Page 45 of Dangerous Secrets

“Thank you, Vassily. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

“Yes, my dear. I’m looking forward to welcoming you.” Delicate pause. “Welcome you both.” Worontwoff waited until she hung up then they heard the sound of something breaking.

Silence. Then another explosion of sound, a two-syllable word.

Nick looked over at Alexei. “What was that?”

“Pizdets,” Alexei said.

“Thank you, Alexei,” Di Stefano said, rolling his eyes. “So what does it mean?”

Alexei’s eyes gleamed. “Fuck.”

Charity putthe library phone down thoughtfully, wondering whether she’d done a good thing or a bad thing.

Vassily hadn’t sounded pleased. At all. She knew his voices and this was his I Am Not Amused voice. He lived in a large home, a mansion, actually, and what he termed the Music Room was large. But he’d told her he didn’t want more than 30 people and he’d probably already invited as many people as he felt the room could comfortably hold. His soirées were catered and the caterers had probably already been told the exact number, as well.

Vassily was a charming man. He had enriched her life in so many ways, she couldn’t even begin to count them. However, Charity also recognized that the man had a dark side, a granite hardness to him that she sometimes saw people tripping over unexpectedly, like a rocky outcropping in a meadow. Part of that dark side was that he didn’t like being crossed, in any way.

She respected that, always. She’d inherited from her mother an ability to read people and from her father an ability to avoid antagonizing the difficult. Charity knew exactly when to keep her mouth shut, and she did.

With Vassily it was easier than with most people she dealt with and who tried her patience, like the mayor or old Mrs. Lawrence. However difficult he became, he had earned every wrinkle in his character, and he was entitled to that dark side of his.

Vassily never spoke of it, but his body spoke eloquently. His grotesquely scarred and shattered hands, with all the fingernails missing. A thin, deep scar running from his temple to his jawline, just missing his eye. An inability to lift his right arm higher than his chest. A limp that was exacerbated in the winter when it was damp. And when was it not damp in Vermont in winter?

Vassily was endlessly fascinating to everyone—he was, after all, one of the world’s greatest writers. A man who would be lionized in any of the world’s great cities, even though he had chosen, inexplicably, to bury himself in a small provincial town in Vermont.

No one could give him back his lost years and his ruined health, however. No matter how famous and rich he became, he had been through hell.

So Charity forgave Vassily everything—his moodiness, his harsh, granite core, his dark side. She had no right to judge him, and she didn’t.

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked if Nick could come with her. It appeared that it was a breach of Vassily etiquette. It’s just that with each passing day, she was more and more certain that Nick would soon move on. How many business opportunities could there be, after all, in the Granite State, for an investor? Smartas he was, he was surely running them all down to ground. And once he’d finished, what was there to keep him here?

Charity had no illusions about the two of them, as a couple. There was nothing here to tie Nick down. He had money, looks, health. A bachelor pad in Manhattan. Potent male charm. Charisma. He was a superb lover.

The world was his oyster.

There was no reason whatsoever for him to stick here with a small-town librarian who led a quiet life and was responsible for two elderly, frail relatives who tethered her as much as—perhaps more than—two small children would have.

Charity’s life was circumscribed, hemmed in on all sides. His was not. It was wide open.

So, he’d be going soon. He might even be gone by Thursday, and maybe she’d just humiliated herself in vain, asking Vassily for this favour for a man who wouldn’t even be here.

It was just that the thought of an evening without Nick, even one of Vassily’s musical soirées, which she ordinarily loved, was painful in the extreme. Which meant, of course, that she was in for a great deal of pain in the very near future.

Chapter Thirteen

Parker’s Ridge

November 21

She was thinking about him—mooning over him, really—when all of a sudden, like magic, there he was.

Nick.HerNick. Such a delicious thought, however much she chided herself for it.

Her Nick.

He wasn’t hers, or if he was, it was just temporary, but still. It sounded so nice.

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