Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (34 page)

“
AUNT LONDON!” ERIN
shouted the second I wheeled into Gray’s house. She leaped onto my lap and took my face between both of her hands, holding me still so I couldn’t look anywhere but at her. “It’s my birfday.”

“I know it is, silly goose. Why do you think I’m here?”

She grinned, looking down at the box she’d dislodged in her anticipation to get to me, twirling the silver-and-teal curling ribbon with her chubby fingers. “Is this my present?”

“It is. But you have to wait to open it until everyone’s together and you’re opening all your presents.”

“Exactly, munchkin,” Gray said, lifting her off my lap. “You know the rules. All the birthday presents get opened at the party.”

“Can I shake it?” she asked, giving me a devious grin.

I passed the box over. “Shake away. I doubt it’ll tell you anything.”

Gray put her on the ground and playfully swatted her on the bottom. “Go on. Take it to add to the pile.” Once she ran off, he turned to me. “Please tell me you didn’t spend a fortune.”

“It’s an aunt’s prerogative to spoil her nieces and nephews rotten.”

“Which means you got her something that cost more than you should’ve spent on her in a full year.”

“It means I got her what she wanted. It’s an Elsa doll. Not too expensive.”

He rolled his eyes, but Sierra came into the room with the baby in her arms. She saw me, stopping cold. She’d had a huge, welcoming smile on her face, but it fizzled into the less-than-enthusiastic expression she usually bore when I was around. There might have even been a hint of stink eye attached.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Without another word, she turned and headed back into the kitchen.

“Don’t mind her,” Gray said.

“I never do.” My brother knew Sierra and I weren’t all buddy-buddy, but I sometimes wondered if he saw how she really felt about me, or if he was blind to it because he loved us both. Daddy saw the truth, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. I doubted Gray could really make a difference with Sierra’s jealousy, but it’d be nice if he could acknowledge that there was an issue.

The kids were all gathered in the playroom, along with a few of their friends. The mothers seemed to be congregating in the kitchen, where Sierra had gone. That made my choice easy. I wheeled myself into the playroom.

Gray followed me and flopped down on the beanbag chair. “You seem out of sorts,” he said, his voice almost completely covered up by the squeals and giggles coming from the kids.

“I am out of sorts.”

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

I gave him a do-you-really-want-to-know look.

“Want me to guess instead? I think it has to do with Dmitri Nazarenko. And maybe Wade Miller, too, since he’s not here with you like he usually is for the kids’ birthdays.” He shifted so he was looking at me full on. “And maybe most of all, it has to do with the fact that you’re pregnant. And not totally with the baby’s father, even if you’re not exactly
not
with him, either. And you’re scared.”

My jaw dropped. “How do you know all of that?”

“Dad,” he said matter-of-factly. “He let it spill last weekend when we were FaceTiming. Didn’t mean to, but it came out. I notice you’re not denying you’re scared.”

Gray was going to have to know eventually, but I’d hoped to have things a bit more settled before I started filling in the rest of my family.

“To death,” I admitted. There wasn’t any point trying to hide the truth from my brother. He knew me too well. “So Sierra knows, too?” I asked.

“She heard.”

“That explains her reaction when I came in today.”

Gray rolled his eyes. “Don’t make this into more than it is.”

“Oh, come off it. She’s never liked me, but she’s been jealous of the attention I get since my accident. She thinks she should get more attention than me because she’s been providing our parents with grandkids and I haven’t, but now she probably thinks my baby’s going to steal attention away from her kids.”

“Maybe she does. That doesn’t mean anyone else agrees with her.”

I shrugged.

“Dad said you weren’t sure what you were going to do yet.”

“I’m not.”

Gray raised a brow in question.

“Trying to work things out with Dima. If we can find a way forward, then we’ll decide what to do together. But I’m not going to jump into a long-term relationship with a man who’s got issues just because I’m pregnant. If we couldn’t make things work when there wasn’t a baby involved, what reason is there to believe that’ll change once you add another complication to the equation?”

“He’s not the only one with issues.”

I rolled my eyes. “His are bigger than mine.” Weren’t they?

“You ever stop to think that maybe you’re expecting too much?”

“I just want to see some effort.”

“You just want to be in control,” Gray said, rolling his eyes. “Of everything.”

“I like to be in control because there are so many things I have no control over.”

“You don’t have control over anything. You just want to think you do.”

I pouted, hating when my brother was right. “Maybe.”

He laughed. “But he knows?”

“He knows.”

“And what’s he doing about it?”

“Trying to figure things out. The ball’s in his court.”

Which meant it was out of my control.

No wonder I was out of sorts.

SVETKA HAD THE
biggest smile I’d ever seen when I met her at the airport. She reached up with both hands and took my face between them, kissing me on each cheek like I’d seen her do with Sergei so many times before.

My heart lodged somewhere in my throat when she did that.

“Your beard,” she said, Russian words rolling thick from her tongue. “Dmitri, I never thought I’d see you without that beard again. You make a mama proud to see your handsome face. Did you shave it for me?”

I winked. “If you want it to be for you, it’s for you, Svetka.”

“I wish you’d call me Mama. Or at least Matushka.”

She’d been trying to get me to call her something more familiar for over a decade, but I’d never been able to bring myself to do it. Especially not since the wreck. I could have killed her one true son that night, so why should I have the honor of calling her Mama? She would never listen to my arguments, telling me she might as well be my mama, so I should just give in and call her what she wants.

I took her bag from her and led her out to my car.

“So warm,” she said in awe.

“Just wait until we get to California.” I loaded her bag into the trunk and helped her into the passenger seat before getting behind the wheel. “It already feels like summer there. No snow. No need for your coat. You’ll love it.”

“I already love it because you wanted to share it with me,” she said, patting my knee. Then she gave me another once-over. “Much too skinny. Just like Sergei. I’ll bake you some good bread.”

RAZOR AND VIKTORIYA
came over for dinner the first night Svetka was in town. Svetka shooed me and Razor out of the kitchen, but she allowed Viktoriya to stay and help her, loudly complaining in Russian that my American house was so confusing since it didn’t have doors on every room. She’d never allowed me and Sergei to get in her way in the kitchen, kicking us out to do our schoolwork and closing the door so she could have peace while she worked her magic.

Viktoriya was allowed to stay, though, because she was a woman. Svetka still held on to very traditional views of gender roles, and I doubted she would ever let them go.

I heard their voices coming from the kitchen, but I did my best not to pay too much attention to what they were saying. At least not until I heard London’s name. Then I sat up a bit straighter.

“Dmitri has a girlfriend?” Svetka asked, a hint of awe in her tone. “A real girlfriend?”

“I think so. She’s not making it easy on him, though.”

“He won’t make it easy on himself, you mean.”

They both laughed, but there was a lot of truth in Svetka’s words, even if I didn’t want to hear it. London wanted things of me, and I wasn’t sure she was wrong for wanting them.

I’d thought I was ready to give her way a try, but I’d chickened out at the last minute, and I hadn’t done a damned thing since then in terms of meeting her needs. The only thing I knew I needed, though, was her.

FOR THE NEXT
two days, Viktoriya spent as much time as possible with Svetka so she wouldn’t be alone. I still had to go to practices and team meetings, so I couldn’t be with her nonstop. The two of them had hit it off right away, though. Before we left for the California road trip, Viktoriya and Tallie even took Svetka to a garage sale.

My Svetka came back to my house with a stuffed white tiger that was almost as big as I was. She set it on the coffee table in my living room and pushed it around until it was positioned exactly how she wanted it.

“You need a pet, Dmitri,” she said when I asked her why on earth she’d bought it.

“It’s not alive,” I pointed out.

“So you can’t kill it.” She nudged it one more time, then nodded and headed for the kitchen to brew more tea and bake more bread.

She was still dealing with jet lag, so she went to bed very early that night. I stayed downstairs to call London, since I hadn’t heard her voice since Svetka had arrived, and I missed her with the kind of hollow ache that had filled me after my father had passed away.