The Unwilling Bride (3 page)

“Well, the thing is, Stefan, if your friend lived here a long time ago, he just wouldn’t have any reason to know that we’ve had a strong political women’s movement in this country over the last couple of decades. There was a time it was okay to call a woman cupcake or chick or doll. In another time, those were terms of endearment or affection—”

Stefan’s shaggy eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Endearments are now forbidden? American women no longer want affection?”

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s just that certain terms have become symbols of women being oppressed.”

“Paige, you are throwing me for a rope. I know about oppression. Oppression has nothing in common with word meaning of affection, not that I understand. You American women seek to oppress affection?”

“No. No, I…” She shook her head, starting to feel utterly confused herself. “The point is that some of those words and phrases became symbols. Symbols of the ways women had been treated like sex objects.”

“Ah. I get you. Much clearer now.” He hesitated. “I think. What is sex object?”

Paige grabbed her mug. She’d been wrong. No matter what proportion of vodka he’d splashed into the coffee, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough to be comfortable with the unexpected turn this conversation was taking. She slugged down a gulp of the brew and grappled to explain. “A sex object is when someone is treated like a thing instead of a person. Women wanted to be valued for more than just their bodies or looks. They wanted to be valued and loved for their minds.”

“Yeah? So what is the news here? This is automatic. What man with brain would love half the woman? Why waste time loving less than body, soul, mind, whole caboodle? How else would you love?”

“Um, maybe we’d better try this language lesson another time,” Paige said desperately. Her conscience shot her slivers of guilt for copping out. Before he went to town again—for his sake—he really needed to understand that it wasn’t wise to call strange women “cupcake” or warmly suggest that they “get it on” or “hit the sack.” But to summarize the whole history of feminist philosophy and politically correct
language in a short conversation—it just wasn’t that easy. There was clearly a whole difference in cultures.

Or there was a difference in him. An image flashed through her mind of Stefan, making love, inhaling a woman’s mind, body, soul, “whole caboodle.” Blood charged through her veins in an embarrassing rush. He had sounded so matter-of-fact. Maybe loving “whole caboodle” was status quo for him, but it wasn’t anything she was familiar with. And she was utterly confounded how the subject had veered in such an intimately personal direction. They’d started out in the nice, cool North Pole—how had they ended up in the hot climate of Tahiti?

“You are probably frustrated with me. I learn too slow,” he said morosely.

“No, no, you learn very fast. It’s just that learning certain things about any language probably takes a lot of time.”

“Yes, exactly true. But it helps much having someone to explain. I hope we can talk like this again?”

“Sure,” Paige said. What else could she say? She had a bad feeling she’d only further confused him about the language instead of helping him this time. Still, she carefully added, “I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of free time, though, Stefan. I work long hours.”

“I understand. I saw your workroom, your cameos. Maybe you could show me something about your art another time, too, okeydoke?”

“Okeydoke.” When he surged to his feet, Paige abruptly realized that he was leaving—without having to be asked, which was a huge relief—and she swiftly uncurled from the couch and popped to her feet, too. She opened her mouth, intending to say something cordial about his stopping by. Instead a
giggle bubbled from her throat and escaped. A giggle. Her. A plain old girlish, giddy, happy giggle. How appallingly silly.

Stefan threw back his head and laughed. “You sleep good tonight, babe. Vodka good for you. Nothing to worry,
lyubemaya.
Great medicine for the soul.”

Paige didn’t know what that
lyubemaya
meant, but knowing his fondness for affectionate terms, she figured it was too dangerous to ask. Temporarily her reaction to a couple of spiked coffees was embarrassing her to death. At five foot seven and a sturdy one hundred and thirty pounds, she certainly should have been able to handle a little alcohol. For that matter, she’d never been a sissy drinker, had always taken her brandy in straight shots anytime she had a cold. It just belatedly occurred to her that she hadn’t had a cold in three or four years. “I’m afraid I haven’t had much experience with vodka,” she admitted.

“And I bet you never had borscht? Caviar? Solyanka? We will have to fix all those missing experiences in your life very soon.”

Food, he was talking about. Not love. Not sex. It had to be the hundred-proof liquid sloshing in her mind that made her suddenly think of “missed experiences” in a context with Stefan.

Vodka might be medicine for the soul in Russia, but it wasn’t for her. Positively she was never touching the stuff again if it made her feel this…goofy.

Stefan had been nothing but friendly. A lonely man in a strange country, seeking some basic companionship. Even now, as he yanked on his alpaca jacket, the front hall sconce light illuminated his genial smile, the crinkle of laugh lines around his eyes. It was just his powerful stature that made her five-seven seem defenselessly
small. Maybe he was hopelessly gregarious, but he hadn’t done or said one thing to make her worry that he was anything but a kind man. A safe man. A good guy.

“Snowing again,” he noted, as he pulled worn leather gloves from his pockets.

“We’ll probably have a couple more inches by morning.” She hugged her arms under her chest. The front hall was drafty cold. He was obviously ready to leave, so she thought he was just turning toward her to say goodbye. And she saw him bend his head, but she also saw his kind, safe almost-familiar-now smile.

It never occurred to her that a kiss was coming.

It never occurred to her that he wanted to kiss her.

Her mind scrabbled to recall if she’d sent him any come-on body language signals. But of course she hadn’t. Paige hadn’t sent any men those willing body language signals since she was sixteen. And lightning storms weren’t supposed to happen in the blizzard month of January.

She wasn’t prepared, never even got her arms unfolded before they were trapped between his body and hers. A big hand cupped her head. His lips touched hers, more gentle than a whisper, his mouth unbearably soft against the tickle of his rough, wiry beard.

The taste of him was foreign. Alien. Drugging sweet and disturbing. Her pulse zoomed like a skater on the ice for the first time, unpredictable and unsteady and flying way too fast.

That first skimming kiss turned deeper. His mouth rubbed against hers, testing, exploring the texture of her lips, savoring the taste of her. You’d think he hadn’t kissed a woman in the last hundred years. You’d think he just discovered a secret treasure, and
her senses wrapped around the smell of leather and alpaca wool and the male warmth radiating from his body.

The speed of light was fast, but not half as fast as the speed of darkness. It had been so long since she’d kissed anyone. She’d forgotten. The exhilaration sweeping through her pulse was more frightening than any danger. She’d forgotten what it was like to feel that innocent burst of yearning, to feel that lusty dizzy spring-fever high, to feel that heady excitement of wanting. Or maybe she’d never known. She’d kissed boys, not men. Never a man who knew how to kiss like he did. Never
him.

She meant to bolt, not close her eyes. She meant to push him away, not stand stock-still as if she were caught up in a spell of enchantment. She wasn’t wild anymore. She’d slayed and buried every hint of wildness in her heart, years and years ago, yet it was as if she’d frozen those emotions instead of truly killing them off, because they seeped through her now, billowing loose like a parachute in the wind.

It was his fault. If she could just get a lungful of oxygen, she knew she could catch control again. Yet his thumb grazed the line of her jaw, in a caressing gesture as potent as tenderness. And his kiss turned openmouthed, claiming her response as if it already belonged to him, making her li’ps ache and her head feel thrumming dizzy.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. And then, she didn’t have to. He lifted his head. There was a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, sharp and black and hot, yet he pushed back a strand of her hair with a gentle touch. His gaze scored her face, studying her
eyes, her mouth, the flush burned in her cheeks that he’d put there. And then he smiled.

“Paige…” He dropped his hand and stepped toward the door, as if nothing but leaving had ever been on his mind. The sudden glint of humor in his eyes, in fact, had the devil’s own mischief. “So you know. That was not about oppression or sex object. That was just Russian way of saying thank you, good night.”

That was it. When he opened the door, a harsh sting of snow blasted in, but then he was gone.

She threw the latch and hooked the chain bolt, unsure whether she wanted to shoot him—or laugh. It would seem she’d gotten
one
language lesson through to him, if he understood the concepts of “oppression” and “sex object” well enough to joke about them.

She couldn’t seem to laugh, though. Her heart was still slamming too hard. Even when he’d completely disappeared out of sight down the driveway, her pulse was still bouncing off the walls.

That Russian didn’t need language to communicate a damn thing.

Abruptly she realized how late it was. She gathered up the dishes from the living room, then started turning off lights through the house. The last room was her workshop, and when she switched off the overhead from the doorway, her eyes instinctively flew to the jade cameo.

The light couldn’t help but draw her. She’d stashed the jade cameo on a shelf, still unsure what she was going to do with it. But even with the whole downstairs dark, the bright snowy night caught the soft iridescent glow of the stone. It was the nature of jade to appear lit from within, and she found herself staring
at the carved woman in profile, frowning hard, not really seeing her but simply thinking.

She used to be wild and impulsive, once upon a time. She used to be reckless, giddy on life and her newly developing powers as a woman, teasing every boy she could attract. And it was never far from her conscience, that a sixteen-year-old boy had once paid the cost for her thoughtlessness and insensitivity.

She’d changed. Completely. Her life was selfdiscipline, work, responsibility. Possibly she was a teensy bit absentminded—hey, there was no way to wipe every single flaw from her character—but she felt good about the woman she’d turned into. She hadn’t hurt anyone. She’d been very careful of that. Her sisters said she was too tough on herself, but Paige stood on her own two feet, strong and sturdy.

Alone.

Safe.

Alone and safe had been paired in her mind for a decade, as natural as pairing peanut butter and jelly. Nothing she’d questioned…until tonight and a wild, wayward kiss that had come out of nowhere.

Around that unpredictable Russian, Paige thought darkly, she had better watch her p’s and q’s.

That settled, she pivoted on her heel and went up to bed.

P
aige was too busy working to think about Stefan.

Her legs were wrapped around the spokes of the work stool, her hands around a cup of fragrant Darjeeling tea. At five in the morning—when she had just as determinedly
not
been thinking about Stefan—she ’d remembered the coral.

The chances of her falling back to sleep wouldn’t make bookie’s odds, and the coral was an excellent excuse to bolt out of bed. So she’d charged downstairs in old black sweats and bare feet, and burrowed through all the boxes of raw materials until she found it.

Sipping her tea—from the second pot, now—she studied the crooked, jagged wedge of coral shell with ruthless concentration. She still recalled the sly, sneaky grin on the clerk who sold her the piece—he’d been real sure he was pawning off a worthless piece on a
rookie. Maybe the clerk was an ace pro at textbook geology, but he didn’t know cameos and he didn’t know coral.

She did.

In the middle of the night, when she’d been fighting to get that blasted Russian off her mind, she remembered the coral, remembered the break in the outer layer of the shell, the rich cherry red color the Italians called
rosso scuro.

Coral was almost always uniform in color. Finding a piece with two shades was crying rare—and a cameo carver’s dream. Further, the coral that mattered was gem material—true precious coral—not the stuff that came off from reefs in shallow seas, but the stuff that came from down deep. This piece came from down deep, off the coast of Sardinia. No holes, no flaws, no cracks. The shadings were rich and true It’d make a pendant, nothing bigger, but the potential for treasure was there—and hopefully a perfect treasure for her sister, Gwen.

Paige gulped another sip of tea. Energy was biting at her harder than hunger. Her fingers itched to pick up a chisel and start working. But she had to know the piece of coral more intimately than her own heartbeat before touching it. Nothing was more fragile than coral. Nothing as easily broken.

Like her sister, she thought.

Her gaze strayed to the jade cameo on the top shelf. She’d really been stupid. It had always been a mistake, trying to make a present for Gwen in jade. Coral was so much more like her. Probably from its first discovery, coral had been symbolic in medicine and magic. A romantic talisman of beauty and the kind of beauty one put in everyday life, which was exactly like
Gwen. Hopelessly romantic. Fragile. Easily hurt, easily scarred, but beautiful on the inside—if anyone could ever get her to believe it.

Too restless to sit, Paige popped off the stool and started twisting the gooseneck stem of her work lamp so the light better illuminated every angle of the coral, her mind on Gwen—and Abby.

Paige had been badly worried about both sisters since Christmas. Generations of Stanfords had lived in the old Vermont homestead until the clan scattered—Abby and Gwen had grown up, moved away, and then their parents had retired to Arizona. The whole crew had argued with Paige about living alone in the old-fashioned, heat-eating monster, but this was home, the roots of the whole family, and they all still gathered here for the holidays. They had this past Christmas, too, but with mom and dad there, both her older sisters had kept a protective lid on any serious conversations.

Paige didn’t need the specifics to recognize that both Gwen and Abby were stressed out and unhappy. Growing up, they’d all fought like snakes and mongeese. Still did. Gwen had made one man her whole life; Abby was all ambition and drive; and Paige was the unconventional rebel. Bickering and teasing was probably inevitable when none of them ever had one single thing in common, much less came close to sharing each others’ goals or dreams.

It didn’t matter. It never mattered. They didn’t have to understand each other to love. The bond between sisters had always been unshakable. Paige always knew when one of them was unhappy. The reverse was just as true. And she’d been frustrated and worried ever since Christmas, that her sisters were having some kind
of trouble in their personal lives that she couldn’t do a damn thing about.

A cameo wasn’t going to solve Gwen’s problems. The need was in Paige, to create something for her sister, something that had meaning; something that expressed love. Impatiently she propped her hands on her hips, fiercely concentrating. All raw materials looked like nothing in the beginning. The coral, no different than other shells or stones she worked with, had a secret to tell. It was up to her to find the truth.

The frown on her forehead suddenly eased. Blood started waltzing through her veins. She had it. Automatically her fingers fumbled blind, yanking open the drawer on the left, groping for the India ink pen and the leather-lined vise. Oh, man, it was
there;
she saw exactly what she wanted to do—

From nowhere, a scraping sound interrupted her concentration. A grating scrape, followed by a mysteriously soft
whoomph.
Her head shot up. Both sounds came from the outside, but definitely close enough to the house to be unignorable. Someone was on her property. In her driveway.

She heard the sharp, grating scrape again—what on earth
was
it?—followed by…damn…a wild baritone singing some kind of insane aria. A Russian aria.

She thought,
no.

Perching up on tiptoe, she scowled out the window, but couldn’t see anything or anyone from that view. The
scrape-whoomph
sequence repeated itself again, though. She pushed up her sweatshirt sleeves and stomped down the hall to the next bedroom. From that window, if she craned her neck far enough, she could see a bucketful of snow flying in the air, the silver
shine of a snow shovel and, yeah, a disheveled head of coal black hair.

She thought, I’m gonna kill him. And headed for the back door to do just that. An occasional visit, fine. Stefan was alone in a new country and lonesome to talk with someone. Fine. He needed help with his language before he was safe to let loose in public—at least around women—and that was fine, too. She personally knew what it felt like to be a misfit, and she really didn’t mind helping him.

Only the kiss last night had changed things.

She’d spent a sleepless night with Mr. Michaelovich barging into her dreams. Those dreams had been embarrassingly, explicitly sexual, brought on—no doubt—by her celibate life-style. Only no guy had bugged her dreams before Stefan. And neither had any other guy’s kisses.

No one could help what they dreamed, but by George, a woman could control who used her snow shovel.

Bristling from every feminine nerve, she yanked open the back door—and almost earned herself a scoop of snow directly in the face. Thankfully the white powder frosted the overgrown yews next to the door—and by then Stefan had spotted her.

He leaned an elbow on the shovel handle and grinned. It
had
snowed the night before, four fresh inches of sugar-white powder adding to the foot-deep ground cover. Pine branches sagged under the weight; the naked hardwoods looked as if they were coated with a layer of whipped cream. The whole world had turned white except for one slam of color—him.

His cheeks were redder than apples; his eyes a dancing black. Backdropped against all that stark
white, his shoulders looked huge and powerful—a wincing jolt of virile, vital masculine energy in a day that
had
been so serene, so calm, so peaceful.

“Good morning, my cupcake! You take my breath, you are that sexy this fresh in the morning!”

Paige wiped a hand over her face. Heaven knew what she looked like, but for positive it wasn’t sexy, and he was not going to do this to her again. She was
not
disarmed by the way his Russian accent wrapped around that antiquated sexist endearment; she was
not
charmed by the totally unpredictable uses of the language that came out of his mouth. She was aggravated with him for this intrusion. Justifiably aggravated. But the damn man was so exuberantly enthusiastic, so
happy,
that yelling at him was harder than kicking a puppy.

“Good morning,” she said, echoing him, her tone as formal as she could make it, and then forged ahead, “Stefan, there was absolutely no need for you to come over and shovel my walk!”

“Well, big confession to tell. Guilty confession.” Stefan cocked an elbow on the shovel handle. “I not do this for you. I do this for me.”

“I—pardon me?”

“I work on computer for hours. Very quiet, very silent work. Requires total focus. And this is my work, what I love, no question, but I get desperate for exercise. I have to break in—”

“Break out.” She automatically corrected him.

“Yeah, you understand. Need to break out. I get energy buildup like to burst. I see you have no man, that it snowed last night, very easy for me to shovel your walk for you. Big favor to me, because I am so
desperate to vent all this physical energy. I thank you for providing this chore.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. She scalped a hand through her hair, feeling confused. So far she had yet to anticipate anything the confounded man was going to say. Ignoring the comment about “no man” was easy, but how was she going to argue with a guy who regarded snow shoveling as a personal favor to him?

And those dancing dark eyes mirrored utter sincerity. “I found shovel by your back door. Easy to find. No reason to ask you, I know, because we are neighbors, and like you told me, it is natural for neighbors to help each other in America.”

“Well, I know I said that….” Geezle beezle, talk about getting trapped by her own words. “But this is a little different, Stefan. It scared me, when I heard an unfamiliar sound outside. I didn’t know it was you—”

“Da, I can imagine. You live alone, any stranger could bother you. Not good, this danger, but I will watch over you now, Paige, no need to worry. And I tell you next time I’m here, so you know it’s just me.”

Alarm shot through her. It was funny, really, even sweet that he thought she needed protecting—considering that no man, from the day she was born, had ever doubted that Paige could take care of herself. Her dad used to fret that she took self-reliance to a fault and tease that she was stubborn enough to take on a battalion of marines—but she’d never lacked the courage to stand up for herself. Maybe Stefan had grown up with some outmoded chivalrous values about women, though. And she didn’t want to hurt his
feelings, but somehow she was failing to communicate the concept of privacy.

“Stefan, it’s okay—I’m okay—and I really don’t need watching over. I can shovel my own walk, fix my own leaky faucets. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time, and I’ve known everyone who lives in Walnut Woods all my life. The same families have been here for generations, and I…”

Her voice trailed off. Stefan was shaking his head before she halfway finished explaining. Something was on his mind, because he obviously wasn’t listening to her.

“We talk another time, lambchop, because I can see you shaking. Too cold, standing there with no coat. You go back in. I not interrupt your work. You just pretend I’m not here, okeydoke?”

She ended up returning that “okeydoke,” because it seemed to be the only word she was positive he understood. Pretending he wasn’t there also struck her as a fine idea…until she tried putting it into commission.

The piece of coral was waiting for her. She couldn’t be more excited about working on it. If she didn’t exactly want Stefan around, at least she knew where he was. Outside. Lustily singing Russian opera in an offkey baritone. Clearly happy, and nowhere near her workroom.

When the singing stopped, she tensed for a second, then relaxed. He was done. Now he would surely go home. Naturally it had been difficult to relax, knowing he was so close, but now she could seriously concentrate.

And the silence and peace were wonderful, until she caught the whiff of spices in the air. Basil and ginger.
Pepper. And something hot and sweet and fruity—orange marmalade?

If forced at knife point, Paige could cook from scratch. Baking bread in the old wood stove was even a challenge she enjoyed, but day by day she leaned more toward throwing Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Frozen meals did the job better, and cooking for one was beyond boring. More to the immediate point, there could not conceivably be mouth-watering exotic smells emanating from the kitchen, because she hadn’t
been
in the kitchen.

She found him standing over her wok, holding her fork, and her kitchen towel hanging from the belt loop on his jeans. Steam rose from the wok. Fragrant steam that smelled like something to die for. She crossed her arms, tapped her foot and delivered a cough from the doorway.

His head pivoted around, shaggy eyebrows arched in surprise. “You should be working.”

“I was trying to,” she said dryly.

“Well, this is a little lunch. A thank-you for letting me shovel your walk. I figure you are busy, too busy to maybe cook, so busy maybe you forget to eat. And I have all this—”

“You have all this energy. Yes, you told me. Energy enough to burst.”

“I leave. Instantly. Soon as finished here.” He waved a hand to illustrate his luncheon menu, which rivaled something she’d be lucky to put together for her family for Christmas. “I wanted to make you borscht,
blinchikis,
maybe
vatrushkas.
Give you samples of some Russian food. But couldn’t find ingredients. Best I could do was Oriental. You probably hate Oriental, huh?”

“Oh, no, I’m crazy about Oriental food, but Stefan-”

“Great.”
He made an effusive gesture, shooing her out. “You go back to workroom. I’ll bring in. Quiet as rat. Not bother you.”

“Quiet as a mouse.” She automatically corrected him.

“That’s me,” he agreed.

For a man who made ardent, extravagant and passionate protests about not bothering her, Stefan had managed to embed himself into her life as tenaciously as a tick on a hound.

Four days later, he showed up at her workroom door, carrying a tray. Paige took one look at the lunch of shiitake mushrooms and shrimp, and thought this had gone too far. Way too far. She had no idea where he’d found the oyster sauce or fresh cilantro leaves—certainly not in her kitchen. Completely without permission, Stefan had stacked her wood and stocked her kitchen and done all kinds of nefarious other chores over the past few days.