Sonya’s gaze flicked to Dmitri before she smiled and practiced her English. “Thank you.”
“Are you all visiting? Everyone expects it to be warmer here in the summer and has to buy a coat.”
“Yeah. And my…girlfriend…she would like to shop in some smaller shops. What do you call them? Boo-teeks?”
“Sure. Would you like me to write some names down for you?”
“Please,” Sonya said.
“And we’ll take this coat. She’ll wear it out.”
“Of course. Just give me the tag.”
Sonya twisted her arm to read the price dangling from the coat’s sleeve. She gasped. In a charmingly loud whisper, she said, “Even I know that is a lot of money.”
“Not to worry, I’ll put it on Uncle Gregor’s credit card.” Dmitri had his own accounts, but as payback for that stunt with the thugs, his uncle would be paying for Sonya’s shopping spree. He handed the Lisko Enterprises platinum card to the clerk.
With a list of boutiques in hand, and a crudely drawn map where to find them, he led them out onto the street. She looked gorgeous in her new coat, even in those stupid mukluks. He cursed the need to hold her hand because he couldn’t step back to admire her. Plenty of other men were, and so he pulled her closer.
He found the first shop on the list in an alley that could have been in Paris rather than San Francisco—sidewalk cafes, awnings, old-fashioned facades on the storefronts. A bell jingled when he led her inside.
“Bonjour,” said the shop girl, confirming his impression they’d somehow detoured to France.
“Bonjour.” Sonya’s delicate mouth spread into the largest smile he’d ever seen her wear.
Pride rolled through him like a monstrous wave. He was making her dream come true—right off the pages of her old Vogue magazines. There was nothing he could do about the way her life had been cut short and her beauty wasted. But he could give her this small happiness right now. A tiny step on his road to redemption.
“What are you shopping for today?” The young woman swept her arm out to direct them to the racks of clothing.
“My girlfriend needs a pair of jeans and a sweater.”
“Jeans?” Sonya leaned in to whisper, her breath tickling his ear. He smiled to himself—she wasn’t arguing about the girlfriend part.
He translated into Ukrainian, explaining everyone wore them all the time in America, and that his dark pants were a version of this type of garment. With her characteristic curiosity she examined them, catching the edge of his pocket as if fascinated by the bright gold stitching. Something about her attention focused just there—oh hell—a jolt of desire shot straight to his cock.
“Hey, ghost, let’s stay on track.”
He shifted his hips away from her, but not before she noticed what he was trying to hide.
She frowned.
Shit.
Surely she understood—
“What size are you?” The clerk rifled through a rack of the indigo garments.
“I don’t know,” she called out. Then she turned and muttered into his shoulder. “Only toothpicks could wear those.”
He chuckled and refrained from telling her how much he appreciated that she wasn’t a toothpick.
“Do you know your measurements?”
She did and gave them in centimeters. He called out his hasty mental conversion and hoped it was close enough. Off by an inch and the clothes would be too tight.
In spite of his effort to calm down the excitement in his pants, his eyes strayed to her chest—a thing of beauty, a natural wonder. She must have noticed, because a blush started there, creeping up her face. Last night, the weight of his fatigue had made it possible to resist the almost naked beauty in his arms. Newly energized, his body was getting all kinds of inappropriate ideas.
“These should fit.” The shop girl held up two slim pairs of jeans, and even though he’d seen her in that wet, transparent shift, the idea of her curves fitted into the snug pants stoked his lust again.
“They are so small. How can they—?”
“Sonya, give them a try. They’re comfortable.”
She shook her head, crossing her free arm over her breasts. “I don’t think—”
Her reservation caught him up short and the pleasure he’d taken in bringing her waned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
He pulled her close and whispered. “Sonya. This is your chance. Live a little.” His words weren’t just a turn of phrase, but a plea, and with his eyes, he tried to show her his need to spoil her.
Her pupils went wide in her dark irises and her breath hitched.
Okay. Not the reaction he’d intended. He swallowed, his throat all of a sudden dry.
She reached for the hangers. “All right. I’ll try them on.”
Now that was more like it.
“The fitting room is right back here. I’ll bring you some tops. What colors do you like?”
Dmitri answered for her. “Something that goes with her coat.”
She elbowed him. “I like muted colors, please. Pastels and neutrals.”
The French girl smiled at the two of them and an odd awareness squeezed his brain. Togetherness. No one had ever looked at him like that—as if he were part of a couple, as if he belonged with someone else. In a nightclub, even when he staked his claim over one of the party girls, the temporary nature of the arrangement was clear to everyone. It seemed somehow inevitable that the one time he met a woman he actually wanted to be with, to belong to, she happened to be a ghost who needed his help to disappear.
She sure as hell did not need his hormones going all schoolboy on her.
The clerk didn’t seem surprised when he followed her into the dressing room, although he’d certainly never gone shopping with a woman before. The cubicle was large, with an armchair, a three-way mirror and hooks for any number of clothes hangers.
Now for the complicated dance moves involved in getting Sonya dressed while they kept their skin-to-skin contact going.
She flashed him a shy smile.
Yeah, he was totally screwed.
“That thing with your ankle worked well. Let’s try that again.” Without waiting for an answer, he dropped into a cross-legged position on the floor. With a firm grasp of her calf, he let go of her hand and began to remove her boots.
She raised one foot and then the other, but when her feet were bare, she simply stood there, her long creamy legs naked before him. It didn’t help the situation in his pants one bit. He could not do this for long and keep behaving like a gentleman.
“Sweetheart. Just untie the dress and then step into the jeans one leg at a time.”
“Um…” Her face had turned a deeper shade of pink.
Her modesty, while cute, was seriously testing his resolve. He needed to get this show on the road: her, fully clothed, ASAP. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m not wearing any underwear.”
“Fine.” That image did not help.
“What if the pants don’t fit, after…?”
Ah. Fair enough—skinny jeans did fit like a second skin. Staring up at her, he begged. “We’ll buy them anyway. Seriously, Sonya, I can’t do this all day long.”
Her chin fell, tucking into her chest. “Of course. I’ll hurry.” She untied the sash of the dress.
He averted his face. Damn it. She really had no idea what she did to him, even after she’d caught a glimpse of his hard-on. And this was certainly not the time to explain. She placed a hand on his shoulder and then reached for the jeans dangling from the hanger.
“Um…”
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to take two hands and both feet to wriggle into these things. They’re like nylon pantyhose without the stretch.”
Shit. Should he have the shop girl bring a pair of slacks? No. He needed to get this painful test of will power over and done with. “Give me your hand again. I’ll stand behind you wit
h my hand on your shoulder.”
“And your eyes closed?”
“If I opened them, I could not be held responsible for what happened next.”
Her eyebrows drew together in the same adorably puzzled expression she’d given his erection. “Are you saying—?”
“Sweetheart, please.”
They wrangled themselves into position, and she dropped the dress. He looked. Of course he did. Maybe he could stay alert on a twenty-four-hour stakeout, but he was a man, and not a noble one at all when it came down to it. From the back, she looked like vintage porn—sweetly sexy. A porcelain hourglass with chestnut hair cascading toward her full behind. It would undoubtedly be the softest thing he’d ever touched. But he wouldn’t.
Would. Not.
He gritted his teeth to strengthen his resolve.
Then she bent over to slide her foot into the jeans giving him a shadowed view of her sex. She stepped her other ankle into the pants and stood, dragging them up. Of its own accord, his hand slid down her spine to cup her ass just as she hoisted the denim over her hips.
She froze and spun around. Beneath the jeans, he held on tight to a ripe handful of her backside and drew her closer.
“I don’t understand you.” Her breath blew warm against his chest and she rubbed her hip against his stiff cock. “Pushing me away last night, staring at me like you want to gobble me up now. You’re hot and cold all the time.”
He closed his eyes and rested his chin on the top of her head, hating that he’d confused her. “We’ve got to find your murderer, and my target. There’s no time for being hot with you in a dressing room.”
She pulled back to look at him, keeping her arms linked behind his neck. “True. But that’s not all that’s holding you back.”
He blew out a breath that rippled over her hair. “You’re a good girl, and you deserve a good guy.”
She pulled back and studied his face, then opened her mouth as if to protest. Instead, she sighed. “I also deserved not to get shot. We work with what we’ve been given, and you’re the only man who can see or touch me.” She held his gaze and didn’t blush. “I want to…live a little.”
She understood so much more than he’d given her credit for, and her decisiveness undid him. He backed her into the wall and ran his fingers through her hair, cupping her head and pressing his thigh between her legs, still holding on tight to her sweet ass.
Her dark eyes flashed wide before her lids fell, heavy. “Oh.”
Now that was an expression he could stare at all day. But he turned his attention to the breasts he’d longed to touch since he’d first seen her. They were full and firm and peaked under the first swipes of his thumbs, so responsive to his touch. Her hips rocked, grinding her sex against his thigh. The sound of her shallow breaths filled the fitting room.
“Sweetheart. I will do my very best to make you feel alive.” He lowered his mouth to her breast and traced his tongue around her nipple before he sucked it into his mouth.
She groaned something like a yes.
His mouth pulled into a smile against her skin. “Did you like that?”
Like a natural, she replied with another thrust of her hips.
Time to focus on the other breast. He brushed her hair over her shoulder, baring an angry red scar—a bullet’s exit wound. He froze, feathering his shaking hands over the blemish on her otherwise-flawless skin. The man who had done this to her deserved her fury, and worse—he deserved to bathe in his own blood.
But Dmitri had inflicted the same injury on another woman, which meant he deserved the same fate.
“Is it ugly?”
“Nothing about you is ugly.” He kissed the wound, wishing he could erase it, and with it, two fateful gunshots almost fifty years apart.
“Still, I’ll never be a swimsuit model like the ones I saw on the fashion network.”
“I’d much rather see you in a swimsuit than those toothpicks.”
Yeah, it came out sounding slick, but he meant it—and she grinned—so worth it.
He could keep right on kissing her, giving her what she wanted. Or he could keep his hands to himself, except for the chaste touch required to keep her in her skin. Option B was honorable, and certainly what she deserved, but damn near impossible when her lush and creamy breasts were staring him down, nipples erect, so sweet and ready for his tongue.
A loud cracking knock sounded on the fitting room door. “How do the jeans fit? Do you need another size?”
Dmitri exhaled, mostly relieved the decision had been made for him. “We’ll need a few more minutes.”
The clerk huffed. “Sure you do. Here are some tops.” She flung them over the fitting room door. “I do have other customers waiting to use this room.”
Only then did he notice the chatting of women’s voices in the shop.
“Pick out a sweater or two, sweetheart. Then we’ll go find you some shoes.”
Instead of agreeing, her stomach growled.
He was such an asshole. She’d only had three bites of pancake before they’d had to evacuate Elena’s place, and that was all she’d eaten in half a century.
“But first we find some food.”
“Thank God.” She covered her abdomen as if she could silence her hunger.
She chose two cashmere sweaters in gray and pink. He helped her wrestle into a tank top that held her breasts snugly, the way he wanted to.
After he paid the shop girl for Sonya’s clothes, he guided her back inside the mall where he’d seen a café. Leaning over the pastry case, she licked her sweet lips, eyes shining. He wanted to buy her one of everything, but she rolled her eyes and picked three huge golden croissants—one plain, one with ham, and one with chocolate. She devoured all three of them in a matter of minutes. Every bite made him think of kissing her again, of the taste of her breasts.
Then she lifted the largest hot cocoa he’d ever seen to her lips. The paper cup must have contained half a gallon of milk, with just as much whipped cream piled on top. After her first sip, a smudge of the cream lingered on her lip, and he closed in, licking it off.
She pushed him away. “Dmitri! People can see.”
He snatched hold of her wrist just before she released his arm. “Careful. Can’t have you ghosting right here in front of everyone. Might cause a panic.”
“Fine.” She pouted down at the table. Without turning her head, she looked at him sideways and the corner of her mouth turned up. “But no kissing in public.”
His phone rang, interrupting his search for a snappy comeback. It was good old reliable Yuchenko. He always came through—probably because he was scared to death of Gregor, and Dmitri by association.
Dmitri didn’t bother being friendly. “Find anything?”
“Yeah. Easy. Truss family—murder, suicide. Father involved in a jewelry theft, stealing from some high-up party official. Wife leaves him, taking their daughters to her hometown. He follows them there and kills all three, then swallows the nose of his own gun. Ugly story.”
Dmitri whistled. Very ugly. And very different from what Sonya had remembered. He’d need to get to the bottom of that difference and fast. “You got the file in front of you?”
“Uh huh. Why?”
“Who worked the case?”
Papers rustled. It was long past the end of the workday in Kiev. Dmitri had sat in that Soviet-era building at Yuchenko’s painted metal desk at least a dozen times, half of which were legitimate on-the-record dealings, and the other half not so much.
The investigator cleared his throat. “What are you not telling me, Lisko?”
Dmitri’s stomach sank, dreading what would come next. “Just say it.”
“It’s the man himself. Gregor Lisko, Junior Officer, Investigator Oleg Fedak, Senior Investigator Sergei Hritz.”
Two names Dmitri knew well. His uncle’s cronies for years. Dmitri had no idea what the fuck was going on, or what the hell had happened in 1968.
But he knew one thing for certain—the teapot in his backpack had not come from an antique shop on Olesya Street.
Chapter 22
Sonya sipped the sweet, rich, hot chocolate. Throngs of shoppers milled past, encumbered with glossy, colorful bags. The parade of characters in outrageous clothing was very like the television shows she’d watched. She pulled her coat over her thighs, squeezed tightly into the new jeans. Modern women exposed so much of their bodies, which clarified at least some of her questions about how realistic the shows were.
She would have to ask Dmitri about space exploration. Were people really living on giant cruise ships that traveled the universe?
But she would ask him after he’d taken her to bed.
Slowly, so he wouldn’t notice, she returned her attention to him. He stared at the table with the phone at his ear and his lips pressed thin. The grim expression made him almost scary. But earlier, when he’d smiled and his sensuous mouth had revealed his even teeth and crinkled the skin around his crystal-blue eyes, his air of menace had vanished. He was beautiful in the way of so many flawed things.
Dipping her finger into the cream floating in her cup, she considered whether he would laugh more at a dollop on his nose or her own. Then his troubled gaze came to rest on her. No playful gesture would ease the worry etched on to his face.
“Who worked the case?” He squeezed her fingers hard enough to hurt.
She winced, tugging at his grip.
He closed his eyes and, without looking at her, eased up the hold. “Just say it.”
Before her eyes, he turned ghostly white, pressing his palm onto the table.
“Don’t tell him about this, all right?” His gravelly voice was a rasp.
The other man’s response was too garbled to hear, but Dmitri’s nostrils flared.
“Yeah. I get it. But at least don’t go out of your way to let him know, okay?” He ended the call without waiting for a reply.
She expected him to volunteer what he’d learned, but people passed by their table like the second hand on a clock, and he remained silent, his face angled toward the scuffed aluminum tabletop. Finally, she couldn’t wait any longer.
“Dmitri?”
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