Hold Me Tight: Heartbreakers (17 page)

“Louise and Viktor’s
samovar
is in the other box,” Ellie said quietly, her expression soft and understanding as tears came to Jessica’s eyes. “It’s nice, having your own set, having a family to enjoy it with you.”

Touched by the warmth of this family, Jessica fought back tears. She hadn’t realized how much richness her life had lacked, how brittle it now seemed.

Who was she really? How much had she missed? And finally, what if she failed?

She found Alexi staring at her, and turned away. She didn’t suit him, or this family. What was she thinking, involving herself with Alexi, a man who had already been hurt?

What was she doing?

Alexi wiped his hands on the rag and stood, studying the newly installed kitchen sink and counter. His cousins and uncle were already enjoying sweet rolls and coffee in the next room and Alexi couldn’t put off joining them any longer.

Jessica was clearly emotional and off-balance, uncomfortable amidst the sudden burst of Stepanovs. She’d seemed helpless and afraid, and yet she didn’t turn to him, preferring to keep her fears to herself.

So he was angry and frustrated, and wanted to hold her. But her head had gone up with pride and once again she’d cut him from her life, from what caused her to react so emotionally, almost stunned by family warmth.

He threw down the rag and, unable to prolong it any longer, walked into the living area. Once there he stopped, caught by the image of Jessica sitting on the floor. Her legs were folded, the toddler seated upon them. Her hair was down, waving around her face, and she seemed softly, warmly, stunned as she spoke with his family. She seemed locked in a discovery that pleased and frightened her.

Then Jessica met his gaze and tears shimmered in her eyes. Her lips opened and trembled, as if she were trying to speak.

Alexi moved quickly to her. He gently picked up the toddler and handed her to Jarek, then he lifted Jessica into his arms. Alexi sat in the big rocking chair that had just been brought from the shop and held Jessica, rocking her gently while his family continued to talk softly.

“I can’t do this,” Jessica whispered.

“I know,” he returned, challenging her. “It’s too easy. You like the fight, don’t you?”

“Rat.”

When they were alone, Alexi watched Jessica carefully place the china cups and saucers onto a huge hutch. Her fingers ran over the gleaming, ornate
samovar
as if treasuring it.

He placed the new secretary desk he had just carried inside on the floor. Jarek had left it in the sunroom and Alexi preferred to give his gift to Jessica in private. “Where do you want this?”

“What?” As if reluctant to leave the Stepanov gifts, Jessica turned slowly. “It’s beautiful, Alexi. But not necessary. You can take it back to the furniture display room, or the shop. The door will do nicely—”

She frowned and came closer. “I haven’t seen this design before. It’s beautiful, very feminine, almost sensual.”

In comparison to the emerald rings she wore, glittering as her hand swept across the desk, the walnut secretary was nothing—and it was everything, a gift of his heart to the woman he suspected he loved. “I made it for you. It’s my own design.”

Jessica frowned, clearly startled, her hand going over her heart. “You made it. For me,” she repeated.

Alexi swallowed the emotion in his throat. “I hope you like it. Now, where do you want it?”

“For me? Is that how you see me? Like the beauty in this?” she repeated once more, as if disbelieving. A tear dropped from her lashes and slid down her cheek. “No one has ever made me a gift before,” she added shakily.

“It is only a small thing, something a man does for a woman he—cherishes,” he finished unevenly. He placed the secretary on the floor and reached to cradle her face in his hand. His thumb stroked away the tear and he replaced it with a light kiss.

“It’s lovely. I—I don’t know what to say.” Jessica felt as if all the brittle pieces of armor she’d pasted around her through the years were coming apart.

She didn’t expect to see the pain in his face, or the tears. “Alexi, I am fine.”

“You say you’re always ‘fine,’ don’t you?” His deep voice was rough with emotion. “But you show me what you feel, behind that smoke screen you use to protect yourself.”

She couldn’t stop the tears flowing down her cheeks. “Why are you so angry?”

“Because my gift is so little, so simple, a man to a woman, and it terrifies you. You should have had presents before…made with—” He stopped and turned from her. “I want to take you someplace. If you want to go, put on your boots and jacket. It’s cold outside.”

“No. Not now.”

Alexi raised a dark brow. “You don’t trust me, even for that?”

“I just want to stay here…where it’s all so beautiful. I’m afraid if I leave, it will all disappear….”

His frown deepened. “This is a good house. It’s rough now, but it’s not going anywhere.”

How could she explain? “No, I’m afraid all the warmth and love will—”

Alexi tugged her into his arms and his light kisses dried her tears. “You think too much.”

“This is only temporary, you know. There’s a real world out there, and it isn’t going to wait. Just hold me tight, Alexi. I feel as if I’m coming apart.”

His body stiffened, but he held her tightly against him.
Temporary
with Jessica wasn’t a word he liked, yet it was better than nothing with her.

Layers of morning fog blurred the sight of Jessica walking along the beach in front of Alexi. Sandpipers zigzagged along the sand, picking at bits of food; seagulls cried like tiny white ghosts before settling upon piers circled by thick cables.

She had been unsettled throughout the night, walking out onto the deck to stare at the night, to listen to the crash of the waves. More than once, she had passed by the hutch holding his mother’s old china, touching the pieces almost reverently. She’d sat at the desk he’d made, running her hands over the smooth, oiled wood, rearranging her laptop and pencils and pads several times.

Alexi rubbed his chest, where the ache had started inside his heart and watched Jessica.

She began to walk toward the deserted pier that the summer would fill with tourists, browsing in the shops and sitting in lawn chairs with bait and tackle boxes at their sides, fishing lines in the water.

This is only temporary,
she’d said, and the words had hurt him desperately. They closed the door to the future they could have, that he wanted.

Alexi reached down to pick up a smooth flat stone and sent it skipping across the dark waves. And what did he have to offer her?

Was she thinking of her late husband, the man she had loved?

Was Alexi so fragile that he needed her to say the words to him, to come after him, initiate lovemaking desperately, to give him a sign that she cared? How much time did they have before she went back to Seattle, to the elegant home and wealth he couldn’t give her?

Alexi watched her disappear into the fog lying over the tourists’ pier.
How could he let her go?

How long could he dance around saying what he wanted, pushing for a commitment that might terrify her?

Alexi inhaled roughly, holding the cold, salt-scented air inside him before releasing it. He knew himself. He wasn’t a man to wait and he wasn’t a man to avoid the inevitable confrontation with the bully hounding her. Jessica’s independent nature wouldn’t like his interference.

By the last week of January, just two weeks since Alexi and she had first made love, Jessica had dug into her new role, not exactly a peaceful change, but definitely more exciting. Not only was she discovering how much she liked everyday life in Amoteh, the Stepanov family, but she felt energized. She wasn’t simply a mechanical body filling an office position. She wasn’t drained by mountains of responsibilities and paperwork, and then returning the next day for the endless tasks.

Instead she had found that life in Amoteh settled her into a peace she’d never known. She enjoyed the good times the Stepanov women shared, the way Ellie had settled into a quiet anticipation of her baby, which was due the first week of February.

She had carefully filtered her cell phone calls, not answering Howard’s. Because of business, she restricted him to e-mail contact, and he was angry. Too bad. The newly installed land line also had a Caller ID attached and Howard was simply ignored.

Jessica was in her own perfect bubble, complete with a man who made her feel—really feel like she was alive and thriving. In Alexi’s arms, Jessica was all woman—and that held a beauty
and power of its own, so deep and powerful that it glowed inside her.

Sometimes.
There were times when she could shake him, as if that was possible.

Jessica stared at Alexi, who was above her repairing the roof. Through the makeshift hole, which would later become a skylight, he glared down at her. “I said, ‘roofing nails.’ This is a wood screw.”

“Listen, bud. Be glad. You got me up at the crack of dawn and you haven’t stopped pushing me since. I haven’t done anything right all day—according to you. And you’ve gotten sawdust all over the floor. I just used the shop vacuum on it.”

His smile wasn’t nice. “That happens when wood is sawed. It makes sawdust.”

“I’ve been up and down this ladder so much that my butt hurts.”

“I need roofing nails, not wood screws, and a claw hammer isn’t a crowbar.”

“First, I wasn’t holding my end of the replacement window high enough and you yelled at me.”

“Yell back. Go back to your office work. But get me the nails first, I’m losing daylight.”

Her temper rising, Jessica held back the shout almost ready to burst into the air between them. “You know I never yell,” she said unsteadily. “I’ll get your damn nails…. What did you just mutter?”

“Nothing.”

“You just said ‘women,’ like that, like—” Jessica realized she had just shouted. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”

Around the nail between his lips, Alexi said, “Sure. You yelled, and now you’re blaming your bad temper on me.”

He took the nail from his lips and began to hammer above her. Jessica wasn’t done with him. “You shouldn’t have started it, Stepanov.”

“Get off that ladder. I’ll get the nails myself. The right nails. Go bake some cookies or play with your computer. I’m losing daylight,” he repeated.

“You’re going to lose a lot more than that.” Jessica backed
down the ladder, giving way to Alexi who was descending. She stood to one side and crossed her arms. “Alexi, you are an evil, temperamental, bullying, single-minded, arrogant—”

He walked to an assortment of sacks, selected one, filled the pouch at his workman’s belt and held up a nail in front of her. “This is a roofing nail,” he said, spacing out the words as if speaking to a small child. “A screw has little ridges running around it.”

“Rat,” Jessica finished her assessment of the man who had nudged her temper all day.

She studied Alexi, who was dumping the old removed nails into a can. Sawdust was in his hair and a little had caught in the dark stubble on his chin. He was wearing a worn, quilted plaid shirt against the cold, jeans that revealed his thermal underwear through the torn places in them, and work boots that had definitely seen better days.

“I am not going to the Seagull’s Perch tonight while you tend bar,” she said unevenly to keep herself from shouting. “I’ve had enough of you for the day. So far, I’m not intelligent enough to hold a level steady or use a nail gun. And just by the way, you’ve laid out the kitchen wrong. Add that to the way you do not roll the toothpaste tube from the bottom and—What are you looking at me like that for?”

“Are you going to yell again? It sounds like you’re getting worked up enough to—”

Jessica stepped close to Alexi and grabbed his shirt in her fist. She stood on tiptoe to frown up at him. “I never yell,” she said between her teeth. “Got it?”

“I think you are going to yell,” Alexi stated quietly, watching her. “You did a while ago.”

“No, I won’t and no, I didn’t.”

“Okay,” he said lightly, and lifted her hand to kiss her palm. While her mind stopped and churned and tried to find steady ground, Alexi bent to kiss her lightly, his tongue flicking lightly across her parted lips. Then he picked her up by the waist and lifted her aside; he walked into the living area and into the kitchen.

Jessica followed quickly; Alexi could confuse her too easily.
“You can’t just shift an argument from a heated discussion—”

Alexi frowned and studied the kitchen layout. He opened and shut the small temporary refrigerator’s door. He turned the water faucet on and off. “You were getting worked up to yell. What’s wrong with this layout?”

“I was discussing…repeat, discussing, how arrogant you are. You can’t just kiss my hand and me in the middle of it. That changes the rules.”

“We have rules? I thought we were just going with the flow, as Bliss and Ed say. The sink here, the refrigerator here, dishwasher here—pantry and laundry room combination just off the kitchen. There’s nothing wrong with this design.”

“We do have rules. One of them is that you can’t talk to me like a child.”

“You are no child,” he said firmly. “But you are used to ordering people around and you are
my
assistant. I am not yours.”

“Do women really put up with your arrogance?”

“Since I am
temporarily
—as you say—out of commission with any woman other than you, how would I know that? And I am not arrogant. I simply know what I am doing. How many remodeling jobs have you done? I’ve done a few and there is nothing wrong with this layout.”

“I’ve designed traffic flows, aisle promotions, and so on. This ‘assistant’ knows that you’ve got the refrigerator clear at the other end of the kitchen. If the door is open, it will block anyone from coming into the kitchen from the living room. And the dishwasher should be close to the sink. You really should make the window longer and the sill wider for potted herbs.”