“I want your face.” Obviously well used to making himself at home, he opened the drawer on an end table and rummaged for a pad. “Perhaps I’ll do your body later. It’s a good one.”
Her laugh was quick. “Thanks.”
“You might as well cooperate,” Rachel told her, and crossed over to take the baby. “Once the artist in him takes over, you haven’t got a chance.”
“I’m flattered, really.”
“There’s no reason to be,” he said absently as he unearthed a suitable pencil. “You have the face you were born with.”
“Thank God that’s not always true.”
That caught his interest. “You had it fixed?”
“No. I just sort of grew into it.”
“Not there,” he told her before Bess could sit. “Over there, closer to the window, in the light. Rachel, when do I get the drink you promised me?”
“On its way.” She stopped nuzzling Brenna long enough to look up. “What can I get you, Bess?”
“Anything cold—and a shot at holding the baby.”
“I can accommodate you on both counts.” Rachel laid her daughter gently in Bess’s arms. “She hardly ever cries. And I think her eyes may stay blue. Like Zack’s.”
“She’s a beauty.” Bess leaned down to brush her lips over the curling dark hair and to draw in the indescribably sweet scent of baby. “Like all of you.”
“Move,” Mikhail ordered his sister. “You’re in my way.”
Shooting off a mild Ukrainian insult, she headed for the kitchen.
“Talk if you like.” Mikhail gestured with his pencil, and began to sketch.
“It’s one of my best things.” She’d already forgotten to be self-conscious. “Where’s Sydney and Griff?”
“Griff has the sniffles.” The pencil was moving with quick, deft strokes over the pad. “Sydney fusses over him, but she saysI’mfussing over him and sends me out on errands.”
“Which he does by coming by and plaguing me,” Rachel called out.
“She’s happy to see me,” Mikhail said. “Because she’s lonely, with Zack and Nick over checking on the progress of the new apartment.”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re moving.” Comfortable, Bess tucked up her legs. “Alexi mentioned it.”
“We need a bigger place. Of course, it was supposed to be ready a month ago, but things never run on time. I’ll miss this one,” she said, coming back in with a tray of cold drinks. “And having Nick underfoot. But I imagine he’ll like having this place to himself.”
Bess reached for her drink with her free hand, gently jiggling the baby with the other. “I guess he had as big a crush on you as Freddie has on him.”
For a moment, Rachel only stared. Then she let out her breath in a quiet laugh. “Alex said you saw things.”
“Just part of the job.”
Rachel didn’t consider herself a slouch in the reading-people department. “So, how big a crush do you have on Alexi?”
“The biggest.” Bess smiled and rubbed her cheek over Brenna’s. “He thinks I’m flighty. Fickle. But I’m not. Not with him.”
“Why would he think that?”
“I have a varied track record. But it’s different with him.” When Bess lowered her head to murmur to the baby, Rachel glanced at her brother. They exchanged a great deal without uttering a word. “It makes me envy people like your sister, Natasha,” Bess went on. “Those three beautiful children, a husband who after years together still looks at her as if he can’t believe she belongs to him. Work she loves. I envy all that.”
“You’d like a family?”
