Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (41 page)

After a quick luggage exchange between their driver and a man in a starched white uniform, she and Nikolai were led past the check-in desk, up three short flights of stairs, and through a set of arched doors painted a vibrant blue.

The scene that met her when she walked through the blue doors made her heart stop. It was a spacious and gorgeous white room with sea blue furniture that matched the blue infinity pool just beyond large balcony windows. And beyond that…

Sam went to the windows to stare wide-eyed at the Athens peninsula spread out to the left and right of them. A lush scene, dotted with hotels and trees overlooking a sea so blue, it seemed to glow underneath the city’s lights.

It was easily the most beautiful view she, Sam McKinley—now Sam Rustanov—had ever clapped eyes on. And suddenly, all her questions dropped away, replaced with something else she didn’t think she’d be feeling toward Nikolai Rustanov at any point over this weekend. Gratitude.

She turned and watched her husband exchange a few short words with the uniformed man, before closing the door behind him.

“Thank you,” she said when they were alone in the room. “Thank you so much for bringing me here.”

He gave her a look she was beginning to recognize, the one he gave her when she’d confused him. Probably because they’d only just now arrived and she was thanking him like he’d already given her a whole weekend in paradise.

“I’ve only ever lived in Alabama, Indiana, and Michigan,” she explained. “I’m just happy to be somewhere so beautiful.”

He considered her statement for a moment before saying, “You’re welcome. Now we must take showers and change. Then we have dinner.”

Less than an hour later, Sam found herself in the gorgeous dress Isaac had bought for her, at the best Greek restaurant in the entire world. Granted, the only Greek food she’d ever eaten was at the Mr. Gyro in Lafayette Square, but shoving bite after bite of the delicious lamb dish in her mouth, she couldn’t believe there were any Greek restaurants better than this one on the face of the earth.

“Oh my God, why does anyone ever move from here?” she asked. “If I was Mr. Gyro, I never would have left!”

She glanced up to see if Nikolai was enjoying the meal as much as she was. She thought her golden dress was a showstopper, but Nikolai was equally holding his own in an elegant black suit paired with a crisp white shirt. He cut a striking figure seated across from her. However, he didn’t seem to be enjoying the meal as much as she was. He was just sitting there, his chin resting on his fist, eyes bemused as he watched her eat.

“Why aren’t you enjoying this?” she demanded, nodding toward the family-style meal. “Everything’s delicious!”

“I’m sure it is,” he answered with a nod. Then he leaned forward to say in a husky voice, “But I prefer watching you eat,
zhena
. This sight pleases me very much.”

A shiver went down her spine at the thought of him being pleased by the sight of her eating. But she wondered aloud, “I-is that a cultural thing? Um, liking to watch people eat? M-maybe it’s something they do in Russia?”

She was stuttering again, she noted with an inner wince. Like the rom com character Nikolai had accused her of being.

He frowned at her, as if he were trying to figure out if she was joking.

But Sam continued. “Like your mom—was she a good cook? Did she like to watch you and your brother eat?”

Sam cringed as soon as the question left her mouth. Yes Sam, good job, she thought to herself. Don’t just shut down his game, rain it out by asking him questions about his childhood. The same kind of questions he always refuses to answer.

She braced herself for the cold shutdown and waited for the heated look to leave his eyes.

It did. Immediately. And he leaned back, as if suddenly wanting to put more distance between them.

But then he said, “My mother was very good cook. She loved cooking. She loved watching Fedya and I eat.
Da
, maybe I have little of her in me.”

She nearly dropped her fork, she was so shocked by his answer. That he actually had answered!

He looked away, his jaw clenching. “I do not talk about her,” he said, as if reading her stunned thoughts. “But my mother is same as your mother,
zhena
. Dead.”

She lowered her fork and confessed, “I know. I Googled you.” No surprise, there hadn’t been any mention of his possible mafia ties, but… “A few articles mentioned your mother died when you were young.”

He shifted in his seat. “Seventeen. Not as young as Pavel.”

“No, but that’s young enough,” she said, thinking of her own mother’s death. “Was it hard when you lost your father, too? The internet said he died a few years ago.”

Nikolai looked further into the distance, like this whole conversation was leaving a bad taste in his mouth. A taste even all the delicious food sitting on the table between them wouldn’t be able to take away. But nonetheless, he once again answered, “No. World is better off without my father.”

Harsh, but it wasn’t a sentiment she could hold against him. The world was better off without her father as well. Her stepfather, too. She guessed they had more in common than she ever could have imagined.

His unexpected answer made her feel bad for purposefully introducing a dark subject just to get around his mild flirtation. There was a dark cloud hanging over the table now, and she attempted to clear it away by segueing into a less painful topic, one that seemed to have brought him quite a bit of amusement over the last twenty-four hours.

“So here we are, two orphans in Greece, living it up before your big event, which is…” she teased, waiting for him to shut her inquiry down again.

But when his eyes met hers they were quizzical, not amused. Like Sam asking the same question she’d been asking him over the last twenty-four hours had somehow confused him greatly.

“What?” she asked, using a hand to check for food on her face. She’d gone hard on a flaky pastry dish filled with meat. Maybe her mouth was covered with it now. But no, no food, which prompted her to ask, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“
Zhena
… you still have not figured it out?” he asked.

She stared at him, perplexed.

“Do you remember what you said first time we met at party? About dates?” he asked. Then he lifted his eyebrow, as if he were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After a quick memory search, her own words came floating back to her,
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 a dinner and a movie.

That was when the other shoe finally dropped with a great, big thud. She gaped at Nikolai. They were on a date! An actual real life date. In Greece!

And as if to confirm her thoughts, Nikolai said. “This is dinner. Next comes movie.”

D
A-YAM
!!!! Sam thought as she walked out of the restaurant after finishing one of the best meals she’d ever eaten.
Nikolai Rustanov had game
. For someone who’d sworn up and down he didn’t date when they first met, he was proving he was more than adept making a date happen. In a BIG way.

Her state of shell shock must have been written clear across her face, because he placed her hand in the crook of his arm before they got to the gravel lane outside the restaurant, which sat at the top of a slight incline. “Hold on to me,
zhena
. This is not good place for falling.”

Her cheeks heated, but she did as he said since she couldn’t necessarily trust herself not to trip. And she was glad when they made it all the way to the bottom of the hill without incident.

“Just so you know, I don’t trip all the time,” she said, taking back her hand at the bottom of the inclined road. “Just around you.”

“Because I make you nervous.”

Yes, that was exactly why, but Sam folded her arms across her burgeoning waist and said, “Because you do things like sleep on the floor, which is like a huge—some might say Mount Nik-sized—safety hazard. Especially for a pregnant woman trying to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

If he felt any guilt whatsoever about compromising her safety, it didn’t sound like it when he replied, “I’m ready to return to our bed whenever you are,
zhena
.”

If anything, he sounded the exact opposite of guilty. Flirty Nikolai was back.

“You know, this isn’t going to work,” she told him.

“What?” he asked.

“This. Taking me to Greece, showing me a good time so you can get back in my pants. You’re manipulating my emotions with a big gesture, and using scale to get what you want. Don’t think I don’t get that.”

Get that and totally falling for it, she added to herself. Between her pregnancy hormones and the pleasant surprise of an exotic trip, she had no idea how she was going to keep her Celibate Bride Defense going when they got back to the hotel room.

Say something smug,
she mentally begged him.
Convince me I’m right to be way suspicious of your motives in bringing me to this insanely gorgeous country with its incredibly yummy food.

But all Nikolai said in that moment was, “Here we are.”

“Here” turned out to be an empty, amphitheater-style movie theater. Thanks to an almost full moon and cloudless sky, she could see it was made out of the same bleached white terracotta as the hotel and surrounded by what she guessed were olive trees. A warm breeze blew through the space bringing a heady floral scent with it, like a blessing from the Greek gods.

So. Freaking. Romantic.

Sam shivered as even more of her defenses came crumbling down.

“Here,
zhena
.” Nikolai took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders.

They stood there for a moment, facing each other like they had that night at the party, the last time he’d given her his jacket, Sam’s heart helplessly beating with the thunder of a thousand horses.

She knew she should give the jacket back to him. Her dress was on the shorter side, but long-sleeved. It wasn’t like she needed it in such a temperate climate. But his jacket was warm, and she liked the spicy, dark scent of the cologne he’d decided to wear tonight.

It didn’t make her want to throw up. Like, not at all.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, leaning forward. And for a moment she thought he would kiss her again, wondered how she would resist kissing him back if he did.

But he didn’t kiss her, just whispered in her ear, “Will you give me your hand,
zhena
?”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she was going to wake up early. Go down to the front desk and look up the meaning of that damn Russian word. She swore this to herself solemnly.

Then she gave him her hand.

He led her to the two best seats in the house, which wasn’t hard to do since they were literally the only two people there if you didn’t count the handful of theater staff.

“When does the movie start?” Sam asked, after a movie attendant came by with two sparkling waters and a small white bag of caramel popcorn.

“Soon,” he answered, holding the popcorn out to her. “This is how people do on dates. They share popcorn, da? That is what it said in woman’s magazine Isaac got for me.”

She stared at him. “You did
not
have Isaac get you a woman’s magazine.”

“How else do I know how to do this dating?” he asked.

She shook her head, feeling both amused and overwhelmed. Oh, she was in trouble. She didn’t have any idea if he was being this charming on purpose or if he really had no idea how appealing he was right now with his innocent I-read-this-is-how-you-do-it-in-a-magazine shtick, but either way, she could sense the boundaries she’d set down between them blowing away in the warm Grecian breeze.

Especially when his large hand closed around hers, enveloping it in warmth.

“S-so what’s showing tonight?” she mumbled, hoping to change subject from unbelievably romantic dates she had no business going on. And to distract herself from the way her whole body became attuned to his as soon as they touched.

“This week it is
The Wrong Girl 3
.”

Sam tried not to let the disappointment show on her face. Not that she didn’t appreciate the popularity of the film, based on three books about a girl living in a post-apocalyptic future, whose mother marries a maniacal despot out of desperation. But teenage girl, abusive stepfather—it was a little close to home and certainly not the movie she would have chosen to watch in her free time.

“But tonight, theater shows different movie,” Nikolai told her.

“Which one?” she asked.

As if in answer to her question, the screen suddenly came to life with the opening strains of “As Time Goes By” followed by the Warner Bros. Pictures logo. And then, a plaintive voice saying, “I need your help, Veronica!”

Luckily they were the only ones in the movie theater, because Sam screamed out loud. It was the
Veronica Mars
movie! And on a twelve-foot screen, no less!

Yeah, that sealed it. She leaned over and dipped her hand into Nikolai’s white paper bag of caramel popcorn, feeling she had no choice but to confess, “Best. Date. Ever.”

“
D
ID you enjoy the movie
?” she asked Nikolai as they made their way back to the hotel a couple of hours later. She was glad for the long walk back because she wasn’t quite ready for the night to end.

Not only because this had seriously been the best date in the entire history of all dates that had ever gone down, but also because she didn’t know how she should handle the hotel room sleeping arrangements. The room had a blue couch, long enough for her to stretch out on, and she’d made a point of placing her suitcase next to it before they went out to dinner, her way of letting him know nothing had changed between them except the locale.

But that was before she’d discovered Nikolai’s event was really a date… really, more like a mini-honeymoon. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was the best one she’d ever experienced. And though she wasn’t one to be pressured into doing anything she didn’t want to do, well, c’mon! It was kind of hard not to want to do pretty much anything with him after a date like the one he’d just taken her on.

“
Da
, I liked movie,” he said. “But I am more wondering why you like her so much—this Veronica Mars character.”

“I guess I like the idea of a girl taking control of her own life, using her wits and unique skills to one-up the bad guys. Also, she’s really spunky, the way I wish I had been when I was younger.”

“Me too.”

“What?” she teased, scrunching her nose up at him. “You wished you had been a spunky girl?”

“I wished for more control when I was young,
da
.” His face darkened. “My home life was not happy.”

She waited for him to say more, but this time he didn’t surprise her. Just continued walking, letting the subject fade away before asking, “How is your morning sickness?”

“Much better now,” she answered. “I haven’t felt nauseous for the last ten days, so I think it’s finally letting up.”

“Book I am reading says you should eat many small meals throughout day. Eating like this will keep your stomach happy and give you nutrients you need.”

She did a double take. “Wait, you
read
that? In a book?”

“
Da
,” he answered, sounding confused by her confusion.

“You, Nikolai Rustanov, are reading a book about… what? Like a guide to pregnancy?”

He stiffened beside her as if he’d been caught do something embarrassing. “
Da
,” he admitted.

“But why?” she asked, finding it hard to imagine this hulking male beside her was actually reading a book like
What to Expect When Expecting
when she hadn’t even started reading pregnancy books herself.

“Because…” He went quiet, and for a few moments there was only the sound of her wedges and his shoes, crunching against the gravel. “Because I am not bad man like you think. I was not bad caretaker to Pavel because I wanted to be. I was not good parent because… because I don’t know how to be good parent. My mother and father maybe not so good at job.”

Her mind went into buffer mode, she was so shocked he was once again sharing something real with her. But thank God she was a natural counselor, her autopilot soon kicked in. “So because you had bad parents, you think you’re doomed to be a bad parent? Is that why you were keeping your distance from Pavel when we first came to live with you?”

He nodded, his eyes seemingly glued to the street beneath his wing tips. “He is maybe not lucky boy. At first I think, I will give him money and room to live in, that is all he needs. But when I see you with him, way you are with him, way he is with you, I realize I cannot give him what you give him because I do not know how.”

He expelled a harsh breath, as if saying this to her was actually a major effort on his part.
Maybe it is
, she thought, waiting for him to finish, completely fascinated.

He continued to look down at the ground as he said. “When you tried to leave my house, take my baby with… When you said to lawyer I am bad parent, I… I…” he shook his head seemingly unable to finish that sentence. “After that I told Isaac to buy for me books about how to be good father. It is hard because maybe my English is okay for talking, not so good for reading, and they have many books translated to Russian for woman but not for man.”

Sam stared at him, her eyes wide as her hands unconsciously came to rest on top of belly. “Are you trying to say you want to be a father? A good father to this child?”

Silence, then a quiet, “
Da
,” as if he’d had a hard time working up the nerve to say that one word. “I want to be good father. Good father to both Pavel and our baby.”

He finally met her eyes, his own filled with utter sincerity. “I’m hoping I can read enough books in time.”

Dammit. And there went Sam’s last line of defense. She’d let Pavel into her fortress willingly, happily. But Nikolai’s simple wish struck an impossible chord, one that crumbled the last wall she’d constructed around her heart to keep out men like Nikolai, cracking it open with a sudden flood of compassion.

She couldn’t help it. She didn’t know what had happened to Nikolai as a child, but she knew it couldn’t be good. And her instincts were telling her that this man walking beside her, the one Indiana hockey fans called Mount Nik, was way more vulnerable than he’d previously let on with his balcony invitation and his bedroom manipulations and his hard stares.

With her heart beating in her throat, she said, “I’m assuming you read all the stuff your lawyer dug up on me?”

A pause, as if he was considering whether to tell her the truth or not. But eventually he answered with a quiet, “
Da
.”

“Then you know I wasn’t exactly raised in a great situation either. My mom had the potential to be a good parent, but she had zero self-confidence and she was really pretty, which turned out to be a fatal combination. She got involved with some awful guys. My dad was the first of them, and the biggest favor he ever did her was catching his life sentence without possibility of parole while she was pregnant with me.”

Sam thought about the man she’d only known through prison pictures. He’d died in a prison riot when she was ten, but it wasn’t like that really mattered in the grand scheme of things. His imprisonment meant her mother had been given a long enough respite from his violence to give birth to her. But that respite had been brief in her mother’s otherwise permanently stormy sea. After that, she’d never been able to carry a pregnancy to term again.

“After my father, it was one guy after another beating her up. My stepfather was the worst of them, so of course he was the one she married. He got some work in Indianapolis soon after and we followed him to Indiana when I was sixteen.”

“Did he hurt you?” Nikolai asked, his voice a cold wind on a warm night.

“No,” she answered. “He came at me a couple of times, but my mom taught me well. Go and hide when he started drinking, she’d tell me. Remember when I described how I found Pavel hidden in the cabinet that night? That was me all the time. I was like the queen of cowering while my mother was getting hit.”

She let a few beats go by before asking, “Did Slimy Kevin’s fact-finding mission say why I shot my stepfather on my eighteenth birthday?”

He didn’t answer, so it must have. Yet she still felt compelled to explain, to tell him all of it. To make him understand what happened.

“Growing up, I thought my mom was so weak and I got sick of it. All the drama, patching her up after my stepfather was finished. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I was seventeen, I met this guy name Anthony… and he felt sorry for me, I guess. He convinced his parents to let me stay with him, just until I finished school. I got a thirty-one on my ACT, so I automatically got a full ride to IU. So it was only supposed to be for a few months.”

Her face darkened, remembering. “It wasn’t the best situation. I felt really ashamed all the time, being around Anthony and his perfect family. All of them acting like Anthony was a saint for dating me and convincing them to let me stay there—which he was. I’m still very grateful someone showed me that kind of compassion. I just… I just wished things were different. I spent a lot of time back then resenting that I’d had to impose on him and his family like that. And I hated my mother for putting me in that position.”

She sighed thinking of how judgmental she’d been before getting her degree in psychology, before she’d been able to understand something had happened to her mother to make her think these were the only kinds of relationship she deserved. But Sam pushed through her personal shame to continue with the story.

“My mom called me on my birthday, begging me to come over to eat my cake. She always made me a German chocolate cake on my birthday. I can still remember her limping around a few times while she was making it, but she always did it, no matter what. I told her not to bother, but she begged me to come over. Begged me. I still can’t believe I made her beg…”

Sam had to pause while another wave of shame knocked her around. “But eventually, she wore me down. I agreed to come. I only planned to stay for a few minutes. One slice of cake I told myself…”

The memories choked her up, clogging her throat with tears. She stopped.

“Tell me rest.” Nikolai’s voice was quiet, but strong in its command.

She had to finish the story. Not just for him, but for herself. Sam took a deep breath, made herself calm down “So yeah, when I got off the bus, I took a detour to my favorite neighborhood sub shop. Ate a whole twelve-inch meatball grinder so I’d be nice and full when I got to my mother’s and wouldn’t have to stay too long. If I hadn’t stopped to do that, maybe I would have gotten there in time, but I did and when I came through the door, my stepfather was standing over her body with a knife.”

The image of her mother lying on the floor, her beautiful face frozen in a rictus of terror, like she’d known this would be the last beating, the one that ended her—that image came back to her like a perfectly preserved movie scene. So much blood…

“I know the statistics now,” Sam said, gritting her teeth against the pain of the memory. “I know physically abusive relationships often escalate to murder. That forty-percent of murdered women worldwide are killed by their partners. That many women like my mother don’t think they’re deserving of good relationships, and their spouses alienate them from everyone they know, make them feel worthless, like they’re all alone… so they don’t seek help.”

Sam shook her head. “But back then, I didn’t take the violence seriously. It was just this big thorn in my side, something I imagined my mom enduring for the rest of her life, because she was too dumb and weak to leave my stepfather. So I did the worst possible thing. I left her alone. I was her last resource and I left her alone with him. Made her beg me to come home.”

Sam’s voice cracked, as regret over her ignorance flared anew inside her chest. It took a few more shallow breaths before she was able to talk again. “Anyway, they didn’t live in a great neighborhood and like a lot of people, my stepfather kept a gun in their apartment. Near the door, in fact, so it was easy…”

Sam grimaced. “I don’t remember much, just being angry, and then the gun was going off, and I guess I was a better shot than expected, because the bullet hit him in the face.”

Sam wrapped Nikolai’s jacket tighter around herself, suddenly cold. “So that’s how I ended up getting tried for murder. Because technically, he’d already killed her. There was no reason for me to kill him. Even my boyfriend couldn’t deal with that. He visited me once in juvie to say he was sorry but his parents didn’t think he was equipped to continue associating with somebody who had my kind of issues. He made it real obvious he thought I was a nut job for killing my stepfather,” Sam thought of her stepfather’s prediction when she moved out to live with Anthony. “Too much trouble for a piece of ass, I guess.”

She recovered with a brave smile, “But luckily I had good grades and a decent court lawyer. She got them to try me as a juvenile, and the judge was a woman who believed the story she made up for me about self-defense. So I got very, very lucky.”

She sighed and finished with, “And that’s why I’m here today, walking around Greece with you instead of rotting away in the penitentiary system, just like my father. And that’s why I started Ruth’s House, so no woman anywhere would ever be left alone with her abuser like my mother was. And that’s why I do things like teach yoga and mindfulness along with providing counseling services, to give women the tools they need to get out of bad relationships and stay out of them. But trust me…”

She forced herself to look directly at him now. “I’ve got baggage, too, but here’s what I’ve learned working at Ruth’s House: your past doesn’t matter. Only what you do today matters. What you continue to do tomorrow. If you want to be a good father to Pavel and to this baby, you can do it. I know you can. You just have to try.”

And there it was. Her long, sordid story laid out for him in full, so he could see she wasn’t some perfect parent, pre-made. That she was a human, who’d done some truly terrible things before getting to the place where she could properly mother a child.

She’d hoped her story would inspire him, but judging from his reaction it did the exact opposite. He glanced over her, opened his mouth… closed it again. Then he looked away. Just like Anthony had looked away from her when he’d been dumping her across a gray metal table.

His inability to speak, to so much as look at her, made Sam’s heart sink.

Why had she told him everything? He already knew most of it anyway from the court papers. So why hammer it home here and now? This was why she never told anyone about her past. Well, except Josie—and even then, that was after years of knowing her, after hearing Josie’s own tragic story. But she’d only known Nikolai for a few months, and the fact remained that she barely knew anything about him. Yet she’d told this huge Russian guy everything—all because he’d read a couple of parenting books.

She couldn’t have been more pissed at herself.

They walked the rest of the way back to the hotel in awkward silence.