Page 50 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“Ican’t believe you, Marco! I can’t believe you!”

“Sammy, don’t be mad at me,” Marco said on the other side of the line. “I’m only trying to do what’s best here.”

“What’s best?” she repeated, her voice full of derision. “For who? Your favorite hockey player? I can only assume that’s why you’d give this guy our home address.”

“I gave him your home address. It’s just yours. You only have temporary custody, and you’re not the kid’s blood,” Marco answered. “Rustanov is.”

“Maybe not. But I could have stalled, given Pavel the time and counseling he needed to properly process what happened to him before I sent him off with some guy who didn’t even know he was alive until a few hours ago!”

“You’re acting like it’s his fault his druggie brother didn’t tell him he had a kid. The point is now he knows, and he’s trying to make it right.”

“Trying to claim Pavel like a piece of luggage, you mean. And you just made it that much easier for him!”

Just thinking about how Marco had betrayed her and Pavel in favor of his hockey hero made her want to scream.

But Pavel was in the front room with Back Up and she worked hard to keep her voice down so he wouldn’t hear her in the back bedroom when she all but hissed, “Pavel doesn’t need a hockey star who will hand him off to a nanny to raise.

He needs counseling. He needs guidance. He needs love. ”

Sam thought about Nikolai Rustanov’s derisive dismissal of love as a silly custom at the party and said, “He needs all the love he can get.”

“Sam, I like you, I really like you, but you have got to start seeing reason here. You are one person and you said it yourself, you’ll be stretched thin again as soon as the shelter fills back up. Rustanov can hire a battalion of yous to give Pavel whatever he needs. You should—”

“Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, Marco,” Sam said through clenched teeth. “I don’t care who he is, I’m not going to hand a traumatized little boy over to him just because they have some tenuous family connection. You have no idea what Pavel has been through. No idea!”

“And you do?” Marco asked, sounding both confused and skeptical.

Sam paused, then paused some more, her mind buffering, because how could she explain it to Marco? Her reasons for feeling so connected to Pavel were secret, and she hadn’t told anyone but Josie.

“Yes, I do,” she eventually said. “More than whatever therapist this hockey player’s assistant picks out for him.

So please, if you really like me, if you ever cared about me at all, call him off.

Call him and tell him not to bother coming over here.

Tell him that he’ll have to go through Child Services if he wants custody of Pavel, just like anyone else would. ”

“Sammy…”

“Please, Marco. I know what I’m doing and I know what’s best for Pavel right now. You’ve got to trust me.”

“I do trust you, but in this case, I think you’re being a little… I don’t know a nice way to say this—but you’re being kinda crazy, Sammy. I mean, don’t you want us to get back on track with dating? See where the relationship goes? All the places it could go?”

The stress he put on “all” left no doubt of his real meaning. During their last date, he’d hinted that the next order of takeout should include an overnight stay. Obviously he was fed up with waiting to take their relationship to the next level.

Sam’s heart hardened with bitter disappointment. Marco might think she’s cute, she realized, but apparently that was all he thought of her.

You’re just a piece of ass, far as any of these boys concerned, and that’s all you ever going to be to them.

Her stepfather’s ugly words rang in her ears as she realized the truth about Marco. He wasn’t a potential love connection. Not someone she could eventually marry and trust. At the end of the day, the only thing he cared about was getting her into bed.

“You’re right, Marco. Obviously, I’m not thinking clearly,” she said.

“I mean, Nikolai Rustanov knows how to hit a ball with a bent stick really well, and all I am is a grown woman with two degrees who works with children in crisis on a day-to-day basis. What could I possibly know better than Nikolai Rustanov about what’s best for Pavel?

Thank you for interfering. I’m not sure how I ever got this far without your clearly superior expertise and advice. ”

“Now you’re just being mean, Sammy.”

“Don’t call me, Sammy. In fact, don’t ever call me again.”

“C’mon, Sam—”

Sam hung up on him, and then threw her phone across the room in disgust. How dare he? How dare he?

She clenched and unclenched her fist, so frustrated it made her feel violent inside.

She’d thought Marco was different from all the other guys who’d only stepped to her because she’d inherited her mother’s good looks.

But as it turned out, he was just like the rest. In it purely for the cookie.

It was so obvious why Marco had suddenly decided she wasn’t thinking clearly.

Because she took a child into her home, one that would temporarily stall their fledgling relationship and disrupt any chance of sex happening in the near future.

But the joke was on him. There was nothing Sam despised more than disloyalty. From the well-meaning relatives who told an abusive husband where his wife was hiding to the cop who sent a hockey player straight to her front door. Nothing could have been a bigger turn off for Sam. Nothing.

There came the sound of knocking so loud, she could hear it all the way in the back of the house.

Sam let out an irritated sigh. Apparently the hockey player had arrived.

She walked to the front room, already rehearsing her speech about how he’d need to go through Child Services, just like any other adult seeking custody of a child they’d never met before.

She’d need to send Pavel to wait in the second bedroom while she dealt with his uncle, and that might be a little hard considering Pavel had a bad case of hero worship where Mount Nik was concerned.

However the question of sending him away became moot when she reached the front room and found the table Pavel had been sitting at empty.

He was supposed to be filling out a battery of tests so she could assess his skills and know how to properly advocate for him when she went to enroll him at the local elementary school next week, but he was nowhere to be found.

Back Up, on the other hand, was already at the door, muzzle up, mouth open, tongue primed to lick whoever was knocking.

“Pavel?” she called out, wondering if she’d not noticed that the bathroom door was closed when she walked past.

More loud knocking and someone on the other side shouted, “Pizza delivery!”

A temporary relief replaced the dread she’d carried into the living room. Oh good, it was just the pizza she’d ordered. She could take it and Pavel into the back room and turn on the TV for him while she dealt with his uncle—

“Don’t answer the door, Mama,” a voice said.

Sam frowned. It was Pavel’s voice, coming from under the table.

She bent down to find him crouched beneath it, much like he’d been crouched inside the cabinet when she’d come to get him a few days ago.

The knocking must have triggered him somehow, she realized. Made him think he was back in the house where his father’s horrific death had gone down.

She held her hand out to him. “Pavel, it’s okay, it’s just the pizza I ordered. From the same place as two days ago. You said you liked it, remember?”

But Pavel shook his head. “No, it’s not. It’s one of the bad guys.”

More knocking. “Tony’s delivery! I got the pizza you ordered right here, ma’am.”

“Hold on,” Sam called back. She wished the pizza guy had been considerate enough to ring the doorbell instead of knocking. The sound had probably been enough to send Pavel into a post-traumatic episode.

“You think the pizza guy hurt your dad?”

Pavel shook his head, his voice frantic as he answered. “He’s not a pizza guy. He’s a Russian. He’s one of them.”

Sam hesitated, not sure how to handle this situation.

There was a lot of stuff to parse out with Pavel and she wanted to help him through this, show him how to manage his emotions when he’d been triggered.

But she also needed to answer the door and hide him away in the guest bedroom before his uncle showed up.

Now the guy on the other side of the door was pounding. “Are you coming out to pay for this pizza or what?”

“I’ve got to pay for the pizza,” Sam explained to Pavel in a low, calming voice. “I know this situation makes you feel scared and anxious, but it will be all right.”

Pavel leaned forward and grabbed her forearm with both of his hands, tears springing to his eyes. “No, it won’t. Mama, please don’t answer that door. Please!”

She knew Pavel was having a post-traumatic episode. And she knew she’d really regret this when it came time to figure out how to get a hungry little boy to stay in his room while she talked to his uncle. But in the end, she gave in.

“It’s okay. Don’t cry,” she told Pavel. Then she called out to the guy on the other side of the door, “I’m sorry. We won’t be needing that pizza any longer. Just charge the credit card I gave you and, I guess, donate it to the next homeless person you see.”

“Are you serious, lady?” the voice on the other side of the door asked.

“Yes, completely serious,” Sam answered, feeling both guilty and silly as Pavel clung to her forearm, his thin fingers digging in like a tiny bear trap.

“How about my tip?” the delivery guy asked.

“I’m really sorry, but I won’t be able to tip you right now. I can’t come to the door,” Sam said. “But if you leave me your name, I’ll stop by Tony’s later and make sure you get a generous tip for your trouble.”

Silence. A long silence, while Sam waited for the guy on the other side of the door to give up and go away.

But there were no receding footsteps. Instead, there came more loud pounding on the door, so heavy it shook the whole frame.