Alexei walked from the recreational center to the Movie Motel, his heart light in ways it hadn’t been for years. Holly had responded to him. She’d softened like butter the minute he’d touched her.

The gravel crunched under his feet and the air was brisk on his skin. How long had it been since he’d simply enjoyed the world? Since he’d even acknowledged there was beauty and goodness in the world? He stopped, letting the night flow around him, grateful he’d made it. He breathed in, letting the air fill his lungs. This was the right place to be, the right thing to do. He could feel his brother’s approval. This was what he owed Mikhail—to lead a good life, to bring joy into the world.

He laughed as he opened his eyes. If he kept it up, he would get emotional. It happened a lot since the day he’d made the choice to let revenge go. He started walking toward the motel again, his head filled with happy plans. He was going to have to find a car. He was going to have to find a job. All of that would have been taken care of for him if he’d chosen to stay in witness protection, but Holly was more important than such minor matters.

“’Night, Alexei.” Gene waved at him from behind the counter. The door was open, and Gene had a bag of popcorn in his hand. “How was the wedding shindig?”

Alexei followed his line of sight. From where he was standing, Gene could watch the screen. It was playing a Doris Day film. The Technicolor of the movie lit up the night.

“I miss wedding, but I enjoy the dancing very much.” He’d loved the feel of Holly’s body pressed against his. He’d loved it even more when he’d covered her with his own. He’d meant what he’d said to Caleb. He’d only been kissing her and touching her. He had no intention of their first time together happening on a picnic table. There would be time for freaky sex in odd places later. The first time would be in a bed with flowers and wine. And maybe a cranky doctor.

Gene nodded. “I bet you did. You Russian fellas are real good dancers.”

“You were not invited?” It seemed like almost everyone in Bliss had been invited to the wedding. The hall had been filled to the brim with guests.

“I don’t like to leave this place much,” Gene explained with a sigh. “Besides, if I had left, I would have missed a couple of new guests. Real nice folks. You know, I offered Stef and Jen a room for their honeymoon. They wanted to go to Hawaii.” Gene’s head shook like he couldn’t understand why anyone would willingly leave Bliss.

If Alexei had his way, he would take Holly on a great honeymoon. Someplace nice and tropical, where he could enjoy the sight of her in a bikini and he and Caleb could go fishing.

Because he intended to be in a happy threesome, though he wished the man who was to be his partner was less of a stubborn ass. He’d met donkeys with heads less thick than Caleb’s. Doris Day continued on her quest for love on the big screen behind him while Alexei changed the subject.

“Tell me something, Gene. I am needing to find work. Do you know of anyone who needs good employee?”

“What kind of work are you looking for?”

Well, he’d spent the last several years working for the mob. He was excellent at interrogating criminals, laundering money, and covering up crimes. He doubted anyone was looking to hire a thug. “I am good with cars.”

Gene’s eyes lit up. “I heard Long-Haired Roger was looking for a mechanic. Now, you want to make sure you find Long-Haired Roger and not Roger. They’re different, but lots of people get them mixed up. Roger is kind of mean, and folks around here are pretty sure he’s planning on attempting to secede from the US. I don’t think Uncle Sam is going to let Roger form his own country and name it Rogerville, but he gets touchy about it, so I would avoid him. Now, both Long-Haired Roger and Roger are married to women named Liz, so you can’t tell them apart that way. And their wives are sisters. And they don’t much like each other. I think their dad should have come up with different names, but he just called them Liz One and Liz Two.”

Gene, he’d discovered, could talk for long periods of time. He knew everyone in the area and had a story about each person. Unfortunately, Alexei didn’t have time this evening to listen. He needed to shower and sleep. In the morning, he had to meet with Caleb and then find a job. “I will find the Roger with long hair.”

“Oh, he doesn’t have long hair anymore. He went bald a couple of years back.”

And Gene could be very confusing. “Perhaps you give me address.”

“Now that’s a real good plan. I can do that.” Gene wrote down the address, and Alexei bid him farewell.

Perhaps by tomorrow he would be gainfully employed. Maybe between the blood tests and a real job, Caleb would relax a bit.

Maybe when Caleb realized he wasn’t alone in caring for Holly, he would discover that he could handle a relationship. After what had happened to his wife, he couldn’t blame Caleb for being scared of commitment. Watching his wife murdered in front of his eyes would have had an effect. But Alexei meant to draw Caleb back into life. He was too good a man to let himself wither and die. He’d given Alexei his life back. Alexei meant to return the favor.

He was about to open his door when he noticed someone had beaten him to it. He wasn’t a fool. There were still people who wanted him dead. He’d left a small thread hanging in the door. It was on the concrete of the sidewalk now. Gene’s staff didn’t clean at night.

Someone was in his room.

He calmly pulled the Glock from the holster at the small of his back and flicked off the safety. Luckily Holly hadn’t noticed it. He would more than likely have to explain why he walked around armed all the time. But for now he was thankful for the feel of it in his hands. He thought briefly about leaving. He could head for town and talk to whoever was manning the sheriff’s office, but this was his problem. The last thing he needed was to run into Logan Green and ask him to watch his back. The last time he’d talked to Logan Green, the man had been tortured and nearly killed by Alexei’s mob boss, buying Alexei time to save Holly. If Stefan Talbot hadn’t come along, he wasn’t sure Logan would have made it. No. He wouldn’t ask anyone to risk his life. If he really had people trying to take him out, he would have to consider leaving Bliss. He couldn’t risk Holly.

In one smooth move, he opened the door and got into a firing stance, his legs strong beneath him, both hands on the gun.

And sighed because his past had caught up to him in the form of a couple of law enforcement professionals. And they were kissing on his bed. He now knew who had checked in while he was gone. “You could not make love on own bed?”

Michael Novack rolled off his partner and looked up at Alexei with a grin on his face. “We’re lucky that was you and not someone else. One of these days they’re going to fire us.”

Jessie buttoned up her shirt. Unlike Holly, Jessie didn’t blush. She simply winked at Alexei and smoothed her straight dark brown hair. She was dressed in her normal uniform of slacks and a button down. Jessie dressed like she was one of the boys. It suited her slender, athletic build, but Alexei greatly preferred Holly’s curves. “Surprised to see us? We were surprised you left.”

Was he surprised to see the US marshals in Bliss? Not really. But he’d hoped they would let him go. “The job was over. The trials are done.”

Michael was a former linebacker. He often told Alexei about his college days. He flexed his arms over his head, displaying a body built on broad lines. He was dressed in dark slacks and a button down, though it fit him differently than his partner/girlfriend. “Two of those cases are still on appeal. I explained that to you.”

Appeals. Yes. There was nothing appealing about the prospect. The appeals process could take even longer than the trials. It was a criminal’s last legal way out. “I don’t wish to stay in Florida motel room for years waiting to see if criminals’ lawyers will get them out. I wish to get on with life.”

“So you traded a motel room in Florida for one in Colorado?” Jessie asked, a smirk on her face. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense. And this place is boring. Even the movies are super old. I don’t get it. Unless, of course, there’s a girl involved.”

He’d never mentioned her name to either of his handlers. He’d kept that to himself. He’d erased her texts and burned her letters. He wanted no mention of her to come to anyone who might leak it. Now that the trials were done, he’d felt safe enough to come back to her. No one would care that Alexei Markov had disappeared into the west and found his wife. He would even insist that Caleb be the one to legally marry her so there was no record of his name linked with hers.

“Her name wouldn’t happen to be Holly Lang?” Michael asked.

“How did you know?” Shit. He’d fucked up. He’d known he couldn’t keep it a secret, had never meant to from the locals, but he didn’t want anyone outside of Bliss to know about her.

Jessie looked at him sympathetically. “No one broods the way you did over anything but a woman.”

“I don’t know. I think I brood over many things. Dead brother. Many crimes committed in name of revenge. Lots of peoples wishing to eviscerate me.” He had a long list of worries.

“Yeah, you’re a walking mental health issue,” Michael replied, his dark head shaking. “But we always knew it was about a girl. We had your file, man. Holly Lang is a local waitress. You saved her life.”

“She is nice lady.” He downplayed it. Let them believe he would have done the same for anyone.

“And you’re in love with her.” Jessie wasn’t going to let up. Alexei had often compared the slender brunette to a badger. She could be mean and stubborn when she got an idea in her head. “You’re here for her. And don’t think I didn’t know about the cell phone. I’m just a great believer in forbidden love.”

Michael sent a leer her way. “She is. Now marriage is another story. She doesn’t believe in that at all.”

Dark eyes rolled. “Dude, seriously? You bring that up now? We would both be fired.”

Michael wouldn’t let up. “Or one of us could move to a different department, maybe something less life threatening.”

Jessie’s lips pursed. Alexei got the feeling this was a well-worn argument. “Sure you can. Enjoy the paperwork, buddy, because I’m not moving.”

Alexei reholstered his gun. He wouldn’t be using it this evening. “Please to be having relationship discussion later. Tell me if you’re taking me back into custody.”

He would have to find a way to talk to Holly. He couldn’t disappear again. He couldn’t walk into her life, kiss her for all he was worth, and then step back out. It would crush her, and he didn’t trust Caleb to pick up the pieces. Not yet. Caleb was like the nursery rhyme Humpty-Dumpty. He required piecing back together after a long fall. But Alexei couldn’t put him back together again if he was holed up in a motel in some nondescript city in Middle America.

“Technically, if you don’t want witness protection, we can’t force you into it. You’ve proven valuable to the government, but not in an eyewitness fashion. If you choose to leave the program, we can’t stop you,” Michael explained.

“I choose to leave.” He breathed a deep sigh of relief. He’d done his duty by putting the criminals away. He’d saved lives by cutting their careers short. Now it was time to do his duty to Caleb and Holly.

“I told you we shouldn’t have called him Howard.” Jessie smiled at him. “We knew that would be your answer, but we’re here anyway. Look, we’ve grown to give a shit about you. I think the judge is going to throw these suck-ass claims out, but if I’m wrong, we should know in a week or so. We don’t have to tell our boss you’re opting out yet. We’ll explain we’ve moved you to another location, and if these dirtbags get another trial, we go deep and take this Holly person along for the ride.”

“No. I do not wish this for Holly.” Holly would wither being forced to change her name and stay in cheap motel rooms, always hiding. And she wouldn’t go. She couldn’t live with never seeing her son again. “If I must go, I will go alone.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Michael said seriously. “We should know soon. In the meantime, neither one of us has mentioned your new home to anyone. Not even our director. You should be safe here. I take it you traveled under an assumed name?”

“Of course. I take bus. Not much securities there.” Just very smelly people on his particular bus. But when a person wanted to be anonymous, there was no better transportation.

“He’ll be fine, babe,” Jessie assured him. “And we’ll have a mountain vacay. We’re in the room next to you. We can be here in two seconds flat. Well, unless Mr. Horny here has his way, and then it’s more like fifteen, twenty seconds.”

“Bitch.” But Michael said it with deep affection.

It hadn’t taken Alexei long to discover that the partners were more than mere friends. He’d spoken with Michael about it. They had only been lovers for a few months, but Michael loved her deeply, and Jessie seemed to feel the same way. They acted professionally while working, but Alexei could see that they were going to take advantage of their impromptu vacation.

And he would take advantage of his.

 

* * * *

 

Caleb cleared off his desk. He checked and rechecked his exam room. It was small and really the only neat room in his office beside the teeny tiny waiting room that almost no one used. No one waited in Bliss. In Chicago, he’d had a huge waiting room with perfectly designed furnishings. Every inch of that space had been modeled to give the patient a calm, peaceful place to wait while the doctor took his time. He’d paid a decorator a fortune to ensure that his office was the best. Well, his wife had paid a portion of his fortune. He’d never given a crap about any of it. He’d only wanted to work, but his wife and family had insisted that Dr. Caleb Sommerville have the most prestigious-looking office they could afford. Two years later, he was in a mobile hospital in Africa. Yeah. Caroline had loved that.

He now had two folding chairs and a whiteboard where people could sign up for appointments. More often than not, all that was on his board were snarky notes.

He hated bringing Holly to his office. He avoided it when he could. When he’d needed to be with her twenty-four-seven, he’d taken her on his rural rounds and then back to her place. If she spent too much time here, she would probably wander into his living quarters, and he definitely didn’t want that. The apartment over the clinic was a stark glimpse into his soul. Yeah. ’Cause you’ve fooled her with your charming banter. She’ll be shocked to find out you don’t give a crap about decorating. Because she thought you were fucking Martha Stewart before.

What the hell was he doing? Why was he worried about this? It wasn’t like it mattered. He wasn’t starting a relationship with Holly. He was protecting her. Protection was all he could give her. He’d proven he couldn’t handle a real relationship. He’d put his work in front of his marriage. He’d started out with feelings for Caroline, but he’d cared so little for her in the end that he’d left for months at a time. She’d had to travel halfway around the world to tell him she was leaving, and then he’d gotten her murdered.

He didn’t deserve Holly. He couldn’t give her the life she needed. He was too dark for her. How could he tell her all the things he thought about, dreamed of? He couldn’t.

But then did Alexei really deserve her?

“Knock, knock.” A soft feminine voice floated in from the outer office.

Caleb stopped. He didn’t think he had any appointments. Only Alexei’s extremely thorough checkup and Holly’s intensely awkward one. How was he going to put impersonal hands on her? Even checking her pulse gave him a hard-on.

He certainly hadn’t been expecting Nell Flanders.

“There you are!” Nell didn’t walk. She sort of floated, as though her dainty feet didn’t quite touch the earth she claimed she was so connected to. Nell was a healthy thirty-year-old with shiny brown hair and a penchant for public protests. “I’m glad I caught you before you opened up.”

God, he hoped she wasn’t going to ask to go on rounds with him. Nell had a reputation for attempting to experience what she called life lessons. She’d tried working with almost everyone in Bliss in order to connect with the people around her. Her experiments had ranged from the successful—she was quite good at selling baked goods at The Trading Post—to the utterly disastrous—she’d nearly given Max Harper a heart attack when she had tried to set all of his horses free. Luckily Max was a damn fine horse trainer and on a short leash from his far more patient wife. Otherwise, Nell Flanders might have been in trouble.

Caleb didn’t need trouble today. He had all he could take. He would run these tests for Holly, and then he would leave town for a few days because he wasn’t going to watch her date Alexei. No way. No how.

Except he had to. Callie was having a baby. Fuck. He couldn’t leave. First he had to deliver the baby, and then he had to stay around because newborns required checking. Maybe he could call someone else in? Who was he kidding? There wasn’t anyone else.

“Uhm, am I interrupting something?” Nell stood, staring at him, a basket of green in her hand. Some sort of plant.

“No.”

She looked around the office, her eyes studying the surroundings. “Oh, well, you seemed to be concentrating. I thought you might have been doing some serious meditation.”

More like some serious freaking out. “I don’t meditate. What do you need?”

Yep, his bedside manner was in full swing.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

He stared at her, suspicion tickling at him. No one wanted to talk to him. He’d cultivated a reputation as a taciturn bastard. If it wasn’t about a physical malady, no one attempted to engage him in conversation. He could sit for hours in Trio or Stella’s beside someone and never utter a word until it was time to go. “Hello” and “good-bye” was about what he’d trained people to expect from him. That and “take a deep breath” or “this is going to sting.”

Except Alexei. He’d talked a lot that day. And he’d taught the Farley brothers. He’d felt bad for those kids from the moment he’d heard they were getting bullied, but until Alexei had talked to him about it, he hadn’t done anything. That day by the pond, he’d really talked to Bobby and Will. He’d given them advice his own father had given him. It had been easy because he’d known if he fucked up or said the wrong thing or had a panic attack, Alexei would take care of them.

“Have I lost you again?” Nell asked.

“All right. I’ll hear you out,” he said slowly. This was Holly’s friend. He could listen.

“I want to talk to you about Holly.”

Or not. He turned back to his equipment, dismissing her entirely. How large bore of a needle could he convincingly use on Alexei without breaking his Hippocratic oath?

He could hear her foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the linoleum. “I’m not going to go away because you ignore me.”

“Most people do.” And he liked it that way.

A confident huff came out of her mouth. “Most people haven’t handcuffed themselves to giant trees for days at a time. You know, you learn a lot when you protest. I know how to talk when being screamed at and threatened with bodily harm and various lawsuits. I’ve been called every name in the book. I’ve been shot at and played chicken with a bulldozer. I won. You can ignore me all you like, and I’ll keep talking until you listen to me. That can be now or five days from now. I’ve cleared my calendar.”

Crap. He believed her. He turned back to Nell, who set down the potted plant and smiled. He gave her his best scowl, but she simply brightened her smile. She wasn’t going away no matter how much he tried to intimidate her.

He knew when to retreat. “All right. I’m listening.”

“You know I like you, Caleb.”

He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. He hadn’t thought about whether Nell liked him or not, but she seemed to require a response. “Thanks.”

Her smile widened. “Oh, thank you. I really do like you. You’re a healer. You have a healer’s aura. It’s beautiful. You’re lucky. Some people get auras that don’t blend well with their natural coloring, but yours is lovely. Unfortunately, you also have a black cloud that follows you around.”

Again, he had no idea what she wanted, but she stood there, her doe eyes wide, forcing Caleb to respond. “Sorry.”

She waved him off. “Oh, you can’t help it. Something happened to you, something traumatic to damage your aura, but it’s fixable. I don’t suppose you have any interest in seeing a shaman? She makes awesome Blizzards, too. I can get you in for half price.”

No way was he going to Crazy Irene unless he needed some steak fingers. “No. I’ll keep my dark cloud.”

She continued on as though that had merely been the opening volley in her attack. “It’s not a literal cloud, of course. Just a dark lining around your naturally sunny aura.”

Now he was sure she was insane. He’d never been sunny. Not one day in his life.

Nell continued, her voice filled with earnest pleading. “But you let that dark cloud affect everything. I can see plainly that you have feelings for Holly.”

Now it was time to lie. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. Everyone knows it. You’re not exactly hiding it.”

He thought he had been. “What gave me away?”

She stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language and then replied slowly. “Uhm, you go into the diner three times a day. You turn around and walk out when Holly isn’t working. I happen to know that Stella has taken to giving you Holly’s schedule so you don’t scare her customers by walking into the middle of the diner, staring everyone down, and then walking back out without saying a word. Seriously, Caleb, people think you’re a terrorist or something.”

“I accept that.” As long as no one shot at him, he really didn’t care what they thought. And a shot of adrenaline never hurt anyone. It was good for the heart to have a shock every now and then.

Nell crossed her arms over her chest, frustration evident in her squared shoulders and down-turned mouth. “You scare the tourists. Strangely though, you don’t scare Holly. She doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that you stare at her like a tiger waiting to pounce. I think what makes her sad is that you haven’t pounced at all, and now Alexei is going to pounce, because let me tell you, that tiger isn’t sitting on his hill waiting for gosh knows what to happen. That tiger knows he’s hungry, and he’s going to eat your pie, Caleb.”

He was having trouble with her line of logic. First he had a cloud following him around, and now he was a starving tiger on a hill and he had an odd diet. “Tigers eat pie?”

“In my version of life, they do. In my perfect world, tigers are vegans, too.”

And in Nell’s perfect world, he would crap rainbows. “Are you asking me to pounce on your best friend?”

Her hands came up, fists pumping in victory. “Yes. I am so glad you understand. I don’t get it, but sometimes people don’t think I communicate well.”

It said something about him that he sort of understood her. “I don’t think pouncing on Holly is a good idea. I don’t think I would be a good boyfriend.”

Nell stepped forward, stopping shy of putting a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re underestimating yourself. You can do anything you want to. Are you willing to try?”

He wanted to. It was right there on the tip of his tongue to say yes. Maybe he could pretend to be the same man he’d been twenty years before. He could pretend he still believed in things like happiness. “It’s not a good idea.”

She frowned but held her ground. “All right then. You were my front-runner, but since you’re getting out of the game, I have to ask you to step aside. I mean really step aside. No more longing looks. No more charging in when trouble happens. Yes, we all know you’re the one who paid for her roof and her car, and you’re the one who forced the mayor to okay the new stop sign in front of Stella’s because you’re worried she could get hit crossing the street. And the next time there’s a killer in Bliss, let someone else take care of Holly. And there will be a next time. We all know that.”

His entire body tensed at the very idea. He wouldn’t be able to breathe not knowing that she was okay. When she’d been in danger before, he’d needed her right there or he’d have been utterly worthless.

Nell’s finger wagged his way. “You don’t like the idea, do you? Well, I don’t like my best friend crying over you. It’s time to decide if you’re in or you’re out. And if you’re out, you need to leave her alone. What you’ve done isn’t fair.”

“I never even asked her out.” He could hear the sullenness in his voice. He sounded like a fucking five-year-old. Why did that asshole have to come back? Why couldn’t he have stayed in Florida? He was forcing Caleb to make decisions he didn’t want to make. Holly had been crying over him? God, he hated the thought.

“No, but you made her think you liked her,” Nell replied. “And I think she might hold back from Alexei if she hopes there’s a chance for the two of you. Let her go. Let her be happy with Alexei. Unless, of course, you want to join them.”

“Fuck no.” He didn’t share. He wasn’t going to get involved in one of the crazy threesomes this town seemed to thrive on. Even if they did work out and everyone was happy and secure. Nope. Not going there. “Do you think he genuinely cares about her?”

Nell’s eyes softened. “I think he was willing to die for her, and he barely knew her name. He’s been reliable in communicating with her, and that can’t have been easy given what he’s been through. I think she’ll be safe with Alexei.”

Confusion was riding him hard. He didn’t want to think about the long letters Alexei had sent to him. They had been full of confessions and gratitude at first, and then he’d simply started telling Caleb about his life. As if he wanted to know. He’d only read them because he’d had nothing better to do. “Then why the hell would you want me to be with her if you think Alexei is so damn good for her?”

Nell didn’t react at all to his huffiness. She merely smiled, though it struck him as a sad thing. “I thought Holly would be good for you. In some ways, I think you need her more than Alexei does. But you don’t see it, and I can’t make you. You’re going to follow this path. I can see it plainly now.”

He felt his chest tighten. Holly was going to be with Alexei. Holly was going to choose the Russian.

Choose? You never gave her a choice, and now it’s too late to force her into one. She would be miserable and possibly resent the hell out of whoever made her choose. Face it. You fucked up. It’s what you do.

Nell sighed. “No moving you, is there? I suppose the world needs its mountains like it needs the air. Well, since you’ve made your decision, you should know that if you screw up Holly’s new relationship and her happiness, then I will do very terrible things to you.”

It was like Snow White threatening to kill him. “Terrible things?”

She nodded primly. “Yes. I don’t know what those things are yet, but I have an excellent imagination. And I have years of pent-up rage. Oh, I lock it away because I believe anger is useless, but I swear on the god of your choosing and whom I honor because I honor all religions, that I will find a use for all that rage. I will direct it at you, and it won’t be pleasant. You like to be alone, don’t you?”

He was pretty much always alone. Even in a crowd of people. “Yep. So don’t think that turning the town against me will hurt too much.”

Nell’s brown hair shook. “Oh, I would never do that. Bad, bad karma. It does strike me, though, that a man of your persuasion needs a friend. You know, someone who would be around you all the time, talking to you, keeping you company. Yes, someone who talks as little as you do probably wants to listen to someone like me talk a lot. I can talk for hours. I never let up. I can talk about everything. Ask Henry.”

It put a chill through him. She would do it, too. Nell Flanders, twenty-four-seven. “Well played, Nell. I’ll consider it.”

Her chin came up, and she nodded shortly. “See that you do. I’ll make a list of the topics of our conversations so you’ll have a better idea of how terrible this could be. In the meantime, I brought you a plant. Your office needs a softer touch. Even if no one ever sits in this waiting room, it would be better for you if you had something lovely and lively to call your own. I don’t even want to see your apartment, do I?”

His apartment had a leather recliner, a television, and a card table. It had a bed, but only because it came with the building. He’d never slept on it. There was nothing on the walls. No pictures of his family or knickknacks. Nothing at all that celebrated a life. Everything was utilitarian. And a bit messy.

“I’ll find some more plants. You’ll see. The oxygen the plant gives off will make you feel better. You have to water it once a day.” She stopped and stared at him. “I’ll take care of that. And maybe I’ll upgrade the waiting room a bit. You won’t mind. I know you won’t.”

He got the feeling that if he did mind, she would start talking. “Nope. Feel free to decorate to your heart’s content.”

She turned on her Birkenstocks as the door opened again. “Hello, Alexei.”

And, of course, Alexei smiled and reached for her hand. Charm seeped from the asshole’s pores. “Ms. Nell, it is good to see you. You look lovely this morning.”

Nell blushed. “Thank you. That is kind of you to say.”

“I only to speak the truths.” The bastard smiled widely, taking both of Nell’s hands in his. “I am going to be dating Holly. I would love to do the double with you and Henry.”

Nell’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no. Despite his very open mind, Henry isn’t into sharing or swapping or any of that stuff.”

Alexei’s confused face turned toward him. It was blatantly obvious that he had no idea what Nell thought he’d said. He thought briefly about letting the fucker hang, but the words came out before he could stop them. “He was talking about a double date, not a foursome. But I find it interesting that your mind goes there.”

He was satisfied by her flushed face and completely silent mouth. Oh, it opened, but nothing came out for a moment. He’d finally found a way to silence Nell Flanders. Maybe this minor war she’d started wasn’t over yet.

Alexei, ever the gentleman, stepped in. “So sorry. Many, many apologies. I am not interested in the swappings of wives, merely in sharing of meal.”

“Of course. Henry and I would love that. Thank you, Alexei.” Nell hurried out.

Unfortunately, Caleb had the feeling she’d be back.

Alexei turned to him, bowing slightly. “Thank you for the translation, my friend. My words are still muddled in brain. I do not always understand English sayings. And they change so quickly. Now that I am back here, I think I will watch more of the MTVs so I can speak more like an American.”

Dear god, he would sound like he was straight off the Jersey shore. “All I know is that if you’re reliant on me as a translator, you’re in serious trouble. I almost let Nell believe you wanted an orgy.”

“No orgies. Just a very happy relationship. One where Holly gets everything she needs. If that comes from me, then good, but I think she is so much womans, she might require more.” He said it with a serious expression on his face.

He wasn’t sure how to take that. Yep. If Alexei needed him to translate, they were all in trouble. He didn’t understand the guy.

Good thing he understood his job and his duty to his patients. A deep sense of joy lodged in his heart. Alexei might waltz away with the girl, but not until he’d been thoroughly examined. Thoroughly. After all, that was a doctor’s job.

He felt a smile cross his face. He was pretty sure it wasn’t reassuring. He pulled on his latex gloves. “So, do you want to start with the blood work or the prostate exam?”

Alexei went a little pale. “I am being sure I do not know what this prostate is. Well, I have suspicion.”

Now Caleb grinned widely and held up a tube of lube. “Don’t worry about it, buddy. It’s all a part of the service. You need a prostate check every year.”

“But I promise not to use prostate in making the love with Holly. I will keep her far away from prostate.” Alexei backed up, his eyes going to the lube.

Nope. He wasn’t getting out of this so easily. “Sorry, buddy. It’s this or a full colonoscopy. Welcome to America. Now please bend over.”