Page 18 of The Bratva’s Arranged Virgin Bride (Fokin Bratva #8)

Finally, it seemed like Kolya would be gone for longer than a few minutes at a time.

For the last few days, he’d been hanging around the house, and it had been awkward, to say the least. I was trying to keep up the appearance that I wanted to be married to him because I had been yearning for him all this time.

Yearning for his severed head on a platter, maybe.

I didn’t think he was buying it, because I was being pleasant enough, but didn’t trust myself to get too close. Couldn’t have another scene like in the kitchen during our first few hours of wedded… whatever this was.

Every time he went out, I would start rummaging through drawers and closets, but he never stayed away for long, and I didn’t want to get caught spying.

I was certain he didn’t trust me any more than I trusted him, and we were circling each other like wary cats about to get into it with claws and jaws.

But now he made it seem like he would be gone most of the day, and after about ten minutes of fruitlessly staring at my new painting, I put the brush down in a huff.

I loved the new space I set up, but I was as stuck as ever.

None of my latest paintings thrilled me, so I gave up, feeling like torturing the canvas to finish a soulless piece would be a waste of time.

I was being pretty obnoxious, just like the students in art school who thought they were so damn precious and every drop of paint they splattered had to be perfect, or it was shit.

There was no denying it, and it was embarrassing, but I still couldn’t make myself get back to them.

Not even when Kolya had complimented the one piece.

Yes, he could be awfully charming, and had been laying it on thick the last few days, like a true newly wedded husband would be.

As much as I wanted to believe he was sincere, because the man knew good art, that was one thing I had to give him, I just couldn’t.

It had always been difficult for me to finish a painting.

I had always been ruthlessly unkind to my art, finding faults that others didn’t see.

There had only ever been one painting I was pleased with, and it was gone.

The canvas I had just started already put me in a bad mood, and it barely had three brush strokes on it. Into the discard pile, it went, tossed there a little too roughly and causing the rest of them to topple over. I left them like that and trudged out of my bright and pretty studio.

Painting was supposed to soothe and ground me, but it only reminded me of everything I had lost. No, everything that was stolen from me. As much as I hated thinking about it, it fueled my fire and reminded me of my goals.

Here, I had time to spy and possibly find something that could help bring him down after I was done twisting the knife in his broken heart.

I took my time going through his drawers and closet, but there was nothing out of the ordinary unless there was some kind of code in the way he folded his boxer briefs.

It was clear he hadn’t lived here before we both moved in, at least in the living areas.

He had an office, but it was locked, and knowing him the way I did, he’d be aware if I messed with it.

It was disappointing, but not my top priority at the moment.

As much as I didn’t want to face it, it was time to get serious with the heart-crushing.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to crush his heart, but more that I was afraid of that wild response I had to him in the kitchen.

Whatever had come over me was out of my control, and the scariest part was that I didn’t care.

As long as he was kissing me, touching me, I didn’t care at all.

All of the things I wanted from my father’s house had already arrived and been organized and put away, and I was sick of swimming in the ocean to pass the time. I'd been wanting Kolya to leave, and he’d barely been gone a few hours when I was already antsy for him to return.

Did I miss him? Ha.

I thought about putting together a surprise dinner for him when he returned, but decided that would set a bad precedent.

I kind of liked the idea of being the perfect wife, but only for the perfect husband.

That wasn’t and would never be Kolya. So, no dinner.

I took a tepid shower and changed into a white linen sundress, dabbing aloe on my slightly sunburned shoulders and across the bridge of my nose.

My blonde hair was already getting streaked with pale gold from all the time I’d been spending in the sun, and I could hear Mila’s fastidious voice in my head, warning me to stay inside for a few days or risk looking like an alligator bag when I was forty.

Hmph. As if Mila had any right to give me advice, even in my imagination. Still, I didn’t want my burn to get worse, so I ended up back in my studio instead of out on the sand. Yanking out a fresh canvas, I slapped a coat of gesso on it, just to have something to do with my hands while I waited.

That was where I was, staring at the blank canvas, when Kolya returned home and came to find me. I turned to see him eyeing the tipped-over pile I never got around to picking up, and with a long sigh, I set my brush down. It wasn’t like I was using it.

“Nobody judges me more than I judge myself, so stay quiet about it.”

He held up his hands, taking a few more steps into the room. It was disconcerting how he took up so much space. Disconcerting, and exciting. It wasn’t a big room, but he shouldn’t have dominated it so fully just by stepping through the doorway.

“I didn’t have any thoughts at all except for how damn pretty you look in this light.”

Yep, his charm was impossible. Impossible to resist. As he smiled at me, taking me in from my bare toes speckled with white paint, up to my hair, which I’d swept into a high ponytail, he pulled a package out from under his jacket. It was a thick rectangle, wrapped in silver paper.

“I got something for you,” he said. “It arrived today, and I picked it up on my way home.”

A gift as well as a compliment that had me melting?

It was probably more papers to sign. I took it from his outstretched hand and tore away the paper, gasping when I saw it was an out-of-print diary by an obscure nineteenth-century artist hardly anyone knew about.

His work was bizarre and ahead of its time, and while I’d found copies before, they were all in terrible condition.

I flipped it open, sure it had to be a reprint I wasn’t aware of, but it was definitely old.

Despite its age, it was in nearly perfect condition.

The pages were only slightly yellowed, and the drawings scattered throughout the scrawled text leaped from the page.

I leaned closer, breathing in the musty old book smell, and gasped again as I noticed it wasn’t just a well-maintained first edition of a book that hardly had any copies printed in the first place.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, running my fingers over the script on one of the pages, feeling the raised ink under my fingers. “Tell me this isn’t the actual diary.”

“It is,” he said.

“But it should be in a museum.”

“It was,” he said. “I’m fairly sure you’ll take good care of it.”

“Thank you.”

Tears rushed to my eyes, and I blinked them away before they fell on the pages or before Kolya saw them.

This had to be the best gift I ever received.

All at once, the memory of dragging him into a bookshop tucked away in an alley in Milan hit me like a brick.

I’d barely mentioned I was on the lookout for this diary, and of course, the place didn’t have a copy.

I never brought it up again. And yet he remembered.

This was so much better than a big flashy ring or a heavy bracelet dripping with diamonds that I’d never wear. Something like that didn’t take any thought at all, but this… This was amazing. He really did know me.

I shivered, putting the book carefully on the side table, promising I’d find a safer spot for it.

I pretended I was deep in my work, shaken to the core by his thoughtful, perfect gift.

Confused as hell as to why he gave it to me.

And every nerve in my body was aware of his commanding presence in my space.

I could feel his eyes on me as I lifted my discarded brush and held it over the canvas.

I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to paint.

The air seemed to crackle in the room as he took a step closer.

I could feel him just a few feet away, feel his eyes on me.

Before my hand could shake and give away how nervous he made me, I put the brush back down.

He moved closer, his big body just behind me, close enough to smell the heat of the day still clinging to him, along with his cologne.

Close enough to feel his breath ruffle my ponytail.

Reaching around me, his arm touched my side as he picked up the brush I had just discarded.

I had already dipped it in a deep ochre paint, and he swiped it across the white background.

After a few more sure strokes, as if he knew exactly what he was doing, something started to appear.

He paused, lowering the brush as if to decide what to do next.

I looked it over and gasped. It was a very good outline of my profile.

I would have recognized myself anywhere in just those few masterfully placed lines of paint.

“I never knew,” I said. Not that he painted or that he was so good at it.

“I used to,” he said. Was that a wistful tone in his voice? It was hard to tell when his nearness had me so distracted. “Selling art that isn’t mine is so much easier than trying to convince someone to take something I did,” he admitted with a quiet laugh.

“That’s the truth,” I said, laughing along with him.