39. Chapter 39
Chapter thirty-nine
Eleven days later, I stood barefoot in Lachlan’s kitchen with music playing through the penthouse and enough food cooking to feed considerably more than two people.
The beef had been in the oven for hours, slowly braising in Irish stout until the smell of beef, onions, and gravy filled the kitchen and made my stomach growl every time I lifted the lid.
A bowl of potatoes waited for the last of the butter and cream before I folded in the cabbage for the colcannon.
The carrots were nearly done roasting, and the brown bread I’d made earlier rested beneath a towel on the counter.
Dessert had taken most of the morning.
The bread-and-butter pudding had finally turned out exactly the way I wanted, with vanilla crème anglaise waiting in the refrigerator and caramel sauce cooling nearby.
Scarlett had laughed when I told her I’d made a practice version the day before because I refused to serve Lachlan anything that merely qualified as edible.
I turned up the music and sang along as I added another generous piece of butter to the potatoes.
I wore black leggings and an oversized gray sweater that kept slipping off one shoulder, with my hair pulled high to keep the long curls out of the way while I cooked.
I had never been happier in a kitchen or more nervous.
I glanced at the clock again. It was still several minutes before he said he would be here.
You invited the man to dinner in his own home. You can hardly complain that he isn’t here yet.
The absurdity still made me smile.
Especially when I remembered how I’d invited him.
The night before, I had opened his refrigerator, stood beside it with the door wide behind me, and taken a picture of myself pointing inside.
Can you guess what’s for dinner tomorrow night?
His answer had come less than a minute later.
A sandwich?
No.
Pizza?
Also no.
A longer pause had followed.
At this point I’m going to start naming things in the refrigerator.
I had stared at the screen for an embarrassing amount of time before sending:
You are, if you’re interested.
The little dots appeared almost immediately.
Name the time. I’ll be there.
So I did, and a little thrill went through me. I’d read that message at least six times before going to sleep.
It turned out neither of us was very good at complete silence. The night after Lachlan left, I was lying in his bed with my new phone resting against my stomach, staring at his name for nearly twenty minutes before I finally gave in and texted him.
Thank you.
I didn’t explain what I meant. For the flowers and cake. For leaving the fire burning and music playing so I wouldn’t come home to a dark, empty penthouse. For giving me what I’d asked for even though I knew it had hurt him too.
His answer came a minute later.
Goodnight, Mouse.
That was all, but seeing those two words helped me sleep better that night.
The next night, I sent another message, and another the night after that. Lachlan always answered quickly and kept things light.
We never discussed what would happen when he came home.
Instead, I learned little things. He hated hotel coffee but drank it anyway, thought Boston traffic was designed by sadists, and had discovered that Uncle Jack could turn a simple family dinner into a three-hour argument about loyalty, territory, marriage, and everything Lucian and Lachlan were doing wrong with their lives.
One night, my phone had buzzed well past midnight.
Our uncle is an enormous pain in my arse.
I’d laughed at that.
Did you tell him that?
Several times.
How did that go?
Lucian and I are now in a pub. Draw your own conclusions.
A while later:
My brother claims I am drunk. He’s a liar.
That sounded exactly like something a drunk man would say.
Are you drunk?
I am Irish. There is a difference.
Twenty minutes later, he sent me a photograph of Lucian asleep with his forehead on the table beside an empty glass.
See? Im clerly the responsible borther. Lucian cant lift head. I still take pictures.
I laughed so hard I nearly dropped my phone. The spelling alone had required two corrections, and the rest wasn’t exactly helping his case for sobriety.
Those few minutes with him each night became my favorite part of the day.
I simply liked talking to him.
I liked getting to know Lachlan when no one was shooting at us and we weren’t falling into bed together before either of us could think too hard about what was happening.
One night, Lachlan announced we were playing fifty questions and started with harmless things before gradually getting nosier—favorite color, sweet or savory, coffee or tea, my favorite thing to bake, where I would go if someone handed me a plane ticket, and what people usually got wrong about me.
There were so many questions, some rapid-fire and others that made me stop and think.
The best part was turning the questions back on him.
That was how I learned about the boy he’d been with Lucian, the things he missed about Ireland, what he loved about running Xyst, and which parts of his life he would change if he could.
Somehow, even the silly questions ended up telling me things I hadn’t known I wanted to know.
Lachlan didn’t strike me as a man who normally sat around discussing himself for the pleasure of being known, and I’d spent years learning that the safest place for anything personal was inside my own head.
I’d spent most of my life keeping even ordinary things about myself tucked away, because there had been so few people I could safely share them with.
Now Lachlan wanted to know. And because he answered just as honestly when I turned the questions back on him, I began to think I was getting a version of Lachlan very few people ever saw.
Somewhere between the ridiculous questions and the serious ones, what was between us became easier and more personal.
We were finally learning each other without the rest of the world getting in the way.
Dr. Maria St. Clair had helped with some of the harder parts.
Lacey brought her over the morning after Lachlan left. I’d expected someone older and far more intimidating. Instead, Maria was chic, direct, and so completely unimpressed by the criminal world surrounding us that within twenty minutes, I understood why Lacey trusted her.
She never treated me as though I were fragile.
She also never pretended twenty-five years at La Cruzona could be sorted out in a few conversations.
Some days we talked for an hour. Other days she stopped by long enough to ask how I’d slept, whether anything had brought the compound rushing back unexpectedly, and what I planned to do with the rest of my afternoon.
We talked about Papá and Mamá, the complicated relief I still felt whenever I remembered Ciro was dead, and how freedom could be wonderful and exhausting at the same time.
Maria helped me understand that I didn’t need to untangle my entire past before I was allowed to enjoy my present.
One afternoon, she handed me a notebook and asked me to write down what I wanted my new life to be.
The point wasn’t to write what anyone expected from me or what I thought I should accomplish to prove I had recovered properly. Maria wanted me to write down what I actually wanted.
The first page filled quickly with smaller things: learn Manhattan well enough to stop checking every street sign, travel somewhere because I wanted to go, and enroll in pastry school.
The five-year plan page intimidated me at first.
Then I wrote Own a bakery across the top.
I stared at the words for a long time before adding three more.
Make it beautiful.
I had no idea where it would be or what I would call it. I didn’t need to know yet.
For once, imagining a future was exciting instead of dangerous.
Scarlett and Lacey had done their part too.
They seemed to understand instinctively when I wanted company and when I wanted a quiet afternoon to myself.
They showed me stores, cafés, tiny neighborhood places I never would have noticed on my own, and enough of Manhattan that I could walk several blocks around the building without feeling as though I might accidentally end up in another state.
They tried to take me to a Broadway show, but I refused.
Scarlett had looked at me strangely until I explained that Lachlan liked sharing my first experiences with me, and I wanted that one to be his.
I smiled at the memory as I turned back to the stove.
The potatoes were still waiting for me, so I finished them by folding in the cabbage, cream, and another generous piece of butter, then lowered the heat to keep the colcannon warm.
A few bowls and utensils still crowded the counter, and I cleared them away while the music played behind me.
As I wiped down the counter, my thoughts drifted to the conversation that had changed more than anything else while Lachlan was gone. A few days after Maria began visiting, I finally told her I was ready to speak to Mamá’s family.
She suggested a video call. Nothing formal. No travel. No room full of royal officials. If I wanted to answer one question and end the call, I could. If I wanted to talk for hours, that was fine too.
Nik had become almost painfully careful around me after what happened in his office. He explained every step before he took it and checked with me so many times that by the third one, I almost laughed.
I finally understood a little better why Lacey loved him so much. Somewhere beneath the Pakhan, the hacker, and the man who could terrify grown men without raising his voice, Nikolai Volkov was surprisingly soft where the people he loved were concerned.
He would probably kill me for ever calling him soft, so I kept that observation to myself.
When the video call finally connected, Dr. Maria sat just outside the camera’s view.
King Aleksander Dravik, Queen Sofija Dravik, and Crown Prince Stefan Dravik appeared on the screen.
For approximately ten seconds, all I could think was that I was speaking to a king and queen.