Page 60 of Ruthless Rustanovs

NIKOLAI had assisted in helping his father kill over a dozen men by the time he turned fifteen, but he’d never done anything as hard as listening to his mother cry in their apartment bathroom.

It had been a bad month for Natasha. One filled with a stomach flu that wouldn’t abate. His mother, who had always been a generally healthy person, complained bitterly at first. Not used to being waited on by her sons, who cooked dinner and cleaned while she recovered.

But then the stomach flu, which Natasha had assured them would only last for a couple of days, lingered for a couple of weeks.

By the second week of her illness, his mother grew quiet, her complaints coming to an abrupt stop.

Eventually she’d called Nikolai into her room while Fedya was in the bathroom.

She told him to walk with Fedya to school, but to leave halfway through the day and take the bus to a smaller town about an hour away from theirs.

One of the ones the Rustanovs didn’t bother with because it was known as a place where older people went to live out the rest of their lives in cheap apartments.

His mother insisted Nikolai must go there to get the test she needed, to a place farther away where no one would recognize him as the bastard son of Sergei Rustanov.

Getting the test hadn’t bothered Nikolai.

Much like when he accompanied his father on hit jobs, he froze himself on the inside, divorcing his actions from his emotions.

He’d refused to feel anything as he did exactly as his mother said.

He delivered the test to her in a white paper bag and he’d watched her disappear with it into their shared bathroom with the dispassion of a morgue clerk.

However, the scream that came from the bathroom a few minutes later, followed by wild sobbing and a long wailing, “Nyet!” —those sounds he’d never forget. He could still hear them sometimes, when things got too quiet inside his head.

And he could hear them now, over two decades later, as he once again stood outside the bathroom door, this time dressed in the Polar robe he’d so quickly discarded in order to get Samantha underneath him.

Samantha hadn’t been nearly as dramatic as his mother, merely covering her face before running into the bathroom without a word.

The shower had come on just a few seconds after the door closed behind her.

But that hadn’t been enough to keep him from going to the door, from standing outside of it like her useless dog.

He looked over his shoulder at the digital clock on the bedroom’s nightstand.

She’d been in there for over twenty minutes, the shower running at full blast. Meanwhile, he’d been standing there, trapped in the memory of what would turn out to be the death nail in his mother’s coffin.

Just as he was thinking of going to check on her, the shower finally stopped, and soon after he could hear her moving around, probably drying off.

Nikolai drew himself up and waited. But then, nothing.

Everything went quiet. And somehow that made it even worse than the wild sobs that had come from his mother.

He knocked on the door. “Samantha, come out,” he commanded.

“No thank you, and please don’t call me that,” she answered through the door.

He didn’t pound on the door, but his voice was fist enough as he said, “Come out and talk to me. I will wait here for you and this will be hard to explain to boy when he wakes up.”

There were a few moments of silence, during which he could almost see her on the other side of the door, weighing her options, maybe wondering whether he was serious about standing out there until Pavel woke.

He was serious. Dead serious. And perhaps she sensed that, because a few seconds later the door opened and she reappeared, now dressed in a red bath towel, her long twists pulled into a large ball on top of her head.

And holy shit, as his American teammates might say, but he was glad to be wearing a robe, because his cock responded badly to the sight of her in a bath towel.

He was once again achingly hard and ready to take her again.

Despite the circumstances, despite the fact that he’d already had her and she should be well on her way out of his system.

With other women, he’d had to resist the urge to move to another room when it had been too late to send them home for the night.

With Samantha, he had to resist the urge to reach out for her, to unwrap that towel from around her body, and once again bury himself in her warmth.

He forced himself to focus on her face. And was surprised to find she wasn’t crying like his mother had that fateful night. In fact, her expression was totally composed, a serene work of art that put him in mind of vintage photos of Mother Teresa.

“Hi,” she said, her voice calm and soft. “Sorry about that. It took me a while to clean up and process my thoughts.”

“Over twenty minutes,” he said.

“And I apologize,” she answered automatically. “For everything. I’m fine now. You don’t have to worry, though it was considerate of you to do so. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep before Pavel wakes up.

Nikolai stared at her. It was like she’d pushed a personality button, one that made every carefully considered word that came out of her mouth sound calm and gracious.

He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

“You are upset. About our sex… without condom.”

He was upset, too. A man in his position—the owner of a team, and formerly a hockey player who’d been targeted by groupies and gold diggers alike.

He’d never in his life, slept with a woman without a condom and he was deeply disturbed he’d been so caught up in getting to her, to getting inside her, that he’d violated his number one rule.

“I’m sorry,” he told her now.

“I’m sorry, too,” she answered. “But what’s done is done. I don’t need to talk about it and you don’t need to worry about it.”

The words, obviously meant to be reassuring were anything but.

His eyes narrowed. “If you are pregnant, what will you do?”

His question caused a momentary crack in her calm facade and she shifted in obvious discomfort. “First of all, I’m not pregnant.”

“You cannot know this,” Nikolai said.

“I’m not,” she insisted, her voice pleasant but tight. As if all one needed to keep from getting pregnant was the right attitude and the right tone of voice. “But if I was, it would be my choice.”

Nikolai’s heart constricted with the thought of her…

“And your choice would be what?” he asked, needing to know.

She averted her eyes. “Well, if I was—which I’m not, but if I was, I’d, um… I’d, um…”

Nikolai braced himself to hear the ugly truth.

“I’d have to… keep it,” she said quietly.

Nikolai stared at her, his mouth open.

“I’m over thirty now and though I fully support a woman’s right to choose under any circumstance at any age, I—I…

” Somehow this part seemed harder for her than her fierce defense of abortion rights.

“When it comes down to it, I want to be a mother. I have for a while now. And if you want to be a mother like I do, you don’t exercise that option.

” She glanced up at him, then quickly looked away. “No matter who the father is.”

Conflicting emotions collided inside of Nikolai’s chest like gladiators in an arena. On one hand, joy that she would go through with the pregnancy no matter what. On the other hand, it was clear she was upset that he was the father.

Him. Not her boyfriend, the police officer.

His heart, which had thawed for a few moments when they’d come together in a tangle of fire and ice, hardened again.

“In one month, I will ask you question again. If you are pregnant, you will tell me.”

She looked up at him, her eyes aggressively calm, like two dark, placid stones inside her pretty face.

“I’m not pregnant,” she assured him.

“If you are you will tell me,” he insisted back.

“Yes, I will,” she finally agreed. “But I’m not pregnant, so this conversation is, you know… pretty moot.”

He wasn’t sure what “moot” meant, but the promise was all that mattered. Samantha was strange, and at times infuriating, but he didn’t think she was a liar.

As if reading his thoughts she said, “But again, all of this is just hypothetical. And none of it matters, because I’m not pregnant.”