“Shit,” Nikolai said softly, in Russian.
“Are they friends of yours?” Tenny asked in a whisper. “They look like the kinda guys I don’t wanna meet in a dark alley, you know?”
Nikolai stabbed his cigarette out. “I need to go.”
“Wait.” Tenny lunged across the table, trapping his hand beneath his own. Played up a show of nerves. When he met Nikolai’s gaze, he saw the boy’s nerves weren’t at all a show, nor was the way he’d gone sheet-white. “We didn’t decide anything. My friends and me – we’re interested in talking to your bosses. In buying from them.”
Panic turned his pupils to pinpricks. “I told you.” He’d been easing up, starting to tilt his head and suggest potential meetings, but all of that was gone, now, blasted away by sight of his betters. “I sell antiques.” He snatched his hand away, and stood – but leaned in just before he bolted, and whispered, “Come see me at Marcel’s. I can get what you need, if you’re serious.”
“Oh, I’m dead serious,” Tenny assured, and watched the boy take flight.
At the door, one of the three flashy men gripped the back of his shirt when he would have escaped, dragged him in roughly to ask him something Tenny couldn’t hear from this distance.
“Damn,” Kat said behind him.
“Yeah.”
~*~
“Verdict?” Toly asked.
Raven spooned up the first bite of soup, blew across it, and gave it a tentative taste. They’d added chicken, wild rice, and mushrooms, after deglazing with wine, covering with broth, and letting it simmer two hours. She’d never been much of a cook, and so was pleasantly surprised by the flavors of her first mouthful.
She swallowed and nodded. “Not bad. It won’t make you sick, in any event.”
He snorted, and took his own spoonful, nodding and humming and spooning up more, afterward.
It pleased her in a domestic, unexpected way, to see him enjoy something she’d made. As if she’d nourished him, somehow. Goodness knew he could stand to consume more calories. Get more sleep. Frown less.
Take her to bed later…
She said, “You were saying about the renovations?”
He nodded, wiped his mouth.
They were still alone, just the two of them. Cass had taken her bowl of soup and hunk of baguette and gone scurrying off to her room again, completely absorbed in her illustrating. Something about an attached tablet, and pen that wrote on a screen – Raven didn’t pretend to understand. Likewise, Bennet and Shep had taken their dinner back to the TV. She should have scolded them for potentially spilling soup on the sofa, but was enjoying Toly’s company too much to insist they stay in the kitchen.
Each time she saw him, she felt this new connection between them gaining mass, growing heavier, developing its own gravity. Some of it was the rush of desire, the flare of heat in her belly, the anticipatory tingle in her skin. Simple want. But some of it was this, too, the two of them working around each other in the kitchen, preparing the soup, having a glass of wine at the table while they waited for it to cook, talking of nothing. And now sharing a meal together, steam curling off their bowls, warming their faces.
But when it came to the talking of nothing…well, that felt deliberate. They couldn’t talk ofthem, that growing connection, the preposterous idea of it developing into anything serious once all this was over. Given his background, she didn’t want to pry into any of his personal stories, either.So what was it like killing people in Moscow? Did you enjoy the prostitutes and drunken gambling?Likewise, he didn’t try to pry into her past. Didn’t ask about London, about her dating history. About her plans to return there, once she had the New York branch of the agency properly settled.
So it was nothing. Their current topic was the post-explosion renovations at the clubhouse, some of which she’d witnessed a few weeks ago when she made the trip up for the strange meeting between club, friends, and Melissa Dixon, detective.
It was a boring topic, but a safe one.
Toly said, “It cost enough to build a whole new house, but Maverick wanted to” – he did air quotes with his free hand – “preserve the history of the original house.”
“History’s important,” she said. “And always more glamorous than new things.”
He snorted. “There’s nothing glamorous about the clubhouse. It’s a–”
His phone beeped.
He pulled it out with a frown, and Raven took another spoonful of soup to keep from looking like she was snooping. His frown deepened. “It’s your brother. He says I shouldn’t go to Hauser’s tonight.”
She echoed his frown. “Does he say why?”
“No. Just an extra ‘don’t come,’ in all caps.” He fired off a response and tucked the phone away again, expression gone grim, gaze flicking to the wide, windowed French doors that let out onto the terrace.
