“Your papa likes Carter.”
“Maybe he should date him then.”
“Mila,” he chastised.
For years, Papa had hinted he would be happy if Carter became his son-in-law. I was sure it was only because his father was a business friend and a famous attorney from old money. Like always, I’d given in to Papa’s insistence, and Carter and I had shared a traditional courtship for six months now.
“He’s going to pop the question tomorrow, isn’t he?” I asked emotionlessly.
It should have been a ridiculous thing to ask considering we weren’t even monogamous. All anyone had to do was turn on TMZ to find out who twenty-five-year-old playboy Carter Kingston had been sleeping with. But he was taking me to The Grande, a restaurant well-known for marriage proposals. I could only imagine his papa had pushed him toward the archaic idea, just as mine had.
Ivan didn’t say anything, but his eyes told me all I needed to know.
I nodded even though, inside, the thought of saying yes, of knowing I would force that word past my lips, trapped me in a glass box slowly depleting of oxygen, and I was banging on the walls, choking, coughing, begging for air.
I forced the feeling down. “Carter will still be here when I get back.”
Ivan remained quiet for a moment before he tossed out his best card. “You know your papa would not approve of this.”
I chewed my lip. In the past, whenever I’d asked to tag along on one of Papa’s business trips, he’d refused. But even as a child, I noticed something in his eyes, a spark that couldn’t say no with more volume than if he’d shouted the word. I was never, ever permitted to set foot in Russia, that much was clear.
“I know, but he’s not here right now, is he?”
“You are not going.”
I stared at him.
Ivan might complain sometimes, but he never told me what I could or couldn’t do. It was always, “Yes, Mila.” “Of course, Mila.” “As you wish, Mila.” Kidding. That one was a besotted, sword-wielding Westley in my dreams. My point was, he never said, “No, Mila.” I bet if I wanted to rob a bank, he would be my second, no questions asked. Naturally, he’d tattle on me to my papa afterward, but he’d still don a ski mask with me.
The suspicion I’d worked so hard to keep down popped like a balloon, grabbed ahold of my heart, and twisted. What was my papa hiding in Russia?
Another family?
The only conceivable reason he might hide something like that from me was he didn’t want me in their lives. And, eventually, in his too.
Je ne pleurerai pas. Tu ne pleureras pas. Nous ne pleurerons pas. I will not cry. You will not cry. We will not cry.
The conjugations failed me, and a single, annoying tear ran down my cheek. Ivan angled my chin up to his and wiped it away, the soft brush of his thumb wrapping me in warmth and contentment. Something else filled the space between us. A pull. An attraction. A little electricity. Some days, when I was feeling particularly suffocated, it sparked hotter than others.
Neither of us ever acted on it.
My excuse was the fortune-teller I went to when I was fourteen. At that very gothic age, I’d asked her what my purpose was in life. She’d frowned, sitting behind her crystal ball, and then said I would find the man meant for me and that he would take my breath away. It was a generic response she probably told everyone, but it stuck to me like glue.
I breathed just fine around Ivan.
And Carter, despite experimenting with him out of sheer boredom. Not to mention, he was incredibly persuasive.
My time was running out like the last few grains of sand spilling through an hourglass. Yet still, I waited. For more. For some silly idea Madame Richie had put into my head.
That was my excuse.
Now, I was curious to know Ivan’s.
I leaned into the thumb running across my cheek and blinked soft eyes up to his. “How come you’ve never kissed me?”
“Because I want to live more,” he deadpanned.
A corner of my lips lifted. I’d never even heard my papa raise his voice before, and certainly not to Ivan, who was practically a son to him.