CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Meet me at the diner at one today.
The message had pinged his phone about an hour earlier, but Ilya hadn’t heard it. Now he had only twenty minutes or so to take a shower and get over there, and even if he rushed, he was going to be a few minutes late. He shot Theresa a message in return letting her know he was on the way, but he stalled out in his bedroom, not sure what he ought to wear.
It wasn’t a date, he reminded himself. They weren’t going to do that. Even if he was interested in dating anyone on a regular basis, which he wasn’t and hadn’t been for a long time, it couldn’t be Theresa.
“You look nice,” Galina said when he stopped in the living room on the way out to tell her he was leaving. “You always did clean up well, Ilyushka.”
She sounded drunk, although there was no evidence of her drinking. The pet name was a sign, though, as was the way she lolled on the couch watching daytime television. Ilya ran a hand over his hair, damp from the shower, and looked down at the jeans and T-shirt he’d finally decided were nice enough to make it obvious he’d put in some small effort, but casual enough to show it hadn’t been too much.
“I’m going out,” he said.
His mother laughed, low and throaty. “I see that. To meet a girl, yes?”
“I’m . . . yeah. Sure.” He patted his pockets to check for his phone and wallet and keys. He didn’t want to ask, but he did. “You okay? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine. You can bring back some coffee and cream when you come home. We’re out, and your brother used to be sure we had some, but I suppose he has more on his mind these days than whether or not his mother is supplied with coffee and cream.”
“Yeah, I can do that.” Ilya hesitated, wanting to get out of there, but the old, distasteful compulsion to check up on his mother lingered. “You sure you’re all right?”
She looked at him. “Go meet your other woman. I’m fine, I told you.”
“She’s not—” He bit back the words. Galina was baiting him the way she’d been doing for years, but he didn’t have to rise to it. Instead, he nodded and ducked out of the living-room doorway without another word.
He made it to the diner in another fifteen minutes by taking backstreets and avoiding the traffic lights. He pulled in at 1:12 and had no trouble finding a spot in the lot because the only other car there was Theresa’s battered gray Volvo. She was leaning against it, tapping a message into her phone, but she looked up with a smile when he got out of his car.
“Hey,” she said. “You made it. Good.”
Ilya looked toward the building, brow furrowed. “Doesn’t look open.”
“It’s not. They closed last week.” Theresa slipped her phone into the bag hanging on her shoulder and clapped her hands together. “Want to go inside and check it out?”
“Like . . . break in? Aren’t we a little old to be doing that sort of thing?”
She grinned, and once again Ilya was struck with how broad and beautiful that smile was, and how a man might be tempted to do almost anything to earn another from her. “I have the key.”
“How’d you get a key?” He followed her across the lot to the front door.
She glanced at him over her shoulder as she fit the key into the lock in the double glass doors. “I have a good relationship with the Realtor. I took care of a lot of property transactions at my last job. Sometimes she couldn’t get to a site at a convenient time for the buyer, so I handled it. She trusted me with the keys. C’mon inside.”
Ilya had been inside the diner hundreds of times over the years, but it looked different when it was dark and empty. He waited as Theresa found the bank of light switches on the wall and flipped them on. She gave him one of those grins he couldn’t help returning and gestured at him to follow her into the center of the dining room. She spun slowly, looking around and even upward to the ceiling.
“It needs some cosmetic work,” she told him. “But I had everything else checked out from some people I really trust, and it’s still solid. And the price is totally right. Apparently the Zimmermans want to unload it as fast as they can so they can get out from under the back taxes and just move on.”
“Wait, wait.” Ilya held up both hands. “What’s going on here?”
Theresa’s smile faded, though her gaze stayed bright and focused on his. She drew in a small breath, as though gathering courage, but when she spoke, her voice was steady and strong. No hint of hesitation. “I think you should buy it.”
“Buy the . . .” Ilya burst into laughter. “Right. I’m going to buy this place? Why would I do that?”
Theresa moved toward the long diner counter lined with swiveling red stools and hopped up to sit on the counter’s edge. “Because you need something to do with yourself. You want to own a business instead of working for someone else. And because you’d be good at it.”
“Good at running a restaurant? Isn’t that like the hardest kind of business to run?” Ilya shook his head. “I have no experience with that sort of thing.”
Theresa nodded. “I know. But my job is connecting people with properties I think they’ll really be able to turn around and make successful.”
“And you think that’s me and this place?” Ilya joined her with a hop up onto the counter. They both swung their feet, knocking their heels on the edges of the swivel stools. He nudged her with his shoulder. “Are you for real?”
“Totally for real,” Theresa said, and nudged him back without moving away again so that they settled there with their shoulders touching. She looked at him.
He thought in silence for a moment. “It would need to be different than it was. Different menu, still a diner, but lose the stuff nobody eats, and make sure there’s always breakfast all day. Keep the retro look. It could be good.”
There were bones here. He could cover them with something. He knew it.
“It would be great,” Theresa said.
“I don’t want to do this alone,” Ilya said seriously. “You’d have to come in on this with me.”
Theresa looked surprised. “Me?”
“Yeah. You. The one who knows Babulya’s secret recipe for borscht. And her challah.”
“You think borscht would be a big seller?” she laughed gently.
Ilya smiled. “You know how to make a lot of her favorite recipes, right? What would be better in a diner than some of the meals she used to cook for us? Potato pancakes, borscht, black bread.”
“Knishes and piroshki.” She sounded thoughtful.
“Lots of Greek diners around,” Ilya told her. “Why not a Russian Jewish diner?”
Theresa laughed, tossing her head back for a second before she settled her gaze on him again. “Right. Why not?”
Ilya snapped his fingers, getting excited by the idea. “Challah French toast. Egg-salad sandwiches with macaroni salad. Bagels with lox.”
“Matzoh ball soup,” Theresa said at the same time he did.
“Yeah,” Ilya added quietly. “That.”
Theresa nodded again. “I’m not a chef, though. I mean, I know how to make all that stuff, but I’m not sure about doing it for a restaurant. Besides, I already have a job.”
“If I can learn to run it, you can learn to cook for it,” he said. “And you told me already that you’re doing freelance work. So you fit it in around shifts here, or training the cooks. I don’t expect you to be the one to actually sling all that hash. Shit, I can’t believe I’m actually considering this.”
“I told you that’s my job. Getting people together with projects they can really run with.” She paused. “I ran some numbers for you, and I did have some insider information about that big check you just got. So I already know you can afford this. But I can’t.”
“Silent partner?” Ilya hopped off the counter to take a walk up and down, looking at the diner with new eyes. From behind him, he heard Theresa also jump down. “We could work something out. You have the recipes. I have the cash. You have the connections. I have the . . . hell, I have the . . .”
“You have the chutzpah,” she said.
He laughed and reached out to take her hand, tugging her closer. She came, reluctantly, but didn’t resist when he put his hands on her hips. “Hey.”
She tipped her face toward his. “What?”
“Who else did you take this to?”
She gave him a curious look. “What do you mean?”
“Am I the only one you brought this to, I mean? The diner. The idea of buying it. Or am I just one in a long list of hopefuls?”
He was asking about the diner, but there was a hint of another question in his voice, one he hadn’t meant to ask. At least not aloud. He resisted pulling her closer, the idea of her body pressing against his definitely not even close to being brotherly.
“I brought it to you. Only you.” She smiled a little. “Does that make a difference?”
“Just wanted to know if I had any competition, that’s all.”
Those clear amber eyes narrowed the tiniest bit as her full mouth pursed. “I see.”
There was that zing again, the flutter and pull of the need to make her smile. Ilya had been with a lot of women, but very few had made him want to see them laugh. If Theresa had been one of those women, he’d have kissed her in that moment, pushing away the desire to feel something beyond physical pleasure. If she’d been someone else, he would not have hesitated for even a second to seduce her. Looking into her eyes, the curve of her waist beneath his hands, all he could do was force himself to step away from her. He could kiss her, but if he did, eventually everything would be ruined and angry between them, and she would hate him.
He would lose her, he thought with a sudden, stunned revelation, and it mattered more to him that Theresa stay in his life this time around, like a second chance neither of them had bargained for. One he did not want to squander. He took another step back, watching her expression switch from contemplation to confusion.
“You okay?” Theresa furrowed her brow and took a step toward him.
“Yeah. Fine. I’m good. Just thinking about all this.” He turned, gesturing at the shadowed dining room. “Do you really think I can do this?”
“I really think you can do this, Ilya. More than that, I think you need it.”
That turned him. “You do, huh?”
“You need something,” Theresa said seriously. “Why not this?”
He did need something, he thought. He wasn’t sure it was a diner; it seemed like maybe it was a woman with dark, curly hair who had no problem keeping him in line. He didn’t say that, though. Instead, he nodded. Grinned.
“Why not this?” Ilya said. “Yeah. Hell, yeah. Why not?”