Page 137 of Ruthless Rustanovs

THEL, curious about Bair’s peculiar prediction, did exactly that. Though she waited until the end of dinner when the children had all either been escorted up the stairs to go to sleep, or retired to Alexei’s massive entertainment room for yet another game of Viking Shifters, before she did.

“Walking over, I told Bair all the wives here were so nice, I couldn’t imagine them ever giving their husbands a hard time,” she announced to the now adults only table as they enjoyed a dessert of the homemade peppermint bark, Tasha had made herself.

Just as Bair predicted, every man at the table but him and Sawyer fell out laughing. In fact Nikolai laughed so hard, he was wiping tears out of his eyes and claimed to have “maybe broken rib”—even though from what Thel could see, his wife, Sam, was the kindest of them all.

“It’s not that funny,” Sam said, glaring at her husband.

Bair merely shot Thel an “I told you so” look across the acacia wood table as Eva agreed, “She’s right. We are all very nice.”

“And extremely altruistic, too,” Tasha added.

Nikolai just asked his wife, “Should you tell her Greece date story or should I?”

“No, first I would like to tell you the story of how Eva let me think she was in love with another man when we finally reunited here in Texas,” Alexei insisted.

Then Suro shocked the hell out of Thel by actually saying more than two words at one time. “After you are done, I will tell you how I came to own a strip club in Chicago.”

“I think Alexei and Eva should go first,” Marian insisted.

“Their story is still my favorite. But Thel, you’ll most likely enjoy Nikolai and Sam’s the best because it has a dog.

Did you ever tell that Beast of yours how you used to rescue dogs when you were high school?

Though now that I think about it, Tasha has two names, just like you.

And she spent a lot of years hiding, too—you’ll definitely be able to relate to that one.

But then again, they’ve all either killed or had men killed for the women they love, just like your Bair, so really, you can’t go wrong with any of their stories. ”

The laughing came to an abrupt stop and everyone not related by blood or marriage to Marian turned to look at her.

“How did you know about…?”

“No one knows about…!”

“How could you possibly…?”

“It’s a long story,” Willa answered, cutting Marian off as she poured both herself and Sawyer an emergency glass of wine.

“You’ll get used to her knowing everything about you already,” Sawyer assured everyone at the table.

He tipped his newly refilled glass to them in a silent toast. “Maybe not by the end of this trip. But, you know, give it year. Willa, baby, you should definitely be passing around that wine right about now.”

“Here you go, Alexei,” Willa said scooting it across the table toward him.

“I still have questions,” Alexei said, as he poured a liberal amount into his own glass. “Many questions.

“Me, too!” Eva said, eyeing Marian warily.

Thel’s heart sank and she exchanged a look with Willa.

This was what always happened to them. What came with being the daughters of the town Crazy Lady.

Having to explain yourselves and your mother to freaked out new acquaintances.

Reason number one why neither she nor Willa had ever intentionally brought anyone home.

But before anyone could ask anything else, Bair spoke up.

“Thel’s mother has ‘the sight,’” he informed his brother darkly. “You can choose to believe this or not, but you will not question my wife or her family about it. They are my guests, and I will not have them made to feel uncomfortable in my brother’s home.”

Now everyone at the table looked toward Alexei who, from what Thel remembered, did most of the commanding when it came to his brother.

Alexei took a slow sip of his wine, as if he didn’t notice everyone waiting for his response. Then said, “You are of course right, Boris.” He nodded toward Marian. “I am sorry for any insult I might have given you, Mrs. Thompson.”

“That’s okay, dear,” Marian answered. “None of you Rustanovs trust easily. And I imagine you’re really on edge after what happened to your cousin’s family. Tragic story that. Very Russian though. The hubris. The death. The bitterness—oh thank you, dear!”

She broke off when one of the servers came into the dining room with a huge bowl of popcorn. “You’re right on time with my special request!”

“Mom, you did not ask the kitchen to make you a bowl of popcorn,” Willa said as soon as the server was out of earshot.

“It is no problem, Willa. Our kitchen is always open for special requests,” Alexei assured her. Though he continued to eye Marian, looking both suspicious and perplexed.

“That’s right,” Marian said. “He told us that when we got here, youngest daughter. And I’m sorry,” she said with an apologetic look toward Tasha. “As good as your homemade peppermint bark is, dear, it just will not do for this next part.”

In the confused silence that followed, Eva seemed to be the only one brave enough to ask, “What next part?”

As if on cue, a large hulking figure entered the room. Thel had thought it was quiet before. But nearly everyone in the room shifted into Defcon 5 levels of silence when this guy came in. You could have heard a pin drop, except for the soft crunching sound of her mother eating popcorn.

At first, Thel struggled to understand why everyone was so wary of the new arrival.

He seemed a lot like every other Rustanov sitting at the table.

Same heavy jaw. Same cruel mouth. Same sharp cheekbones.

Only prettier. From what she could see, he possessed perfectly cut features, blond hair, and eyes so crystalline blue, he immediately put Thel in mind of Paul Newman’s taller and hunkier brother.

The only thing off about him was that he stank. Though he was all the way on the other side of the table, she could still smell him. An off-putting reek of body odor and alcohol.

Bair, Alexei, and Nikolai regarded the man—who obviously had to be their cousin, Ivan—as if he were a ghost who had just entered the room. Though that couldn’t be the case, she assured herself, because Thel could see him, and unlike her mother and sister, she definitely couldn’t see ghosts.

“Hi, Ivan!” Eva said, with what looked to Thel like a shit ton of forced cheer. “Can I get you anything, darlin’? Maybe heat you up a plate from dinner?”

“I ran out of vodka at the other house. It is stocked for shit. Where is there more?” he answered. His English was nearly perfect, without too heavy of an accent or a dropped article in sight. But his voice was hard and clipped with the usual Rustanov flair for dropping insults like mics.

“Oh…ah, Alexei…?” Eva said, deferring to her husband.

“You have already had enough,” Alexei answered, where his polite Texan wife could not.

“I see it over there,” Ivan said, heading over to the oak and pewter drink cart parked on the back wall. The cart’s middle shelf held a collection of vodka, wine, and whiskey bottles. And at the bottom of the cart rested a charming assortment of electric blue, red, and yellow drinking glasses.

The cart was like every other piece of furniture in the main house. Aggressively masculine design topped off with surprising bursts of color: a true reflection of Alexei and Eva as a couple, it seemed.

However, Ivan didn’t stop to appreciate the bar’s pretty set-up. Just grabbed the closest bottle, unscrewed the top, and took a swig straight from the head.

Then with the deliberate languidness of a predator born, he turned to face the room. Thel’s stomach dropped when she saw what everyone else on the other side of the table must have seen when he first walked in. One side of his face was total movie star. But the other…

The only word she could think to describe it was hideous.

He’d obviously been burned or something, because one side of his face was destroyed.

Like a mottled facsimile of the pretty side.

You could sort of tell what kind of chiseled beauty used to reside there.

But you had to squint really hard, and even then…

Everyone at the table watched him take another swig of Belvedere in silence. But if the silence made Ivan uncomfortable he didn’t show it. Instead, he took in the table with one mean sweep of his blue eyes, assessing each person sitting there, before his crystalline gaze finally settled on Thel.

“This is her? The one who used to be your pet?” He seemed to be addressing Bair. But he spoke English and kept his lazy predator gaze on Thel as he spoke.

“You should go back to your room, Ivan,” Bair said, in lieu of an answer. “You are obviously still in pain.”

“You are very pretty,” Ivan said, looking Thel up and down.

“Even prettier than his mother. I have good memory of her. When I turned fifteen, my father offered me a night with his new pet as birthday present. Said I could do whatever I wanted with her. I said, ‘Papa, your new pet is pretty but not as pretty as your last one. I want her.’”

Ivan chuckled, as if this were some kind of warm Norman Rockwell memory.

“‘But she is no longer my pet,’ my father tells me. Not since he has replaced her with another. I tell him, ‘Go find her. Bring her to me. If she does good job, maybe I will make her my own pet.’ So he said he would. I looked forward to my birthday all week. But then the news came that she had killed herself. Too bad,” Ivan said with a sad sigh…

before his mean blue gaze found Bair. “But you are right, Boris. I am hurting. Maybe you can have this other pet come up later and make it up to me for my birthday. That would certainly help.”

Bair’s chair hit the floor with a loud crack, and though Thel was much closer to where Ivan was standing, she barely made it out of her own chair before he was all the way around the table.