Page 26 of Beautiful Secrets

“I was waiting for something. Looks like it’s arrived.”

I feel her eyes on me when I go to buzz in our room service. A girl in a uniform wheels in a food trolley, her eyes discretely downcast until she leaves the room with a few pounds tucked away in her apron.

Mika didn’t even shout out for help, and I wonder about that for a whole two seconds until I look up and see she’s gone.

My heart does an unhappy caper in my chest. I scan the living area, but it’s empty.

Then I see the balcony’s door is standing open, and my stomach twists into a fucking pretzel.

I race outside, skidding to a halt when I see Mika leaning against the rail. She’d been blocked by one of several potted palms strategically placed along the balcony.

“Nasty way to go,” I say, ambling up to her. Christ, when is my heart going to stop racing?

“Excuse me?” Mika turns to me, her face ashen.

“You okay there, little rabbit? You don’t look so good.”

“Need fresh air,” she says, but speaking gingerly.

“Come inside.”

And, surprisingly, she does. I lead her back to the kitchen, and click my fingers at a stool. She scowls a little at that, but drags herself up after a second anyway.

Instead of bringing her any of the food reeking its deliciousness into the room, I put on the kettle and start hunting around in the cupboards.

“So tell me, why are in such a hurry to get to Russia?”

Eventually I find what I’m looking for—peppermint tea. Some crazy expensive-looking shit. It smells so good, I make two cups. Black, no sugar. Best way.

I picked up more than just some prescriptions while I was at Blackmoore Sanitarium. One of the patients was mad about herbal teas—certifiably—and wouldn’t shut up about how good they were. Which ones did what. Five years of that, eventually you just give in and try a cuppa.

Developed quite a taste.

I slide the mug over to her. “I can torture you, if you’d prefer.”

She frowns at me, takes a sip from her steaming black mug, and then sets it down again. “I cannot stay there anymore.”

“So? Grown-ass woman like you, you don’t like it there, you fucking leave.”

She scowls at me, and then takes another sip. “That is not how it works with us.”

“What, Russians?”

She shrugs, her scowl cooling a little. “Women.”

“Russian women.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Da.” Then, as if she thinks I’m a complete fucking moron, “Yes.”

“Keep going like that, I’ll pull you over my knee.”

It shouldn’t delight me that just those few words make her cheeks glow, but it does.

“He marry me off,” Mika says.

No doubt her father.

She’s looking into her cup, her wet hair a shade darker and dangling around her head in cables.