29. ANDIE
“You sure you want to come out tonight?”
Nikolai leans in the door, watching as I put the finishing touches on my outfit. I slip my earrings on, looking at him in the mirror.
“I told you, I really want to do this,” I reply. “Now, more importantly—do I look okay?” I get to my feet and give him a little twirl, letting him inspect the outfit before I take it out on the road.
He pauses for a moment, adjusting his tie where he stands in the door, and slowly lets his gaze trace up and down my body. “No,” he replies. “You look fucking amazing.”
I laugh. “Okay, I think I can work with that.”
Truth be told, I am a little nervous about going out tonight—not just because it’s going to be the first real business event I’ll be attending with Nikolai, but because it’s the first time I’ve really dressed up since I found out I was pregnant.
Most of my clothes still fit me, but Nikolai insisted on getting me something new for the occasion, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue.
He settled on a red velvet dress, gathered at one hip to disguise the slight pouch in my belly where the pregnancy is beginning to show. While it’s not going to be long before I have to come clean about it to the whole world, right now, I’m glad that it will not overshadow me.
“The car is waiting,” he tells me, offering me an arm. “Are you ready to go?”
“I think so,” I reply, taking his arm and hanging on a little more tightly than I entirely need to.
I know it’s probably kind of silly for me to be so nervous, but I can’t help it—this is the first time I will really have stepped out into the world as his wife, and I want to make sure I make a good impression on everyone I meet tonight.
Even if that’s not entirely the goal of this evening.
After the conversation we had the other day about his mother, Nikolai has been trying to involve me more in matters of the business—asking for my advice on this or that, getting me to sit in on phone calls so I can try to parse where they might be trying to hide something in conversation.
Tonight, we’re going out to a charity gala for one of the major museums in the city, which a few of his potential new business partners will be attending.
He wants to make a good impression, and has insisted that my insight could be what makes or breaks his chance to work with them.
I was more than a little surprised when he suggested that I attend this event with him, but pleasantly so. Because it tells me that he meant what he said when he assured me that he never wanted me to feel trapped, the way I felt when I made a break from this place before.
I can understand now why he was so strict with me, why he saw the same fate his mother might have faced waiting for me if he didn’t do all he could to protect me, but he seems to have started to trust in the fact that I’m not at risk the same way she was.
That he’s not his father, and he will not make the same mistakes that led to her passing.
He leads me down to where the car is waiting for me, and holds the door for me, a true gentleman. As he slips inside, he reaches over to rest his hand on my thigh, a possessive gesture that I know is meant to remind every man we encounter tonight that I am well and truly his.
“So,” I remark, as we pull away from the townhouse. “Who exactly am I meant to be keeping an eye out for tonight?”
“Malachi Brown,” he replies. “He’s one of us, old mafia family, but it’s the woman he’s engaged to that I’m really interested in.”
I perk up. “Oh, yeah?”
He nods. “Sasha Bronstein,” he replies. “A property heiress. They were engaged recently, and if he goes through with the marriage, he’ll have access to some of the biggest warehouses in the city. Exactly the kind of place I’d like to have a clear path to and from, if I can get it.”
“So what do you want me to try and figure out?”
“Just how serious they seem about getting married,” he replies. “Engagements, they can mean life, or they can mean supplication. I want to find out where he lands with this woman.”
“Hmm, noted,” I murmur, as I twist my ring on my finger.
He’s had it resized recently, to make sure it fits me properly.
It might have been intended for someone else when it was purchased, but now it has been entirely edited for my hand, as though I was always who he intended it for.
I can’t help but see it as a symbol of something greater.
We pull up outside the museum and I take his arm as we head inside. You’d think that I wouldn’t be impressed by these huge events anymore, given that I organized so many of them myself, but I still have to take a moment to drink the place in when we step into the main hall.
Large marble columns rise at either side of the dance floor, a band tucked into an alcove beneath a stained-glass window.
Immaculately-dressed waiters move to and fro with drinks and tiny bites of food that already have my mouth watering, and everyone gathered looks as though they’re ready to walk the red carpet.
“Woah, this is amazing,” I murmur, and Nikolai grins, glancing down at me.
“Up to your standards, hmm?”
“Trust me, anything’s up to my standards when I don’t have to organize it myself,” I reply, grabbing one of the appetizers from a passing waiter and popping it into my mouth. I close my eyes, groaning. “God, that’s good…”
“Artesco,” a voice calls out, and Nikolai turns to see a man striding toward us, hand outstretched. “I heard you were back in the old country…glad to see you’ve decided to join us here again. And this must be that wife I’ve heard so much about, hmm…?”
I put a smile on my face, and let Nikolai introduce me to the man—another Russian, Bratva, but with a great passion for art history, at least by the size of the donation he’s making to the museum.
I notice that Nikolai doesn’t move his hand from around my waist for a moment, as though he’s intent on showing me off, making sure everyone knows just how proud he is of me.
I find myself relaxing as we begin to move through the crowd, falling into that familiar, comfortable pattern that I learned when I was planning weddings.
Noticing the body language, the details in the way these people speak, and trying to reflect it back to them so I’ll feel entirely natural here.
There are even a few people here who have attended the weddings I organized—friends of friends, relatives who recall my face—and I seem to impress them when I ask about the couples who were married in those events, as if they thought I wouldn’t so much as remember their faces.
“There they are,” Nikolai murmurs to me, as we head to the bar to get another drink.
I glance behind me as casually as I can, and see a young couple canoodling on the other side of the long, dark wood counter. “Sasha and Malachi?”
He nods, and I give them a hard look. At a glance, they look as if they are utterly in love, but I know people can put on fronts when they’re aware that they are being watched.
A recent engagement, I’m sure they’re aware, will put them at the center of attention, and I can tell that she’s making certain the enormous diamond hanging from her finger is pointing outward and toward the room.
“Come on,” I murmur. “Let’s talk to them. Let me get a feel for the relationship, okay? I have an uncanny ability to figure out if these things are going to last.”
Nikolai squeezes me around the waist, as though letting me know that he hears me, and calls out to Malachi, who glances around at once. He reaches out to shake Nikolai’s hand and greets him warmly, as if he’s an old friend, though there must be nearly twenty years between them.
“Ah, Nikolai, good to see you,” he remarks. “And have you met my fiancée, Sasha?”
“Oh, fiancée!” I exclaim, as though this is the first I’ve heard of it. “That’s lovely. When did you get engaged?”
“A few weeks ago,” Sasha gushes, and I peer down at her ring.
“Oh, wow, that’s beautiful,” I murmur. It’s certainly huge, that’s for sure. “And when are you going to get married?”
“We haven’t decided yet,” she replies, waving a hand, but I can see her glancing at Malachi out of the corner of her eye, as though hoping that he’s going to jump in and contradict her. He seems utterly oblivious to it. Not exactly off to a great start…
“Well, if you need to find a wedding planner, just let me know,” I tell them brightly. “I know this really great one. She organized our wedding, didn’t she, Nikolai?”
He smirks slightly. “Yeah, she did a great job,” he agrees, circling his thumb on the small of my back.
Sasha looks over at her fiancé with a hopeful expression on her face. “I bet we could use some help, right?” she remarks. “My sister had a wedding planner. She made it so easy for them?—”
“We don’t need all of that,” he replies, looking at her fondly. “We just need our friends, our family, some little church somewhere. I was thinking we could even elope. That would be romantic, right?”
“Right,” she replies, and I can see from the tense smile on her face that she’s not entirely convinced by what he’s saying. “But, you know, if we wanted to do a bigger ceremony, then…”
“I’ll make sure to give you her card,” I remark. “Nikolai, you could pass it on for me, right?”
“Happy to,” Nikolai agrees. “I can’t think of anyone better…”
Soon enough, they’re pulled away by another attendee of the party, and Nikolai raises his eyebrows at me, clearly curious to find out what I think about all of this.
I squeeze his hand, silently promising that I’ll tell him just as soon as we’re out of here.
I know gossip is a standard part of these society parties, but you have to at least have the decency to hold off on it until you get home, right?
We make it through the rest of the evening, until my feet start to ache in the heels I’m wearing and Nikolai seems to notice the slight winces of tension that I can’t hold in anymore.
“You ready to go?” he asks me, leaning down close enough to my ear that I can feel his breath on my skin.
I nod. “I think so, but if we need to stay longer?—”
“Come on,” he murmurs, dropping a kiss on my cheek. “I’ve been wanting to get you out of that dress all night, anyway.”
I giggle as he leads me out of the museum, and soon we’re in the car, heading back to the townhouse. I lean my head against the window, the rain-slicked city streets beyond the glass reflecting the streetlights in pools of yellow and orange.
“So, what did you think?” Nikolai asks.
“About Sasha and Malachi?”
He nods. He’s looking at me with genuine interest, and I pause for a moment, tapping my finger on my chin as I consider the answer.
“You know, I think they’re on different pages. I’d be surprised if the marriage even happened.”
“Really?” He leans forward, cocking an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?”
“The way they were talking about the wedding, it’s clear they want different things. I mean, she seemed pretty keen on having some big ceremony, and he talked about wanting to elope.”
“But the way he said it, it sounded like he wanted to keep it low-key, romantic?—”
“Yeah, but that’s his definition of romantic, not hers,” I point out. “And hers might involve having a great big wedding where she can show off her new husband to everyone instead of running away to some cave in the middle of nowhere and hoping for the best, you know?”
He ponders my response for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“I’m certain,” I reply firmly. “I’ve seen plenty of couples after they got engaged, and they shouldn’t be having disagreements about this kind of thing so early on. It’s a bad sign. Usually means there’s going to be trouble down the line,
that there are other things they haven’t discussed that are going to become problems if they’re not careful. Didn’t you see the way she looked at him when he mentioned eloping? She couldn’t stand the idea, I’m certain of it.”
He smiles at me slightly, and I cock my head.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he replies. “I just appreciate your expertise. I never would have picked up on all of that if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Well, maybe I could come in useful in this business after all, huh?” I remark.
He takes my hand, lifting it to his lips and planting a kiss against the back of it, not moving his eyes off of me for a moment. “Maybe you could,” he murmurs.
And with that, we pull up outside the house, and he steps out, opening the door for me and gently helping me to my feet.
It doesn’t matter how many times he does something like this for me, it always makes my belly fizz with excitement—being treated like a princess after so long having to fight to get by.
We head into the house, and we hardly make it through the door before he has me pinned back against it, his hands sliding up to roll up my dress.
“Hey,” I giggle, as he brings his mouth to my neck, brushing it lightly across my skin. “I haven’t even gotten my shoes off yet…”
“Hmm, maybe I like you in the heels,” he teases, as he scoops me into his arms, carrying me up the stairs. I laugh, looping my arms around his neck and hanging on for dear life as he makes his way to the bedroom. I swear, this man has a one-track mind sometimes…
Good thing I’m on the exact same track, then, I think to myself, as I trail my fingers down his back, all too ready for the after-party to begin.