Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho (15 page)

“
A
re you sure about this
, sir?” Gregory asked, his usually calm voice agitated.

They stood together at the solarium’s window, watching Hannah walk their guest back to the house. She’d just finished showing him the other outbuildings on the property. It was the exact same tour Hannah had given Ivan when he arrived last spring, but Hannah didn’t seem nearly as warm and engaged with the man beside her as she had with him. Perhaps because he was yet another outsider—a large Greek this time, as opposed to a monstrous Russian—but an outsider nonetheless.

In the wide back meadow, a black helicopter—the third to set down in as many weeks—waited patiently for its only passenger to return.

“I’m not sure he’ll fit in here,” Gregory told Ivan now, the closest the old servant had ever come to directly questioning one of Ivan’s decisions.

Ivan cut his eyes at the man, getting the same feeling he had this morning when he’d heard Hannah talking to someone in his office.

“He just told us he’s selling the property,” he’d heard her say as he approached the study. “The buyer’s due here any minute… No, I didn’t know he was interested in selling. If I had, I would certainly have had him call you first, King Nightwolf…”

Ivan stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard her, careful not to make a sound as he listened in. But the old woman abruptly ended the call. “He’s coming, I have to go,” she said quickly.

By the time he reached the door, she was back to cleaning his office. The rotary phone now sitting in a new position on his desk, the only sign she’d made a call at all.

And now here was Gregory, questioning his decision to sell Wolfson Manor to another outsider.

“I do not fit in here, either,” Ivan pointed out. Perhaps Gregory had forgotten how little welcome this strange mountain town had given him so far. “Also, according to his portfolio, he has several such properties around the world, many located in small mountain towns just like this one. I think he is a collector of sorts, and he quickly agreed to my term to keep you two on as caretakers for the property. Do not worry, Gregory. I doubt you will see him all that often, and there will be no need for him to—as you say… fit in.”

However, his words didn’t seem to bring Gregory any solace. “I know you’re probably doing this because you’re still upset about that wolf attack, and I’m sorry about that. You’ll never know how sorry I am…”

Ivan shrugged. “It is not your fault.”

“I—that wolf could have hurt Miss Sola or you or done worse. I should have done more to make sure she understood the dangers of going out on full moon nights. But that’s no reason to sell the kingdom house. Especially to this fellow. He smells…wrong. Hannah thinks so, too.”

Ivan squinted at the thin man, wondering how he could possibly know that, given he and Hannah hadn’t had a chance to exchange words since the buyer’s arrival. At least not that Ivan had seen.

But this wasn’t the first time the couple seemed to know what the other was thinking. Yet another strange thing about Wolfson Point. That, and the townspeople’s weird turns of phrase when it came to this manor house and its prior occupant. Also, the strange full moon curfew, accompanied as it was by the sudden soundtrack of howling wolves. He continued to be mystified by the town he’d chosen to hide out in.

But not for much longer.

“It’s already done,” Ivan told Gregory. “The papers have been signed. This inspection is just a formality.”

Gregory gave in with a tired sigh. “Yes, I thought as much when you took Sola away. I suppose you’ll be joining her in California now?”

“
Nyet
,” Ivan answered, not giving the question even a moment of indulgent thought.

Gregory seemed to be gearing up for another question, but before he could get it out, the buyer entered the solarium with Hannah.

Hannah’s face remained neutral, but the fact that her usual warm smile was nowhere in sight spoke volumes about her discomfort with this man, much more than any outward signs of nervousness would have.

Ivan could understand both her and Gregory’s unease. He didn’t meet very many men larger than he was, but Damianos Drákon—with his mane of thick, black hair—was such a man. He was even bigger than his cousin Boris, with rippling muscles that barely seemed contained by his very expensive dark suit.

Yet, despite his excess of muscle, Damianos was the very picture of refined elegance. He looked fairly young—no more than a decade older than Ivan, if that. Yet he carried himself with even more confidence than any of the gentlemen Ivan had met from some of Russia’s oldest and most exclusive families. In fact, he seemed to reek of a sort of old-world civility, which made Ivan question how he’d come into his money.

For this buyer was someone you didn’t very often find these days: a discreet billionaire. One Ivan had never heard of before he’d approached Alexei, asking if his younger cousin might be amenable to selling his Idaho property.

“Was everything to your liking?” Ivan asked the mysterious buyer.

“Of course,” he answered with a polite bow of his head. “Hannah was very gracious to show me the property. I must take my leave now, but I am well-pleased with this acquisition, and I am most grateful to each of you for taking the time to meet with me.”

Ivan held out his hand for the final shake. “You’re welcome, Mr. Drákon. Please take care of Hannah and Gregory. They have been good to me, and I hope you will be good to them.”

“Of course,” the buyer answered, taking Ivan’s hand in a firm clasp that reminded him of old movies featuring toga-clad Roman Emperors.

Damianos had a Greek accent, but one tinged with an archaic formality unlike anything Ivan had encountered before. And as they shook, he once more had the unsettling feeling that despite this man’s outwardly youthful appearance, he was dealing with someone quite old.

“And now that we have completed our business together, you must call me Anos, as all my friends do.”

“Anos,” Ivan repeated. “I have enjoyed doing business with you.”

Ivan carefully ignored the stricken looks on Hannah and Gregory’s faces. Their lives would be easier without having to serve a grumpy Russian, and he could not risk Sola seeking him out here.

The memory of her holding that broken man’s hand continued to haunt him, even though they had now officially been apart longer than they’d been together.

You are not the man she deserves
, he reminded himself, just as he’d been reminding himself every day since they parted. He wouldn’t be another broken thing for her to take care of.

Ivan had plans. Plans that could not include her, no matter how much his heart ached for the woman who’d turned his world upside down and taught him to finally start looking beyond himself.

As soon as the Greek’s helicopter departed, Ivan picked up the rotary phone to arrange for a helicopter of his own. It was time. Finally time to move on.

I
t was exactly
like what happened with her father all over again. One moment, Ivan was there in her life, making calls, then issuing clipped orders to the small crew of men in generic maintenance clothes who answered the first of those calls.

The men worked quickly. Rolled a large carpet in and then rolled the same carpet with Scott’s body inside, out.

A doctor and nurse arrived on the heels of their departure. A man and a woman respectively, both dressed in casual business attire. The doctor looked Eddie over with a small penlight. Meanwhile the nurse took care of reviving poor Vanessa with smelling salts, which Sola didn’t even know was a thing anymore.

“Poor Vanessa is having quite the week,” Eddie observed from his seat.

Yes, she was. Yet, somehow Ivan managed to smooth that over, too. He and the nurse talked to the little home aide in low, quiet voices, and whatever they said must have done the trick. Vanessa not only left with the nurse a few minutes later, but Ivan came over to assure them that she would be back after a few weeks of rest and observation. Meanwhile, her cousin would be brought in to cover until she felt up to coming back.

Ivan informed both Sola and Eddie of this, but only one of them was able to answer by the time he came back with the news. Eddie was gone inside himself again, eyes clouded over, the sun of his “good day” gone.

And shortly after Eddie left, Ivan announced his own departure.

Sola walked him to the door. Trying to think of something to say. Desperate to find the right words to convince him to stay.

But he was already gone. She could feel the distance between them, wider than it had ever been, even when he pulled her to him and gave her a long, slow kiss.

Good-bye. It was a kiss good-bye, and it was all Sola could do not to cling to him when he inevitably drew back from her.

“You must stay here with Eddie until the new aide arrives,” he told her, cupping the side of her face in his large hand. “I have been assured it will be no more than an hour.”

“Thank you,” she whispered with tears in her eyes.

“Do not thank me,” he answered. One last time. And then he left.

And just like with her father, she couldn’t follow him.

W
hich was
why she ran not walked when a pounding knock sounded on her door a few weeks later. It had to be her Russian, because no one else she knew would knock on a door like that—at least not without yelling “POLICE!” or “INS!” soon after.

But she was wrong. There was a Russian on her doorstep when she swung the door open…but not the one she was expecting. It was Alexei Rustanov and with him stood an older man in a dark suit and…

“Aunt Ximena!” Sola cried, before asking in Spanish, “What are you doing here?”

Her aunt answered in a stream of agitated Spanish about how she didn’t understand any of this! Apparently, an INS officer had shown up at the motel where she worked and insisted she come with him. He’d put her on a “very pretty” private plane—something she’d never flown in before—and brought her all the way down here where this large Russian man had been waiting for them outside the small house, where it turned out Sola lived.

Her aunt looked positively ashen as Alexei escorted her into Sola’s house along with the INS officer. And she kept asking both Alexei and the INS suit what was going on, over and over, in broken English.

Only to break down in happy tears ten minutes later when the INS officer instructed both of them to raise their hands to recite the oath of allegiance.

“I apologize for the dramatics, Sola and Ximena,” Alexei said somberly after they were both declared naturalized citizens of the United States. “But this had to be done as discreetly as possible. What happened here today is not exactly ‘by the book’ as Americans—you Americans—might say…”

“We understand,” Sola said grinning as she hugged her still sobbing aunt. Ximena was so overcome, she’d barely been able to repeat her parts of the oath. “Thank you, Mr. Rustanov! Thank you so much! You’ll never know how much this means to us!”

Alexei shook his head. “Thank Ivan. This was one of the things he insisted on before he left the country.”

That was when her happiness froze inside her chest. “What do you mean before he left the country?”

H
e said
to tell you he is not the man you deserve.

Like the weirdest fairy godmother ever, Ivan had appeared out of nowhere, improved every aspect of her life for the better within the space of six weeks, only to disappear without a word besides those delivered by his cousin.

Six months later, Alexei’s words were still floating around Sola’s head. Following her wherever she went. Even as she packed for her second international trip ever, and the first she’d ever taken by plane. If she was still this haunted by the love affair that had been cut unexpectedly short six months ago, she wondered what it would be like when she was actually in St. Petersburg, completing the fellowship Alexei Rustanov had arranged for her.

Sola almost pretended she wasn’t home when she heard the knock on her front door. But she couldn’t do that. One: it would be mean, and two: her car, a practical Camry, which had mysteriously appeared along with all of its papers inside the glove compartment just a couple of days after she passed her driver’s test, was parked in front of the house. Which meant Brian totally knew she was home.

“Why aren’t you dressed yet?” he demanded when she opened the door. Despite finally letting his hair go gray, or perhaps even because of it, Brian had been looking a lot more dapper as of late. But tonight, he looked even more silver fox than usual, dressed in the tux he usually reserved for his opera opening nights.

Sola glanced down at her shorts and t-shirt. Pretty much the official uniform of the California summer. “I thought maybe I’d skip out on tonight,” she answered. “I’ve got so much to do before I leave…”

“No, no,” Brian was saying before Sola could even continue rolling out the rest of her excuses. “Put on a black dress right now, young lady! Alexei Rustanov just donated a large sum of money to our program. So when a big donor invites us to his fundraising gala, we go.”

“But I’m not even technically a student at ValArts anymore,” she pointed out. “And I’ve only got two more days to pack for two whole years in Russia! He’s got to understand that, since he’s the one who arranged for me to get the fellowship in the first place...”

“Marisol, you’re young, so I’ll explain this to you just this once. Big donors do not
understand
when you decide to skip their galas so you can
pack
. That’s not how these things work. Now, dearest Marisol, if you’d like to have a successful career directing operas as opposed to assisting those of us who know better than to skip galas thrown by major opera donors, I suggest you get dressed as quickly as possible and put on your make-up in the car.”

Well, when he put it that way…

Sola’s real reason for not wanting to go to the gala—that anything or anyone with the Rustanov name attached to it reminded her of Ivan and therefore hurt too much—seemed rather pitiful. Especially since hadn’t seen or heard so much as a peep from Ivan in the past six months.

What a jackhole
, she thought, not for the first time.

Yes, a jackhole, that was what Ivan was. A jackhole who had saved her life twice, made sure her ex-boyfriend would never hurt her or anyone else ever again, kept the mentor she loved most in the world from destroying himself, ensured that Eddie received 24-hour care, paid for the remainder of her education, and arranged for her to finally get the American citizenship she so desperately needed to make her dreams of directing opera after college come true. Which at the end of the day made it hard for Sola to know how to feel about the Russian who’d change her life for the better, but broke her heart with his decision to utterly vanish.

But that wasn’t Brian’s fault. And she’d been to enough Friends and Family sessions at New Promises
during the ninety days Brian was in Ivan-sponsored rehab to know it probably wasn’t a great idea to send him alone to a fundraiser where the champagne would flow.

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

“
Y
ou look beautiful tonight
, Sola,” Alexei told her a little over an hour later, bringing her hand up for a kiss before introducing her to his pretty Southern wife, Eva.

She was taking Brian’s advice and paying court to the king as was his due. Sola stood in the middle of the Institute’s ballroom with Alexei and his wife, a glass of barely touched champagne in her hand. Learning to play the game of art was just as important as talent in this business, Brian had told her before nudging her toward the power couple.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel intimidated. Eva, who she’d heard of about but never met before, was even prettier in person than in all the gushing blog posts she’d read about how the small town mayor and her billionaire husband had turned around their little Texas town. Yet she was the one looking at Sola as if a celebrity had walked into the room.

“So
you’re
the girl who got Ivan to come down from his mountain!” Eva said with a huge dazzling smile as she took Sola’s hand in both of hers. “Girl, I have been dying to meet you!”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Mrs. Rustanov,” Sola answered, finding it impossible not to smile back in the face of Eva’s almost aggressive enthusiasm.

Then remembering why she’d come over in the first place, she said, “Oh, and thank you, Mr. Rustanov, for the St. Petersburg opportunity. I’m so excited!”

But Alexei only frowned. “What St. Petersburg opportunity?”

“The Alexei Rustanov Opera Fellowship?” she reminded him. “The reason I’ll be in Russian for the next two years, interning with the St. Petersburg Opera House?”

Alexei shook his head. “I’m sorry, but as talented as I am sure you are, I arranged nothing for you. You must have won that fellowship on your own merit.”

But before she could point out that the fellowship literally had his name written all over it, and that she hadn’t even applied for it, he said, “Oh, I see our director friend, Mr. Krantz. Eva, come
kotenok
, I would like you to meet him. I need to discuss with him a new piece the Twins have been working on.”

They were gone in a flash, leaving Sola with a number of unanswered questions.

As it turned out, quite a few of her program mates had also been invited to the gala, and she was in constant demand as they grabbed her for short conversations about summer plans. But after thirty minutes of watching both Brian and Alexei schmooze at levels she simply wasn’t capable of from afar, Sola decided to leave.

It was obvious Brian was having a much easier time than she was at this party. And Alexei and Eva were surrounded by so many other big donors and university officials, she doubted she’d be getting anywhere near them again any time soon.

Meanwhile, Sola was becoming more and more antsy by the minute. It was as if a weird, dissonant soundtrack was looping in the background of her psyche, ratcheting up her anxiety and making her feel edgy the way she did when she’d had too much caffeine. She felt like something was approaching, but she didn’t know what.

“Calling an Uber”
she texted Brian.
“See you tomorrow for breakfast.”

Another good thing that had come out of Brian’s stint in rehab: they’d begun sharing breakfast every morning like a real family. And more often than not, it was during this time that the old Eddie would come out to talk with them, if only for a few minutes.

Sola left, hoping Brian wouldn’t be too upset with her, only to run straight into a wall when she walked through the door.

“Leaving so soon?”

No, it wasn’t a wall…

She looked up, and then up some more, to see perhaps one of the most beautiful men she’d ever beheld in her entire life. Another Rustanov maybe? Like Ivan and his hockey player cousin, he had blond hair. He also had Ivan’s piercing blue eyes. But aside from that, the two didn’t share anything in common.

This man was dressed in a tux, and he looked so comfortable in it, Sola actually found herself wondering if he hadn’t perhaps been born in one. Also, unlike Ivan, his hair was slicked back in a stylishly coiffed look that would have easily qualified him to model in one of those
we’re way classier than you
designer cologne ads.

Still, there was something about this man… Something that made her breathe out the question in her heart, even though it was an impossibility.

“Ivan?”