by Lily Harlem
Vadmir stepped into the room. His gaze searched the spread of faces and eventually settled on mine.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep him out,” panted one of the office secretaries, rushing in behind him. She had a clipboard pressed to her chest and her hair had partially escaped its updo.
“It’s okay,” Baron said, standing. He folded his arms and looked Vadmir up and down. “Can I help you with something?”
“No,” Vadmir said. He walked up to Patrick, snatched the paper from his lap and stared at the photograph. “Fuck!”
“Oh, Christ on a motorbike,” Patrick said, fluttering his fingers over his legs where the newspaper had just been.
Vadmir stared at me. His brow creased and his teeth gritted. “This,” he said, flashing the picture my way, “shouldn’t have happened.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. My heart was fluttering and my stomach clenching. His presence when I was feeling delicate was even more overwhelming than usual. Especially when I hadn’t thought I’d ever see him again.
“I have come to get you,” he said, tilting his chin and tensing his jaw.
“But I…” I was already in shock, now it was doubled. “You can’t come in here.”
Baron stepped between me and Vadmir. “She’s right, you can’t come in here. We are debriefing, Mr…?”
“Arefyev.” Vadmir glared at him. “Vadmir Arefyev.”
“Mr. Arefyev, if you could wait outside.” There was a tone of command in Baron’s voice. He was clearly used to getting his own way and being obeyed without question.
“Certainly,” Vadmir said. He stepped around Baron, wrapped his hand around my upper arm and pulled me to my feet. “I’ll take Sammy with me.”
“Ow,” I said as my back twinged. “What are you doing?”
“Are you hurt?” He frowned down at me.
“A pulled muscle, in my back.”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. He looked as though he was in pain, too. “It didn’t say in the paper that you were hurt.” He shook it and several of the inner sheets fell out. “It says the crew were all unharmed.”
“Well, yes, but I—”
“You are coming with me.” He gently slipped his hand around my waist and it felt as though he’d lifted me against the side of his body.
“I can’t just leave,” I said.
“Yes you can.” His voice had switched from hard to soft.
“This is preposterous,” Baron said, taking hold of my opposite arm, as though about to tug me away from Vadmir.
Vadmir sucked in a breath. His chest expanded against my shoulder. He stared at Baron’s fingers around my arm and anger flashed in his eyes.
“Oh, my…” Patrick whimpered and squirmed on his seat.
“You can’t take my crew member anywhere,” Baron said, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “We are in a meeting. She stays here, with me.” He pulled me toward him. “She’s ours, an employee.”
I winced as discomfort circled from my back to my chest. “Ouch.”
Vadmir loomed over me and pushed his face up to Baron’s. “Get. Off. Her,” he growled, “Now.”
“No, not a chance,” Baron said. “Could someone please call security? This man must be removed.”
“Vadmir, please,” I said, feeling lightheaded.
Vadmir shot out his hand and wrapped it around Baron’s wrist. His knuckles whitened. He was gripping him really hard.
Baron yelped. “Fuck, let go. This is assault.”
“Are you going to let go of my woman?” Vadmir snarled.
“No, we are in a meeting…”
“You will be in a meeting your maker in a fucking minute.”
“Shit, damn it, okay,” Baron said, releasing my arm. “Jesus.”
Vadmir released his grip on Baron, pushing him away in the process.
Baron staggered and clutched his right arm to this chest. “Assault,” he said again.
“You are right, grabbing her like that was assault,” Vadmir said. “And there are plenty of witnesses.”
“But I—”
“Oh, be a man,” Vadmir said. “She’s coming with me. She shouldn’t be here after what happened yesterday. Are you mad? All of these people need to be at home, recovering.”
Harmony passed my purse to me. “Don’t forget this.”
Vadmir reached for it and then scooped me close again. I wanted to push him away, demand that he leave and get out of my workplace. But feeling him close, hearing his voice, it was a balm to my fractured nerves and I realized how much I’d wanted him last night, to hold and soothe me. I’d thought I really never would see him again when we were crashing. He would have been the last thing I’d thought about had I died on that runway.
We reached the door that he’d smacked against the wall. A security man stood blocking our way. He had a grim expression on his face and his peaked hat was pulled low.
Vadmir stopped in front of him. He was easily a head taller than the security guy.
“You are not going to try and stop me, are you?” Vadmir said in a low, dangerous voice. “Because I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“No.” The security guard stepped to one side. “I just need to make sure you leave.” He glanced at me. “Miss?”
“Yes, I’m leaving with him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Vadmir helped me to the lot and into his car. He carefully buckled my belt and set my purse on my lap.
My head was spinning. A combination of shock and codeine. Everything I looked at had a hazy outline.
“Where are we going?” I asked when he started driving.
“To my place.”
I rested my head back. “No, take me home. You can’t just waltz back into my life and snatch me away. I need to go home and rest.”
“You need to be looked after.” He glanced at me. “Fuck, you look pale as a skeleton, no, I mean spook…ghost. Pale as a ghost. What are they thinking making you go to work today?”
“They just wanted to debrief us.”
“Then they should go to your house.” He pulled a pair of shades from the dash and put them on. “So where are you living? At the airport hotel?”
“No, I’m in Eddington Gardens, not far from the rink.”
“Yes, I know where that is. What number?”
“Eighty-six.”
I closed my eyes. I felt like I was floating, dreaming. “Why did you come to the office?” I asked studying the way the sun intermittently flashed over my eyelids as we drove past a long row of palm trees.
“To get you.”
“But…?”
“Shh.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “Talk later. Questions later. For now you need to rest.”
I did as he’d suggested. My back was sore, the muscles were spasming, and my head ached. It was a relief to be in a soft chair, with my head resting. The hard plastic seat in the meeting hadn’t been doing my bruised body any good.
I must have dozed with the sunshine warming me, because when I opened my eyes again Vadmir was helping me out of the car.
“Are your keys in your purse?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes, I’m fine really.” I swung my legs ’round and slid from his car to the floor. I thought my knees were going to support me but for some reason they just kept bending and folding.
“Hey, careful.” He caught me and held me close. “You need help to walk.”
“No, really…well okay, but it’s just the painkillers I took. I’m not that injured, just a sore back and a sore head, a bit, well, I don’t know really, it’s all so…”
“Shh, you’re okay now.” He shut the door, and, still holding me upright, helped me into my apartment block.
* * * *
When I woke the sun was setting. I was in my own bed wearing just my underwear and facing the window. For a moment I lay there looking at the wash of colors streaking acros
s the sky. There was a white airplane trail, a thick fluffy line fading into the distance.
I heard movement to my right and turned.
“Ah, shit,” I muttered when my back complained.
“You are awake.” Vadmir was sat in a big pink chair that I used for reading. He was holding his cell.
“Mmm, yes. How long have I been asleep?”
He glanced at his phone. “About eight hours.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it is good for you to sleep. How are you feeling now?”
“Still a little sore.” I licked my lips. “And thirsty.”
He stood, walked up to me and smoothed his hand over my hair. “What would you like? Water? Coffee?”
“Coffee please.”
He leaned down and touched his lips to my head, the way he used to when we were in Sokol. When he was mine and I was his.
I watched him leave the room then adjusted my pillows into a more comfortable, upright position. I realized that although my back was still sore, the spasm appeared to have gone from the muscles. Also everything didn’t look so blurry, perhaps I’d gone a bit mad with the painkillers before the meeting, taken one too many.
I heard voices. Harmony was home. That was good. She needed rest, too.
Within minutes Vadmir was back holding two mugs of coffee. He handed one to me and then sat on the edge of the bed and took a sip of his.
I studied his face. A face I’d come to know so well but now didn’t feel as if I knew at all. I thought back to watching him play. I’d felt so removed from him when he’d been down there, on the ice. I’d struggled to imagine it was the same man who’d sneaked into my bedroom and made love to me tenderly, quietly, and then made promises of more to come.
But my mind felt less fudged now, the painkillers having worn off, and I thought of how he’d barged into my work and stolen me away. Manhandled one of the company’s top bosses and then threatened a security guy.
“Why the hell are you here?” I asked as a swarm of irritation prickled over me.
He frowned as though confused by my sudden outburst. “To see you.”
“And so just like that you turn up.” I rolled my eyes. “And grab me.”
“Yes.”
So he wasn’t going to deny just turning up and accosting me then. “Well, how about last week? Didn’t you want to see me then?”
He pressed his lips together and glanced out of the window.
“Last week,” I said. “I wanted to see you. Hell, I was stupid enough to hang around waiting for you to call. You’d said you would. Crazy old me actually believed you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not good enough.” I sipped my drink and let the reassuring, familiar flavor warm my mouth and throat. Inside, though, I still felt chilled by his week of silence. “Nowhere near good enough.”
He frowned and shook his head.
“I haven’t got the patience to be messed around by a guy who acts like he cares one minute but then can’t follow up on a simple arrangement the next.” I was on a roll now. “How hard could it be to pick up the phone? Even if you’d decided you didn’t want to see me anymore, if something, or rather someone else had taken your fancy, it wouldn’t have hurt to let me know.” I wafted my hand in the air. “Oh, I know what we had was a whirlwind and not exactly conventional but still, you could have had the decency to end it rather than just let it fade into the horizon.” I pointed out of the window with one hand and held the duvet over my bra with the other. My coffee sloshed dangerously near the edge of my cup.
“Sammy, I—”
“It’s her, isn’t it?” I braced for his reply. “Alena. You’re back with her. I knew this would happen. How could you not swap her for me? She’s Russian, your family love her. It just would have been nice to be told and—”
He’d pressed his hand over my mouth, the same way he had when we’d made love that last night in Sokol and I’d gotten too vocal.
“Be quiet,” he said. “And listen.”
I swallowed and glared at him.
He didn’t remove his hand.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he said, “It got complicated after you left. You are right. Alena did come back.”
“Mmphf…” I managed behind his hand as I continued to glare at him.
“But it is not what you think.”
I shoved at his arm and he dropped it away. “So tell me.”
He rubbed his palm down the side of his face.
“So tell me what it is like,” I said. “Because I have no damn idea why you’re here if you’re back with your ex.”
“I’m not back with her.” He went to reach for my hand but I pulled it away.
He sighed. “She’d been to see Darya, as you know, and then decided, after Darya had talked about America and her dreams of coming here, that she would like to move to Orlando with me.” He paused and huffed. “She came to see me, said that she would move out here within the month and we could get married as we’d once planned. Have the family we’d talked about when we were growing up and that she’d never stopped loving me.”
My belly quivered. I wasn’t sure how long the coffee would stay down. Damn it. All my fears were being realized.
“But it’s not like that for me,” he said, “I tried to tell her no, I did tell her no, but it fell on deafness. She wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t in love with her anymore. She is so hooked on the idea that it will always be me and her and I couldn’t convince her otherwise.”
“So what happened?” I asked quietly and dreading the answer.
“She asked me to think about it. For one week.” He put his mug on the locker and then did the same with mine. “I said that I would, but only to get her off my back.”
“So you’re considering it? Her coming out here to be with you?”
“No.” He leaned forward and cupped my cheeks in his palms. “No, not for a second.”
“So why…” His hands felt so right on me yet still I couldn’t forget the pain of him not calling.
“I just needed to make that phone call, yesterday. Tell her that it wasn’t happening, ever. I wanted that conversation out of the way before I saw you.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “And it was stupid of me. I should have called you, pushed Alena from my mind the way she had me all those years ago. But we have so much history and I’m not a cheat. I would never cheat. I’m a one-woman man.”
I reached up and placed my hand over his. I was beginning to weaken for him.
“I felt like I’d been unfaithful to you, to her, too.” He frowned. “I was in a mess all week, Sammy, I could hardly concentrate on the game. But I made the call yesterday morning. I put an end to it with her forever. I’d planned on coming to see you as soon as I could, make it up to you and hope you still liked me.”
I pressed my hand over his. “Vadmir.” His face had twisted with anxiety. I hated seeing him like this. He was usually so big and full of confidence. It reminded me of the time I’d seen him sitting alone in the bar in Moscow, pinching the bridge of his nose and his thoughts a million miles away.
“And then this.” He swallowed tightly, as though he had cotton wool in his throat. “I’d just come out of practice yesterday and the crash was all over the news in the players’ lounge. I felt sick.”
“I’m okay.”
He shook his head. “I could have lost you. Really lost you without ever having told you how I felt. And that fire officer, he…”
“He what?”
“He…that should have been me. I want to be there to save you, protect you. It should have been me at your side.”
“You can’t feel guilty about not being there,” I said. “It’s a fire officer’s job to be on standby in case of emergency and he’s trained to deal with it.”
Vadmir leaned forward. He came so close I could see the flecks of darker blue in his irises. He didn’t speak.
“And I’m trained for that kind of thing, too,” I went on. “I don�
��t just hand out drinks and duty free. I know the protocols for handling emergency situations.”
He shook his head. “Well, it’s too damn dangerous, this job of yours. It’s got to change.”
I pulled back and raised my eyebrows. “What?”
“I don’t want you doing it.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, Vadmir.” I pulled his hands from my face. “I’m my own person.”
He shut his eyes and let out a long, low breath, seeming to deflate as he did so.
“And I happen to love my job,” I said.
“So you want to get back on a plane? You want to get back in the air? Right now?”
I looked out of the window. A new jet engine trail was being made where the last one had faded. He’d forced me to think about something I’d been putting off bringing to the surface of my mind. “No. I don’t.” Saying the words made it real. I didn’t want to get back onboard, not yet anyway.
“Then you won’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
He rubbed his palm over his short hair creating a scratching sound in the quiet room. He then stood and went to the window.
I settled back on the pillow a little more, adjusting it so my spine was comfortable, and waited for him to explain. Once nestled into the softness I made the most of admiring the view. He had the tight, dark denims on that hugged his ass so well and certainly distracted me from thoughts of returning to work. Instead I licked my lips and remembered how soft the skin on his butt was.
“The thing is, Sammy,” he said, turning to me.
“Mmm?” I quickly looked up at his face. “What?”
“I’m in love with you.”
“I…I…what?” I stared at him. “You can’t be.”
“Why the hell not?” He shoved his hands onto his hips and frowned.
“Well, we…I don’t know, we’ve only just met.”
He walked over to the bed and sat down again. “No we haven’t. I agree it’s not months or years, but fuck, I hated not speaking to you. All I wanted was to have you by my side. Tell you about my day, find out how yours had been and then go to bed with you in my arms.”
“So if you’d wanted all of that you should have called and explained.” I huffed. “It wasn’t exactly a great week for me, you know.”