HER RUSSIAN SURRENDER (28 page)

“Soon,” he answered, holding the popcorn out to her. “This is how people do on dates. They share popcorn,
da
? That is what it said in woman’s magazine Isaac got for me.”

She stared at him. “You did
not
have Isaac get you a woman’s magazine.”

“How else do I know how to do this dating?” he asked.

She shook her head, feeling both amused and overwhelmed. Oh, she was in trouble. She didn’t have any idea if he was being this charming on purpose or if he really had no idea how appealing he was right now with his innocent I-read-this-is-how-you-do-it-in-a-magazine shtick, but either way, she could sense the boundaries she’d set down between them blowing away in the warm Grecian breeze.

Especially when his large hand closed around hers, enveloping it in warmth.

“S-so what’s showing tonight?” she mumbled, hoping to change subject from unbelievably romantic dates she had no business going on. And to distract herself from the way her whole body became attuned to his as soon as they touched.

“This week it is
The Wrong Girl 3
.”

Sam tried not to let the disappointment show on her face. Not that she didn’t appreciate the popularity of the film, based on three books about a girl living in a post-apocalyptic future, whose mother marries a maniacal despot out of desperation. But teenage girl, abusive stepfather—it was a little close to home and certainly not the movie she would have chosen to watch in her free time.

“But tonight, theater shows different movie,” Nikolai told her.

“Which one?” she asked.

As if in answer to her question, the screen suddenly came to life with the opening strains of “As Time Goes By” followed by the Warner Bros. Pictures logo. And then, a plaintive voice saying, “I need your help, Veronica!”

Luckily they were the only ones in the movie theater, because Sam screamed out loud. It was the
Veronica Mars
movie! And on a twelve-foot screen, no less!

Yeah, that sealed it. She leaned over and dipped her hand into Nikolai’s white paper bag of caramel popcorn, feeling she had no choice but to confess, “Best. Date. Ever.”

34

“D
id you enjoy the movie?” she asked Nikolai as they made their way back to the hotel a couple of hours later. She was glad for the long walk back because she wasn’t quite ready for the night to end.

Not only because this had seriously been the best date in the entire history of all dates that had ever gone down, but also because she didn’t know how she should handle the hotel room sleeping arrangements. The room had a blue couch, long enough for her to stretch out on, and she’d made a point of placing her suitcase next to it before they went out to dinner, her way of letting him know nothing had changed between them except the locale.

But that was before she’d discovered Nikolai’s event was really a date… really, more like a mini-honeymoon. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was the best one she’d ever experienced. And though she wasn’t one to be pressured into doing anything she didn’t want to do, well,
c’mon
! It was kind of hard not to want to do pretty much anything with him after a date like the one he’d just taken her on.

“
Da
, I liked movie,” he said. “But I am more wondering why you like her so much—this Veronica Mars character.”

“I guess I like the idea of a girl taking control of her own life, using her wits and unique skills to one-up the bad guys. Also, she’s really spunky, the way I wish I had been when I was younger.”

“Me too.”

“What?” she teased, scrunching her nose up at him. “You wished you had been a spunky girl?”

“I wished for more control when I was young,
da
.” His face darkened. “My home life was not happy.”

She waited for him to say more, but this time he didn’t surprise her. Just continued walking, letting the subject fade away before asking, “How is your morning sickness?”

“Much better now,” she answered. “I haven’t felt nauseous for the last ten days, so I think it’s finally letting up.”

“Book I am reading says you should eat many small meals throughout day. Eating like this will keep your stomach happy and give you nutrients you need.”

She did a double take. “Wait, you
read
that? In a book?”

“
Da
,” he answered, sounding confused by her confusion.

“You, Nikolai Rustanov, are reading a book about… what? Like a guide to pregnancy?”

He stiffened beside her as if he’d been caught do something embarrassing. “
Da
,” he admitted.

“But why?” she asked, finding it hard to imagine this hulking male beside her was actually reading a book like
What to Expect When Expecting
when
she hadn’t even started reading pregnancy books herself.

“Because…” He went quiet, and for a few moments there was only the sound of her wedges and his shoes, crunching against the gravel. “Because I am not bad man like you think. I was not bad caretaker to Pavel because I wanted to be. I was not good parent because… because I don’t know how to be good parent. My mother and father maybe not so good at job.”

Her mind went into buffer mode, she was so shocked he was once again sharing something real with her. But thank God she was a natural counselor, her autopilot soon kicked in. “So because you had bad parents, you think you’re doomed to be a bad parent? Is that why you were keeping your distance from Pavel when we first came to live with you?”

He nodded, his eyes seemingly glued to the street beneath his wing tips. “He is maybe not lucky boy. At first I think, I will give him money and room to live in, that is all he needs. But when I see you with him, way you are with him, way he is with you, I realize I cannot give him what you give him because I do not know how.”

He expelled a harsh breath, as if saying this to her was actually a major effort on his part.
Maybe it is
, she thought, waiting for him to finish, completely fascinated.

He continued to look down at the ground as he said. “When you tried to leave my house, take my baby with… When you said to lawyer I am bad parent, I… I…” he shook his head seemingly unable to finish that sentence. “After that I told Isaac to buy for me books about how to be good father. It is hard because maybe my English is okay for talking, not so good for reading, and they have many books translated to Russian for woman but not for man.”

Sam stared at him, her eyes wide as her hands unconsciously came to rest on top of belly. “Are you trying to say you want to be a father? A good father to this child?”

Silence, then a quiet, “
Da,
” as if he’d had a hard time working up the nerve to say that one word. “I want to be good father. Good father to both Pavel and our baby.”

He finally met her eyes, his own filled with utter sincerity. “I’m hoping I can read enough books in time.”

Dammit. And there went Sam’s last line of defense. She’d let Pavel into her fortress willingly, happily. But Nikolai’s simple wish struck an impossible chord, one that crumbled the last wall she’d constructed around her heart to keep out men like Nikolai, cracking it open with a sudden flood of compassion.

She couldn’t help it. She didn’t know what had happened to Nikolai as a child, but she knew it couldn’t be good. And her instincts were telling her that this man walking beside her, the one Indiana hockey fans called Mount Nik, was way more vulnerable than he’d previously let on with his balcony invitation and his bedroom manipulations and his hard stares.

With her heart beating in her throat, she said, “I’m assuming you read all the stuff your lawyer dug up on me?”

A pause, as if he was considering whether to tell her the truth or not. But eventually he answered with a quiet, “
Da
.”

“Then you know I wasn’t exactly raised in a great situation either. My mom had the potential to be a good parent, but she had zero self-confidence and she was really pretty, which turned out to be a fatal combination. She got involved with some awful guys. My dad was the first of them, and the biggest favor he ever did her was catching his life sentence without possibility of parole while she was pregnant with me.”

Sam thought about the man she’d only known through prison pictures. He’d died in a prison riot when she was ten, but it wasn’t like that really mattered in the grand scheme of things. His imprisonment meant her mother had been given a long enough respite from his violence to give birth to her. But that respite had been brief in her mother’s otherwise permanently stormy sea. After that, she’d never been able to carry a pregnancy to term again.

“After my father, it was one guy after another beating her up. My stepfather was the worst of them, so of course he was the one she married. He got some work in Indianapolis soon after and we followed him to Indiana when I was sixteen.”

“Did he hurt you?” Nikolai asked, his voice a cold wind on a warm night.

“No,” she answered. “He came at me a couple of times, but my mom taught me well. Go and hide when he started drinking, she’d tell me. Remember when I described how I found Pavel hidden in the cabinet that night? That was me all the time. I was like the queen of cowering while my mother was getting hit.”

She let a few beats go by before asking, “Did Slimy Kevin’s fact-finding mission say why I shot my stepfather on my eighteenth birthday?”

He didn’t answer, so it must have. Yet she still felt compelled to explain, to tell him all of it. To make him understand what happened.

“Growing up, I thought my mom was so weak and I got sick of it. All the drama, patching her up after my stepfather was finished. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I was seventeen, I met this guy name Anthony… and he felt sorry for me, I guess. He convinced his parents to let me stay with him, just until I finished school. I got a thirty-one on my ACT, so I automatically got a full ride to IU. So it was only supposed to be for a few months.”

Her face darkened, remembering. “It wasn’t the best situation. I felt really ashamed all the time, being around Anthony and his perfect family. All of them acting like Anthony was a saint for dating me and convincing them to let me stay there—which he was. I’m still very grateful someone showed me that kind of compassion. I just… I just wished things were different. I spent a lot of time back then resenting that I’d had to impose on him and his family like that. And I hated my mother for putting me in that position.”

She sighed thinking of how judgmental she’d been before getting her degree in psychology, before she’d been able to understand something had happened to her mother to make her think these were the only kinds of relationship she deserved. But Sam pushed through her personal shame to continue with the story.

“My mom called me on my birthday, begging me to come over to eat my cake. She always made me a German chocolate cake on my birthday. I can still remember her limping around a few times while she was making it, but she always did it, no matter what. I told her not to bother, but she begged me to come over. Begged me. I still can’t believe I made her beg…”

Sam had to pause while another wave of shame knocked her around. “But eventually, she wore me down. I agreed to come. I only planned to stay for a few minutes. One slice of cake I told myself…”

The memories choked her up, clogging her throat with tears. She stopped.

“Tell me rest.” Nikolai’s voice was quiet, but strong in its command.

She had to finish the story. Not just for him, but for herself. Sam took a deep breath, made herself calm down “So yeah, when I got off the bus, I took a detour to my favorite neighborhood sub shop. Ate a whole twelve-inch meatball grinder so I’d be nice and full when I got to my mother’s and wouldn’t have to stay too long. If I hadn’t stopped to do that, maybe I would have gotten there in time, but I did and when I came through the door, my stepfather was standing over her body with a knife.”

The image of her mother lying on the floor, her beautiful face frozen in a rictus of terror, like she’d known this would be the last beating, the one that ended her—that image came back to her like a perfectly preserved movie scene. So much blood…

“I know the statistics now,” Sam said, gritting her teeth against the pain of the memory. “I know physically abusive relationships often escalate to murder. That forty-percent of murdered women worldwide are killed by their partners. That many women like my mother don’t think they’re deserving of good relationships, and their spouses alienate them from everyone they know, make them feel worthless, like they’re all alone… so they don’t seek help.”

Sam shook her head. “But back then, I didn’t take the violence seriously. It was just this big thorn in my side, something I imagined my mom enduring for the rest of her life, because she was too dumb and weak to leave my stepfather. So I did the worst possible thing. I left her alone. I was her last resource and I left her alone with him. Made her beg me to come home.”

Sam’s voice cracked, as regret over her ignorance flared anew inside her chest. It took a few more shallow breaths before she was able to talk again. “Anyway, they didn’t live in a great neighborhood and like a lot of people, my stepfather kept a gun in their apartment. Near the door, in fact, so it was easy…”

Sam grimaced. “I don’t remember much, just being angry, and then the gun was going off, and I guess I was a better shot than expected, because the bullet hit him in the face.”

Sam wrapped Nikolai’s jacket tighter around herself, suddenly cold. “So that’s how I ended up getting tried for murder. Because technically, he’d already killed her. There was no reason for me to kill him. Even my boyfriend couldn’t deal with that. He visited me once in juvie to say he was sorry but his parents didn’t think he was equipped to continue associating with somebody who had my kind of issues. He made it real obvious he thought I was a nut job for killing my stepfather,” Sam thought of her stepfather’s prediction when she moved out to live with Anthony. “Too much trouble for a piece of ass, I guess.”

She recovered with a brave smile, “But luckily I had good grades and a decent court lawyer. She got them to try me as a juvenile, and the judge was a woman who believed the story she made up for me about self-defense. So I got very, very lucky.”