Page 96 of Disguised as Love

Now, I just had to do the same with Raisa.

Raisa

LOVE WHEN YOU CALL MY NAME

“Even if I go for miles and hours

There’s only one thing that I need, only one word you say

Love when you call my name.”

Performed by Alicia Keys

Written by Saadiq / Augello-Cook

The sun was soaking into me as I lay on our private beach at our compound in Hawaii, but I still felt cold. I’d felt that way for the entire week we’d been there. I flipped onto my stomach, turned the volume up on my phone, and let the husky voice of the male narrator fill my ears.

The problem was, every time I heard his voice, I thought about how it was nowhere near as sexy as Cruz’s had been. I thought about how it would sound if Cruz’s deep voice was saying the words, and it left me aching for things I couldn’t have.

I hadn’t heard from him since the day he’d stepped off Papa’s plane. It didn’t surprise me, but it still stabbed me in the gut after the sweet promises he’d made. I’d known the truth, even if my ridiculous heart had wanted to believe otherwise. I’d known once reality had settled in?his life at the Bureau and his family?that he’d realize the stupidity of tangling himself with me. With the Leskovs.

I’d promised I’d wait to hear from him before going back to Stanford, but I was ready to do just that. I needed to bury myself in my work, get my head back into the formulas and numbers rather than dwell on thoughts of a man I could never make mine. That I shouldn’t want to be mine.

It had all been a mirage. That was what I kept telling myself every time I started to think about how I’d fit perfectly in his arms, or how our bodies had felt built for one another when we’d been tangled together during our one night of passion. It was just the intensity of our days in St. Petersburg that had made us seem perfect for one another. Passion emerging from fear and anger and loss.

Then, Ito-san’s words on the plane would echo through my brain about souls finding souls in every reincarnation. I wasn’t sure I believed that we came back to earth when we died, but the idea of it was romantic and heady. An idea I wanted to be true, even when it wasn’t.

Boyish laughter pulled me from my sullen thoughts, and my eyes lifted to watch Jules and Holt flinging sand at each other while my beautiful sister, Georgie, hollered at them to stop. Her long dark hair was wrapped in a braid and flung over her shoulder. She was a little curvier than she’d been before she’d given birth to the twins, but it suited her, just like the happiness that bubbled through her and the soft smile she gave to Mac who was laughing at his sons’ antics.

I was glad they’d shown up two days after we had. Mama and Papa had both needed the distraction. But their arrival had sent Malik scurrying away because he and Mac had never gotten along. Mac could never find it in himself to forgive our brother the way both Georgie and I had.

Before he’d left, Malik had told me more about his production company, the movies and shows he wanted to make all from our homeland. He wanted to bring a different Russia to Hollywood. One that wasn’t about communism, or the fall of communism, or the mafiya that had filled in the void that politics had left behind in the nineties. He wanted to share the joy and resilience of our people. I’d been impressed and seen a side of Malik I hadn’t seen since we were little. I hoped it would keep him engaged so he would no longer seek the dark depths of the mafiya.

Georgie and Mac each grabbed one of the boys and came up the beach toward me.

“We’re going in before we can’t get the sand out of these two,” Georgie said.

“Okay,” I responded.

She eyed me, then handed Jules to Mac, who easily carried both his sons in arms that were almost as big as Cruz’s had been.

“Go on, I’ll be just a moment,” she told him.

Mac looked from me to his wife and seemed to know better than to argue. He held the boys like a log under each arm and headed off to the house with them giggling and squirming.

We watched them leave, and then Georgie sat down on the blanket next to me.

“You’ve been unusually pensive since we got here,” she said. “I think it’s time you spill your guts.”

I looked at her over my sunglasses and then pushed them back up my nose. “Don’t be dramatic. There is nothing to spill.”

“Mama says this Special Agent Malone was in love with you.”

I scoffed.

“So that’s how it is?” she said, a small smile creeping up her face.

“How what is?”

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