The Professional (39 page)

“Perhaps I would tell you more about myself,” he said, “if I were more certain of you.”

The finish line was still between us, a glaring line of chalk. “Then we’re right back in the same catch-22. I find it difficult to throw all-in when I know so little about you. You give me a crumb of information only every few days. At the rate we’re going, by the time I’m ready to sign on, twenty years will have passed.”

Speaking of time . . . We’d drifted to stand in front of the great d’Orsay clock window. Between the roman numerals, I could gaze out and see the misty Seine below, the lights of the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden.

Faced with this view, my current friction with Sevastyan faded, giving way to memories of my father, the Clockmaker. When the minute hand ground forward, I had to stem my tears. “How are you doing, Sevastyan?” I didn’t have to be more specific.

His face was granite under pressure. “I grieve, as you do. I think about him a lot.”

I took Sevastyan’s hand in mine. “Thoughts of him come all the time, sparked by so many different things.” Tonight, I’d reflected on his letter, on his hopes for me. Earlier this week, I’d seen white tigers on a street-side billboard, and my mind had snapped right back to laughing with him. “Will you tell me a story about him?”

Sevastyan was opening his mouth—doubtless to decline.

“Just one,” I hastily said.
“Pozhaluista.”
Please.

Looking like he was about to speak in front of thousands, he cleared his throat. “When I’d been with him for a few months, he took me to a summit meeting. Another
vor
’s son said something about Paxán that I took as an insult. I got into it with the older boy—which meant the two of us were sentenced to fight in the middle of a packed warehouse. ‘You’re too smart to be taking blows to the head,’ Paxán told me as he walked me through the crowd.” Sevastyan frowned. “He was always telling me that I was smart. So I told him I would ‘fight smart.’ ”

I could imagine this exchange so vividly: Paxán shepherding him through a throng of
mafiya
, tough Sevastyan with his chin jutted—even as he soaked up the attention from Paxán. Because no one had given it to him before?

“As I headed toward the makeshift ring, men were yelling all around us, placing bets. I was just fourteen, and it was . . . a lot to handle.” Understatement. “Paxán looked so concerned that I’d get hurt. I told him he shouldn’t worry about me.”

“What did he say?”

“He sighed and told me, ‘Best get used to it, Son.’ The first time he’d called me Son. Something clicked in my head, and I finally accepted that I would have a home with him, that it was permanent.”

Had he been worried for months that he would have to return to the streets? To leave a place like Berezka?
Oh, Sevastyan.

“After that, I was determined to make him proud, to win.”

“And you did?”

“It took three men to haul me off my unconscious opponent.”

At fourteen. “Paxán let you continue fighting after that?”

“I convinced him I’d do it for no reason at all—or for money and respect. He had no choice but to agree.”

“You didn’t go to school?”

“I was learning from him,” Sevastyan said matter-of-factly. He didn’t have a chip on his shoulder about schooling; no surprise, Filip had lied. It was clear Sevastyan was confident in his intelligence and learning. It was also clear Paxán had nurtured that confidence.

“Each week, he bought me books. Mathematics, economic theory, philosophy, great Russian literature. And history,” he said. “He never told me I had to read them, but the reward was discussing the books with him, usually while he tinkered with those damned clocks.”

Sevastyan’s unmistakable affection made my eyes water anew. “Thank you for telling me that story.” He’d opened up to me about something! Every time he showed me these glimpses of himself, I fell a little bit more in love with him.

He raised his brows. “I think that’s the most I’ve ever spoken.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

At that moment, the clouds parted for us, revealing the moon. Its light spilled down over the river and illuminated the numbers of this clock, making them glow.

The full moon. Had it been a month since Sevastyan had taken me to Russia? Since he’d first kissed me?

I wondered if he realized this. It seemed that everything he did was by design. Might Sevastyan be a closet romantic? In a casual tone, I said, “This is an anniversary of sorts for us.”

He didn’t look surprised at all. “Yes. It is.”

“Are we commemorating the first night we kissed?” Before I’d had any idea what this man would mean to me.

“I want to.” He drew me against him. “You can’t imagine how badly I’d wanted to claim that kiss.”

“You claimed far more than that on the plane.”

His lids grew heavy as he obviously thought back to what we’d done. “I was a very lucky man that night.”

“And now?”

“I’ll consider myself lucky, my elusive girl, once you consider yourself taken. Every man has a weakness; you are mine. I’ve accepted that. Now you must accept me.”

No, every
person
had a weakness. Aleksandr Sevastyan was my own.

“I need you all in, Natalie.”

He
had
opened up to me tonight, and we could build from that. I smiled up at him. “I haven’t ruled anything out, Siberian.”

“I suppose that’s good enough—for now.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb over my cheek. “Do you want to see your painting again? We can go back.”

Back? When the minute hand ground on once more, I didn’t feel sadness. This time I felt a tiny bloom of optimism.

Maybe we were at last moving
forward
.

“T
he plighted life’s not treating you well?” Jess queried a couple of days later. “I thought you guys were lovey-dovey all the time after the museum.”

“If possible, he’s even more distant.” This morning he was once again MIA. And,
shocker
, he’d left no note, belatedly texting me:
in meeting

Gee, thanks. I’d thought talking about Paxán would be our common ground. Yet that story about my father had been the last I could coax from Sevastyan.

“He sounds like a downer to me,” Jess observed.

“We’re supposed to go to Russia in two days. He promises everything will be different there.”

“And?”

“I’m leery. Jess, I’m not sure if I want to return with him.” In some dark moments, I didn’t know if I
could
—not without sacrificing some part of myself. “How can the sex be so good when other parts of our lives are so lacking? I know without a doubt that no other guy will fit me so well in bed. I found him on my first foray.”

“You sound like you’re in love with him, Nat.”

“I am,” I admitted. “But it’s complicated. This love might have a razor’s edge to it. And it’s exhausting. I don’t remember the last time I was so tired.”

Perhaps I needed to get out from under his influence and process everything that had happened. His personality was larger than life, the things he’d shown me as well; it could be that I’d overloaded.

Sometimes I thought a break from his intensity might be welcome. Other times I shrank to think of parting from him.

“You’ve got to bring this to a head,” Jess said. “If you want answers out of him, then demand them. Speak to him in the language he understands: Unicorn. Or Glock, or whatever. Dig until you get the splinter out of the lion’s paw.”

“And if I
can’t
dig it out?”

“Then let him get fucking gangrene—alone. Put a cap on this, girl. Give it one more shot, but then you’re done.”

Maybe she was right. He expected me to do all the adjusting—while he stubbornly remained the same. Maybe I should stop compromising and making excuses for him.

“You know you’re probably going to have to cut this one loose, Nat. I think you’re hoping that I’ll tell you to stick it out through thick and thin, through all his wank moppet damage. Wrong. Sometimes self-preservation means preservation of self.”

“That’s deep, Jess.” And it was exactly where I was failing: keeping the Natalie in Natalie. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Read it in a twatting romance novel.”

I gasped. “You can
read 
?”

“There’s my Nat! I missed you. Lose the downer unicorn and come home.”

I recalled his reaction the last time I’d suggested a break; he’d
trashed the dresser. “Taking time off will be difficult with a guy like him.”

“Then remember my advice.
ABC, baby
.”

After we hung up, I dressed, readying for battle. What I wouldn’t give for a pair of jeans and clodhopper boots—or any garment at all from the bottom of my Nebraskan laundry basket.

I settled on a satin-weave blouse in cobalt blue and a black pencil skirt. I knotted my hair atop my head as I slipped into a pair of pointy-toe heels.

It wasn’t until later that afternoon that he returned, making his way up to our room. Weariness emanated from him.

Not just weariness—distance. It was worse than it’d ever been. And I could swear I even saw resentment in his expression.

Resentment toward . . .
me
? What the hell did I do? “We need to talk.”

He shucked off his gun holster, rolling his head on his shoulders. “I don’t want to do this right now.”

“You’re not going to put me off any longer. I’m done whiling away here when you go out for your mysterious meetings—that you keep secret from me. I’m done being shut out of your life.”

His eyes were full of warning. “You need to learn patience.”

Patience? He was putting this back on me again? “When do you intend to let me in? When do I rate high enough to get to know your business? To actually discuss things with you? After we sleep together? Already did that! Once we’re living together? We
are
.” I tapped my chin. “Hmm? Maybe after you whip and screw me in front of an audience? How much more personal can things be than that? Yet you won’t share what’s going on in your life? In your thoughts?”

“Maybe it will
never
happen,” he said, filling me with alarm. “Did you ever think about that, Natalie? How about
never
?”

“If I’m not your partner in this, then I’m no better than a doll, a toy you bring out and store away whenever it suits you.” Like I’d done with my arsenal. “How do you think that makes me feel?” To him, I was merely a belonging—which he’d
told
me.

Should’ve listened to him, honey.

He scrubbed his palm over his mouth. “Maybe you expect things from me that I do not know how to give.”

“You know how. You just refuse!”

“So I’m to shoulder all the blame? Why should I tell you anything when I can sense you’re pulling away from me?”

“Oh, no, no, no, Siberian. I’m not pulling away—you’re shoving me out of the fucking door! You keep this up, and I will bolt. Do you understand me?”

Though I sensed a weird kind of panic in him, his demeanor was all confidence. “There’s no leaving, sweet. You’re as addicted to me as I am to you.”

Under the influence. I couldn’t deny this. Not to mention that I was stupidly in love with him. Yet if he wasn’t good for me,
to
me . . . “It’s true, I am addicted to you. But maybe it’s time to kick the habit—”

A commotion sounded downstairs. Sevastyan lunged for his holster, had his gun out in an instant. “Stay here. Lock the door behind me.”

My heart slammed. “Who’s here? Is it another
vor
’s men?”

He cocked his head. After a moment, he said, “No, and that’s a problem.”

“How? Why??”

“Because I can kill an enemy’s men.”

A
s I locked the door behind him, I wondered why Sevastyan hadn’t told me to go to the safe room.

But didn’t I know? He didn’t want me to watch the camera feeds. Which meant I
had
to.

At the desk, I scanned screen after screen as he made his way downstairs. My eyes widened when I saw the monitor that covered the parking area. Our guard was laid out on the ground. At least he looked like he was still breathing.