Chimera (26 page)

I bought her daisies every day. Sometimes it was a bunch tied with a ribbon. Sometimes it was only one. She was a daisy girl. Roses seemed too pretentious for someone as honest and down to earth as she was, and tulips didn’t have her life. They didn’t explode with light and energy. They didn’t throw their arms to the sky and gather in the sun. Nat and daisies were two of a kind in that respect. She was all about color, too, my girl. All our sheets were covered with whimsical patterns—fish, flowers, flying birds, diving dolphins. And every set was so tacky and garish that you were in serious danger of going blind at the sight of them.

I’d never claimed to love Natalie for her subtle taste. I loved her because of her lack of taste and for her freckles that spread like a wildfire in the summer sun. I loved her for her homemade caramel milkshakes, the best in the world, and for her tuna casserole, the absolute worst. And when she dragged that dog from the pound home for my birthday, I groaned and threw up my hands, but that was on the outside. On the inside I kept right on loving her. I’d told her before that I liked Labs, and that’s what she brought home. It had three legs, a tongue too big to fit in its mouth, and produced a gallon of slobber every five minutes. She named it Harry after my long-gone horse and gave it my spot on the couch.

With that, if possible, I loved her then even more. I loved her as much as I was capable. That was the key word, wasn’t it? Capable.

It wasn’t enough. When I finally broke down and told her what I did . . . what I had become since college, it was over. She could’ve handled just that, I think. Make no mistake; she would’ve dragged me by my ear out of that life and across the country if that’s what it took to break away. Innately honest and stubborn as all hell, she would’ve put my career to bed, for good, and before I could have taken another breath.

But it wasn’t just that. Natalie had known all along that she owned only a piece of my soul. Unreservedly, she had given me all of hers and waited patiently for me to come around.

I never had.

I hadn’t put her first. I was good at the daisies, but I’d never put her first. She wouldn’t have minded that. She would’ve understood. But I had never made her equal to my obligations either—never. It hadn’t even been close. It was one strike too many. She could’ve easily reformed me. I hadn’t ever cared about the business other than how the money from it could help me find Lukas. But while getting me on the straight and narrow would’ve been a piece of cake for Crusader Nat, she couldn’t force me to free up the rest of my heart. And she knew it.

I knew it, too. I hadn’t blamed her then, and I still didn’t. She didn’t leave me; I gave her up. I threw her away. I couldn’t make room for her in my life. There was Lukas and only Lukas. All Natalie ever had from me was the leftovers, the table scraps. Lukas came first, last, and always. Finding him was the only thing that had mattered. I’d made that choice before I had ever met Nat. When she was gone, I tried to tell myself that my only mistake had been to lead her on, to give her hope for a relationship I wasn’t equipped for. Yeah, that’s what I told myself.

I was wrong.

Lukas . . . Michael wouldn’t have begrudged me love while I searched. Generous of spirit and with a basic goodness he wasn’t yet aware of, he would’ve been happy for me. The denial wasn’t his; it was mine.

Jericho had stolen more than my brother on that beach. He’d stolen me too. He had hollowed me out, scooped out the important parts, and left a shell of brittle ice masquerading as a human being. When his man had left me for dead on the sand, he hadn’t been far off the mark. Not far at all.

I missed Nat. I missed her every time I saw a scraggly daisy blooming in the weeds, every time I saw a red kite flying high enough to block out the sun. I missed her when I bought boring white sheets and when I bypassed the dog food aisle in the grocery or when I bought thin, overly sweet fast-food milkshakes. I missed her and hoped she was someone else’s daisy girl.

I missed her and knew I’d never see her again.

So when Michael had asked me about love and relationships, things that were much harder than sex to explain, Natalie was the only place I had to go. It was a painful place, but it was a worthwhile one too. She deserved to be talked about, my girl, and Michael deserved to know there was glory in this life if you weren’t too damaged or too afraid to accept it. I talked long enough that my throat was sore. I didn’t want him to make my mistakes. It was a mistake no one should have to live with.

Michael had seemed to sense how painful a topic it was and thanked me before curling up in the backseat to leave me with my memories and my regrets. The sweet and the bittersweet; that was what life was all about. He slept for nearly six hours. I’d slept for maybe three, but for once my dreams were . . . nice—melancholy, but good.

“I thought your uncle Lev would be happy to see you. I thought you said he would welcome you with open arms and a heated house.” Jarring me from thoughts of kites, daisies, and freckles, a disheveled blond head popped up from the backseat and a sleepily disgruntled face peered at me from a cocoon of blankets. “It’s cold, in case you haven’t noticed, and I have to use the bathroom. This isn’t any better than that tree incident. In fact it’s worse.”

To his confusion, I handed him an empty plastic soft drink bottle I grabbed from the floorboards. “No, kiddo,
now
it’s worse.”

As comprehension flooded his features, I yawned and turned back around to watch the snow slowly pile on the hood of the car. I ducked automatically as the bottle returned, whizzing by my ear. I’d noticed Michael, like me, wasn’t much of a morning person.

“Absolutely not,” he said evenly. “No way.”

I shrugged and yawned again, rubbing at my eyes. “It’s your bladder. Besides, if you save up, I’ll teach you to write your name in the snow.”

With a glare as chilly as the air inside the car, he leaned over the seat and retrieved the bottle. I kept my back to him to give him some privacy. “And, smart-ass, Uncle Lev will be glad to see me. I just didn’t want to show up in the middle of the night. He’ll know something’s up. If he thinks I’m in trouble, he’ll be all over us, asking questions, and trying to get us to stay. We can’t afford that.”

“Why not?”

I hadn’t gotten very specific with Michael on how exactly I’d left my earlier employment. It had been difficult enough to tell him what little I had about my life in the
Mafiya
. “I told you how I quit the mob to come after you,” I started slowly, jangling the keychain that hung from the ignition.

“I remember.”

Of course he remembered. What had it been? Four, five days ago? “Well, it’s not the type of job where you give two weeks notice and they throw you a going-away party. Konstantin, the man I worked for, wasn’t exactly boss-of-the-year material. He could’ve made things difficult for me if he’d wanted.” From day to day it was hard to guess his mood. From distantly amused to coldly murderous, Konstantin was rarely predictable in the depths of his violence. He wouldn’t have hurt me, not once he heard my reasoning. He still respected Anatoly too much for that, but he could’ve slowed me down while I laid it all out. That I couldn’t afford. “So, I simply took off. Disappeared. I could always explain myself later if I needed his help. I show up with my missing brother, Anatoly’s lost son, and all’s forgiven.” Leaning my head back on the seat, I massaged the back of my neck. “But on the day I left, someone killed Konstantin. Shot him. For his ex-bodyguard, yours truly, that doesn’t look too good.”

“Won’t your uncle Lev believe you’re innocent?”

“Do you?” I asked lightly and far more casually than I felt.

There was a moment of thought, the sounds of shifting blankets, and then, “I do. You don’t seem to like hurting people. You’re good at it, but you don’t like it.” His voice dropped to a barely audible murmur. “Not like Jericho.” A hand came over the seat before I could comment to thrust a capped and newly warm bottle into my hand. “Here. There’s no room back here.”

Right. Sure there wasn’t. But encouraged by his belief in me, I decided I could probably put up with a little urine. Putting it in our trash bag for later disposal, I returned to the conversation. “Uncle Lev will know I didn’t do it, but that doesn’t matter. If we’re there more than a day or two, it’ll get back to Miami via the grape-vine, and Konstantin’s son will send some people after me. They won’t be as scary as Jericho, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do us some damage all the same.” Damage was a nice euphemism for “kill us and dump us in the harbor.”

“All right. That makes sense, I guess,” Michael accepted doubtfully. Cheek to cheek with him, a sleek ferret head poked free of the blanket to fix me with a nearsighted glare. “But it’s still cold. And it’s still your fault.”

“The logic of a true student of the sciences,” I grumbled, but I started the car and set the heater on high. “We’ll find someplace to clean up and head to Lev’s. That reminds me; I have something for you.”

He took the glasses I retrieved for him from the glove compartment. I’d lifted them yesterday at a gas station. With cheap wire rims, the lenses were tinted tawny brown, but not nearly as dark as most sunglasses. Michael would be able to get away with wearing them inside without raising any eyebrows.

Releasing his death grip on the blanket, Michael turned the glasses over in his hands. “What are these for?”

“Your eyes,” I said matter-of-factly. “You can deny you’re my brother until the end of time, Misha, but if Uncle Lev sees your eyes along with the blond hair, he’ll have something to say. And we don’t have time to get into that with him.” Nearly twenty years older than Anatoly, Lev was basically retired. He had a few of his old crew who still hung around, but they were like him, in their early seventies and not as quick with the brass knuckles as they used to be. They might put a crimp in Jericho’s style, but they wouldn’t be able to hold him back for long.

I could see that Michael wanted to say something. Eyes distant under the fringe of unruly hair, he chewed at his lower lip before opening his mouth, only to shut it again. “Something wrong?”

He shook his head slowly at the question. “No . . . no. I’ll wear them.” Slipping them on, he raised both eyebrows. “How do they look?”

“You’re practically a movie star there—Brad Pitt all the way.” The glasses did work well enough at obscuring the differing color of his eyes, making them both appear an indistinct color, maybe brown, maybe hazel, maybe gray. “Just keep them on. Hey, we could always dye your hair again. There’s a whole rainbow of colors out there we haven’t touched on.”

He promptly retreated back into the blankets. “And let’s keep it that way.”

“No guts, no glory, kid.” The car had warmed up and I plowed it through the drifting snow. Not only would Lev be glad to see me, but he would feed us breakfast as well. It had been just over a week since I’d tasted home-cooked food, but it felt like years. I was looking forward to eating off china instead of from a paper bag.

By the time we swept through the wrought-iron gates that guarded Uncle Lev’s house, we were fairly presentable courtesy of the now-familiar gas-station-bathroom sponge bath. Michael was in jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, the dressiest thing we’d managed to pick up for him along the way. I’d put on a black shirt and a pair of gray slacks that were miraculously unwrinkled from a week in a duffel bag. We weren’t exactly suave by any means, but neither did we look like we were living out of our car with nothing but a ferret and a half-empty jar of peanut butter.

I didn’t recognize the guy at the guard shack, and he fixed me with a suspicious glower until he received the all clear from the house. I was unimpressed. From the size of his gun, he had something to prove; at least Michael would have said so.

Parking the car on the rosy brick drive that circled before the front of the house, I climbed out into the lazy drizzle of snow. I shoved my chilled hands into my jacket pockets and started around the car. Michael joined me and stood looking up at the house with a slightly awed expression. It was something to see; there was no doubt about that. Three stories high with a multitude of leaded glass windows and masses of winter-brown ivy, it could’ve been shipped stone by stone from jolly old England. There were even miniature gargoyles on the roof that spouted water nonstop during the rainy season. It was a testament to the overblown, and Uncle Lev through and through.

As we stood at the door, I gave Michael a last once-over. “You ready? Comfortable with the story?”

He didn’t appear nervous, but considering the past ten years of his life, this was definitely small stuff and not to be sweated. “Nephew of the girlfriend you don’t have. Fairly simple. And if I forget, I’ve written it on my hand.”

I almost looked at the palm he overturned, but caught myself at the last minute. “To think I took a bullet for you,” I snorted as I pressed the doorbell. “And this is the thanks I get. Lip from a snot-nosed kid.”

Looking over at me, he haughtily pushed up the glasses with one meticulous finger. “The privilege is all yours.”