Vassily imagined that a job like this, using a top pro who had to make it look like an accident, would cost at least two hundred thousand dollars, plus twenty thousand for the cutout. Over and above that, he would make sure Ilya was sufficiently recompensed with a bonus, that went without saying.

Nothing. It was nothing. It was what his enterprises in the Caribbean earned in a morning. More than worth it for Katya.

Katya.

Vassily stared into the fire, his heart beating hard and fast. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. This time he’d marry her. He hadn’t done it before, more fool him. He’d thought they had all the time in the world. He and Katya had been golden. Their future held only glory and fame in the new Russia.

Instead, the past had clawed them back, drawing them down into a pit full of vipers and monsters. He hadn’t had time to marry Katya, but this time he would.

This time he’d get it right.

This time, he wouldn’t lose her.

This time, Katya would be his. Forever.

Friday

November 25

“So, what are we doing here, Nick? And why couldn’t I go to work today?”

Charity looked worriedly over at her lover. He had white stripes of tension around his mouth, jaw muscles clenched, big hands clutching the wheel so tightly the knuckles were white. He was looking grim and tense, as if privy to very bad news, though she couldn’t imagine what.

Just looking at him made her tense, too.

Nick had been enigmatic and distant all morning, yet feverish with some secret plan. Mysterious and rushed. He’d insisted that she put on her prettiest dress and call in sick, which she’d refused. Nick pressed, and normally Charity would have given in, but she drew the line at pretending to be sick. It was dishonest. She was a lousy liar, even if she wanted to lie, which she didn’t. The words would have choked in her mouth.

However, she did have tons of time off coming, so she finally caved in to Nick and phoned Mrs. Lambert to ask whether she could replace her for the day.

They were parked near Adams Square, in the courthouse parking lot, waiting for…something. Charity had no idea what and no idea why.

Nick’s lovemaking last night had been…intense. Wild, actually. He’d pushed her into new territory, a place where she had hardly recognized herself. If she shifted in the car seat, she could still feel him inside her. It seemed as if he’d touched every inch of her body last night. She could still see his beautiful face, a lock of black hair falling over his forehead, gorgeous blue eyes staring into hers. His gaze never wavered from hers as he pumped in and out of her, claiming her in every way there was.

Charity had felt turned inside out, so strongly attuned to him that she knew what he wanted from her before he asked. They’d moved almost as one together, all night. A new creature, a fusion of two bodies. She’d fallen asleep in his arms only in the early morning and had been appalled when she’d woken up at nine. The library opened at nine thirty.

Before she could jump out of bed, Nick had tightened his arms around her, rolling her over and entering her in one smooth movement. They’d made love so much during the night that she was still wet. Pinning her down with his weight, Nick refused to move until she promised she’d skip work today and come with him for a surprise. No amount of wriggling budged him. It was so frustrating, she finally agreed and with a hot gleam in his eye, his hips finally started moving. He laughed when she came immediately.

But laughing Nick was gone and grim Nick had taken his place. He had been completely silent on the drive into town and now he simply sat there in the driver’s seat, holding on to the steering wheel as if to a lifeline and staring silently out the window.

What could he possibly be looking at? The sky was pewter gray, so overcast it looked more like evening than late morning, bestowing a dull cast on everything. To the left, lost in the fog, was the Parker’s Ridge equivalent of Fifth Avenue—Revere Street, three blocks of old-fashioned shops, with nary a boutique or a chain in sight. To the right was Kingsbury Square, the snow making the rhododendrons look like huge puffs of pink-white cotton. Ahead was the gray cement wall of the new courthouse, a 1960s monstrosity everyone hated.

Should she tell Nick the story of spearheading the campaign to have it torn down? He usually loved her Parker’s Ridge stories, as if she were an anthropologist telling exotic tales of life in a tribe in a faraway country.

No, maybe right now he wasn’t in the mood for Parker’s Ridge stories. Not with his jaw muscles jumping so hard it was a miracle he didn’t crack a tooth.

One of the many things that had happened last night, and that had changed her forever, was that Charity had completed the process of becoming attuned to Nick and his moods. The intense sex, the blinding pleasure, his body in hers for hours, had transformed her. It was as if she were made of iron filings and he was the magnet. She was sensitive to every breath he took, every move he made.

Right now she could tell he was in the grip of some strong emotion. The very air molecules in the car were buzzing with it. Nick was radiating something and she couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Anger? No, that wasn’t it. Sadness? Not quite. Whatever it was, it disturbed him deeply.

His hands unclenched and fisted once more around the wheel, as if he were bracing himself against something.

She repeated her question. “What’s so important I couldn’t go in to work this morning? And it better be good because I’ve never missed a day of work in my life.”

His jaw muscles worked heavily as he turned to her, face serious.

“Charity, I—” He stopped. It was the first time she’d ever seen him at a loss. So odd, her graceful, articulate Nick, searching for words.

And then it hit her, a sledgehammer blow to her heart, followed by an icy chill that left her shaking.

Oh my God! Of course. Foolish, foolish Charity. How on earth could she have missed the signs? It would have been immediately clear to any woman with a little more experience than she had in beginning and ending affairs. She was going to pay a very heavy price for being so out of the dating scene.

He’s leaving, she thought, and her heart gave another sharp blow in her chest. He’s leaving today and he doesn’t know how to tell me. He’ll be gone by nightfall.

Nick was a gentleman. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to go into work. He hadn’t wanted to say his good-byes on the library steps. Perhaps he wanted to take her out to lunch, break the news to her gently, and now he was finding it difficult. Probably more difficult than he’d bargained for.

Just as she was finding it difficult to take in a breath. Something big and heavy was pressing in on her chest. She had to choke back the grief rising in her throat.

She’d known all along he’d leave. It was inevitable, the way of the world. She’d even steeled herself to be stoic when the time came. It’s just that she never thought the time would be quite so…soon.

Today was Friday. A week ago, he’d shown up in her life and they’d been practically living together ever since. The incredibly intense sex had hurried things along in her heart, but racing alongside the blinding physical pleasure had been all the small things that had made her fall in love with him.

A kind of steadiness, a—a manly kind of inner calm that she’d associated only with her father and her uncle, two men of a different era, never with a virile, sexy, relatively young man. A man with a strong internal compass, with no need to impress and, by the same token, no need to put others down. A careless kindness, which he wouldn’t even recognize as such, but she did. He had an old-fashioned male courtliness that delighted her.