Exposed (17 page)

“Are you hungry?”

June pressed her lips together, then nodded.

Ivan pointed into the distance. His half-finished cabin was shadowed under a strand of aspens.

“I’m still building my house,” Ivan said for some reason. Why would June care? But he kept talking. It was easy to talk to June, and that unnerved him less than he expected it would. “I don’t yet have an ice chest or stove, but we can get something from the main kitchen.”

Ivan eased the truck past the barn and pulled up to a circle drive in front of the main house. He watched June closely as they walked up to the house, saw his family home through her eyes. It was a large, peak-roofed cabin—the split-wood planks weathered gray. It was the opposite of her house, with wild rose bushes in place of a neat lawn; a long covered porch brimmed with rocking chairs, and baskets hung in place of a pot of silk flowers and a welcome mat. The green paint on the front door was peeling, and blue-gray smoke curled out of one of the two chimneys. June tried to hide the way she peered around, eyes darting to all the ways Ivan’s farm was foreign to her. 

A line of mud-caked boots stood beside the front door, and furry
ushankas
hung from pegs nailed into the wall. Next to Ivan, June stared at the hats, eyes wide.

Embarrassment warred with defiance. Ivan was taking a risk, showing June his farm. That kernel of mistrust grew once more.

“Did your family bring those hats when you emigrated?”

Ivan didn’t answer, but his mouth hardened.

But then June surprised a wide smile out of him. “Can I try one on?”

He’d almost reached for one when the front door swung open.

“Vanya! We’ve been—” Galina stopped abruptly, her mouth snapping closed when she saw June. 

“Mama, I was just going to grab something from the kitchen. We’re picking up more flowers for Miss Powell’s garden.”

“Nonsense,” Galina answered. She smiled at June and switched to careful English. “Join us for dinner, Miss Powell.”

“Oh! I …,” June glanced up at Ivan then back to his mother.

From out the open door, warm smells and loud voices enveloped them. They were speaking Russian—of course they were—and it hit Ivan for the first time how very
other
it sounded. Another small frown wriggled between June’s eyebrows.

A growl rolled up Ivan’s throat. He loved the language, the way it rushed like a river and tumbled like rapids. He wasn’t going to let an outsider make him ashamed.

June sniffed. “That does smell wonderful,” she said.

And once again, Ivan was pulled up short by surprise.

“Then it’s settled,” Galina said, slipping back into Russian. “This way,” she said in English.

She took June by the arm and led her inside, Ivan trailing behind. They’d had exactly one “American” in the house before, and that was when his mother had contracted scarlet fever a few years ago. Dr. Pinkerton was gentle with his sick mother, but Ivan hadn’t missed the way he’d refused their offer of food and kept glancing at the portrait of Lenin hanging on the wall.

Galina was tugging June deeper into the house and shouted suddenly. “English!”

The two men in the great room went suddenly silent.

June glanced at Ivan, blinking wide, then turned back to Galina. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I love the sound of Russian. It’s so … swift. I only know a few phrases in French. To know a second language …,” she looked again at Ivan. 

Ivan’s heart turned over in his chest. Maybe she would see them. Really see them, not their name or their heritage, but them. Hope bloomed bright in Ivan and smothered the doubt, cast out the mistrust. Ivan slipped a hand against June’s elbow, leading her into the main house.

Abram and Kostya sat at the table. Painted ceramic bowls were heaped with potatoes, beans, and peppers—all the unsold vegetables they could save from rotting. There was a tureen of
borscht
and a platter of cream-covered river trout. Every head turned to stare at June.

Kostya snapped his eyes from June to Ivan, his furry brows crawling up high on his forehead. An unspoken surprise fired in his older brother’s wide eyes.

“
Ne smey
, Kostya.” Ivan growled a warning. He could practically see his brother’s gears turning.

Kostya held his meaty hands up and laughed. “June Powell, were you out all night a few days ago too?” Kostya asked, all innocence. “Ivanushka could barely stay awake the next day.”

Next to him, June’s cheeks flared crimson. Ivan balled his hands and glared at his brother, letting loose a stream of Russian curse words that made their father’s eyes widen. June’s reaction to Kostya was all the confirmation he needed. Kostya roared with laughter, unrepentant.

Ivan sighed deeply and pulled a chair out for June. 

Though Abram spoke fair English, he was muttering in Russian to Kostya. Though by the cock of June’s head, Ivan was fairly sure she could pick out the word “
Amerikanskaya
.”

Galina bustled in from the kitchen with an extra place setting. “Abram, English,” she demanded.

Instead, Ivan’s father fell silent. The entire table fell silent and horribly tense. June fidgeted in her seat and quietly accepted passed plates of food.

She lifted a spoonful of
borscht
to her lips, sipped the soup as quietly as she could. Ivan couldn’t help but pause, wait, and watch as June tried their version of dinner. Then she sighed and closed her eyes. And Ivan sighed too.

“This is wonderful,” she said to Galina, only pausing to take another big spoonful. She sampled the trout next, then a forkful of beans. “I wish I could cook like this,” she said around a mouthful of potatoes.

Galina beamed. “I could give you my recipe. It’s from my
babushka
.” 

“
Babushka
,” June tried. “I’ve heard that one before. Does it mean ‘mother’?”

“It means ‘grandmother,’” Ivan corrected.

“And
vnuchata
means ‘grandchildren,’” Galina said, all innocence but with a spark of delight in her eyes. Ivan cut a glance her way. He could only imagine the
vnuchata
she was picturing already. 

But that thought warmed inside of him, melted the hard rock around his heart. Once he’d given her a chance, June had done nothing but surprise him.

“Your family grows such beautiful flowers,” June said, deftly changing the subject and looking toward Kostya. “None of my friends can resist them.”

Galina cleared her throat loudly and pasted a smile onto her face. They all knew that wasn’t true of late. There was a pile of rotting roses behind the greenhouses to prove it.

At the head of the table, Abram snorted. His eyes flicked to Ivan. “They can’t resist turning us into the Rosenbergs either,” he said in Russian.

“Papa,” Kostya hissed. 

“She’s not like them,” Ivan said in Russian.

Abram shrugged and pushed back from the table. “But would she stop them? They’re all the same, Vanya.”

Abram inclined his head toward June. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Powell,” he said in English, then disappeared down the hall. There was a muffled click of the bedroom door, then silence.

June looked at her lap, her lips pressed together. “Perhaps I should go,” she said quietly. “I showed up unannounced and you were so kind to give me dinner.”

She started to push away from the table as well, but Galina stopped her. 

“My grandfather, he had a flower shop in Petro … pardon, Leningrad,” she said. She smiled at June and passed her the tureen to ladle out more soup. “The city ladies would come for his crocuses in the spring. Roses in the summer. I would come from the farm on weekends to help in the shop.” She smiled at the memory, and it did wonders for easing the tension.

Ivan cocked his head. His mother never spoke about her childhood in Russia. Her father had lost his large farm in the revolution and his mother’s life had changed drastically. Though it was nothing to his father’s family—most of them had not survived the purges. But his mother shared this story with June. 

Did she see something in June like he did?

Ivan stood suddenly. He’d planned to keep June outside this home, outside the sanctuary of the greenhouses. And yet here she was. How had he ever thought she’d be easy to scrub from his mind? She was unforgettable.

“June, can you help me pick flowers from the greenhouse?”

June scrambled to stand and inclined her chin toward Galina in good-bye. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.” 

There was something in her voice. Gone was the careful lightness and poised smile. Her voice colored with depth and emotion, and Ivan fought a desire to wrap his hand around her own.

Ivan clenched his hand in his pocket and led June through a large kitchen. Dried sachets of herbs hung upside down along nearly every available hook, and ceramic bowls and platters were stacked along open wood shelves. The kitchen was old fashioned, with an ice chest in place of a refrigerator and a deep, porcelain sink instead of a dishwasher. What would Annette Powell say? 

“Mind the dishwasher,” Ivan muttered to June, a wry grin tugging at one corner of his mouth.

June’s eyes went wide, then she laughed. It was a thing of beauty.

“My God, Ivan. Was that a joke?”

Ivan drew his lips down in an exaggerated scowl. “Of course not.”

That just pulled more laughter from June. Warmth tugged at his chest, and a tightness that filled him to bursting.

They ducked under a low lintel to head outside and down a narrow alleyway separating the greenhouses. Ivan led June past the first two and into the third. 

The glass door was heavy behind them, and the air was thick with humidity.

The world turned green—dark green vines crawled up to the ceiling, hanging over brighter, waxy green palm fronds, delicate, new green shoots pushed from the soil, and pale green buds snaked skyward ready to open wide. Even the air seemed tinged with the color. Ivan breathed—truly breathed. It was rich and dense, a scent that reached down deep inside of him. 

Home. This was his true home. Where every defensive wall he’d constructed crumbled and his eyes shone light. The smile he worked so hard to conceal came easy surrounded by his plants. They were an extension of him, and he could feel his power uncoil and stretch under his skin. 

Ivan hesitated. Showing her this, letting her see this part of him. There was no going back after that. A large part of Ivan wasn’t ready. He barely knew this woman, after all. But he couldn’t help what he was feeling, this longing for her. A longing for someone to touch him, to look at him without suspicion.

He turned to June and let her see him—truly see him.

“Oh, Ivan,” she breathed. “This is amazing. It’s …,” she turned in a circle, letting her fingers wander over a frond of leaves. She touched a soft arc of bleeding hearts and brushed past Ivan to peer up at blue and purple wisteria forming a tunnel above their heads. He followed her farther into the hothouse as she explored, every footstep pulling him closer to her. 

June spun around under the cascading wisteria and walked backward, drawing them deeper and deeper into the greenhouse. Their steps were muffled and soft, just the rise and fall of breath swirling through the cool humidity.

She spun again and walked away from him, her hips enticing even in the garden-stained pants. He reached out and caught at the tails of her scarf where it tied at the nape of her neck. The silk slipped through his fingers like water.

June buried her nose in a bouquet of freesias, and he could almost feel the touch across his own skin. Her eyes were bright when she faced him again.

“I feel like I’m in the Amazon,” she whispered. “In the book ‘She’ there’s this jungle that is so wild, so all-encompassing. This … this is it.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Ivan admitted.

“Oh, but wouldn’t you want to see a real jungle? Drink water from a coconut?”

Ivan frowned and wandered deeper into the greenhouse. June disappeared and reappeared from amid the hanging vines. “I’ve seen the world, June. I thought once … but—” Ivan shook his head. “It’s all the same underneath.”

Rotten. It was all rotten. 

But the old thought gave him pause now. Was it truly rotten? Or could a sprout of goodness be found if he only looked? He’d grown so hard over the years that he’d gone blind to the beauty of all but his plants. But June was working a change within him, one that terrified and excited him at the same time.

June stood tall from where she’d been bent over a vanilla orchid and met Ivan’s gaze. “Do you really believe that? I can’t accept that this is it. There are cities out there—real cities where you can get lost—and fields and oceans.
Oceans.
I’m a grown woman and I’ve never traveled beyond Denver. I will see the world outside this valley. I
will
.”

She undid him. Completely. Gone was the placid smile. In its place, June’s face was alive with passion and the fervor of dreams. 

Ivan crossed to her in two big steps and pulled her hands into his. 

“I’ll take you to the ocean.” He couldn’t wait any longer. He finally, finally kissed her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

June

Ivan’s hands, his mouth. They were everywhere. Catching at her hair and cupping her face and crashing against her lips. 

One moment there’d been space between them, and the next nothing. And June fell into him with such a force, such a fervor that her own exploding desire nearly frightened her.

Explosions. Explosions everywhere inside June like she had become the Fourth of July. 

Ivan’s lips were soft and hard, tentative and hungry. She parted her mouth and felt his tongue slip against her top lip, his teeth pull gently at her bottom lip. 

She pressed into him and let herself melt, melt, melt. His arms folded around her—strong arms, muscles like twined wires roping over his lean frame.

With a tiny groan, Ivan lifted June off her feet. Almost by instinct, June wrapped her legs around his hips. And oh, the feeling of his body against her … pressing against that tender spot at her center. It sent a wave of heat that pulsed through her until she was filled to the brim with it.