“I get why this would look crazy to you,” she told him. “But Pavel needs a stable home and counseling and, yeah, a good mindfulness practice wouldn’t hurt the situation at all. And I can give him all of that.”
“Do you know how many kids need that and don’t get it every year?” He frowned, worry creasing his boyishly handsome face. “Look I know you have a thing for rescue situations. The fact that you have the world’s dumbest pit bull tells me that.”
“Hey! Back Up is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier,” she corrected. “And she isn’t dumb.”
“She jumped up on me and literally tried to eat my gun the last time I was here,” Marco reminded her. “She’s either dumb or suicidal.”
He rushed on before Sam could argue with him further. “The point is this kid is not Back Up, or even a victim of domestic abuse. He’s eight years old, and he was in a cabinet the whole time his dad was getting snuffed.” Marco shook his head. “Look, I don’t want to be mean here, but I’ve got to at least try to talk you out of this. Witsec’s already taken a pass. You should, too.”
Sam shook her own head, knowing exactly where Marco was going with this. The same place the other police officers at his station had when she’d decided to use her social worker’s license in order to assume custody of Pavel until further notice.
“There’s nothing to be talked out of,” she told Marco, just like she’d told those officers. She considered Marco a friend with potential to become more than that, but right about now, she was finding it hard not to get frustrated with him.
“Pavel’s scared out of his mind and for good reason. He won’t leave Back Up’s side. He would have slept in her dog bed if I hadn’t let them both bunk down with me.”
“Even more reason why we should get Child Protective Services involved. Let them handle it.”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t want him handled. I want him taken care of.”
“Yeah, but…” Marco reached out to take her hand. “Why’s it got to be you?”
Sam froze. The answer to that was so complicated. Marco was a nice guy and she’d welcomed his interest in her. Working as many hours as she did, it wasn’t like she met a ton of guys just dying to start a relationship with someone whose biggest dream was to open “a different kind of domestic abuse shelter” in all fifty states.
Nevertheless, there were parts of her past he wasn’t privy to, parts that made it impossible for her to abandon Pavel when he needed not just anyone, but someone who absolutely understood what he was going through.
“So what are you suggesting?” Sam asked, taking her hand back from him. “That I further traumatize him by passing him off to strangers?”
Marco opened his mouth to answer just as a knock sounded on the other side of the door.
“Hold on a minute,” Marco called out.
“Come on out, Pavel,” she said at the same time.
The door opened and Pavel stuck his head outside. She could hear Back Up panting behind him and smiled because the dog had stuck to Pavel’s side for the last few days, as if sensing the little boy needed her.
“Hi, Pavel,” Sam said with a bright smile.
“Hey, little man. What’s up? Settling in okay?” Marco asked with a dimpled smile of his own. Usually Sam liked how well the officer got along with children and the rest of the women at her shelter, effortlessly putting everyone he met at ease with his outgoing and affable nature. But in this case, it struck Sam as a little fake, considering he’d just been trying to convince her to pass him off to Indiana’s Department of Child Services.
Pavel, who might have heard more than she would have wished, didn’t even spare him a look.
“Tonight is Mount Nik’s last game. May I watch it?” he asked politely, without any acknowledgment of Marco whatsoever.
“Sure, feel free to change it,” Sam answered. “I’ve got some paperwork I can finish up while you do that, then it’s time for bed.”
“I’m a big Indiana Polar fan myself,” Marco told the kid. “And I’m off duty now.” He smiled at Sam. “You got any beer? Maybe I could come in and watch.”
“Ah…” Sam said.
“Mama, I’d like to watch it alone if you don’t mind,” Pavel said in the doorway.
Pavel, Sam had discovered over the last forty-eight hours, was actually a very polite little boy. At least to her. Everybody else was a different story, and he seemed even less enthusiastic to watch the game with Marco than she was to invite him in after his Child Services pitch.
“That’s okay,” Marco said, throwing Sam a puzzled look. “I’ve got some buddies I can watch it with at the bar. Go Polar!”
Pavel just disappeared back inside, shutting the door behind him.
Apparently he did not feel any solidarity with Marco whatsoever just because he was also a Polar fan.
“Wow,” Marco said, running a hand over his spiky black hair.
“He’s adjusting,” Sam said. “And he probably didn’t get much social training growing up the way he did.”
“Yeah, but… Did I hear him call you Mama? You said you just met this kid, what? Forty-eight hours ago?”
Sam cringed. She’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask her about that. Pavel had been calling her “mama” ever since they’d arrived at her apartment two nights ago, almost as if they’d formally agreed to the title change on the car ride over from the police station.
“He’s not your kid,” Marco told her now.
“I know that,” she answered, even as her heart kicked up a mutinous rebellion, pumping harder, as if to say, That’s a lie! Pavel is my son and I’m his mother. Obviously it was meant to be!
But she brutally suppressed those thoughts and repeated, “I know, obviously he’s not my son. This is just a temporary arrangement.”
“Then why is he calling you mama? You’ve made enough calls in these domestic abuse situations to know the deal. You’re not supposed to get too involved here. You pass these kids along to the foster system and that’s supposed to be the end of it.”
“I know that, too.”
“Is it because the shelter’s empty right now? Maybe you’re feeling like you need a project, and that’s why you took the kid into your custody?”
“No,” Sam answered. Though she had to admit she’d been bored lately. The number of domestic abuse cases coming through Ruth’s House had severely dipped after the Super Bowl, but March Madness was right around the corner and the NBA playoffs after that. Sadly, the one thing Sam could guarantee was that the shelter wouldn’t be empty come spring.
“No, that’s not it,” she assured Marco. “I’ve got plenty of paperwork and grant applications to keep me busy.”
“Then why are we having this conversation? Why won’t you let me put this kid in the back of my car and take him over to DCS?”
Sam couldn’t answer that without coming off as even more insane than Marco probably already suspected. She knew it wasn’t wise or healthy to let Pavel call her mama, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he was doing so because she needed to step up and be his mother now. At least until an appropriate one could be found for him.
Sam chewed on her lip. “Okay, fine, I’ll sign off on Pavel leaving my custody as soon as you find a set of suitable parents and give me at least two weeks to thoroughly vet them with supervised visits.” She put a friendly hand to his back and started escorting him to his car, which she could see parked right next to the shelter in one of the intake spaces for Ruth’s House. “You have my word.”
“Fine, I’ll get going. But don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Sam.”
“Of course you know what I’m doing,” Sam answered, coming to a stop beside his car. “I’m doing what’s in Pavel’s best interest.”
Marco folded his arms. “Let me finish, Sam. I know what you’re doing, but I’m not going to force the issue because you’re sort of right.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “The kid’s been through a lot, so I’m going to call in some
favors and see if we can’t find some parents who meet your criteria. Until then, I guess this is as good a place as any for him. At least Ruth’s House is secure.” He threw a disparaging look toward the slender windows on either side of her door. “If you don’t count those break-in windows on your cottage. I’ll come by this weekend and maybe see about boarding them up—just until we get a bead on whoever killed the kid’s father.”
Her heart warmed at his words and many of the bad feelings she’d been having about him began to evaporate.
“Thanks, Marco,” she said. “Thanks for your understanding.”
He unfolded his arms and came closer in a move that brought to mind the hockey player who had kissed her two days ago.
“So I’m doing you a solid…” He flashed his dimpled smile. “Maybe you should reward me with a kiss?”
Unease crawled its way up Sam’s back, and she had no idea why. Marco was a good guy. A good, solid guy who didn’t send emissaries with balcony invites, who’d never hit her with a lewd double entendre, or even try to steal a kiss from a woman he’d just met.
Sure, he could stand to be more open-minded about the alternative healing therapies she was using at Ruth’s House, and sure she didn’t love that he was acting like he deserved a gold star for agreeing to let her show a little boy some compassion—
Sam stopped herself with an inner ugh of disgust. Why did she always have to psychoanalyze the guys who showed any interest in her? That was probably why she was still single at the age of thirty-four. Single and childless. Two things she needed to focus on correcting sooner rather than later, if she ever wanted her dreams of finally being a part of a loving family to come true.
She pasted a smile on and said, “One kiss coming right up.”
Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed her lips to his.
The kiss was… nice. Really nice. Just like Marco.
He grinned at her when it was finished, “I’m gonna get started on finding some great parents for Pavel first thing tomorrow morning.”
She grinned back and waved as he got in the car.
Marco was a terrific guy, she thought as she watched him ease around the shelter’s corner and drive away. A really terrific guy.
So why had she been thinking of the Russian hockey player the entire time she’d been kissing him?
7
“MOUNT, wait, wait! Don’t—”
But it was too late, Brian Atwood’s back hit the plexiglas wall so hard, it rattled the entire structure surrounding the ice at the Polar training facility. Introduction courtesy of Nikolai “Mount Nik” Rustanov.
“What were saying about wanting special treatment?”
Brian panted, trying to catch his breath after that hit. “We went pretty hard at your last game party last night. I was just making a suggestion…”
“You suggest we end practice early so you can sleep away your bad decisions. You think easier to ask permission for naptime now I am owner?”
“C’mon Mount, man, that’s not nearly what I was trying to say,” Brian said, looking both hurt and offended by Nikolai’s assessment of the situation. “I’m just saying—”
Nikolai slammed the blond player into the wall again, wishing that the hockey uniforms weren’t so well padded. But from the grimace on their star left winger’s face, he needn’t have worried. He’d most certainly felt that.
“All right, all right, I get it,” Brian said through the pain. “We’re not leaving early.”
“No, we are not,” Nikolai agreed. “In fact, we will stay extra twenty minutes because you wasted our time with your request.” He all but spat out the last word before letting the entitled hockey player go with one last shove into the plexiglas.
Behind him, Gary Burton, the Indiana Polar’s head coach, blew his whistle. “All right, line em up right over here. Side-to-side drills, starting now!”
Brian edged out from between Nikolai and the plexiglas, but Nikolai’s dark, hooded glare followed him all the way back to the drill line-up. He hadn’t been a fan of the diva hockey player with the long blond hair before he’d bought the team. And he was even less of a fan now.
He skated back over to the bleacher side of the rink, where his cousin was standing with a hot coffee.
“Maybe we trade him before playoffs.”
Alexei answered with a low laugh. “You don’t think Atwood got your point about not letting his fame interfere with his obligations?” His English words came out so smooth, one might not have known he’d been born and raised in Russia. Thanks to his business background, unlike Nikolai, Alexei had managed to mostly lose the accent of his youth.
“I don’t like having to make the point,” Nikolai answered in Russian.
“Be grateful,” Alexei answered, easily flipping back to Russian, too. “He is the reason you own the team now at such a low price.”
True. Part of the reason Nikolai had been able to buy ownership of the team so easily was because the last owner had blown much of the team’s operating funds to sign Atwood to a seven-figure deal. That had been six months ago, and just four months before he’d been forced to formally declare bankruptcy when the new addition didn’t bring in as many new fans as he’d planned. With a sizeable investment from his billionaire cousin, Nikolai had been able to snatch up the team in a sweetheart deal.
Now Nikolai was looking forward to leading the Polar into the future with a much firmer hand. But the acquisition of the team had come at great cost to his career.
“Are you angry at him or angry because he gets to play the game you no longer can?” Alexei asked behind the short rink wall.
Technically, you couldn’t both play and hold a majority stake in a team, especially if you didn’t want to cede your vote to someone else within your organization. He had a vision for the team, and not being able to speak or vote at NHL meetings wasn’t part of that vision. So sadly, the night before had been his last game with the Indianapolis Polar.
“I am grateful for your support, cousin. Having control of this team is my dream,” he told Alexei. Then he grumbled, “Not so much the paperwork.”
Now Alexei really laughed. “The only cure for paperwork is family. When I come home from the office and see my Eva, my Aaron, and my little Layla, all the bad parts of business go away. Think about settling down, Nikolai. It is best thing a business man can do for himself.”
“We are from the same place, but my family was not like your family,” Nikolai answered. “I do not have a wish for a wife or children.”
He thought about how Fedya had looked in his study. Wild eyes and obviously strung out. Like the worst stereotype of every junkie he’d ever seen on American television—but with a Russian accent.
“I see how children can become,” he said.
Alexei’s good cheer dimmed. “Yes, it was hard to see Fedya like that…”
Both Nikolai and his older brother, Fedya, had started out as star players for the Indiana Polar after getting drafted as a pair from their Russian team. But whereas Nikolai had flourished, going on to win two Stanley Cups as a defenseman in the golden days of his adopted team, his brother, their original star left winger, had not been immune to the temptations America offered up to a previously cloistered athlete.
He’d quickly fallen to the vices of drugs and alcohol and within two seasons, his star, which had burned even brighter than Nikolai’s, had been diminished. Eventually he’d been kicked off the Polar for missing too many practices. And in recent years, he’d sunk to a place so low, Nikolai had been forced to cut him off.
He thought back to Saturday when his formerly large brother had shown up on his doorstep, emaciated and in possession of only half his teeth, claiming to need money. Badly.
“Some Russians hired me to sell their product because their boss heard a lot about your father back when he was in Russia. I pretended Sergei was my father, too—least the dead fuck could do is give me his name for business purposes,” he told Nikolai in Russian, scratching at his arm.
“They gave me product to sell, and I came up with a plan—a good plan. Cut product down, sell even more, turn better profit.”
Fedya acted liked this was the most inspired plan a drug dealer had ever come up with. And he actually seemed proud of himself when he said, “I sold all of it, just like I promised, and I gave money to Russian Boss. But afterwards, people started complaining about the product, and now the Russian Boss is demanding I pay him more, even though I already paid him. I wouldn’t give in to his demand, but he thinks he is like your father. He might try to make example of me if I don’t give him money.”
A typical Fedya sob story. Bad idea explodes into a total shit storm, which his brother somehow managed to take no responsibility whatsoever for. It happened this way every single time.
Nikolai had given his brother a look colder than the Indiana winter raging outside the study’s windows.
“You dare come to my home, high on drugs, asking for more money after I’ve already wasted so much money on you in past? No. I will tell you like I did last time you came to me. From now on, I will only give you money for rehab.”
Fedya went from plaintive to petulant in an instant, Nikolai and Alexei just watched as Fedya threw a full-fledged temper tantrum. Kicking at Nikolai’s desk like an oversized man-child as he accused Nikolai of being a terrible brother, and Alexei of looking down on him because, unlike Nikolai, Fedya wasn’t a Rustanov. Then he had burst into tears.
Years ago, before Nikolai had learned to harden his heart where Fedya was concerned, seeing his brother unravel like this might have been enough to move him to open his wallet wide. The sight of his brother brought so low used to rip at his heart, move him to do anything to get his brother, who used to be a person Nikolai admired, to stop crying.
But Fedya had taught him a lesson about helping those who didn’t truly want to be helped. Every single dollar he’d given his brother over the years had been wasted on more drugs. He’d gotten kicked out of any decent apartment Nikolai had arranged for him and either totaled the cars Nikolai had gifted him or sold them off for more drugs.
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