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‘Have you tracked him down, your biological father?’ She stopped, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, that’s another very personal question. You don’t have to answer that.’
‘No, I haven’t met him.’ He shifted and Sybella could see this weighed on him. ‘I have his name. I haven’t done anything about it. I don’t know if I ever will.’ He rolled those big shoulders. ‘What about you? Have you gone looking for your real parents?’
Which was a neat way of diverting the conversation. Sybella wondered if he was even conscious of how everything in his body conveyed tension when he talked about his biological father.
‘According to the records office, my father is unknown and my mother was a student who gave me up for adoption,’ she answered. ‘We got together when I was twenty. She came to my wedding. She remembers Fleur with birthday cards, which is something. I think it’s hard for her to maintain relationships with people. She seems to have had a difficult life.’ She looked down at her hands.
‘I’m sorry I was dismissive about your adoptive parents the other night,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did.’
She looked up. ‘That’s all right, it’s forgotten.’
Nik was gazing back at her steadily, and this intimacy created by their mutual confessions was making Sybella feel something like the first steps in a friendship was springing up between them, only none of her friends were six-feet-six-inch Russians with Cossack eyes and a way of looking at her that made her think he might like to kiss her again.
‘What a pair we make,’ he said in that quiet, gravelly way of his.
Sybella dropped her gaze, suddenly immensely shy.
‘What I guess I’m getting around to, Sybella, is that Deda has helped me through some difficult times as a kid, Baba as well. I owe them both a great deal. I’m cognisant I may have dropped the ball with Deda recently, but I want you to know he’s in safe hands and why.’
Sybella blinked rapidly because she could feel ready emotional tears surging up.
Blast those pregnancy hormones. They’d arrived six years ago and never really gone away.
‘I could see how close you were earlier today.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I implied anything else. I obviously didn’t have the full picture and you weren’t obliged to tell me. I mean, it’s not as if we know one another.’
‘I’d like to get to know you better.’ His Russian accent was suddenly stronger and Sybella almost slid off the sofa again.
He would? Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t mean it like that.
‘I would too.’ She tried to think of something to avert attention from her burning cheeks. ‘I can offer you something to eat. I was just going to mix up a stir-fry for dinner. Would you like some?’
Nik didn’t hesitate despite having just eaten a full meal with his grandfather. ‘Yes, I would.’
When she leaned forward to stuff her feet into slippers, as if to completely assure the direction of the evening, her breasts moved sumptuously against her top, giving him a glorious view of how generous Mother Nature had been.
‘The kitchen’s this way,’ she said, straightening up as if nothing extraordinary had just happened, and with a shy smile she gestured for him to follow her.
Nik followed.
His gaze dropped to the fulsome curve of her bottom beneath the soft fabric of her drawstring pants. He’d never considered himself a connoisseur of the female bottom. But right now he was seeing the benefits of a woman with some heft in her pendulum. In fact he was pretty much transfixed by that sweet wobble and sway.
In the kitchen she had a bottle of Spanish red out on the counter.
‘Can you get some glasses? They’re in the cabinet over there,’ she instructed as she began gathering her ingredients around her.
He found a couple of wine glasses and poured. He’d drunk worse.
Presently the place began to smell delicious from whatever was heating up on the stove.
Vaguely he remembered his grandfather mentioning Sybella’s cooking skills, and he had to admit there was something about Sybella that made a woman being competent in a kitchen sexy.
