Mistletoe and Magic (25 page)

Stefan hugged her next. “Truly magnificent, Polina. Thank you.”

“No,” she replied. “Thank
you
. I hope you’ll enjoy this for many years to come.”

The other guests clustered nearer to pat her shoulder and nod their approval. Over their heads, Rhys caught her gaze and gave her silent applause. She beamed brighter than the sun glistening on Christmas snow. His focus strayed to the ever-present, ever-running clock.

Thirty-seven hours. In thirty-seven hours, she’d be gone. He had already set her free, but that didn’t mean he planned to let her go.

Chapter 10

When the rest of the family left for the walk to church for midnight mass, taking Cyryl with them, the adult Nowaks, Polina and Rhys lingered behind. The time had come for Polina to present Rhys with her gift. She gave Stefan a silent nod, and he immediately clapped a hand on Rhys’s shoulder.

“Come, friend. There is something I wish to discuss with you.” He led Rhys into the dining room.

Let the games begin
. Polina, eyes closed, inhaled a shaky breath.

A sharp elbow nudge from Agata caught her directly under the ribs. “You do this now. You see. All will go well.”

On a nod, Polina crawled beneath the Christmas tree to retrieve the
gesiorka
. A bouquet of silk flowers entwined with a scarlet ribbon wrapped around the neck of the bottle of special vodka.

Taking the bottle from her, Agata snapped her fingers in Polina’s face. “Eyes down,
ukochana
.”

She had to remember to play the role of obedient Polish lady. Polina dipped her head.

“Good girl. Come now.”

Eyes downcast, she followed Agata into the dining room where Stefan led a clearly baffled Rhys through a banal conversation regarding the weather.

“…I have no idea when the snow will stop,” Rhys said, a sharp edge cutting the words. “Look, Stefan, this has been fun, but I have so little time left with Polina—”

Bam
! Agata slammed the bottle on the table between the two men. “You are fond of our girl, eh?”

Rhys visibly flinched at Agata’s noisy intrusion, but then stared at the bottle. The dawn of understanding lit his eyes, and he turned to grin at Polina. Her heart leapt. He knew! He knew and he approved. A roar whooshed through her bloodstream, the cheering of her nerve impulses.

“Eyes down, girl,” Agata chastised her.

Her neck snapped down, gaze focusing on the ceramic tile floor, but her insides danced. She stood on trembling legs, hands clasped together to prevent anyone from noticing how badly they shook.

“Do you believe our girl is equally fond of you, Rhys?” Stefan asked, his smile evident in the lilt to his tone.

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there? Polina, sweetheart,” Rhys crooned. “Be a good girl, and fetch me a glass, would you?”

Excitement surged inside her. Oh, how she wanted to look up at him, to see the game reflected on his face! But Agata had instructed her thoroughly about her role in the
wywiady
. She’d already twisted the tradition to suit her whims for tonight, but she’d stick to the step-by-step as closely as possible.

Normally, a Polish gentleman and his intermediary appeared at the prospective bride’s home at night, and after small talk about everyone’s health and the weather, the topic would wind its way toward the couple’s affections for one another. The gentleman would then bring out the
gesiorka
, a token of his interest. The lady in question was sent out of the room to fetch a glass. If she returned with the glass, it was an indication that his feelings were reciprocated. If she left the room and did not come back, or if her family refused to drink the special vodka, no match was made between the couple. Generally, a second visit—with more
gesiorka
—was required before the betrothal could be considered official.

On winged feet, she stepped slowly into the kitchen to fetch the glasses. Agata had already prepared the tray, and she returned to the dining room in time to hear Stefan, acting as Rhys’s intermediary in the traditional ceremony, say, “We must dispense with the follow-up visit as Polina will be gone from Krakow in two days. With your permission, Rhys, I will ask Polina to join us for this drink.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rhys replied.

She could barely keep from flying onto his lap, but she had to maintain this role to the very end. This was her gift to Rhys. Nothing could go awry, or the meaning would be minimized. Barely allowing herself to breathe, she set the tray on the table and waited, head bowed.

She maintained eye contact with her feet as Stefan handed her the opened bottle, and she poured the vodka into one of the glasses. At last, she raised her gaze and faced Rhys. Love shone from his eyes, love and pure joy. Emboldened by his obvious delight at the ritual, she took a sip from the glass, then offered the vodka to him.

He didn’t hesitate to take his sip from the same glass. Only after he swallowed did he finally address her. “You do know what this means, sweetheart, don’t you?”

“It means I’ve pledged to marry you,” she replied, her voice low but sure. “On my honor and the honor of my ancestors. This trust cannot be broken. Merry Christmas, Rhys.”

Pulling her close, he pressed his lips to hers in a soft and tender kiss. “Had I known this was what you planned, I would have bought you an engagement ring to make it official.”

She flitted her barren fingers near his face. “I’m not a ring-kinda-girl.”

His arms wrapped around her waist, holding her in his embrace. “Yeah, I get that. But the ring isn’t for you. It’s to make sure everyone knows you belong to me. Now and forever.” He kissed her again, this time with more fervor, his tongue plundering her mouth with a pride of ownership.

Every nerve inside her sizzled. Her feet found no purchase, and her legs buckled. Only Rhys’s strong arms kept her upright.

When he pulled away again, his eyes danced with mirth, and a knowing grin twitched his lips. “Tell me the truth. You followed Hunter’s barking that first night, didn’t you? You heard him bark and followed the sound.”

Her brain wouldn’t engage, and her lips burned for another kiss. She nodded.

“Ha!” he crowed to Stefan. “I told you so. Fate brought us together.”

“No, it was
magic
,” she corrected him and brought his lips to hers again.

Chapter 11

Brutal Texas heat wilted Polina into the cracked vinyl upholstery of Uncle Leo’s battered pickup. The return trip from Krakow had shattered her, emotionally and physically. When Uncle Leo—tall, rail-thin, and hawk-faced—opened his arms to her outside the baggage claim area, she’d folded into him and burst into tears. He said nothing, just cradled her close against his bony chest for a long minute before helping her stumble through the parking lot. He’d come alone for her, as if he understood she needed time to process all she’d gone through before seeing Tiny, Ralph, Sasha, and the rest of the gang.

Once on the highway, he didn’t even turn on the radio. White lines whizzed by, along with row after row of steel electrical towers, fields of dirt, strip malls. And cows. Brown cows, black and white cows, cows with calves, cows in groups, cows that stood alone. Texas seemed to have more cows than people.

“Why are there so many damn cows in this state?” she exploded.

Uncle Leo glanced sideways at her and clucked his tongue. “I told your mother not to send you on that trip. Fool waste of good money, if you ask me.”

Waste of money? No. Her mind flashed on Rhys’s kisses, Agata’s warm hugs, Stefan’s steadfast affection, and Cyryl’s boyish exuberance. So much magic, all hers for the taking.

Coming back to Texas was a waste of money.

But Rhys had insisted. “You need to be sure about us,” he told her before Stefan took her to the airport. “Honor or no honor, we won’t get married if you decide you have more living to do. When you’re ready to settle down, you let me know. In the meantime, you’ve got the laptop, so there’s no excuse for you to go a day without talking to me. Right?”

Right. A laptop and a WiFi device sat safely stashed inside her backpack. Not exactly the most romantic Christmas gift a man could give his betrothed, but more precious than a ten-carat diamond to her.

“I bet you’re glad to be back in the good old U.S. of A., huh?” Uncle Leo remarked.

She offered him a wan smile. “Maybe I will be, after I’ve slept for a day or two.” Even in her own disjointed brain, the comment sounded unkind, and she quickly added, “What have I missed since I was gone?”

Shrugging, he refocused his attention on the traffic. “The usual. The Zipper’s down. I’m gonna need you to take a look at it when we get to the yard.”

A sigh escaped before she could stifle her reaction. In his mind, nothing had changed. She was still the Fix-it Queen for all the carnival rides. Inside her, however,
everything
was different, and the sooner he realized that, the better for everyone. “I told you before I left, Uncle Leo. I’m not coming back to the carnival circuit.”

He glared out of the corner of his beady black eye. “What you gonna do, Pollyanna? You ain’t equipped for nothin’ else in life
but
the carnival circuit.”

Pollyanna. She bristled. He always called her Pollyanna as an insult, a dig at her tendency to remain positive, no matter how rough times got. She wouldn’t rise to his baiting now.

“Your mama shouldn’t have put them grandiose ideas in your head. I’ve been good to you all these years, took you in, fed you, gave you a decent life. You owe me.”

Although his words pelted like red-hot pellets, she steeled herself to remain calm. When had he become such a nasty old man? Or had she simply never noticed before now?

A million images cluttered her memory. She recalled Uncle Leo kicking some skin-and-bones mutt caught eating the moldy hot dogs in a nameless dirt town in Missouri. Sasha, the Russian immigrant, forced by Uncle Leo to work through the flu during a heat wave in New Mexico had nearly died of dehydration. Tiny, who was actually a former mathematics professor named Morgan Rosenfeld, joined the circuit after too many years of alcoholism caught up with him at a state college. Uncle Leo had coined the nickname, Tiny, because the professor only stood four-foot-eleven-inches tall. It was mean-spirited and small-minded, which kind of described Uncle Leo to a T, now that she thought about it.

She remembered Tiny teaching her to read and write in the back of the bunkhouse, and how Uncle Leo had chastised them both. “Why’re you wasting time on her?” he’d sneered. “She’s as dumb as her mother. Might as well teach a goat to speak Latin.”

At the time, his insults had infuriated her. She was
not
like her mother. And if only to prove him wrong, she’d worked harder to learn, soaking up knowledge like a thirsty sponge. She read every book she could find, whether it involved history or science or literature. In fact, she still had a battered old copy of “Gray’s Anatomy” under her bed in the trailer. Plenty of nights, she’d snuggled in her bed and traced the blue line of the inferior vena cava from the jugular to the iliac region. Her nighttime companions included “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” and “Oliver Twist.” His insults had burned, and in the end, he’d been forced to admit she was the smartest person in the camp.

But now, as she looked across the truck at him, she wondered.

Mom had been ten years old when Uncle Leo brought her to America from Poland. Had she been able to speak any other language besides her native Polish? As an adult, Mom’s language skills weren’t exactly stellar, but Polina had always chalked that up to the booze and pot. But what if she’d never really learned English? Even Cyryl, well-educated by his parents, had struggled to wrap his tongue around the unfamiliar language. What had it been like for her mother, alone and terrified in a foreign country—a country not always as welcoming and open to strangers as her native Poland?

If Polina had never believed Uncle Leo when he told Tiny that she was too stupid to learn, why on earth had she ever believed the same derision about her mother?

“You belong with us, Pollyanna.” His gruff statement jolted her out of her thoughts. “We understand and accept you in a way the real world never could.”

Polina glanced up at the hazy sky.
You never had a chance, did you, Mom
?

An ocean of sympathy threatened to drown her. No wonder Mom had lost herself in an endless round of drugs, alcohol, and men. She was homesick and alone. And even her own daughter had never understood her pain.

Along with this new awareness came an epiphany. Her trip to Poland had never been about finding magic. Mom had sent her to Poland to find herself, to find the courage to break away from Uncle Leo. The courage that Mom had never been able to muster.

I won’t let you down, Mom. I’m not alone. I have Rhys. And deep inside me, I have you. Thank you
.

***

She received a queen’s welcome when she and Uncle Leo arrived at the current temporary locale of Jablonski Enterprises. Sasha reached her first and scooped her up to spin her in his broad arms. “I missed you,” he shouted, then whispered low in her ear, “Betsy’s all set to go.”

Betsy was the mobile home she’d shared with her mom. Feigning a kiss to his cheek, she whispered back, “As soon as Uncle Leo’s asleep.”

With a curt nod, he set her back on her feet.

“Welcome home, Polina,” Tiny said and hugged her. He, too, leaned close to murmur in her ear. “I left you a present in Betsy’s kitchen. Don’t open it until you’re long gone from here, you got me?”

Biting back a smile, she replied, “Got it.”

Ralph came up to her next. “Fridge is stocked,” he said, pulling her into his embrace. Since he ran the sausage and peppers stand, she had a pretty good idea what was stocked in her refrigerator. Behind Ralph stood Lena, her mother’s replacement, who no doubt would have another secret message for her.