Seeing Red (11 page)

“Yeah, I’m sure that whole civilization thing has nothing to do with that,” she said. Finally, she withdrew her hands and peeled plastic off the meat. She’d have to cook that thing on high for it to be done by dinner.

“You think there would be civilization without smart women figuring out ways to make one chicken last four days?”

“Now that would be impressive.”

He shrugged and scratched at the edges of the medical tape on his arm. “My grandmother did it all the time.”

Meg opened her mouth to tell him how awful that sounded, but at the last minute thought better of it.

“Perhaps on Sunday there’d be a roast. By Wednesday, there’d be soup.”

“And on Saturday?” She curled her fingers around the drawer handle, and she met that hypnotizing stare of his once more.

His lips quirked up into a grin that wasn’t quite joyous. “There was a lot of cabbage. Potatoes. Carrots. Fortunately, my babushka was a creative woman. I was never truly hungry, even if what was on my plate wasn’t particularly presentable.”

Meg couldn’t imagine living that way. Growing up, she’d never wanted for anything. Never had occasion to. Her father was well employed, and her mother had entered the marriage with money of her own. As an adult, Meg had always had a fallback, if she needed it. She hadn’t in a long while, and she was thankful for that. She never wanted to draw on her parents that way again unless things were truly dire.

“Mommy, phone.” Toby held her cell phone out to her, and confusion clouded Meg’s thoughts.

“The phone was off.”

“I turned it on to play a game.” He thrust the phone closer to Meg.

She squinted at the touch screen, making out the contact data scrolling across the top.
Mom & Dad - Home
. “Shit,” she whispered.

“It’s Nanna Maura. Take it! Commercial’s ending.”

Meg just stared at the phone. Her mother? What would she say? Did she know what Meg had done?

Well, of course she did. She would have had to by now.

Meg ran her tongue over her dry lips and tilted her face up toward Seth.

His curious expression softened to…one of mercy, perhaps? He took the phone from Toby.

“Hi. This is Sergei Rozhkov. Sorry to keep you waiting. Megan has her hands full at the moment.”

Chapter 8

Silence filled the line, and finally, an elegant soprano voice said, “Mr. Rozhkov, please don’t take this personally, but you have to put yourself in my shoes. This is the second marriage of my daughter’s I’ve had no prior warning about.”

Seth cut his gaze to Meg, who was now transferring the uncooked beef into the pot and watching him as she did it.

She raised both eyebrows.

He’d always assumed that her first marriage had been well coordinated, as most everything else in her life seemed. What had happened? Did her parents discourage the match, but go along with the marriage after the fact?

Seth cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. Once things started moving, it was like trying to stop a rolling ball from going downhill.”

Was that right, or had he botched another idiom?

He looked at Meg, who nodded and grunted. “Sounds about right,” she whispered.

“Tell me—and I promise that if you want to keep it a secret, I won’t say a word—is she pregnant? Is that why you did it?”

His jaw dropped so fast the hinges creaked, but he couldn’t stop himself from staring down at her belly. Even clad in horizontal stripes, and white ones, to boot, it was flat as a board. If she were pregnant, she probably wouldn’t have had all that wine back in Bermuda.

Meg must have figured out what the conversation had turned to because she poked his shoulder with her index finger and spat, “No!”

Seth cleared his throat once more. “No, Mrs. Scott, she is not.”

“Dammit.”

“I’m sorry?”

She blew out a breath, and something on her end slammed. Suddenly, the sound of cawing seagulls filled the line. Static crackled over the din, and after about ten seconds of that, she said, “Sorry. Her father walked into the room. He lives under a rock and hasn’t heard yet. I’ll be honest with you. After Toby, she swore up and down that she wouldn’t have any more children, and it broke my heart. You’ll understand it when you’re my age and your entire legacy is one grandchild.”

Meg reached in and pressed her finger over the phone speaker. “Is she giving you the grandchild guilt?”

He nodded.

She rolled her eyes and drew back her hand.

“It’s not like Stephen’s ever going to get it together. You’ve met him. Wouldn’t you agree I should count him out?”

Seth felt the burn from that statement, and it wasn’t even about him. “Uh, I don’t know, Mrs. Scott. I’d say he has a lot going for him. He just needs to find the right woman.”

At that, Meg’s cheeks flushed a deep red, and she set down the packet of Italian seasoning she’d been fondling. Had he said the wrong thing? Embarrassed her?

“Well, I hope he does it soon. He’s the last of the line with the Scott name.”

And Seth bet Stephen would never be allowed to forget it.

“Have you talked about children at all? Stephen was coy on how long you two have been together but certainly family planning has come up at least once.”

This time when he looked at Meg, she could give him no clues, and he didn’t know which lies to tell. He hedged. “We’ve decided to let nature take its course. Whatever will be will be.”

“So, you’re not fixed?”

“I’m sorry?” He mouthed the word fixed to Meg.

She closed her eyes and sighed.

When she opened her eyes again, she pointed to his crotch and brought one hand down in a bladelike motion toward the other one.

Oh. “No, Mrs. Scott, as far as I know, I’m intact.” He felt dirty even discussing it with his sorta-wife’s mother. His mother-in-law.

“Good to hear. Maybe you’ll have an accident.”

“Um…”

Meg grabbed the phone.

“Hello, Mother. I’m going to take a wild-ass guess that whatever you just said to my husband was either offensive, obscene, or far too forward. Which was it?” She walked off with the phone, and Seth stood reeling.

He’d always thought Sharon was in your face when it came to impressing her will on people, and folks generally didn’t mind because Sharon was always right. But Mrs. Scott seemed to be a special breed of bossy. All he could do was laugh.

“What’s funny?” Toby asked from the sofa.

“Your babushka. Your grandmother. She’s very…interesting.”

“That’s what granddad calls her, too.”

Well, at least she hadn’t yelled. As crazy as the conversation had been, she didn’t have a single ill word to say to him. She’d only been concerned about the product of their future. But what she didn’t know yet was that he and Meg weren’t certain to have a future.

Kids, though…he’d never given having any much thought. He’d always been the kind of guy who didn’t think too far ahead when it came to his personal life. His longest relationship to date had been a few months, right before he left Russia for college. Nothing had clicked in all that time, and maybe he didn’t know how to go about putting the pieces together. He’d wanted a girlfriend, but the kind of women he pursued didn’t want that from him. Now he knew he’d been pursing the wrong kind of woman. In all that time, he was looking for cute and sweet, when his luck might have been a bit better if he’d been courageous enough to seek out a woman who’d make him work.

And working he was.

Meg returned, shoving her phone into her shorts’ pocket, and shaking her head as she passed him. “Sorry, Seth. She’s got sort of a one-track mind.”

“Why did she ask me about…” He made that chopping motion.

She wiped her hands up and down her shorts legs as if she were wiping sweat from her palms. She whispered, “Spike,” and bobbed her head in Toby’s general direction.

When she made a come-here gesture, he leaned down for her to press soft, warm lips against his ear.

He ached to draw her in even closer, to nestle the side of her face against his chest, but somehow he resisted her pull. He’d have to train himself to behave, or else when they finally shook the dust out of everything and walked away—back to their separate lives—he’d end up leaving a bit of his heart with her.

That wouldn’t do. At age thirty-five, he couldn’t afford to fall hard, because no matter how well he’d exercised his ability to rebound from disappointment, eventually there’d be a point when he’d never recuperate. He’d never want to try again. He’d die lonely and single. Childless.

He was an idiot for even coming over. True, he did have a meeting in Research Triangle Park in the morning, but he could have bunked with Curt and accepted Erica’s hospitality like he always did. He could have bothered Grant for his guest bed, or air mattress, depending on what they’d unpacked. In a pinch, he could’ve called Sharon and she and Ashley would’ve cheerfully put him up.

No, his self-torturing instinct had been to put himself in Meg’s space, and thank God that woman in the garage had let him into the building.

She whispered, “Spike told my mother after Toby was born that he’d gone and had a vasectomy. I don’t know if it’s true, and I always used backup birth control. But, I can’t imagine any ethical physician in the US doing the procedure without the patient’s spouse signing off on it.”

He turned her, slightly, to access her ear, unable to stop himself from grazing his lips along her earlobe.

Her hand fisted his shirt, holding him still, but he didn’t want to push his luck. He whispered, “He could have had it done outside of the country, but that’s a lot of trouble to go to while on tour.”

With a small nod and a murmured, “Mm-hmm,” she pulled away, and turned the dial on the slow cooker to high.

He wondered what she’d do if he pushed her just a little. Stroked her cheek or tipped up her chin. Would anger flash through those dark eyes of hers, or would she let him touch her more?

“My parents will….” She let her words trail off, and her face lined with worry as she fidgeted with the corner of a dish towel. “They’re driving down to meet you. Or will as soon as my mother fills my father in on the news. I imagine their arrival will come during the weekend.”

“Just tell me where you want me to be, and I’ll be there,” he said, and she rolled her gaze up to meet his.

“Why are you always so accommodating?” she asked.

“Is that so suspicious?”

“Given what I’m used to, I have good reason to be wary.”

“You should have better than you’re used to then.”

Her cheeks reddened again, but she shook her head and turned her back to him to tidy up the counter. “Simple as that, huh?” Her voice had taken on a bitter tone.

To him, the situation was simple. As complicated as Meg was, figuring out her most pressing needs wasn’t exactly rocket science…and he knew rocket science.

“I need to unpack our luggage and get a load of laundry started,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to see over the kitchen divider. “Oh, he’s asleep. Poor kid. Been a long day.”

“Should I move him?”

The tension in her jaw abated and forehead smoothed. She shook her head. “No. He’ll probably sleep until he wakes up drowning in his own drool. Half an hour at least. Won’t let him go longer. He’ll be up all night, walking the floor, if I let him.”

“Ah.”

“Here, grab your bags and I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

“I figured I’d sleep on the sofa.”

“I can give you something a little better than that.”

He could have sworn that when she looked at him, passing by, there was a glint of mischief in her eyes. The last time she’d looked at him that way had ended with hot, soft flesh pressed against his and a mind-blowing orgasm. Chances were good he was reading too much into the situation, especially with Toby being there.

He grabbed his backpack and followed her toward a corridor beyond the living room.

She pointed at doors as they passed them. “Main bathroom. Guest room-slash-office.” She didn’t stop there the way he expected. She kept walking, kept pointing. “Toby’s room. Utility closet and washer-dryer set.” With her hand on the knob of the last room, she looked at him. “That just leaves the master bedroom.” She pushed the door open.

“I couldn’t displace you from your own room.”

“You’re not.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him through the opening.

When all of him was in the room, she shut the door and locked it. Pointing to the corners of the room, she said, “Closet. Master bathroom.”

“Okay….”

“Sometimes Toby climbs into bed with me in the middle of the night, so consider this a serendipitous diversion.”

“I’m sorry? I don’t….”

Her stare locked on his as she wriggled her shorts past her hips.

Oh.

He set down his bags, never once taking his eyes off her as she pushed her panties down next. She stepped out of them and walked bare-assed to her bed.