Chapter Twenty-One

 

Vadmir helped me to the lot and into his car. He carefully buckled my belt and set my purse on my lap.

My head was spinning. A combination of shock and codeine. Everything I looked at had a hazy outline.

“Where are we going?” I asked when he started driving.

“To my place.”

I rested my head back. “No, take me home. You can’t just waltz back into my life and snatch me away. I need to go home and rest.”

“You need to be looked after.” He glanced at me. “Fuck, you look pale as a skeleton, no, I mean spook…ghost. Pale as a ghost. What are they thinking making you go to work today?”

“They just wanted to debrief us.”

“Then they should go to your house.” He pulled a pair of shades from the dash and put them on. “So where are you living? At the airport hotel?”

“No, I’m in Eddington Gardens, not far from the rink.”

“Yes, I know where that is. What number?”

“Eighty-six.”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I was floating, dreaming. “Why did you come to the office?” I asked studying the way the sun intermittently flashed over my eyelids as we drove past a long row of palm trees.

“To get you.”

“But…?”

“Shh.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “Talk later. Questions later. For now you need to rest.”

I did as he’d suggested. My back was sore, the muscles were spasming, and my head ached. It was a relief to be in a soft chair, with my head resting. The hard plastic seat in the meeting hadn’t been doing my bruised body any good.

I must have dozed with the sunshine warming me, because when I opened my eyes again Vadmir was helping me out of the car.

“Are your keys in your purse?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you walk?”

“Yes, I’m fine really.” I swung my legs ’round and slid from his car to the floor. I thought my knees were going to support me but for some reason they just kept bending and folding.

“Hey, careful.” He caught me and held me close. “You need help to walk.”

“No, really…well okay, but it’s just the painkillers I took. I’m not that injured, just a sore back and a sore head, a bit, well, I don’t know really, it’s all so…”

“Shh, you’re okay now.” He shut the door, and, still holding me upright, helped me into my apartment block.

* * * *

 

When I woke the sun was setting. I was in my own bed wearing just my underwear and facing the window. For a moment I lay there looking at the wash of colors streaking across the sky. There was a white airplane trail, a thick fluffy line fading into the distance.

I heard movement to my right and turned.

“Ah, shit,” I muttered when my back complained.

“You are awake.” Vadmir was sat in a big pink chair that I used for reading. He was holding his cell.

“Mmm, yes. How long have I been asleep?”

He glanced at his phone. “About eight hours.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it is good for you to sleep. How are you feeling now?”

“Still a little sore.” I licked my lips. “And thirsty.”

He stood, walked up to me and smoothed his hand over my hair. “What would you like? Water? Coffee?”

“Coffee please.”

He leaned down and touched his lips to my head, the way he used to when we were in Sokol. When he was mine and I was his.

I watched him leave the room then adjusted my pillows into a more comfortable, upright position. I realized that although my back was still sore, the spasm appeared to have gone from the muscles. Also everything didn’t look so blurry, perhaps I’d gone a bit mad with the painkillers before the meeting, taken one too many.

I heard voices. Harmony was home. That was good. She needed rest, too.

Within minutes Vadmir was back holding two mugs of coffee. He handed one to me and then sat on the edge of the bed and took a sip of his.

I studied his face. A face I’d come to know so well but now didn’t feel as if I knew at all. I thought back to watching him play. I’d felt so removed from him when he’d been down there, on the ice. I’d struggled to imagine it was the same man who’d sneaked into my bedroom and made love to me tenderly, quietly, and then made promises of more to come.

But my mind felt less fudged now, the painkillers having worn off, and I thought of how he’d barged into my work and stolen me away. Manhandled one of the company’s top bosses and then threatened a security guy.

“Why the hell are you here?” I asked as a swarm of irritation prickled over me.

He frowned as though confused by my sudden outburst. “To see you.”

“And so just like that you turn up.” I rolled my eyes. “And grab me.”

“Yes.”

So he wasn’t going to deny just turning up and accosting me then. “Well, how about last week? Didn’t you want to see me then?”

He pressed his lips together and glanced out of the window.

“Last week,” I said. “I wanted to see you. Hell, I was stupid enough to hang around waiting for you to call. You’d said you would. Crazy old me actually believed you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not good enough.” I sipped my drink and let the reassuring, familiar flavor warm my mouth and throat. Inside, though, I still felt chilled by his week of silence. “Nowhere near good enough.”

He frowned and shook his head.

“I haven’t got the patience to be messed around by a guy who acts like he cares one minute but then can’t follow up on a simple arrangement the next.” I was on a roll now. “How hard could it be to pick up the phone? Even if you’d decided you didn’t want to see me anymore, if something, or rather someone else had taken your fancy, it wouldn’t have hurt to let me know.” I wafted my hand in the air. “Oh, I know what we had was a whirlwind and not exactly conventional but still, you could have had the decency to end it rather than just let it fade into the horizon.” I pointed out of the window with one hand and held the duvet over my bra with the other. My coffee sloshed dangerously near the edge of my cup.

“Sammy, I—”

“It’s her, isn’t it?” I braced for his reply. “Alena. You’re back with her. I knew this would happen. How could you not swap her for me? She’s Russian, your family love her. It just would have been nice to be told and—”

He’d pressed his hand over my mouth, the same way he had when we’d made love that last night in Sokol and I’d gotten too vocal.

“Be quiet,” he said. “And listen.”

I swallowed and glared at him.

He didn’t remove his hand.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he said, “It got complicated after you left. You are right. Alena did come back.”

“Mmphf…” I managed behind his hand as I continued to glare at him.

“But it is not what you think.”

I shoved at his arm and he dropped it away. “So tell me.”

He rubbed his palm down the side of his face.

“So tell me what it is like,” I said. “Because I have no damn idea why you’re here if you’re back with your ex.”

“I’m not back with her.” He went to reach for my hand but I pulled it away.

He sighed. “She’d been to see Darya, as you know, and then decided, after Darya had talked about America and her dreams of coming here, that she would like to move to Orlando with me.” He paused and huffed. “She came to see me, said that she would move out here within the month and we could get married as we’d once planned. Have the family we’d talked about when we were growing up and that she’d never stopped loving me.”

My belly quivered. I wasn’t sure how long the coffee would stay down. Damn it. All my fears were being realized.

“But it’s not like that for me,” he said, “I tried to tell her no, I did tell her no, but it fell on deafness. She wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t in love with her anymore. She is so hooked on the idea that it will always be me and her and I couldn’t convince her otherwise.”

“So what happened?” I asked quietly and dreading the answer.

“She asked me to think about it. For one week.” He put his mug on the locker and then did the same with mine. “I said that I would, but only to get her off my back.”

“So you’re considering it? Her coming out here to be with you?”

“No.” He leaned forward and cupped my cheeks in his palms. “No, not for a second.”

“So why…” His hands felt so right on me yet still I couldn’t forget the pain of him not calling.

“I just needed to make that phone call, yesterday. Tell her that it wasn’t happening, ever. I wanted that conversation out of the way before I saw you.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “And it was stupid of me. I should have called you, pushed Alena from my mind the way she had me all those years ago. But we have so much history and I’m not a cheat. I would never cheat. I’m a one-woman man.”

I reached up and placed my hand over his. I was beginning to weaken for him.

“I felt like I’d been unfaithful to you, to her, too.” He frowned. “I was in a mess all week, Sammy, I could hardly concentrate on the game. But I made the call yesterday morning. I put an end to it with her forever. I’d planned on coming to see you as soon as I could, make it up to you and hope you still liked me.”

I pressed my hand over his. “Vadmir.” His face had twisted with anxiety. I hated seeing him like this. He was usually so big and full of confidence. It reminded me of the time I’d seen him sitting alone in the bar in Moscow, pinching the bridge of his nose and his thoughts a million miles away.

“And then this.” He swallowed tightly, as though he had cotton wool in his throat. “I’d just come out of practice yesterday and the crash was all over the news in the players’ lounge. I felt sick.”

“I’m okay.”

He shook his head. “I could have lost you. Really lost you without ever having told you how I felt. And that fire officer, he…”

“He what?”

“He…that should have been me. I want to be there to save you, protect you. It should have been me at your side.”

“You can’t feel guilty about not being there,” I said. “It’s a fire officer’s job to be on standby in case of emergency and he’s trained to deal with it.”

Vadmir leaned forward. He came so close I could see the flecks of darker blue in his irises. He didn’t speak.

“And I’m trained for that kind of thing, too,” I went on. “I don’t just hand out drinks and duty free. I know the protocols for handling emergency situations.”

He shook his head. “Well, it’s too damn dangerous, this job of yours. It’s got to change.”

I pulled back and raised my eyebrows. “What?”

“I don’t want you doing it.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, Vadmir.” I pulled his hands from my face. “I’m my own person.”

He shut his eyes and let out a long, low breath, seeming to deflate as he did so.

“And I happen to love my job,” I said.

“So you want to get back on a plane? You want to get back in the air? Right now?”

I looked out of the window. A new jet engine trail was being made where the last one had faded. He’d forced me to think about something I’d been putting off bringing to the surface of my mind. “No. I don’t.” Saying the words made it real. I didn’t want to get back onboard, not yet anyway.

“Then you won’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

He rubbed his palm over his short hair creating a scratching sound in the quiet room. He then stood and went to the window.

I settled back on the pillow a little more, adjusting it so my spine was comfortable, and waited for him to explain. Once nestled into the softness I made the most of admiring the view. He had the tight, dark denims on that hugged his ass so well and certainly distracted me from thoughts of returning to work. Instead I licked my lips and remembered how soft the skin on his butt was.

“The thing is, Sammy,” he said, turning to me.

“Mmm?” I quickly looked up at his face. “What?”

“I’m in love with you.”

“I…I…what?” I stared at him. “You can’t be.”

“Why the hell not?” He shoved his hands onto his hips and frowned.

“Well, we…I don’t know, we’ve only just met.”

He walked over to the bed and sat down again. “No we haven’t. I agree it’s not months or years, but fuck, I hated not speaking to you. All I wanted was to have you by my side. Tell you about my day, find out how yours had been and then go to bed with you in my arms.”

“So if you’d wanted all of that you should have called and explained.” I huffed. “It wasn’t exactly a great week for me, you know.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I should have called and I am sorry.”

“I didn’t even have your cell number.”

“You will have, from now on. I’ll always be there, I promise.”

“Oh, a famous Vadmir promise.”

He tightened his jaw. “I always make good a promise.”

“Not to me, you haven’t.” I thought of all the dirty, delicious things he’d said he’d do to my naked tied up body.

Suddenly his face softened. “Ah, I see.” He slipped his hand behind my head, cradled my skull and hovered his lips over mine. “You’re talking about that kind of promise.”

I stared at his lips and wanted them on me. “You’re not in love with me,” I whispered, not daring to let myself fall for him any more than I already had. Love had been cruel to me in the past. I was loath to get burned again.

“I am so in love with you,” he said. “When I thought something might have happened to you, when that picture of the plane burning was broadcast, I thought my heart would stop beating.” He brushed his lips over mine. “I know you’re not in love with me, not now, but maybe you could be. Maybe you will one day think I’m not such a stupid Russian boy and allow your heart to beat for mine.”

My eyes prickled with tears and my chest tightened. “Vadmir,” I managed. “You stupid Russian boy, can’t you tell?”

“What?” He stroked his other hand down my cheek. “Can’t I tell what?”

“I’m already in love with you.”