The Stanislaski Series Collection, Volume 1

by Nora Roberts

  For two people who had vowed not to complicate matters, she and Zack had done a poor job of it, Rachel decided. She’d been so certain she could keep her priorities well in line, accept the physical aspects of a relationship with a man she liked and respected without dwelling on the thorny issue of what-happens-next.

  But she was thinking about Zack too much, already slotting herself as part of a couple when she’d always been perfectly content to go along single.

  Now, when she imagined moving along without him, the picture turned dull and listless.

  Her problem, Rachel reminded herself. After all, they had made a pact, and she never went back on her word. It was something she would have to deal with when the time came. Much more immediate was the nagging sensation that the relationship of the men beside her had taken a fast turn without her being aware of it.

  To offset the feeling, she kept up a steady stream of conversation until they reached their stop.

  “It’s only a few blocks,” Rachel said, dragging her hair back as a brisk autumn wind swirled around them. “I hope you don’t mind the walk.”

  Zack lifted a brow. “I think we can handle it. You seem nervous, Rachel. She seem nervous to you, Nick?”

  “Pretty jumpy.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She headed into the wind, and the men fell in beside her.

  “It’s probably the thought of having a criminal type sit down to Sunday dinner,” Zack commented. “Now she’s going to have to count all the silverware.”

  Shocked at the statement, Rachel started to respond, but Nick merely snorted and answered for himself. “If you ask me, she’s worried about inviting some Irish sailor. She has to worry if he’ll drink all the booze and pick a fight.”

  “I can handle my liquor, pal. And I don’t plan on picking a fight. Unless it’s with the cop.”

  Nick crunched a dry leaf as it skittered across the sidewalk. “I’ll take the cop.”

  Why, they’re joking with each other, Rachel realized. Like brothers. Very much like brothers. Delighted, she linked arms with both of them. “If either of you takes on Alex, you’ll be in for a surprise. He’s meaner than he looks. And the only thing I’m nervous about is that I won’t get my share of dinner. I’ve seen both of you eat.”

  “This from a woman who packs it away like a linebacker.”

  Rachel narrowed her eyes at Zack. “I merely have a healthy appetite.”

  He grinned down at her. “Me too, sugar.”

  She was wondering how to control the sudden leap of her heart rate when a car skidded to a halt in the street beside them. “Hey!” the driver called out.

  “Hey back.” Rachel broke away to walk over to greet her brother and sister-in-law. Bending into the tiny window of the MG, she kissed Mikhail and smiled at his wife. “Still keeping him in line, Sydney?”

  Cool and elegant beside her untamed-looking husband, Sydney smiled. “Absolutely. Difficult jobs are my forte.”

  Mikhail pinched his wife’s thigh and nodded toward the sidewalk. “So what’s the story there?”

  “They’re my guests.” She gave Mikhail a long, warning look that she knew was wasted on him before calling to Nick and Zack. “Come meet my brother and his long-suffering wife. Sydney, Mikhail, this is Zackary Muldoon and Nicholas LeBeck.”

  His eyes shielded by dark glasses, Mikhail took a careful survey. He had a brother’s natural lack of faith in his sister’s judgment. “Which is the client?”

  “Today,” Rachel said, “they’re both guests.”

  Sydney leaned over and jammed her elbow sharply in Mikhail’s ribs. “It’s very nice to meet you, both of you. You’re in for quite a treat with Nadia’s cooking.”

  “So I hear.” Zack kept his eyes on Mikhail as he answered, and lifted a proprietary hand to Rachel’s shoulder.

  Mikhail’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “You own what? A bar?”

  “No, actually, I’m into white slavery.”

  That got a chuckle from Nick before Rachel shook her head. “Go park your car.”

  As they retreated to the sidewalk, Nick smiled over at Rachel. “I see what you mean now about older brothers. Being a pain must go with the position.”

  “Responsibility,” Zack told him. “We just pass on the benefit of our experience.”

  “No,” Rachel said, “what you are is nosy.” Amused, she gestured toward the sound of voices and laughter. Mikhail and Sydney were already at the door of the row house, hugging and being hugged. “This is it.” When Rachel spotted Natasha, she gave a cry of pleasure and dashed up the steps.

  Hanging back a little, Zack watched Rachel embrace her sister. Natasha was slighter, more delicately built, with rich brown eyes misted with tears, and tumbled raven curls raining down her back. Zack’s first thought was that this could not be the mother of three Rachel had described to him. Then a young boy of six or seven squeezed between the women and demanded attention.

  “You let in the cold!” This was bellowed from inside the house in a rumbling male voice that carried to the sidewalk and beyond. “You are not born in barn.”

  “Yes, Papa.” Her voice sounded meek enough, but Rachel winked at her nephew as she lifted him up for a kiss. “My sister, Natasha,” she continued, as they stood in the open doorway. “And my boyfriend, Brandon. And,” she said when a toddler wandered up to hang on Natasha’s legs, “Katie.”

  “You pick me up,” Katie demanded, homing in on Nick. “Okay?” She was already holding up her arms, smiling flirtatiously. Nick cleared his throat and glanced at Rachel for help. When he only got a smile and a shrug, he bent down awkwardly.

  “Sure. I guess.”

  An expert at such matters, Katie settled herself on his hip and wound an arm around his neck.

  “She enjoys men,” Natasha explained. When her father bellowed again, she rolled her eyes. “Come inside, please.”

  Zack was struck by the sounds and the scents. Home, he realized. This was a home. And stepping inside made him realize he’d never really had one himself.

  The scents of ham and cloves and furniture polish, the clash of mixed voices. The carpet on the stairway leading to the second floor was worn at the edges, testimony to the dozens of feet that had climbed up or down. The furniture in the cramped living room was faded with sun and time, crowded now with people. A gleaming piano stood against one wall. Atop it was a bronze sculpture. He recognized the faces of Rachel’s family, melded together, cheek to cheek, flanked by two older, proud faces that could only be her parents’.

  He didn’t know much about art, but he understood that this represented a unity that could not be broken.

  “So you bring your friends, then leave them in the cold.” Yuri sat in an armchair, cuddling a sprite of a girl. His big workingman’s arms nearly enveloped the pretty child, who had a fairy’s blond hair and curious eyes.

  “It’s only a little cold.” Rachel bent to kiss her father, then the girl. “Freddie, you get prettier every time I see you.”

  Freddie smiled and tried to pretend she wasn’t staring at the young blond man who was holding her little sister. But she had just turned thirteen, and whole worlds were opening up to her.

  Rachel went through another round of introductions. Freddie turned the name Nick LeBeck over in her head while Yuri shouted out orders.

  “Alexi, bring hot cider. Rachel, take coats upstairs. Mikhail, kiss your wife later. Go tell Mama we have company.”

  Within moments, Zack found himself seated on the couch, scratching the ears of a big, floppy dog named Ivan and discussing the pros and cons of running a business with Yuri.

  Nick felt desperately self-conscious with a baby on his knee. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get down. And the little blond girl named Freddie kept studying him with solemn gray eyes. He glanced away, wishing their mother would come along and do something. Anything. Katie snuggled up and began to toy with his earring.

  “Pretty,” she said, with a smile so sweet he couldn�
��t help but respond. “I have earrings, too. See?” To show off her tiny gold hoops, she turned her head this way and that. “’Cause I’m Daddy’s little gypsy.”

  “I bet.” Unconsciously he lifted a hand to stroke her hair. “You kind of look like your Aunt Rachel.”

  “I can take her.” Freddie had worked up her courage and now she stood beside the couch smiling down at Nick. “If she’s bothering you.”

  Nick merely moved his shoulders. “She’s cool.” He struggled to find something to say. The girl was china-doll pretty, he thought, and as foreign to him as Rachel’s Ukraine. “Uh…you don’t look a whole lot like sisters.”

  Freddie’s smile bloomed warm and her fledgling woman’s heart tapped a little faster. He’d noticed her. “Mama’s my stepmother, technically. I was about six when she and my father got married.”

  “Oh.” A step, he thought. That was something he knew about, and sympathized with. “I guess it was a little rough on you.”

  Though she was baffled, Freddie continued to smile. After all, he was talking to her, and she thought he looked like a rock star. “Why?”

  “Well, you know…” Nick found himself flustered under that steady gray stare. “Having a stepmother—a stepfamily.”

  “That’s just a word.” Gathering her nerve, she sat on the arm of the couch beside him. “We have a house in West Virginia—that’s where Dad met Mama. He teaches at the university and she owns a toy store. Have you ever been to West Virginia?”

  Nick was still stuck on her answer. It’s just a word. He could hear in the easy tone of her voice that she meant just that. “What? Oh, no, never been there.”

  Inside the warm, fragrant kitchen, Rachel was laughing with her sister. “Katie certainly knows how to snag her man.”

  “It was sweet the way he blushed.”

  “Here.” Nadia thrust a bowl into her eldest daughter’s hands. “You make biscuits. The boy had good eyes,” she said to Rachel. “Why is he in trouble?”

  Sniffing a pot of simmering cabbage, Rachel smiled. “Because he didn’t have a mama and papa to yell at him.”

  “And the older one,” Nadia continued, opening the oven to check her ham. “He has good eyes, too. And they’re on you.”

  “Maybe.”

  After smacking her daughter’s hand away, Nadia replaced the lid on the pot. “Alex grumbles about them.”

  “He grumbles about everything.”

  Natasha cut shortening in the bowl and grinned. “I think it’s more to the point that Rachel has her eye on Zack every bit as much as he has his on her.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Rachel said under her breath.

  “A woman who doesn’t look at such a man needs glasses,” Nadia said, and made her daughters laugh.

  When her curiosity got to be too much for her, Rachel opened the swinging door a crack and peeked out. There was Sydney, sitting on the floor and keeping Brandon entertained with a pile of race cars. The men were huddled together, arguing football. Freddie was perched on the arm of the sofa, obviously in the first stages of infatuation with Nick. As for Nick, he seemed to have forgotten his embarrassment and was bouncing Katie on his knee. And Zack, she noted with a smile, was leaning forward, entrenched in the hot debate over the upcoming game.

  * * *

  By the time the table was set and groaning under the weight of platters of food, Zack was thoroughly fascinated with the Stanislaskis. They argued, loudly, but without any of the bitterness he remembered from his own confrontations with his father. He discovered that Mikhail was the artist who had crafted the sculpture on the piano, as well as all the passionate pieces in Rachel’s apartment. Yet he talked construction and building codes with his father, not art.

  Natasha handled her children with a deft hand. No one seemed to mind if Brandon created a racket imitating race cars or if Katie climbed all over the furniture. But when it was time to stop, they did so at little more than a word from their mother or father.

  Alex didn’t seem like such a tough cop when he was being barraged by his family’s teasing over his latest lady friend—a woman, Mikhail claimed, who had the I.Q. of the cabbage he was heaping on his plate.

  “Hey, I don’t mind. That way I can do the thinking for her.”

  That earned an unladylike snort from Rachel. “He wouldn’t know how to handle a woman with a brain.”

  “One day one will find him,” Nadia predicted. “Like Sydney found my Mikhail.”

  “She didn’t find me.” Mikhail passed a bowl of boiled potatoes to his wife. “I found her. She needed some spice in her life.”

  “As I recall, you needed someone to knock the chip off your shoulder.”

  “It was always so,” Yuri agreed, shaking his fork. “He was a good boy, but—What is the word?”

  “Arrogant?” Sydney suggested.

  “Ah.” Satisfied, Yuri dived into his meal. “But it’s not so bad for a man to be arrogant.”

  “This is true.” Nadia kept an eagle eye on Katie, who was concentrating on cutting her meat. “So long as he has a woman who is smarter. Is not hard to do.”

  Female laughter and male catcalls had Katie clapping her hands in delight.

  “Nicholas,” Nadia said, pleased that he was going back for seconds, “you will go to school, yes?”

  “Ah…no, ma’am.”

  She urged the basket of biscuits on him. “So you know what work you want.”

  “I… Not exactly.”

  “He is young, Nadia,” Yuri said from across the table. “Time to decide. You’re skinny.” He pursed his lips as he studied Nick. “But have good arms. You need work, I give you job. Teach you to build.”

  Speechless, Nick stared. No one had ever offered to give him anything so casually. The big, broad-faced man who was plowing through the glazed ham didn’t even know him. “Thanks. But I’m sort of working for Zack.”

  “It must be interesting to work in a bar. Brandon, eat your vegetables, or no more biscuits. All the people you meet,” Natasha continued, saving Katie’s glass from tipping on the floor without breaking rhythm.

  “You don’t meet a whole lot of them in the kitchen,” Nick muttered.

  “You have to be twenty-one to tend bar or serve drinks,” Zack reminded him.

  Noting Nick’s mutinous expression, Rachel broke in. “Mama, you should see Zack’s cook. He’s a giant from Jamaica, and he makes the most incredible food. I’ve been trying to charm some recipes out of him.”

  “I will give you one to trade.”

  “Make it the glaze for this ham, and I guarantee he’ll give you anything.” Zack sampled another bite. “It’s great.”

  “You will take some home,” Nadia ordered. “Make sandwiches.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nick grinned.

  * * *

  Rachel bided her time, waiting until dinner was over and three of the four apple pies her mother had baked had been devoured. With just a little urging, Nadia was persuaded to play the piano. After a time, she and Spence played a duet, the music flowing out over the sound of clattering dishes and conversation.

  She saw the way Nick glanced over, watching, listening. As cleverly as a general aligning his troops, she dropped down on the bench when Spence and Nadia took a break. She held out a hand, inviting Nick to join her.

  “I shouldn’t have had that second piece of pie,” she said with a sigh.

  “Me either.” It was difficult to decide how to tell her the way the afternoon had made him feel. He wouldn’t have believed people lived this way. “Your mom’s great.”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Very casually, she turned and began to noodle with the keys. “She and Papa love these Sundays when we can all get together.”

  “Your dad, he was saying how the house would get bigger when the kids left home. But now he thinks they’ll have to add on a couple of rooms to hold everyone. I guess you get together like this a lot.”

  “Whenever we can.”

  “They didn’t seem to mind you broug
ht me and Zack along.”

  “They like company.” She tried a chord, wincing at the clash of notes. “This always looks so easy when Spence or Mama does it.”

  “Try this.” He put his hand over hers, guiding her fingers.

  “Ah, better. But I don’t see how anyone can play different things with each hand. At the same time, you know.”

  “You don’t think about it that way. You just have to let it happen.”

  “Well…”

  She trailed off and, unable to resist, he began to improvise blues. When the music moved through him, he forgot he was in a room crowded with people and let it take over. Even when the room fell silent, he continued, wrapped up in the pleasure of creating sound and feeling from the keys. When he played, he wasn’t Nick LeBeck, outcast. He was someone he didn’t really understand yet, someone he couldn’t quite see and yearned desperately to be always.

  He eased into half-remembered tunes, filling them out with his own interpretation, letting the music swing with his mood from blues to boogie-woogie to jazz and back again.

  When he paused, grinning to himself from the sheer pleasure it had given him to play, Zack laid a hand on his shoulder and snapped him back to reality.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” The amazement in Zack’s voice was reflected in his eyes. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  With a shrug, Nick wiped his suddenly nervous hands on his thighs. “I was just fooling around.”

  “That was some fooling around.”

  Cautious, trying to put a label on the tone of Zack’s voice, Nick glanced back. “It’s no big deal.”

  Grinning from ear to ear, Zack shook his head. “Man, to somebody who can’t play ‘Chopsticks,’ that was one whale of a big deal.” Pride was bubbling through the amazement. “It was great. Really great.”

  The pleasure working its way into him made Nick almost as uneasy as the criticism he’d expected. It was then he realized that everyone had stopped talking and was looking at him. Color crept into his cheeks. “Look, I said it was no big deal. I was just banging on the keys.”

  “That was some very talented banging.” With Katie on his hip, Spencer moved to the piano. “Ever think about studying seriously?”