5. Lisa
Five
Lisa
Jasmine walks in, talking on her phone, kicking off her shoes in the foyer like she’s been doing since she was ten years old, and something on the other end of the line makes her laugh.
“…told you, babe, I have to go. My mom’s gonna kill me if I’m late again. Yes. Yes. I love you. Bye. Bye. Anthony. Bye.”
She hangs up and comes into the kitchen, dropping her bag on the table and going straight for the fridge.
“There’s nothing to eat, Mama. I’m starving. What are we having? Please tell me you cooked. Did you cook? You didn’t cook.”
I open my mouth, close it.
Tell her, Lisa. Just tell her.
“Sit down, baby.”
She turns from the fridge with a string cheese in her hand, already peeling it, and asks absentmindedly, “What?”
My girl. So pretty. So precious. So… fucking perfect. And mine. All mine. I will die before I let any of these damn bastards hurt her in any way, shape, or form.
“Sit. Down.”
My tone catches her attention and Jas’ sits. She sets the cheese on the table, looks at me, and waits.
“Something happened.”
She takes my hand, her green eyes widening. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, baby. Nobody’s hurt.”
“Mama, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just…give me a second.”
I sit across from her and look at my twenty-year-old, trying to figure out how to say this.
“You remember the contract.”
She blinks. “What contract?”
“The one your daddy signed. With the…Russians.”
Her face goes still.
“I thought,” she says slowly, “it wasn’t valid.”
“I was wrong, baby. The contract is valid. They came today.”
“They…Mama . What do you mean they came today?”
“Well, he came. Just one man. He came this afternoon.”
“And you opened the door ?”
I let out a surprised bark of laughter. “I didn’t know who it was.”
“ Ma! ”
I squeeze her hand. “Baby, listen…”
“Where is he? Is he here? Are we safe? Do we have to leave?”
“He’s gone. He left. Honey, sit. Sit , Jasmine, listen to me. We’re safe. He’s gone. But…”
“But what?”
“He’s coming back.”
She stares at me, eyes wide, mouth agape.
“He’s coming back tonight. He’s…Jas’, baby, he says he’s moving in.”
The string cheese rolls off the table and hits the floor.
“He’s what ?!”
“He says he’s moving in. To protect us. Because the contract is…well, it’s…he says it’s for a Venn but not…not you specifically…”
“What?!”
She sits up so fast that the chair scrapes.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait .”
“Jasmine…”
“It doesn’t say me specifically?”
“No, baby, it says…”
“It says the marriage has to be between a Venn and a Maksimov.”
I nod. “Yes.”
Her eyes widen with understanding. “And you’re a Venn.”
“…technically…”
“ Mama. ”
“Jas’.”
“Did this man come here for me, meet you and decide he was marrying you ?”
“ Jasmine Venn. ”
“OH MY GOD!”
“Stop.”
“OH MY GOD! ”
“Young lady, pick up your cheese from my floor. Stop screaming. And stop smiling , why are you smiling…”
“MAMA!”
“Jasmine, this is serious . It’s not funny .”
She smirks. “Was he hot?”
“Jasmine.”
“Was. He. Hot?”
I shake my head, looking away, trying to keep my composure. I am not letting my kid see how Adam Maksimov affected me. “That is not the point.”
“Oh my God , he was hot!”
“Girl, pick up the string cheese.”
“Was he hot or was he hot?”
“He was…pick up the string cheese , Jasmine…”
She giggles. “You’re stuttering.”
“I am not stuttering.”
“Mama, your whole face .”
“Jasmine Maria Venn, so help me God…”
“Tell me everything right now. Everything .”
She has her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, her eyes the size of dinner plates, and she is delighted.
M y daughter, who is supposed to be helping me think this through, is cackling.
The string cheese is still on the floor.
And I can feel a hysterical laugh trying to climb up my throat.
I press my lips together, refusing to let it out because if I laugh I am going to cry , and if I cry I am going to come undone , and I cannot come undone, not before this man gets back into my house.
“He’s Scottish,” I finally let out.
Jasmine gasps.
“He’s what?”
I roll my eyes and look away before grumbling. “Scottish. He has an accent.”
She takes my hand again and squeezes hard. “Mama!”
“I know.”
“How tall?”
“Jazzie.”
“How. Tall. Woman!”
“Six feet. At least. Probably more.”
She’s fucking beaming. “Facial hair?”
I swallow hard, the image of ALL that’s Adam Maksimov assaulting my mind. “Full beard.”
She hums. “ Tats ?”
I squirm in my seat. “…I could see some on his hands… and neck.”
“I am going to pass out .”
“Pick up your cheese,” I try again.
But this girl is not picking up her string cheese. She is staring at me with both hands holding mine, her mouth stretched in a wide grin, looking like she’s twelve years old again. And for the first time in ages, she looks happy about something that’s happening in this house.
I look at my crazy, beautiful, completely unhelpful child. And the laugh I was holding back comes out. Just a little. In the smallest hiccup.
“This is not funny,” I tell her again, weaker.
“Mama. He is coming back . To live here . Because he saw you. Mama, do you know how many men decide big things just by looking at a woman? And you are sitting here trying to act like this is a bad thing …”
“It is a bad thing. He’s a Bratva boss!”
“He’s a Scottish Bratva boss who came for me and saw you . He is in love with you.”
“He is not in love with me. He met me forty-five minutes ago.”
She winks. “And he is moving in.”
“To protect us.”
“To live with you .” She wags her eyebrows.
“Jasmine.”
“In your house .”
“Jasmine, listen to me…”
“Where you sleep .”
“ Jasmine Maria Venn. ”
She finally picks up the string cheese, brushes it off, takes a bite, and stares at me chewing.
“Mama,” she says around the cheese, “I’m so happy for you.”
“Stop it. And stop eating that. You’re disgusting. It was on the floor for ages.”
“ I am so happy for you.”
“Stop.”
She comes around and hugs me tight. “You deserve this.”
I wiggle out of her arms, but I’m smiling. “I deserve to be left alone .”
“You deserve a hot Scottish man who saw you and decided.”
“Jas’.”
I stare at her.
She stares back.
And I cannot keep my face straight any longer. The laugh comes out of me in a rush, halfway to a sob, and Jasmine starts laughing too, and we sit at the kitchen table laughing for a full thirty seconds while my heart is in my throat and the sun is getting lower outside the window.
When the laughter stops, she reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine.
“Mama,” she says, gentle now. “Are you scared?”
I think about it.
“Yes,” I say finally. “But not the way I should be.”
She squeezes my hand.
“I love you, Mama.”
“I love you too, baby.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with him tonight.”
“Thank you.”
“And if he is as hot as you are making him sound…”
“ Stop talking. ”
She winks, laughing again, and gets up to find actual food. I sit at the table, watching her rummage through the freezer. The sun is low now. The light coming through the kitchen window has turned golden.
I look at the clock.
It says a quarter to eight.
He said tonight.
Jasmine makes us pasta, and we eat, but I cannot taste anything. She talks the whole time, refusing to let me dwell, narrating her day, occasionally circling back to was his hair short or long or what was he wearing.. .
After dinner, she insists on doing the dishes. I sit at the kitchen table with my hands wrapped around a mug of tea, watching my daughter rinse plates with her shoulders shaking from suppressed laughter every few minutes, and I am full of love and dread in equal measure.
The light outside goes from gold to orange to that deep dusty pink that means we have, maybe, ten more minutes of daylight.
Jasmine wipes her hands on a dish towel and turns to me.
“I’m going upstairs to change.”
“I don’t think…”
“He’s not going to see me for the first time in the leggings I wore all day. I’ll be back quick.”
She kisses my cheek as she passes and runs up the stairs. Two minutes later I hear water running in her bathroom.
I look down at myself.
I am still in the blue cotton sundress. The raggedy one he saw me in.
Go change, Lisa.
I don’t go change because if I do; I am admitting that I care what he sees. That this is something.
I sit at the kitchen table in my blue dress, drink my cold tea, as the light goes the deep purple of last-light.
And then I hear it. The crunch of gravel. A car coming up the drive. The engine cuts. A door opens and shuts. Footsteps on the porch.
I close my eyes.
God. I know you’re laughing. Help me anyway.
Three hard knocks on the front door.
The kind that rattle the frame.
The kind that say, open up .
When I get up, my legs feel like someone else’s.
I smooth my hands down the front of my dress…
no, Lisa ; you said you weren’t doing that, leave it alone …
and cross the kitchen, the hall and the foyer in my bare feet.
The wood is still cool, and I tell my heart to settle down for the second time today, and for the second time today my heart does not listen.
I put my hand on the doorknob.
Get it together, woman. Open the door.
Oh, sweet Lord!
He is standing on my porch, and the man has changed clothes.
The suit is gone. The waistcoat is gone.
The white shirt I have spent six hours trying not to remember is gone.
He’s in a charcoal henley. Buttons undone, the soft cotton stretched across a chest so broad I have to physically forbid my eyes from doing anything.
The sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, and Lord , the tattoos!
The lines I caught in glimpses out of his collar this afternoon are everywhere …
both forearms, ink running from his wrists up under the henley, dark intricate work I can’t read in the dying light but want to, want to so bad I have to clench my hands at my sides.
There’s a vein running down the inside of his forearm I am going to be thinking about for a long, long time.
His watch is still on. The rings on his big, manly fingers are still on.
And he’s wearing black jeans. Fitted but not tight, sitting on a pair of hips I am not allowed to look at, over heavy black boots that look like they cost as much as my car.
He looks… fucking delicious.
He’s carrying a duffel bag in one hand…black leather, single strap, expensive-looking. Dangling over one boulder-sized shoulder from the tips of his fingers.
Get yourself together.
His eyes fall on me and stop .
He looks at me the way he looked at me the first time.
Slow. From head to toe and back up again.
And when he gets back to my face, he stays there, and the blue of his eyes does that thing again…
pupils widening, just a fraction, just enough that I see it because I am, stupidly, looking right into his gorgeous eyes.
The corner of his sexy mouth pulls up, the beard twitching.
“Aye,” he says, like he’s confirming something to himself. “There she is.”
His voice is rougher than it was this afternoon. Lower. He’s been on the phone all day, maybe, or in the kind of conversation that wears a man’s throat down. Whatever it is, it’s doing things to me that should be illegal.
I cross my arms.
It is the eleven-hundredth time I have crossed my arms today. The motion is automatic. Useless. He sees it and his devastating grin widens, like he is amused that this is still my best defense. My only one…
I tilt my chin up.
“Mr. Maksimov.”
“Adam, love.”
“Mr. Maksimov.”
“Adam. Try it.” His voice goes quieter, the way a man’s voice goes quiet when he is very sure he is going to get what he wants. “It’s just two syllables.”
The way he says it. Like he is teasing me. Like we are flirting . In my foyer. With a bag at his feet. And my daughter upstairs.
I open my mouth to put him in his place, and what comes out is… “Adam.”
Quiet. Soft.
His pupils dilate again.
His jaw twitches.
I have made a tactical error, and we both know it.
He picks up his bag and steps over the threshold. He is close…so close…close enough that I can smell him again, the intoxicating blend of cologne and him .
He walks past me into my house, sets the bag down at the foot of the stairs, turns, and looks at me where I am standing in the open doorway.
“Right then.” He runs a hand over his beard. “Show me where I’m sleeping, love.”