At least, when he wanted her. God knew he always wanted her.
“You’ll still get a chance to say your goodbyes,” Vaslav added.
Vera’s smile faded, but she nodded nonetheless. “Okay. So what else came up that’s so important?”
Oh, that?
Vaslav shrugged. “That’s a surprise.”
Vera did a double take of him as if she hadn’t heard him right the first time. “You got me ... a surprise?” she hedged. The barely contained curiosity in her voice also shone in her bright eyes. “The man who barely wanted to look at me all week—never mind touch me—has done something to surprise me?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
He didn’t know how to explain the way she’d twisted the word, saying surprise first like it was a good thing and then warping it the second time so that it was clear she understood he was being misleading. Vera was picking up on his tricks quicker than he expected her to.
At the mirror, he let her see his gaze travel from the simple cotton panties—bikini style—she wore up her bare chest before locking their stares together. “Is that why you’re practically naked in here when you know I’m getting up and around and ready for this shitshow today? Were you trying to seduce me?”
If he hit a nerve, she didn’t know it. In fact, her sly smile only stroked the heat that had been growing deep in his gut from the moment he walked into the bathroom and saw her perched half-naked on a stool while she smoked a cigarette and read.
“I don’t need to try,” she returned.
She wasn’t wrong, but Vaslav doubted he was off the mark, either. He’d yet to mention the sleek bullet vibrator—clean, and seemingly out of batteries—she let him find in the guest bedroom under her pillow that morning. Yes, he’d actually had to look to find it, but Vera wasn’t the type to leave her bed messy after she left it in the mornings; which was part of the reason he stumbled on it in the first place.
Why had he gone looking for her before starting his day? For the first morning ever since they woke up in the same bed together as husband and wife, she had made good and sure he heard her running through her morning routine. Except by the time he was up and around to do his own, she had slipped out of their master’s connected suites and back to the guest bedroom.
Or so he thought when he went looking.
He could call her on the lie—she was trying something. Even if it was subtle to grab his attention. Knowing she’d be wearing a particular dress he liked for the day only added to the strain on his thin self-control.
Now just wasn’t the time. Not with a day like theirs ahead. A pity for them both, really.
Vaslav turned on the cold water tap, and thrust his hands under the stream to gather a cupful he could use to splash under his jaw and down his throat. Before he did, he asked her, “You want what you want, don’t you? Wasn’t that what you told me?”
He planned to give it to her. Even if it had made him mad at first.
Vera’s brow knotted in the middle, voicing her otherwise silent confusion. “I want a lot of things. I’m not sure what you mean.”
“My mother. You’re curious. A face to the name—isn’t that what you told me, da?”
He gave her studious, unruffled attitude credit. The fact that he hadn’t as much as whispered about his mother since the evening he confronted Vera with her secret phone call meant she should have been surprised to hear him bring it up so frankly now.
“You’re right,” he told her, knowing how cruel his flat tone could be, “it’s not a good surprise. Natalia barely passes as tolerable on her good days. Sorry about your luck.”
“Are you telling me we’re going to see your mother?”
Wasn’t that what she wanted?
“That sweater I mentioned, the grey one,” Vaslav said, changing the conversation altogether, “would you go find it for me now? I feel like I’m already late to get a start on this fucking day.”
Better to just get it all over with.
The good and bad.
Vera stared hard at him in the reflection of the mirror, but he was careful to avoid her gaze even as it followed him when he headed for the tower of rolled, fresh black towels on a stand in the corner by the shower. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with her? Didn’t we just spend a week ignoring each other because you don’t want me to even speak about her like she exists, or wh—”
“I want you to understand, kisska.”
And then he bet she would never ask about Natalia ever again. Some lessons, this one in particular, had to be learned firsthand. He’d never been a terribly good teacher.
7.
Two city blocks away from the restaurant—where Vera would get her very brief chance to say goodbye to her mother and father before they attended a dinner that would start a larger conversation in the Russian criminal underworld—Vaslav finally decided to break the stretch of silence that had accompanied them since Dubna’s rural back roads. His silence, to her at least, was worse than even his anger. At least when he voiced his distress and displeasure, she had something to work with. Silence was nothing more than a void of emptiness, and it left her entirely cold.
Except she hadn’t heard him properly. Distracted by her thoughts as she yet again mulled over how to apologize for something she didn’t regret doing, Vera turned away from the window as the white Rolls-Royce slowed to a stop at a red light.
“What did you say?” Vera asked.
A chuckle answered her back.
Vera wasn’t sure what to make of that. “What’s funny?”
His gaze slid her way while something akin to a smirk tugged at the corner of his scarred mouth. “It’s not like you to not pay attention, Vera.”
“No offense, but you weren’t exactly a great conversationalist after this morning in the bathroom, Vas.”
He arched a brow and tilted his head her way in some semblance of a nod like he was non-verbally agreeing with her statement.
Vera shrugged. “And let me say, silence is the best way to make a person feel wanted. Can’t forget that, right?”
Her sarcasm practically oozed, but she didn’t tamper it for a second. She needed something—literally anything else—from this man except his silence. Maybe then it would make her apology easier.
Even if she didn’t deserve easy.
Ahead of them, the light remained bright, and red.
Vaslav glanced her way. “Is that how you’ve felt all week?”
“What?”
“Is that what you thought—that my silence means I don’t want you? You didn’t feel wanted?”
She wasn’t expecting his question, and she had to drop his gaze to consider how she wanted to respond. He didn’t miss her blatant avoidance if the way his hands tightened on the leather steering wheel was any indication. A vehicle he wasn’t supposed to drive outside of Dubna’s limits if at all possible to keep it untraceable and private.
Apparently, after today, the Rolls wouldn’t return to the estate. At least, not looking the way it currently did. Vaslav hadn’t offered more information in that regard, and Vera wasn’t that attached to the car to prod for more details.