Roulette
Authors: Megan Mulry
ALSO BY MEGAN MULRY
A Royal Pain
(Unruly Royals)
If the Shoe Fits
(Unruly Royals)
In Love Again
(Unruly Royals)
R is for Rebel
(Unruly Royals)
Bound to Be a Bride
Bound to Be a Groom
The Wallflowers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Megan Mulry
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
ISBN-13: 9781477826706
ISBN-10: 147782670X
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa Designs
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014943174
For J.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
I
’m walking home from the beach, carrying my surfboard under one arm, and I realize I’m feeling pretty content about life in general. I finished grading all my student papers in time to leave the office early. I’ve got two weeks of spring break in Russia ahead of me, and I’m actually looking forward to spending some time with my father, for once. I even made it from USC to Venice faster than usual, with plenty of time to squeeze in an hour of surfing before meeting up with Landon.
I’m not feeling cocky or anything, just grateful. I’m enumerating, I guess:
I have a boyfriend.
I have a house.
I have a job.
I have friends.
I have parents.
Thinking about it like that, in a list, gives me a momentary weird feeling that I shouldn't be so sure. About the parents. About any of it. Hubris or something.
I hose down the board and store it in the shed behind my house. I take a shower and get dressed for my farewell dinner with Landon, pulling my thick blond hair back into a tight ponytail, the way he loves.
A little later, there we are, having fun, drinking margaritas and eating killer Mexican food at our favorite place on La Cienega, but I get that creeping anxiety again. I’m always nervous before I go see my father in Russia—the flight, the language, the awkward nature of my family dynamics.
My
family dynamics
are more like a classic episode of
Dynasty
. Cue scene: big-money/big-hair summer of 1984 at the Hôtel du Cap on the Côte d’Azur. Russian mogul seduces young French starlet.
Et voil
à
! Nine months later, I enter stage left. Mikhaila Voyanovski Durand, love child. That pretty much describes how I
don’t
want my life to turn out—and Landon is the obvious antidote to all that.
Landon and I have been dating for about a year. And lately, he’s started getting what I think of as The Look. (The Look that means he is entering Phase Two: You Are Wife Material.) I’ve known this about him from the beginning. He’s driven. He has long-term goals. As such, he lives his life on a schedule.
He’s a really successful cardiologist at UCLA Medical Center, though I’m no slouch—as his dad kindly pointed out, on our recent visit to Ohio, that I, at the age of thirty, was going to be one of the youngest tenured professors at USC. But it’s no exaggeration to say that Landon’s high expectations are usually met. Having accomplished all he has in his thirty-five years, he’s never really had an unrealistic expectation. He makes shit happen. He saves lives. Literally.
I manage to avoid the subject a couple of times over appetizers, when he gives me those extralong I-know-you-know-what-I’m-thinking looks. But by the end of the fajitas, I can’t put him off any longer. He’s got things to say and he’s going to say them.
“Do you know, I think this might be our anniversary . . .” He’s holding his margarita halfway to his lips, like he does when he’s trying to seem like he’s just remarking casually on some random thing.
I’m messed up, probably, because he’s basically the perfect guy and I’m still wrestling with my marriage phobia. I don’t have much to go on, as far as marital role models are concerned.
Much
, in my case, equals nothing. I have nothing to go on. My parents never got around to marrying each other. In fact, I’m not sure they ever got around to liking each other.
My father is an emotional iceberg but a really good person—loyal and honest. My mother is flamboyant and loving and all that, but she never met an indiscretion she didn’t like. She raised me on her own in Bel Air. I use the term
raised
very loosely.
I am not about to get into any of
that
with Landon the night before I leave for Russia for two weeks, so I try to keep it light.
“Anniversary of what? We never really had a first date or anything. Did we?”
“You know what I mean. That night at the Pearsons’ house? That was definitely the first time we weren’t just hanging out. Remember, by the pool? It was the Friday of your spring break, just like tonight.”
I smile and nod, because of course I remember making out by the pool that night and of course Landon avoids saying the phrase
making out
.
“And then we went out the next night . . . and then . . .” He winks.
I remind myself to tell him—at some future, less-important-feeling time—that he needs to quit it with the winking. It irks me.
Instead, I smile to let him know that I, too, have happy memories of the first time we went out for dinner, just the two of us, and ended up back at my place, having sex on the couch in the living room. At the time, I loved how having sex not in a bed was his idea of over-the-top, wild-and-crazy sexual mayhem. But since then, we always have it in bed. It’s just easier that way. Which is fine.
Anyway.
I can tell Landon is working himself up to something, and I try to cut him off at the pass.
“Will you—” he starts.
“Landon—” I interrupt.
“Move in with me?”
We sort of talk over each other, but I think he realizes I thought he was going to propose, and for a split second he also realizes that I am clearly relieved he only asked me to move in with him. Even though I have my reservations—he is so intractable, so fixed in his opinions—I tell myself those are minor flaws, or even points in his favor, part of what people mean when they talk about compromise, part of what it means to be a
mature
person. And mature people live together . . . and eventually get married. Unlike some parents, who shall remain nameless.
There is a great big part of me that wants everything a life with Landon promises: stability, a normal routine, a house, a dog, some kids eventually. I truly believe I want all of that. And it is right there. I know I should just say yes—because what more could a girl ask for? What kind of damn fool says no to Landon Winslow Clark III, MD? But something holds me back from giving him the full-on, 100 percent
yes
! I tell him he’s so sweet to bring it up, but I’m too preoccupied with my trip tomorrow. I tell him I need to focus on getting through the next two weeks in Saint Petersburg, and then we can deal with logistics. That seems to satisfy him for now—he likes that I’m talking
logistics
and that we’ve broached the subject, that moving in together is on the table. I picture him checking it off his mental to-do list.
This is what it must feel like to be a grown-up. This is how it must
feel
to be a thirty-year-old functioning adult and make adult decisions to move in with your doctor boyfriend, to have conversations and make plans. I am building a real life, one that doesn’t rely on distant Russian billionaire fathers or flighty French movie-star mothers who passed their kid around the globe like a relay baton.
CHAPTER TWO
T
he day I arrive in Saint Petersburg, intending to spend my spring break convincing my father that I will not, under any circumstances, be taking over his Russian manufacturing business, the poor man is laid up in the hospital with pneumonia.
My uncle Alexei meets me at the airport and takes me to see my father. He’s kind of drowsy and out of it when I arrive, but it doesn’t really occur to me to worry, because he’s always been really fit and healthy in that gruff way of his. For a few seconds, he seems really happy to see me when I kiss his cheek, but then he falls back to sleep without saying much.
Alexei and I agree to meet back at the hospital in the morning, so I head over to my hotel. I figure my father will be rested up by then and the three of us can still spend a few days at the lake house about two hours west of the city as planned. I fall asleep from a combination of jet lag and the strange comfort that being in Russia always brings.
When I get to the hospital the next day, I’m still jet-lagged and don’t really understand what’s happening. But I do. Nurses are scurrying around the far end of the corridor, and the closer I get to his room, it becomes overwhelmingly evident that they’re freaking out and it’s about my dad.
Alexei comes barreling out of the room, and then sees me and pulls me into one of his signature bear hugs, and I can hardly breathe. And then he’s telling me in Russian that my dad died unexpectedly in his sleep, and he’s using words like
awful
and
incomprehensible
and
it’s just us now
. I get it, I do, but it’s also a barrage of syllables and noise, and I think I’m not really here but still on the plane from LA and having one of those weird long-haul-flight anxiety dreams. But I’m not.
My dad died.
I’m still holding a paper coffee cup in my hand, and I don’t really know why. And then a whole bunch of Official Death Business goes down for a couple of hours, and I wade robotically through them. Once it's over, Alexei and I go back to my father’s apartment and Alexei is pretty much a wreck. He’s talking a mile a minute about everything from some factory deal to my mother to a whole bunch of minutiae I haven’t a clue about.
He and my father were two of the closest people I’ve ever met: best friends, brothers, business partners. I finally convince him to go home and make the arrangements for the funeral, and that seems to motivate him. So here I am, alone in my father’s apartment on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Alone.
Some people see this sort of thing coming: hints, signs along the way. I analyze data for a living. I’m a statistics professor; I am paid to be observant. I’m also physically observant: I surf, I go rock climbing, I like to pay attention to the world around me.
But in this case, it is as if I am not looking at
anything
, am not even remotely aware of something as obviously unavoidable as death.
I try to tell myself he was only my biological father, nothing more, but even I know it for a lie. My father and I were practically clones; our brains clicked in the exact same staccato rhythm.
An hour later I’m still standing in his apartment, when I finally realize the ringing phone isn’t coming from one of the flats down the hall or from outside the window. I cross into the bedroom to answer it.
“
Da
?” I’m fluent in Russian—both from my father and from taking it at MIT—but I still need to focus on the phone when I’m out of practice. I press the old-fashioned receiver hard against my ear in preparation.
“Miki, is that you? It’s Landon. What’s happening? Is he okay?”
About thirty minutes ago, I left one of those it’s-kind-of-a-family-emergency messages with Landon’s answering service.
“No.” I relax because the person is speaking English; then I tense a bit because it’s Landon and Landon likes answers. And I don’t feel like I have any.
“Aw, Mik, I’m really sorry. Do you want me to fly over there . . . I could try . . . I’m not sure I could get away from the hospital without a fight, but I—”
“No,” I interrupt. “No, that’s totally not necessary. He died”—I look at my watch, as if I’m the coroner declaring time of death—“about two hours ago. We’re doing a quick private funeral. My uncle Alexei’s hoping to make it happen tomorrow. And he usually can make things happen, I guess. Given the length of time it would take, it wouldn’t be worth it for you to fly all this way . . .”
Landon sighs into the phone, somewhere in a corridor of UCLA Medical Center. “All right.” He sounds relieved but like he knows he shouldn’t let on too much about the relief. “I feel kind of shitty not being there. Are you sure?”
“Sure. I’m sure. It’s not like my father and I were really close.”
“He was still your dad . . . but I know what you mean. I guess you’re right. You barely knew him.”
I stare out the bedroom window, thinking how I need to get some Russian Windex and clean the smudges near the handle, where my father must have last lifted the frame. Then I look down and notice the pale-blue bedroom carpet; it is old, and especially worn where my father must have stood up each morning, next to his bed. I stare at the spot while Landon talks about some opportunity to start a private practice or something.
I have a flash of a childhood memory, of my father doing his morning exercises—those antiquated at-home calisthenics—raising his hands to the ceiling, then bending over and touching his toes. Then up again. It must have been one of my first visits, when I was seven or eight, because I remember feeling small. He was vividly large when he extended up like that. And he smiled at me, quickly, once.
I didn’t know my father very well, and Landon didn’t know him at all. There is no point in his coming to be with me.
I have the terrible, unbidden follow-up thought that Landon doesn’t know me at all, either, and that there is no point to the two of us even being together. I stuff that thought right into my imaginary I’m-freaking-out-only-because-my-dad-just-died box. Because those are just crazy thoughts. Landon is top-grade husband material, and I do
not
need to be picking apart whether or not he
knows
me.
“Hey, Lan, I should go and deal with all this stuff.” Proper relationship-crushing thoughts, begone. Landon is good. Solid. My father is gone. Vapor. “I’m going to stick to my original flight back, the Sunday after next. Alexei and my dad are—were—still riding me hard to come work for Voyanovski Industries . . . so I need to deal with all that.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t do that—you’re a professor, not a businesswoman.”
Well, now. When he says it like that, I kind of want to prove him wrong. “It’s not that I
couldn’t
do it, Lan, but obviously I’m not moving to Saint Petersburg because—”
“Because you’re moving in with me, remember?”
“Right,” I answer slowly, but what I want to say is,
Whatever, dude
.
Priorities? Dead father? Selfish much?
Then I just exhale, because he probably means it as a comfort, that I have a life waiting for me back in LA. A good life.
I can tell he’s already flipping open a medical chart, since he’s doing that quick “mm-hmm, mm-hmm” thing to pretend he’s still mentally there.
“Okay,” he continues. “Call me if you need anything; otherwise I won’t bug you.” He’s obviously ready to end the call, and I don’t resent it. We both have a shared dislike of lingering on the phone.
“Thanks for calling, Landon.”
“You’re welcome, Mik. Hang in there.”
Click
.
Alexei is able to get everything done for the funeral. He is always able to get things done. He is a jovial older man who talks too much and appears to be doing nothing more than chatting all the time, but meanwhile, everything is “taken care of” by the time he finishes telling the same old story about his great-uncle in Mexico who once had dinner with Trotsky or his great-grandfather who wrote epic folk poetry in the nineteenth century.
While my father was cool and hard to reach until I was old enough to understand a spreadsheet, Uncle Alexei always loved me in that crazy, doting way that only a relative who isn’t your parent can. Alexei was always laughing and squeezing my cheeks and telling me Russian fairy tales while we grilled fresh fish over an open fire during our summer holidays in Sardinia.
Alexei was widowed four years ago and never had any children, so we serve as a tiny receiving line of two for the twenty or so people who have been confidentially notified about my father’s death and invited to the private funeral. Everything in Russia seems like it has to be a secret, or at least that’s how Alexei operates. I don’t think it’s really necessary, but he’s always had a dramatic nature.
I recognize one man in particular, mostly because he is a bit loud and makes a stink when Alexei won’t allow his bodyguards into the private room we reserved for the small reception. He is Pavel Durchenko, infamous in Moscow and Saint Petersburg for his exorbitant wealth and his questionable means of acquiring it. His home on Sardinia is near ours, and I’ve met him a few times before, very briefly, when he came to visit my father there. He’s probably in his early forties, physically fit and wound up tight, looking like his suit was sewn onto him that morning. Impeccable.
Now, I’ve met a few charismatic people in my day—my mother, for one—and I’ve seen this before, at close range. This man has
it
, that thing that makes you shiver when he grasps your hand in his. The bits of silver in his hair and his silvery-gray eyes make me feel like he is made out of some type of gleaming iron ore.
He looks straight into my eyes, giving his condolences. “Your father was a very good man. Sharp. We did business together.”
“Thank you.” I don’t really know if there is a right thing to say, so I’ve resorted to a lot of thank-yous over the past few hours.
“He and I understood one another,” Durchenko says cryptically.
I nod because I have no idea what else to do. I don’t want this guy to murder me in my sleep. Nodding seems like a safe bet.
“My deepest sympathies,” he says, but it’s like he’s trying to communicate with me using telepathy. He’s saying something about sympathies, but his eyes are boring into mine and it’s starting to freak me out.
“Thank you,” I repeat. When he releases my hand, I feel like one of those cartoon characters who fly backward after extracting a finger from an electrical socket.
“Please call on me if you ever need anything,” he adds, pressing a small business card into my palm. “That’s my private number.”
I nod again, say thank you again, and wonder briefly if he and I will be stuck in some infinite loop of thank-yous and nods.
“Very well.” He pats my upper arm and moves on to pay his respects to Alexei. I have the distinct feeling he wanted to say more about his business with my dad, but decided it wasn't the appropriate thing to do under the circumstances. I can tell without turning to look that Alexei is straining to remain his cheerful self as he accepts the man’s supposedly kind words, when they are so obviously enigmatic warnings of some sort. I don’t know if Durchenko is a murderer or just a billionaire businessman, but in Russia, lately, they are often two sides of the same coin.