Page 77 of Charmingly Obsessed
The sharp, insistent trill of the doorbell cuts through our strained conversation, creating a sudden tension in everyone but Serafima Pylypivna. She simply raises a perfectly sculpted silver eyebrow.
“Well, who in the blazes of Hades could that be at this hour?” she calls out, invoking the higher, and presumably moreinfernal, powers. Then she shoots me a look. A sharp, suspicious, all-knowing glance that makes my stomach clench.
I don’t wait for an invitation.
I practically fly to the door, yanking it open.
And there he is. Mykola. My husband. Looking devastatingly, unfairly handsome, even with the faint, purplish bruising still visible around his nose.
He’s holding a couple of paper bags from some ridiculously expensive gourmet deli, the kind that probably charges extra for breathing their artisanal air.
The bags end up clutched precariously in one of his hands as his other arm snakes around my waist, hauling me against him.
He cups my face, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and then his mouth is on mine. A deep, hungry kiss that tastes of cool night air, expensive cologne, and him. Only him.
“Hello, Diana,” he says, his voice a low rumble against my lips, as if we’re meeting for the very first time and and the chaos of the last day never happened.
“Hi,” I whisper back. “I’m… I’m so glad you… you came.”
Kolya doesn’t take his eyes off me. And I can’t tear mine away from his. He kisses me again – slowly this time, lingeringly, – and his long, dark eyelashes flutter against my skin like silk. I sigh into his mouth, a soft, helpless, utterlyschoolgirlsound.
God, we are going to be completely, insufferably unbearable for everyone around us in the very near future. If we even have a near future.
“Hope there aren’t too many… uninvited guests. The store was wiped clean of almost everything I actually planned to buy. Had to improvise.”
“It’s fine.”
He plays the part of the humble, slightly apologetic,uninvitedguest to perfection as he steps into the living room…and then he sees the enormous bouquet of white roses still lurking in the corner.
His gaze shifts to Hippolyt, who is currently pontificating to a captive Serafima about the architectural merits of pre-revolutionary dacha construction.
The golden-haired curvy beauty, Nadya, has conveniently vanished somewhere. Probably to refill her champagne flute. Or escape Hippolyt’s lecture.
“Kolya, come on,” I whisper, pulling him toward the kitchen. “Let me introduce you to Nadya. She’s lovely.”
He doesn’t move, just stands there radiating a possessive disapproval that makes the air crackle. He offers Hippolyt only a brief, almost imperceptible nod.
Hippolyt, bless his oblivious heart, beams and extends a beefy hand. Frez’s handshake is a model of glacial civility that tells me everything I need to know.
In the kitchen, I turn to him at once, gripping his forearms. “Kolya, I’m begging you, please. Behave. Hippolyt himself isn’t even fully aware of why Serafima invited him. And she had to take Corvalol today. Her heart was acting up earlier.”
A small, white lie. But a necessary one.
“And for her, tonight is genuinely New Year’s Eve. We’re going to try and gently nudge him in Nadya’s direction. She needs a husband.”
“What about me, huh? I’m the one behaving here.” He says slowly, his gaze sweeping around Serafima’s cluttered, charmingly chaotic kitchen as if he’s deep in thought, assessing structural integrity or perhaps planning a hostile takeover of her spice rack.
But I can see the way his cheek twitches, just slightly, from the inside. A sure sign he’s suppressing a snarl.
“What role do I play in this romantic subterfuge, sunshine? Am I doing anything? Or just observing? Because whatever yousay, you know. By the way, is he the one who brought the flowers?”
He reaches for a delicate, antique teacup perched precariously on the top shelf, then pulls a dusty, unlabeled bottle of some dark, herbal-looking liqueur from the very bottom cabinet – the same cabinet Serafima Pylypivna had vehemently insisted was permanently sealed shut due to a family curse involving a poltergeist and a missing set of silver spoons.
“It was just a polite gesture,” I say, defensively stacking a pile of mismatched floral tea towels back into a neat, if slightly wobbly, pile. “The flowers. He’s impeccably well-mannered. A perfect gentleman.”
“Really?” He finally lifts his gaze to me, and since there’s a definite, dangerous glint of amusement – and something else, something possessive – in his eyes, I actually relax.A little.
Mykola is, at heart, a good-natured man. Mostly. Nothing to worry about. Probably.
