviously a romantic. One who would be much more trouble than she was worth if he were the sort who took women out on dates.

He stepped closer to her and said, “Trust me, you do not have to believe in silly customs to give woman much pleasure. Come upstairs. I will show you.”

His words must have had some affect on her, because she waved a hand in front of her face, like she was trying to cool herself down.

“Okay, you spit amazing game. Well played, Mount Nik. You’re like an expert in getting women all hot and bothered, I can tell.”

“Thank you,” he said carefully, because he had no idea how else to respond to that seeming compliment.

She slightly turned away from him, her eyes scanning the party.

“Hold on, I have someone I want you to meet.”

“You have someone you want me to meet,” he repeated. “Who?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she answered, her eyes still surveying the room. But then her face lit up. “No, no, no, I take that back. I see her. She’s definitely the one.”

She waved enthusiastically at a tall, beautiful brunette in a black evening dress who was standing with a couple of blondes also wearing black evening dresses. When she got the brunette’s attention, she motioned for her to join them like they were long, lost buddies.

Nikolai’s curiosity was fully piqued at this point. The truth was, the brunette, with her high cheekbones and classic features, was much more his usual type, but why would the woman in the green dress be calling her over? Perhaps for a threesome?

“Hi! Hi! Hi!” the minx in the green dress said when the brunette reached them. “What’s your name?”

“Katrina,” the brunette answered, smiling cautiously as if she weren’t sure if the woman who’d called her over was just friendly or insane.

Nikolai was beginning to wonder the same thing.

“Katrina. That’s a beautiful name,” the woman whose name he still didn’t know said. She looked up at Nikolai. “That’s Russian, right? Like you?”

“Yes, but I’m American,” Katrina answered, throwing Nikolai a flirty smile.

“Well, Katrina, let me introduce you to Nikolai Rustanov. He’s a fan of private conversations on balconies, and pleasurable times with ladies, and, and…” She looked up at him, her face and tone completely serious. “What else?”

“Hockey,” Nikolai answered, wondering what she was getting at.

The woman in the green dress snapped her fingers, like he’d just given her the perfect answer. “And hockey! Do you like hockey, Katrina?”

“I love hockey,” Katrina answered. She turned fully toward Nikolai now. “I have season passes for the Indiana Polar, and you’re actually one of my favorite players.”

“That’s awesome,” the woman said, patting Katrina on the shoulder. “I’ll just leave you two to it, then.”

“Oh, okay,” Katrina answered with a wave, seeming more than happy to be alone with him.

“So is that a friend of yours? Someone who works for you?” she whisper-asked Nikolai when the woman in the green dress was out of earshot.

Nikolai didn’t answer, just watched the strange woman walk away with a scowl on his face.

“Excuse me,” he began to say, preparing to go after her, but then his cousin Alexei appeared and got in front of him.

Alexei was a businessman, not a hockey player, but his face was a match to Nikolai’s in that moment. Same Rustanov bone structure, same green eyes, and for some reason, the same grim look.

“What is it?” he asked, immediately knowing something must be wrong. The Alexei he knew would have teased him mercilessly about getting turned down in such a ridiculous fashion by the minx in the green dress.

“Fedya is here,” Alexei answered, his voice low. “Your assistant came to me since you were… otherwise engaged.”

Nikolai inwardly cursed as he watched the beautiful woman disappear into the crowd. No, he wouldn’t be going after her right away as planned.

He’d have to deal with his brother first.