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Wordlessly, Kat untangles her hand from mine. After shaking me off, she exits the kitchen without looking back at me.
Helpless, I watch her leave, terrified I just might have fucked things up.
12
KAT
The muffled sound of a hesitant knock echoes through the cavernous bedroom, interrupting my dark thoughts.
After a moment of indecisiveness, I answer, not bothering to rise from the bed. “Yeah?” I say guardedly, glancing at the closed door from my comfortable observation point. Slowly, it opens.
To my surprise, it’s Dmitri. He glances at me, clearly unsure of his welcome.
“Can I come in?” he asks from the doorway, his pale blue eyes cautious.
I nod, sitting up. “Yeah, of course.”
He comes in carrying almost a dozen shopping bags. Wordlessly, he looks around the sparsely furnished room before asking, “I’m not sure where you want these. The boutique clerk sent them over today.”
After noticing my puzzled expression, Dmitri says, “It’s the stuff we had with us when the Irish rudely interrupted your little shopping spree and we had to run for our lives.”
“Oh.” I rise from the bed. “I guess we’ll put it all in the closet. I can’t believe the store kept it for us. And then had it delivered here, too. That was nice of them.”
“I’m sure they were more than happy to go out of their way to please Nikolai Stefanovich’s new girlfriend,” Dmitri says, following me into the walk-in closet.
As I take the bags from him, I laugh humorlessly. “Girlfriend? Yeah, I don’t know about that.”
“Soul mate it is, then,” Dmitri says, teasing me. He impassively watches me empty the bags. “I heard you two had a lovers’ quarrel.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Nik’s right. You don’t know how to mind your business, do you?”
Dmitri sighs wearily. “Come on, Kat. We’ve already discussed this. Nik is my business. Stick around long enough, and I’ll make you my business, too.” He winks at me.
I scoff, ruefully shaking my head at him. “We’ll see about that.”
He smirks. “Oh, you bet we will. Now, let’s hear about this little trouble in paradise.”
I hesitate to say more, but if anyone can offer me valuable insight on what to do with that impossible man, it’s Dmitri. “What can I say? As you’re undoubtedly aware, Nik can be a very challenging man. He’s also a stubborn ass. Sometimes, it’s hard to curb the urge to force some sense into his thick skull.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, sister.”
“I guess you could say I’m struggling to figure out where I stand with him. Am I still his underling, or are we past that now? I know he and I started off on the wrong foot—and, truth be told, he’s not entirely to blame for that. But I thought that was water under the bridge by now.”
Dmitri raises his eyebrows. “It isn’t? That’s news to me.”
I shrug. “Not if what he said to me earlier is any indication. And I’m not sure I can fully trust him when I don’t know if we’ll ever move past our rough start. This whole Jekyll and Hide song-and-dance is giving me whiplash.”
Dmitri sighs, leaning his broad shoulders against the closet’s door frame. “Look, Kat—I’ve known Nik for most of my life. For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen him so taken by someone as he is with you. If anybody had described his recent behavior to me, I’d have called it bullshit. But I’ve seen it with my eyes. This lovesick, infatuated way he acts around you probably seems like the norm for you, because that’s all you’ve known from him. But let me tell you, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
“What are you trying to say?”
He shrugs. “Just give him time. It’s all new to him. He’s adjusting to you—to all these new responses you evoke in him—just as you are to him. He’s many things, but a disappointment isn’t one of them. I’m sure you know that by now. If you’re patient with him and give him a chance, he’ll come through. He always does.”
I sigh. “Oh, Dmitri… If only it could be this simple. There’s just no way of knowing?—”
“Listen—” he interjects. “I get it. This shit’s scary. And it’s hard as hell, too. But take it from someone who knows—you don’t want to lose your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have something as life-changing and special as this kind of love. Not over something fixable, workable.”
His heartfelt statement gives me pause. It’s a welcome distraction from my emotional conundrum and another piece of the intriguing puzzle of his mysterious love life. I decide to prod a little. “It sure sounds like you’re speaking from experience, Dmitri.”
