Chapter 21 - Laurel
Meeting so many of Mik’s relatives at once made me dizzy, and he was right.
I couldn’t remember half their names, but they were all warm and welcoming, even his father.
I noticed Konstantin Fokin giving me an odd, perusing look right before the spectacle with the cake, and took into account what Mik said about him putting on a show for the rest of his family.
It didn’t make much difference if he approved of me or not, since Mik was just buying time to get out from under an arranged marriage, but I couldn’t help but hope he might approve of me.
Thankfully, he and his wife, Tati, left before we started dancing, so I could have some fun without any judgmental eyes on me.
Mik and I were always at our best on the dance floor.
I came within a hair of losing my resolve when we got home that night, and with Mik’s arm slung over my shoulder as we stumbled up the stairs, it would have been easy to turn into his room instead of passing on to my own.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he grumbled, pulling out his phone. His relaxed face tensed, and he shook his head. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh no, what happened?” Everyone had drivers after how much we imbibed, but I still hoped it wasn’t a car accident.
He paused a moment, tensing up, looking disappointed and pissed off at the same time. “Not one of them. It’s…”
He kissed me quickly and left, and I was too close to being drunk to think too much about it. Was I relieved he was rushing out again? After the fun family dinner, I was close to giving in to Mik’s charms again, but of course, that would be a bad idea.
This wasn’t real, even if we did have so much fun together, and his family was one I would have loved to fit in with.
I needed the job too much to risk another bad breakup, and what about these late-night outings he didn’t feel the need to tell me anything about?
If I were really his girlfriend, or yikes, his wife, hell yeah, I’d need to know. As of now, it was none of my business.
The next morning, he was waiting for me in the kitchen, as if he hadn’t been out partying and then off on some mysterious emergency. He handed me a cup of coffee and said if I wanted to ride in with him, I better hustle.
And once again, he was too engrossed in his phone to pay me any attention, and the sinking feeling in my gut didn’t let me ask a single question. At the restaurant, he pulled the rug out from under me by calling in everyone who was there and announcing we were married.
“Oh my God, I knew it!” shrieked Chase, high-fiving the sous chef.
Todd grumbled, and I figured he and Chase had a bet running on us, and Todd admitted he had to do the morning coffee runs for a month. “You couldn’t keep hating him?” he teased, giving me a congratulatory hug.
“It was all the bickering that tipped me off,” Chase said, pumping our boss’s hand. “Nobody actually looks for reasons to fight unless there’s something else going on.”
“I never looked for a reason to fight with Laurel,” Mik said.
“Well, now you don’t have to, do you?”
We planned to get everyone together for lunch later in the week, and then everything went back to normal. A month went by in a flurry of work, missed deliveries, construction noise, paint smells, and mostly excitement.
The countdown had started to the grand opening, and I wasn’t sure everything would be finished in time.
How could it ever be complete when Mik kept changing things?
The bathrooms alone had the unflappable builders tearing their hair out on their breaks out back, but by the time the final configuration was figured out, it was easy to see the lounges were going to look like miniature palaces.
The menu was perfected, and then discarded.
Andre walked out and came back. Todd had to take a break to visit his sick mother in Toledo, and some wires got crossed, making Mik believe he just hadn’t shown up.
The volcano that erupted was a sight to behold until he learned the reason, and it was snuffed out instantly.
“Well, why didn’t anyone tell me?” he asked, abashed. “I hope she’s feeling better.”
Chase later whispered to me that Mik had sent flowers to the hospital in Ohio, and was Mik’s biggest fan until Mik decided that not only was the menu a disaster, so was the placement of the refrigerators in the massive industrial kitchen Chase had been meticulously putting together for months.
Suddenly, Chase’s mother was sick, too, and in my mind I didn’t see how we’d ever be serving a single meal or pouring a solitary glass of wine to any patrons any time this century. Mik never wavered in his decisions, and he seemed to have infinite money to throw at each new problem.
His perfectionism was kind of cute. Despite almost everyone secretly, or not-so-secretly, wanting to wring his neck, I could see how much he truly cared about making the place the best it could be.
I felt bad for Andre having to fight for his menu once again, but as strong-willed as Mik was, he had to know what a prize his Michelin-starred chef was, and would have to back down.
The shelving issue I had worried about turned out to be fine, so I was coasting and glad that things were smooth with Mik at home.
How could they not be when he was hardly there?
I kept my head down, made sure my wines stayed at the proper temperature while searching for the rare vintages Mik wanted, enjoying the drama that had nothing to do with me for once.
Until it did. He called me into his office, and Andre sat at one of the chairs on the opposite side of his desk.
I sat next to Andre, unable to gauge from his face what was about to happen.
It wasn’t good. Andre had indeed caved, at least partially, and once again the two of them had agreed on a vastly different menu from the first one and the second.
“So now I have to pair new wines with these dishes,” I said.
“We can do test meals starting on Monday,” Andre said. “Do we have wait staff yet?”
“Do we?” I asked Mik. I had offered to do the interviews, and as time ticked away, I was getting more and more panicked about not having enough time to make sure they were properly acquainted with the vast wine list Mik was intent on stocking.
“I’m working on that,” Mik said. “You’ll have the best, don’t worry.”
I wished I wore a watch so I could hold it up and tap on it. Instead, I stared down at the new menu again and suddenly realized something. “There’s no rabbit dish,” I said. “You took away the rabbit dishes.”
“No one in America eats rabbit,” Mik said dismissively. “They keep them as pets.”
It looked like a vein might pop in Andre’s forehead as he kept his mouth resolutely shut.
“That’s simply not true,” I said on Andre’s behalf.
It was getting easier to fight with Mik now that I knew he took me seriously.
The only problem was the arguments frequently led to both of us getting hot under the collar, which was a no-no.
There was no danger of us lunging at each other across the desk with Andre present, so I laid out the reason for my dismay.
“You remember that extremely expensive Cabernet Franc?” I asked, thinking about that beautiful case of wine that had recently arrived. “We bought that solely for the rabbit dishes. I can’t really see it pairing as well with anything else on here, so now it’s going to rot.”
“Nonsense,” Mik said.
“If I’m finished here…” Andre got up and left, and Mik and I stared at one another.
Nonsense? So much for believing Mik had started taking me seriously. Yes, as much as I loved a good braised rabbit, I did often think of Thumper from Bambi a few bites in every time I ate it.
As we glared at one another, a slow smile started to curl his lips, and heat rose up my chest. Damn it. I shook my head. “At least bring it back as a special.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“That means you hope I’ll forget. I won’t.”
His smile was getting more and more sinister, and so damn sexy. I had been fighting for a month now to forget that perfect night of ours, and the only reason I succeeded was that he was out so often I never had the chance to give in.
And now that was irritating me, too. He was the worst, and it infuriated me that I found myself returning his damn smile.
“We can discuss it later,” he said, starting to rise, his eyes locked on me, roaming down my flushed chest and back up.
A loud knock sounded before his door swung open. His cousins, Nat and Mila, and his sister Sofiya tumbled in, dressed like they were straight out of a Beverly Hills advertisement for upscale leisure life.
“We’re taking your wife to lunch,” Nat said. “And shopping for a wedding present.”
Saved by the family members. Now I could get out of there before we were making out on the desk. “Oh, that’s so sweet, but there’s so much to do.”
“Go,” Mik said. “Have a good time. Weren’t you complaining about the espresso machine yesterday?”
“It’s settled,” Mila said. “First lunch, then gadget shopping.”
I managed to toss a glare at Mik as they led me away, and his smirk was infuriating.
The three women were a little overwhelming at first as we piled into their limo, but it was clear they were trying to make me feel like one of them.
Sofiya was especially sweet, linking arms with me as we waited to be seated at a bustling café on Melrose.
“It’s so nice to have a sister after growing up with three brothers.”
“Ha, try growing up with six,” Mila said.
“Or five uncles and a dad they’re all scared of. I couldn’t get away with anything,” Nat complained good-naturedly.
“So you’re Aleks’s daughter? Which makes you Mila’s aunt?” I asked, piecing together the family tree.
“Yes, but only a year apart, so we’re basically sisters,” Nat said. “Mila was a surprise.”
They made it impossible to feel nervous around them, and pretty soon we were all laughing like we’d known each other for years instead of only meeting once before.
It hit me like a ton of bricks that they truly accepted me as family, trying to work me up against Mik for not giving me a real wedding.
“I don’t mind,” I said, swallowing hard before laying it on thick. “We just wanted to dive in and start our life together.”
“We mind,” Nat said. “There’s nothing like terrorizing a bunch of florists and bakers and designers. We can set you up in no time.”
“We don’t terrorize. We incentivize,” Mila corrected. “And we really just love big family weddings.”
“Maybe we could actually get Ilia and Oleg over here if Mik had a proper wedding,” Sofiya said, looking anxious for a moment.
The three of them filled me in on Mik’s wild twin brothers, and Mila and Nat tried to keep Sofiya from worrying about them, begging her not to run back to Italy to try to get them to settle down. “Look at your father,” Mila said. “He sure settled down.”
I was glad when the bill came, and the subject changed to shopping, not eager to talk about Mik’s father.
Guilt had begun to gnaw at me, growing stronger as they insisted on picking out a new espresso machine for me, filling their own carts with kitchen gadgets and specialty appliances I never knew existed.
They accepted me so readily, along with Mik’s cover story, and the more I got to know them, the more I hated perpetuating the lie.
It seemed so innocent and even good when I thought I was saving Mik from a life with someone he’d never love.
Now his cousins and sister were all in on taking me under their wings, treating me like one of their own.
And I’d been worried about my own broken heart if I let myself truly fall for Mik.
How was this going to end without causing any damage?
It had to eventually end, didn’t it?