The old wooden floor creaked underfoot, but unlike her grandfather’s house, there was nothing unpleasant about the signs of age in the house. It was bright and welcoming inside, spotlessly clean, and much better maintained. The antique parts of the house only gave it charm.
As they moved into the main living room, she saw what Nikolai meant about his mother’s interest in history: she saw an old phonograph, with a cabinet of records, as well as several framed antique photos on the walls. Also, botanical prints that might have been taken right out of Darwin’s Atelier. All the furniture was in the style of the house, though perfectly restored and maintained.
“It must have taken a long time to find all these pieces,” Nadia said.
She was no expert, but she was quite sure those were original Bergere chairs,
“It did,” Nikolai agreed. “She spent years on this house, getting everything just the way she liked it. She didn’t do anything in our house in the city. You saw that place—it’s all my father’s tastes. They were opposites in that, as in many things.”
Nikolai took Nadia through the house, showing her the various rooms, culminating in the upstairs suite where they’d be staying. However, he didn’t immediately throw her down on the bed as she expected. Instead, he seemed to become strangely tense and nervous.
“Why don’t you unpack your bag,” he said. “I’ll go down and make sure we have everything we need in the kitchen.”
Nadia did as he said, taking her clothes out of the small weekend bag and hanging them up in the wardrobe. She saw her mother’s journal at the bottom of the bag—she wouldn’t have risked leaving it where Rashel could get her hands on it—but she felt no desire to read through it at the moment.
She knew that the story in the journal was edging ever closer to an unhappy end, and she felt an irrational aversion to reading it, as if the doomed lovers in the journal had the ability to poison the relationship blossoming between herself and Nikolai.
The parallels between her mother’s romance and her own were too close for comfort at times. It made her feel afraid, the more they aligned.
So, she simply stowed the leather notebook back in the bag and went into the washroom to freshen up.
Nikolai was gone some time—long enough that she came downstairs and wandered through the rooms, wondering where he’d disappeared to. She could see that every room had a vase of fresh flowers in it, and all the flowers were her favorites: lilies, orchids, and peonies. She knew it wasn’t a coincidence, yet she’d never told Nikolai what sort of flowers she liked best. He must have done some reconnaissance.
It was easy to forget the kind of intense, back room, high-level deals he accomplished regularly. She was sure that finding out sneaky information about her was child’s play compared to the kind of subterfuge and manipulation required to succeed in the cutthroat world of Moscow’s business mafia.
It gave her a little chill, remembering who Nikolai really was. She, of all people, a mafia princess of the highest order, shouldn’t have forgotten the dual nature of Bratva. But when she and Nikolai were playing around together, it was so easy to think that was the whole of his personality.
But then Nikolai came back into the house, grinning at her, and the sight of his gorgeous face, flushed and happy, drove every concern out of her mind.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“I was getting the boat ready.”
“What boat?”
“Come and see.”
She followed him out of the house, across the grounds to the wooden dock she’d spied earlier. She saw that Nikolai had taken a rowboat out of the small boathouse and pulled it up to the dock.
She approached the little boat nervously. She’d been on plenty of yachts and sailboats, but never something like this. She could see it rocking and bobbing with the slightest movement of the water, even before either of them had gotten inside.
Seeing her hesitation, Nikolai stepped in first and held out his hand to her.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
Trusting him, Nadia took hold of his warm, strong hand and stepped into the boat. It gave a lurch to the side and she might have fallen right out again, but Nikolai steadied her and helped her sit down on the plank bench.
“That’s not so bad, is it?” he said.
“We’ll see once we’re moving,” Nadia said.
Nikolai cast off from the dock, taking up the oars in his hands. He had his back to the prow of the boat. As he pulled on the oars, the boat moved smoothly through the water, backward from the way he was facing, but forward from Nadia’s point of view.
At first, they moved through the thick mats of lily pads, with their lotus-like white blooms on their plate-like leaves. The lily pads were so closely clustered that it looked as if she could have walked across them if she wanted to. Yet they parted before the bow of the boat, closing in behind them once more.
After a few minutes, they came to the open water of the pond, which was a deep jade green and as smooth as a mirror, until the movement of the oars sent ripples across the water.
Several jewel-bright kingfishers were swooping and diving over the surface of the water, hunting for their dinner. It was incredibly beautiful and completely peaceful once Nadia adjusted to the rocking of the boat.
