Alexei.
Every minuscule particle of Sasha’s being honed in on that solitary word. He was here. Alive. They were both miraculously alive. She stilled in a heartbeat and looked up into Kadir’s sincere, worried face. “You’re not trying to kill me?”
It was then she noticed his shoulder was bandaged. The thick strips crossed around his torso, ran under his opposite arm, and circled a bulky stack of gauze where he’d taken Misha’s bullet.
“No. Not at all.” Deeply chiseled features smoothed into a warm, amicable smile. “I’ve been trying to tell you two about Hughes. I got a piece of intel that clued me into Grigoriy. Not knowing if he’d tapped your phones, or whatever else, I couldn’t say anything outright.” Sinking back into the chair at the side of her bed, he slid a hand down her arm to give her fingers a squeeze. “I kept trying to send Alexei warnings. Trying to get him to meet with me and bring you along. He wasn’t listening.”
“You shot at me.”
He shook his head. “At Grigoriy, and at Hughes. Never at you.”
She eyed him warily, still not totally convinced. “But you were trying to buy me.”
A small, sad smile touched his handsome face. “For your father, Sasha. Though he secured you with Saeed, he wouldn’t let the matter die. He never let it go. I was to purchase you and send you to America.”
Her heart twisted painfully at the memory of her father. For so long she’d believed the despicable lies he wove to protect her. Now he was gone. She hadn’t even had a chance to tell him she forgave him.
She sank into the pillow behind her head and surveyed her surroundings. At her right, machines blipped and shushed. The sterile
room, the wide tinted window, and the soundless television mounted in the right-hand corner near the ceiling screamed hospital. She glanced down at herself, the covers tucked just beneath her breasts. Her skin was pale, marred with bruises where the IV jutted from the fragile skin on the back of her hand. Her head hurt.
Her stomach was on fire.
She gingerly pressed a hand to her midsection and winced, but managed to hold in the agonized groan. “What happened?” Turning her head toward Kadir, she looked beyond him at the open door. “Where’s Alexei? Tell me he’s okay.”
“He’s getting coffee.”
“No, he’s not.” Alexei’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. Wide-eyed in momentary surprise, he took one step into the room, glanced at the cluttered tray beside her bed, and dropped his coffee on the floor.
Sasha would have laughed if the light chuckle that escaped didn’t send streaks of fire coursing through her midsection.
Then Alexei was shouldering Kadir away, wedging himself between the chair and the railing to her bed, and gathering her hands in his. He brought them to his mouth. His lips fluttered against her knuckles. “Princess.” He bent his head to rub his cheek against her hand. “God, I’ve missed you.”
She managed to work one hand free from his tender possession and slid it into his unruly long hair. He yielded to the slight push against his scalp, dropped his cheek gently to her belly. The pressure hurt, but it felt too good to move away. She savored the silence, hearing in the light fall of his breath all the words that lay between them that would somehow never express what filled their hearts.
“Lie to me,” she whispered. “Tell me I’m free.”
“Mm.” He pressed a chaste kiss to her ribs and backed out of her light grip. Muttering, he began to sift through a stack of papers on the bedside tray, tossing bits and pieces left and right, over his shoulder, off the edge.
“What are you doing?” In all the time she’d known him, she’d never seen him look more harassed.
“I’m disorganized.” He set aside the pitcher of water, a plastic cup. “I can’t balance my own checkbook. I’ll never remember your birthday.”
Why did he sound apologetic? With a puzzled downturn of her brow, she worked her way upright to brace on her elbows. Another chuckle threatened as he muttered another unintelligible string of words. She bit it back, wincing. “For God’s sake, stop, before I laugh myself into two halves.”
He let out a grunt of triumph and pulled a stapled stack of papers from the bottom of the pile. Flipping the pages, he folded them back to the last one. He fished around for something else in the drawer, and after several amusing seconds, dropped the papers on her breasts and offered her a pen. “Sign this.”
“What’s this?” Squinting down the length of her nose, she tried to read the typeface.
“Sign it before James Tennyson, the new head of MI6, hears you’re awake.”
Her hand wrapped around his, she paused. The revelation settled around her. “So Hughes is dead?”
Alexei took her hand and placed the pen in it. “Sign the papers.”
Good grief, he was like a kid who’d been made to wait too long for a trip to the toy store. She couldn’t help but grin. “What is it?”
As his bright green eyes locked with hers, all the antsy agitation slid from his expression. He held her stare, silent for a long heartbeat. Hesitation, a glimpse of self-doubt flickered in his gaze. “A Black Opal employment contract.”
“A what?” He had to be kidding. She was afraid of guns.
He wasn’t kidding, she realized, when he didn’t blink. He swallowed, the effort visible in the bob of his throat. When he spoke again, his low voice held gravely roughness. “It’s the only way I can marry you.”
Her heart turned a slow somersault behind her ribs. Tears blurred
her vision, turning the contract into moving specks that resembled ants.
“Unless…you’d rather not.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I mean yes.” A laugh slipped free, but she didn’t feel the sharp lance through her belly. “Show me where. I can’t see.”
He didn’t guide her to the paper. Instead, he wiped the tears from her eyes with the pads of his thumbs, and his mouth slowly descended to hers. His kiss was soft. Teasing. Full of promise.
And ended all too soon.
He pulled away. With an awkward smile, he set one palm beneath the paper and tapped the line. “Right here, then I’ll explain everything.”
Nothing had ever felt more right as Sasha scribbled her name.
O
ne shoulder braced against the doorframe, Misha watched the man he called brother dote upon the woman who had captured his heart two and a half years earlier in a dirty strip club in Moscow. The woman Alexei had moved heaven and earth to protect, and who he would willingly die for. They exchanged glances far more intimate than any man had a right to know. Soft kisses that spoke of the deep hunger that burned between them. In the fleeting catch of their lips, the constant way they touched, Misha witnessed what he would never know.
Part of him wanted to enter and thank Sasha for all she’d done. To give his well wishes for her recovery. It would be long. Arduous. The bullet had lodged dangerously close to her spine and they’d had to pry her open wide to extract it. Luckily, it hit no major organs, only barely perforating her stomach. But it would take weeks, months for her muscles to mend back together and her normal strength to return.
She would overcome, he had no doubt. Alexei would guide her through every torturous, frustrating day.
The other, larger part of him drew him away from the door, into
the hall, toward the elevators and the exit where Kadir waited with the BMW. The peace Alexei had found wasn’t Misha’s to share. It would never belong to him.
A smile touched his face as he strode through the doors. At the passenger door, he stopped to look up in the general direction of Sasha’s window. For the first time in longer than he could remember, unfamiliar warmth stirred in his heart.
“Good luck, my friends,” he whispered as he ducked into the car.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER…
A
lexei stood at the bottom of a stone staircase, looking up at the impersonal two-story building of stone. His right hand curled around the address his accountant sent two months ago. It had taken that long to find the courage.
His left hand tightened against Sasha’s. Hers squeezed in return. She tipped her head up as he turned to look at her, in sudden need of the strength she possessed that allowed her to overcome a critical injury. The same strength that allowed her to accept what he had once been and look beyond it, embracing him for the man he was, flaws and all.
She rose to her tiptoes and brushed a quick kiss against his cheek.
It was all he needed to take the necessary step forward. Shoulders squared against a torrent of doubt and apprehension, he led her up the stairs and into the cool interior. The scent of medicine assaulted his nose, and he flinched against the pungent aroma. Behind a long barren counter, a young woman with streaks of purple in her hair smiled in greeting.
“Can I help you?”
Alexei walked to the desk, but as he opened his mouth to answer, words failed him. What if they knew who he was? What if they didn’t know? He didn’t belong here. He was certain they’d tell him so.
“We’d like to see Olivia Adams,” Sasha answered for him. Her English carried the thick, Moscovian accent he’d come to adore. They rarely spoke it among themselves, and though she’d used it the two
years she spent in Dubai, the last eight months holed away in their new home with little contact with the outside world made her rusty.
In that moment, he loved her even more.
The young girl’s smile brightened as she pulled out a clipboard and flipped the pages back. “Oh, Olivia. She hasn’t had a visitor in weeks. Your name please?”
“Alexei Nikanova,” Sasha continued.
Running a perfectly manicured, polka-dotted nail down the paper, the woman frowned. “I don’t see you listed.”
Alexei’s gut hollowed. He
didn’t
belong here. After all this time she didn’t want to see him—he should have known. Shouldn’t have expected any less.
“But we phoned,” Sasha protested. “We left his name. Filled out papers you sent.” If it were possible, she sounded more upset than he, as her English broke under the surprise.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we only allow family and listed friends to visit.” The attendant set her clipboard on the counter. “If there’s been an error, you can come back next Tuesday when the supervisor is in. She’s on vacation this week.”
Alexei felt Sasha’s anger rise in the tensing of her spine, and he knew standing straight still pained her. That defiant stiffening punched through his self-doubt. He shook his head, flinging aside hesitation. His mother would never allow a stranger in her room. But she would welcome her
son.
He cleared his throat. “Try Mark Adams.” Damn, the name felt foreign.
“Mark?” The young woman’s face lit up like a torch. “You’re Mark? Olivia’s been telling everyone you’re coming since she heard the news. Come with me. She’s in room 117.”
There had been only two occasions in his adult life that Alexei could recall the feel of tears sliding down his cheeks. The first when he held Sasha in his arms, her blood sticky against his fingertips. The second when she whispered,
I do.
But he felt them slide down his face now, and ashamed, he brushed them aside just as they stopped in front of his mother’s door. He knocked.
From a chair in the corner, his mother looked up from her knitting. “Hello?”
“Mom?” His throat felt raw.
“Mark,” she exhaled as she pressed her aged and freckled hands to her heart. “Oh, Mark. Come here and let me hug you.”
With a reassuring nudge from Sasha, Alexei found the strength to cross the room and stand before his mother. He embraced her, uncertain, half afraid he might squash the frail woman he barely recognized. But her hug held surprising strength, making his momentary assessment that she was weak, a falsehood.
“It’s so good to see you.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he murmured. “I—”
She gave his lower back a pat. “Shh. We have time, no?”
Throat tight, Alexei nodded.
A fragile, loving smile spread across his mother’s face. “Then we’ll talk about the past later. Now, who’s this?” She looked around him at Sasha.
He edged out of her embrace, wrapped his arm gently around Sasha’s tiny waist, and cleared his voice. “Mom, I’d like you to meet Sasha, my wife.”
Sasha held out her hand in greeting, but to Alexei’s surprise, when his mother took it, she pulled Sasha down into another tight hug. It was too much for Alexei. The tears came again, reducing him to an embarrassed mess. He forgot all the things he’d planned to say, all the explanations that would excuse the long years he’d stayed away. All that mattered was the objective. If he knew the outcome, he could handle this visit a hell of a lot better.
Crouching in front of her overstuffed chair, he took his mother’s hand between both of his. “Sasha and I were talking. It doesn’t seem right for you to be here when we have a house that’s too big for us.”
His courage faltered, and he looked to Sasha. She gave him a supportive nod. But it was the love shining in her eyes that allowed him to try and spit out the words they’d told no one. Not even Clarke.
“You need a garden. You used to love to plant flowers and vegetables. And you used to talk about having a porch to rock on while the crickets sang.”
Damn it. He was going about this all wrong. Nothing sounded right. With a frustrated mutter, he turned a pleading gaze on Sasha.
She gave him a smile, then turned it on his mother. She spoke slowly and precisely, taking great care with her words. “What Alexei means is we would like you to come live with us. There is much to make up for, if you wish to.” She dropped her hand to Alexei’s shoulder. “And we would love for you to be with us when your grandchild comes in spring.”
“Oh, my gracious.” His mother wobbled as she stood, but she made it to her feet with little effort. Thin arms clasped them both in a tight hug. “You know how to make an old woman’s heart sing.”
Alexei stood then, gathering both women close. He looked over the top of his mother’s head, at the reflection in the mirror of the three of them, and smiled. The lies were finally over. It had taken him too damned long to get over needing them, but he was no longer afraid of the truth. They had time to cover where he’d been, why he’d stayed away. Time to make up for too many lost years. But the strength and affection in his mother’s embrace already told him she knew more than he’d assumed. Even if not, she already forgave.