* * *
“It is.” Aleksy searched for signs of approval in her, not sure why it was important to him. The house was only a thing, and he was past believing the acquisition of things ruled Clair, but he couldn’t deny that he wanted her to like his home.
He’d settle for her liking his things since there was no chance she’d feel anything toward him except repulsion.
Gut-wrenching loss threatened to breach the walls he’d used to brace himself when she had demanded answers at the penthouse. He’d known his past would come between them eventually, whether he revealed it or not. It was the reason they had no future, but he would have preferred they had separated naturally, before she knew any of this. It broke something in him to see her view of him damaged. To see her fear him.
The woman who’d lately been greeting him with shy smiles and the warmth of her touch now held him off with a white face and mistrust in her eyes. He cringed and looked away.
“Did you design it?” she asked, yanking him back to reality.
“To some extent.” Aleksy shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the bed. Fantasies of her white-blond hair and peach-flushed skin against the sea of blue tantalized him, but he ruthlessly shut them down. He’d promised not to touch her.
Keeping his voice without inflection, he explained, “My father worked in logging camps when my parents were first married. The accommodations were drafty bungalows. My mother never complained, but when my father was able to buy into a mill and make his own lumber, he built her a proper house. I used that floor plan as a starting point.”
Clair cocked her head, her whimsical smile sad enough to puncture the heart he’d hardened to get through this. “You always surprise me when you’re sentimental.”
“Sentimental?” The word arrested him. He suddenly saw the monument for what it was. He’d told himself he was building a place to go to, anticipating time to relax once he defeated Van Eych, but it turned out this was yet another attempt to resurrect the dead.
“I thought I just lacked imagination,” he dismissed, hiding his perturbation by circling a finger in the air, urging her to turn so he could help her out of her coat.
She huddled deeper into the thick folds for a moment, long enough for questions to flash into his mind like so many charges off one fuse. Armor against him? Didn’t want him too close? Didn’t want to risk his touch? Wanted to be ready to run when he stopped watching her long enough?
With a skittishness she hadn’t shown since that first day, she offered him her back.
As he stepped behind her, she tensed and cleared her throat but only said, “It’s not a lack of imagination to surround yourself with the familiar.”
Her scent clouded around him, so evocative of their closest moments his abdomen tightened. Heat poured into his loins. He ruthlessly controlled himself and drew her coat off her shoulders, focusing on the inane conversation to dispel the sexual awareness overwhelming him.
“Trying to fix the past by using what’s left in the present is foolish.”
“Don’t call it foolish!” She spun. Her hair whipped his knuckles in delicious castigation.
He inhaled and she folded her fingers into fists that she tucked under her bent elbows.
“The trinkets I have of my parents’ could have belonged to anyone,” she charged quietly. “They don’t offer the kind of memories that would let me pay this kind of homage. Your parents loved each other and you cherish that. There’s nothing foolish about building that into your home. I’d give anything to have a house built on love.”
She really knew how to skewer a man. How did he explain that he’d taken the love in that house and personally caused its loss? He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
“This was a stupid idea,” he muttered in Russian, wondering how he’d imagined they’d be “safe” here. He brushed past her. “I’ll get the luggage in and start a fire.”
* * *
Clair could have walked away. She was half sure Aleksy wouldn’t stop her. Bundled for the weather, passport and credit card secreted in her pocket, she even got as far as trudging into the snow off the front porch.