When Roman imagined bringing the woman of his dreams home to meet his parents, he didn’t expect her to look so shell-shocked. Yet, here they were.
He did his best to look upbeat to counter Sadie’s stunned pause.
He caught her arm and gave a little pull.
“Seriously, are you all right?” he asked.
“Huh?” She shook off whatever had tripped her up.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said.
That seemed to catch her off guard.
“For what?” she asked.
“For dragging you here,” he said, meaning it.
First, for not taking her up on her offer to wait for him. Second, for not fighting for them. Third, for asking his grandmother for her brand of assistance.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes softened, and then, something miraculous happened… Sadie Howard tangled her fingers with his like they were a “them” and he was not just a “him.”
Not in the oh hey, how are you? kind of way. But the intimate I’m here with you kind of way.
Honest as all fuck, Roman did not know what to do with that, but he liked it. So he rolled with it. Threading his fingers with Sadie’s, he hoped like hell his family didn’t screw everything up.
“Sadie!” Babushka called as they entered the kitchen, as though they were the best of friends.
They were off to the races…
Sadie, to her credit, kept her composure intact.
Babushka linked her arm through Sadie’s, pulling her away from Roman. “This is the daughter I never had.”
“I thought I was the daughter you never had?” Heather asked, clearly feigning distress.
Babushka linked her other arm with Heather’s. “You both are.”
“And I’m…?” Roman’s mom asked.
Babushka brushed her off like the last generation’s news.
Mom didn’t seem to care. She simply rolled her eyes at Babushka and went back to fixing a cocktail that appeared to have champagne, vodka, and lemon zest involved. Finishing the drink with a quick squeeze of lemon, she offered the beverage to Sadie.
“You must be Sadie,” she said.
Like the pro she was, Sadie took the champagne flute with a side glance toward Roman. “I am.”
“Well, good luck then,” his mother said. “Might I suggest an abundance of the mashed potatoes this evening?” Her eyes sparkled like she’d just let Sadie in on an inside joke.
“Loads of the potatoes. Or, you know, just skip the extra starch and go for the bottle.” Heather jerked her head toward the bottle of premium Russian vodka on the countertop.
Roman’s mom and Heather laughed like they were in on the biggest of all secrets.
“Hey, Rome?” Zach called.
Roman turned toward him, eyebrows raised.
“Yoo-hoo,” Zach replied in a high-pitched voice. He gave a two-fingered wave followed by giggles.
Sonofabitch. Roman’s entire face heated. This shit, right here, was why he’d stayed away for so long. War zones had nothing on his family.
They wasted no time embarrassing the shit out of him. “You’re going there?” he asked. “Serious?”
“Going where?” Zach asked, Babushka’s patented mock sincerity shining through. Clearly, it was genetic.
“Get it all out now,” Roman invited, gesturing to himself.
“What’s going on?” Sadie whispered out of the corner of her mouth.
“Roman got a Polaroid camera when he was five,” Dad explained, his booming baritone drawing all eyes to him. “He took photos of anything that stood still. Before he clicked the shutter, he’d get people’s attention by shouting, ‘yoo-hoo.’ It sounded an awful lot like Lou Who.”
“So we named the camera Lou,” Mom added in for good measure. As though “yoo-hoo” wasn’t embarrassing enough.
“Louise?” Sadie asked.
Roman shook his head. “Her predecessor, Lou.”
Lou was immortalized in a glass frame that hung on the wall in the den.
“That’s so cute.” Sadie’s cheeks dimpled with her smile.
“Cute is what I’m going for,” Roman replied. That’s why he spent a fuckton of hours lifting weights every week.
“Who is tying who to which appliance?” Anna asked.
“No one,” Mom replied. She gave her kids a glance that would freeze even the hardiest of sailors.
Luckily, they were Dvornakovs, which meant they could withstand that winter chill.
“What happened?” Sadie asked, sipping on her vodka champagne.
Roman’s sister began telling, in detail, the horrible affair.
It wasn’t Roman’s finest moment when his brother Jase got the upper hand in their last brawl. Roman was recovering from a stomach flu, so he wasn’t at his best. Jase licked him in about ten seconds—because, again, puking for days. To add insult to everything, Roman ended the evening hugging the refrigerator with rope tied around him.
He’d extracted himself in twenty seconds, but no one remembered that part of the story.
Now that he was back in Denver, he was waiting—oh boy, was he waiting—for Jase to catch some kind of bug so Roman could tie him to something.
By the time Anna finished regaling the story, everyone in the room had dissolved into stitches. Even his mother, who, up until recently, hadn’t found much funny at all.
That was thanks to Heather. She and Heather had gotten off to a rocky start, but they were now the kind of friends who talked almost every day. Since Roman had been back in town, his mother was substantially less stressed all the freaking time.
“I can’t believe you let him beat you,” Sadie said through her peals of laughter.
That, right there, was why he adored her.
“I beat him fair,” Jase replied, laughter still evident in his tone. “I could do it again, too.”
“Like to see you try, baby brother,” Roman replied.
“No.” Mom held up her hands. “Please.”
Well, since she said please. Roman gestured between himself and his brother with two fingers.
“Later,” he mouthed.
Was he imagining it or did Jase pale a little?
“You’re an attorney?” Mom asked Sadie.
She nodded.
“That must be so interesting.”
Sadie’s eyes stopped dancing from the Roman-versus-refrigerator giggle fest. “Not really.”
“Oh, come on,” his mother encouraged. “What’s something interesting that happened today?”
Sadie stared at her drink. “I am negotiating custody of a large array of fish. Today, I discovered that in a school of fish it’s not the fish on the outside of the school who steer the way. It’s the fish on the inside of the group. The others follow their lead.”
“I aspire to someday have enough fish that I need an attorney to negotiate their settlement in my divorce,” Jase said.
“Puh-lease,” Heather replied. “Like you’d get our fish in any kind of settlement.”
“Then I’ll just keep my own fish in the settlement, the ones I already have.” Jase pressed a kiss against Heather’s forehead.
“What are you talking about?” Roman asked.
“You know, my swimmers?” Jase pointed at his crotch.
“Do not point at your fly when we have company.” Mom narrowed her eyes at Jase.
“They’re not fish, dipwad.” Zach hopped up on the counter, crossed his feet at the ankles, and just dared their mother to get on his ass for bouncing his shoes against her prized oak cabinetry.
“Then what are they, asshat?” Jase asked.
“Sperm?” Mom replied. “Please don’t talk about your special swimmers at dinner.”
“If they’re not fish, then what are they?” Jase asked like this was a real question, but his eyes danced. He clearly enjoyed driving their mother nuts.
“Mammals? The beginning of a mammal.” Sadie sipped at her champagne. “They didn’t have to teach me that in law school, I already knew it.”
“What judge in the state of Colorado would not grant custody of the fish to me?” Jase wrapped his arm around Heather’s shoulder.
Roman settled in to see where they were going to go with this.
“Any judge in the state when I represent Heather,” Sadie replied, deadpan. “With these questions, I’m certain I could get full fish custody granted to her. Not of the sperm, of course, they’re yours to keep. I’m referring to any aquatic acquisitions that take place during the marriage.”
“However short-lived it may be,” Zach added.
“You cannot get divorce until you have babies,” Babushka declared. “I forbid it.”
“She’s got a point,” Jase said. “We should have the kid first and then get divorced.”
“So shall we say about nine months from now?” Heather’s own eyes danced.
Did they just—
Was Roman going to be an uncle?
Was this a…?
His chest went heavy. He wanted a niece or a nephew. He wanted Jase to have everything he’d ever wanted. There was only a small amount of green jealousy settling against Roman’s ribs because Jase had absolutely everything he’d ever wanted.
Yeah, he was thrilled for his brother. And stoked he was going to be an uncle.
The room went quiet, all eyes on Heather.
Roman took in the bottle of seltzer in Heather’s hand. She was usually one of the first to hit the vodka at these events.
“I call dibs on the favorite uncle title,” he said before anyone else in the room had regained their bearings.
Sadie’s lips tucked up at the edges, and he might have imagined it, but he was pretty sure her own eyes had misted. Was she feeling the same green-eyed monster he was?
He’d seen the way she took to Luke and Luke took to her. She’d make a great mother if that’s what she wanted.
“He always gets the good titles,” Zach said with a huff.
“Heather?” Mom asked with tears in her eyes. “Really?”
Heather nodded as Mom wrapped her in a hug.
Suddenly, Roman felt all alone in the midst of a sea of family. Funny thing, Sadie seemed to have the same thought.
They gravitated toward each other while Babushka gushed about the brains her great-grandchild would have, his mother insisted Heather sit down, and Zach and Anna bickered about potential names.
“Your family’s great.” Sadie sipped at the champagne.
“They are,” Roman replied.
“Here I was thinking I’d have to find a closet to hide in.”
Ah, the closet. “Nah, you’ve got a shirt on, so I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
Sadie laughed. “I wish I could forget about that.”
“My condom stash has never been so organized,” Roman said quietly. “Or my socks. Or my shirts.”
“What else was I supposed to do in there?” Sadie asked like she hadn’t had the option to open the door and show herself.
Which, for the record, would have been his preference.
“Mom and Heather didn’t get off to a good start,” Roman said.
He wasn’t really sure why he said it. Just felt like it was important.
“Really?” Sadie didn’t seem to believe him. For good reason, seeing that his mother and Heather were tight as tight could be these days.
Careful not to shake the trembling foundation that he hoped like hell they were building, he slid his hand along the countertop behind Sadie. “She was pretty anti-Heather there for a while.”
“And how does she feel about me?” Sadie leaned into his arm like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Roman watched Sadie until she moved her gaze to him. Then he told the honest and raw truth. “She wants me to be happy. You make me happy.”
Sadie’s expression morphed into one that reminded him of the surprise of the woman he’d known when she’d gotten caught sorting condoms into packs of ten in his hotel room closet.
“Do I?” she asked in apparent disbelief.
He hated that she had to ask. “Yeah, Sadie. You do.”
“Rome…I…”
“You used to talk a lot,” Roman said, resting his elbows behind him on the counter. “Now, you seem to mostly think.”
“Which do you prefer?” Sadie asked.
“Both. But in all seriousness, I’ve missed you. All of you. Even when you get inside your own head.”
Sadie fidgeted with her champagne flute like she’d done with her red plastic cup on the truck bed. “Maybe I just spend time there because it’s easier.”
“Maybe you should come out and hang out with me more often.”
“Maybe.” She met his gaze. “I live in a world of keeping things confidential for my clients.” She focused on the surface of her drink once more. “Even if we decided to hang out, the secrets I’ve been told…you can’t know. Can’t know the clients I’ve represented. Can’t know how hard it was to represent them when I don’t understand why they’ve done what they’ve done and I don’t get to have an opinion because of my job.”
“I have my secrets, too.” With the level of clearance the government had given him, he had a whole truckload of things he could never mention again. Things that were best forgotten.
What was happening between the two of them had nothing to do with secrets and everything to do with good ol’ fashioned fear. “You know that just because it didn’t work out for your clients, doesn’t mean it won’t work out for you.”
“It doesn’t mean that it will, either.”
The rest of the room filtered away. Everyone else was focused on Heather and Jase and their soon-to-be new baby—as it should be. But Roman? He focused on the woman who he hoped like hell would be his future.
The tender looks she gave to those she cared for without ever realizing. The solid spine she had no problem wielding. Sadie was so much more than the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman who had captured his interest.
“Right here, right now, what do you want?” Roman asked.
Sadie didn’t respond.
“It’s just you and me here. You and me now,” Roman said as soothingly as he could manage.
“I don’t know what to do with that.” Sadie swallowed hard. “The you and me thing.”
“Let me in.”
Please, let him in.
Roman wasn’t a guy who had ever begged for anything, but he’d beg for this because it mattered that much. The extent of how much it mattered had seeped into the deepest parts of him.
“And if I can’t?”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He hoped that Sadie would see him. See who he was and who she was to him. See who they could be together.
“Does it matter?” she asked.
He clenched his back teeth and pinched his lips into a line, biting at the inside edges.
“Even if we give us a shot, we both know how it’s going to end. We’ve already been there once. It’ll fizzle. Like it did before.” She didn’t get it.
He needed her to get it.
“It didn’t fizzle. I was an idiot who didn’t take a beautiful woman up on her offer when she laid it all out. That’s not a fizzle. That’s the fault of a guy who didn’t have his shit together.”
Her expression remained unconvinced. She sucked in a breath. “You don’t get it.”
He didn’t.
“I’ve seen this a dozen times,” she said. “Maybe more. A relationship fails. They try again. It fails again. It always fails again. This time, between us, it’ll be spectacular and it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt worse than it did the first time.” Her voice shook with pain so evident that it made his heart beat faster, his body begging him to stop her pain.
Sonofabitch. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.
He’d make it his personal mission not to let it happen again.
“What do you want?” he asked.
As much as it would suck, if she said she didn’t want him—actually said the words—then he’d knock it off. He’d let it go and understand that what he wanted was his problem and not hers.
“What I want doesn’t matter,” she said.
Oh, but it did. It mattered to him.
For the smartest woman he knew, she was proving to be dense when it came to her own desires and the fact that they mattered.
“I’d really like to touch you.” His words sounded like a question.
Roman asking permission to touch her? That clearly caught her off guard.
The bubble that had surrounded them in silence seemed to pop as she moved. Facing him, utter confusion played across her features.
“This is your show,” he continued carefully, wanting her to understand more than anything that she was the one in charge. “Everything that happens from here is your call.”
She could call it off at any point.
“But if you decide to let me in, I swear you won’t regret it. I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re happy.”
Her top teeth nipped at her bottom lip. He was nearly there. She got him.
“So I’ll ask again, can I touch you?” he asked.
“What does it matter if I say yes or no? You’re a Dvornakov, won’t you just do what you want to do anyway?”
Absolutely not. If she said no, he’d honor it. Because he knew they both understood that they were either making a promise to each other or they were going to move on without each other.
“I had a friend once,” he said, ready to make his case.
Her eyes misted as though she intuitively understood he was speaking of her.
“She taught me that the fine print matters.” He looked into the depths of her eyes, trying to see what he should say. “So, yeah, I’d say it matters if you want this or not, nohchnaya babachka.”
A gasp pulled his gaze away from Sadie. The audible inhale from his babushka broke the moment.
“Vhat did you call her?” Babushka asked, eyes big with her fingers pressed against her pink-painted lips.
Roman had seen that look on her before. Generally, it was the look the preceded him getting dressed down. “Um…”
General Babushka marched toward him and smacked him upside the head.
“Ow.” Roman rubbed at the spot.
“Roman Dvornakov, why on earth would you call her that?” his mother asked, the words soaked in shock.
“It means butterfly. At night.” That was the translation. He may be rusty on his Russian, but he was confident here.
“Does it mean something else?” Sadie asked.
“It means that you’re my butterfly. Like the moths at the movie theater?”
She seemed to rack her brain. “The moths?”
“The moths you thought were butterflies,” he reminded her.
“It does not.” Babushka’s words were firm and her eyes flashed with anger. “You alvays vere bad vith the Russian vords. How could you call her this?”
Sadie’s eyebrows fell together. “It doesn’t mean nighttime butterfly?”
“Oh, it means nighttime butterfly, all right,” Jase said. “If you use the direct translation. But in reality, it means prostitute.”
Roman’s heart dropped. No, it did not.
Sadie gasped.
“That’s not true,” Roman said. Absolutely not. He wasn’t calling her a prostitute. His Russian might’ve been rusty—he stopped practicing around the time Dedushka died—but he knew enough to know this was abso-fucking-lutely not the case.
“You’ve been calling me a prostitute?” Sadie asked, the whites of her eyes growing with each word.
The entire family had gone silent sometime during their conversation. Everyone had moved their attention from Heather and her baby to his private conversation—emphasis on the word “private.”
Not that there was much privacy among his family. Usually, they tried to pretend they weren’t the invasive species called Dvornakov.
“I taught you better Russian than this. Your dedushka, he rolls over in his grave,” Babushka admonished, making him feel about two centimeters tall. “You disappoint me.”
Sadie was shaking.
Shit, he hoped he hadn’t made her cry with his inability to translate.
But this wasn’t that kind of shaking, Not the crying kind. “Are you laughing?” he asked, the numb from the shock melting out of his body as her chest racked with the apparent hilarity of his fuckup.
“You’ve been calling me a hooker this whole time?” She wiped a tear with the back of her hand.
“This is not funny.” Babushka’s tone was the same one she had used on him when he was a kid and had accidentally dyed her favorite Persian cat green with food coloring.
“It’s a little funny.” Heather held up her thumb and pointer finger, illustrating that little dash of funny.
“More than a little.” Zach’s words came out on a wheeze. Apparently, Roman was the entertainment for the evening.
“In my defense, I didn’t realize the definition wasn’t…appropriate.” He settled on that last word even though it didn’t really fit.
No words—not a sound—came from his mother’s lips. His father stood completely still.
And then, his mother did what he never would have expected. She started to laugh. Hard. The doubling over was a touch excessive.
“You’ve”—Sadie jabbed him with her fingertip—"been calling me a hooker?”
“I forbid you use Russian ever again.” Babushka slashed through the air with her hand. “Vhere is my purse. You vill swear on your grandfather’s image you vill never utter another Russian vord.”
“I’m not swearing that.” He’d just start practicing again, that’s all.
“Don’t make him do that. I kind of like the butterfly thing. What’s he going to come up with next?” Sadie pulled herself together enough to get through that whole sentence without laughing. “Whew.” She fanned her face with her hands in that way girls did when they were trying not to laugh anymore. “What are you thinking?” She squeezed his arm.
“I’m thinking I’d really like to touch you,” he said, holding his hands near her shoulders but not quite making contact.
She gulped.
He waited.
Finally, she nodded. “You can touch me.”
With permission granted, he ran his index finger along her cheekbone and leaned in to brush his lips against hers.
The kiss wasn’t erotic—they were in his parents’ kitchen and his entire family was present. He kept it simple, chaste, but she tasted like he remembered, and he wanted more.
“Jase, you’re going to let him tie you to the fridge,” Heather mock whispered. “I think it’s your turn.”
Roman broke the kiss. He smiled against Sadie’s lips.
Yeah, Heather was Roman’s favorite sister-in-law, forever and always. She’d just sealed the deal.
“Are you crushing on my brother right in front of me?” Jase asked, feigning disgust.
“Little bit.” Heather crinkled her nose and Jase kissed the tip.
“You want him to call you a hooker, too?” Zach asked.
“I’ll allow it only because you let me knock you up,” Jase continued. “But the fridge thing? That’s never going to happen.”
Oh, it’d happen now that Roman was on his game. He was just going to take his brother by surprise.
Heather’s expression went dreamy. “You should ask if you can touch me.”
Shit, Roman was never going to live that down.
“We got married, isn’t it implied?” Jase continued mock whispering.
Heather glared at him, but the tilt at the edges of her mouth implied that it was all for show.
“Let’s go outside.” Mom already had the French doors pushed open and was doing her best—God bless her—to get the family to start moving toward the table she’d set up by the pool on the back patio. “Everyone.”
No one moved.
“Now,” Mom said with a pointed look toward Roman. “You stay. We’ll give you a minute.”
If Roman had his way, they’d need a lot more than a minute.
Sadie’s cell rang. She glanced at the screen and her eyebrows furrowed. “I need to take this. It’s a client.”
She moved through the entryway into the living room.
“Babushka?” Roman called his grandmother, who was mid-chip dip.
“Vhat?”
“Your services are no longer needed.”
She shoved the chip in her mouth and chewed.
He waited.
“I have no idea vhat you are talking about,” Babushka replied.
“The thing that I asked you to do? You’re off duty.”
“Okay.” Babushka shrugged.
Huh. Well, that was easy.
Everything looked to be sunshine and daisies, but that tickle in his gut insisting nothing was as it seemed turned into a full warning bell. What had he gotten himself into?
Sadie’s emotions surrounding Roman were tied in knots that she couldn’t seem to untangle. The more time they spent together, the tighter the tangle became. Roman’s ease with her made her seriously ponder her previously held beliefs on not trying one more time.
But that was how a girl got sucked in. She was positive.
She’d believe that it would work and then, boom, let the heart stomping commence.
Dinner had been fun. But the fun was temporary, and she had to get out of there before she got so entrenched with Roman that she wouldn’t be able to extract herself.
The comfortably cool air of Denver’s summer evenings brushed over her as she walked briskly to her car. The blue sky with the sun setting behind the mountains of the Front Range was totally gorgeous. Like the time she’d spent with Roman’s family.
Tomorrow, though, the monsoons would come again and the rain would cover it all.
This was the metaphor of life.
“Sadie…” Roman jogged after her. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Sure.” She tried to smile, but all she could see was how messy it would be when the braided knot unraveled and dropped her onto the concrete.
“Babushka mentioned earlier that you need some photos taken for your office?” he asked.
“Actually, that’d be great. I haven’t had a moment to get any done. Do you want to do them—”
“Yeah.” He was like an eager puppy.
An eager puppy built like a tank, but still.
“Now?” he asked. “It’s still early and I don’t have plans.”
If they were alone tonight, she had a hunch they’d end up tangling sheets and the knot of emotions she was trying to sort through. Which meant—
“Not tonight.” She bit at her lip to keep herself from saying yes. “I’ve got to get home. Maybe I’ll even stop and check in on Luke.”
“Do you want company?” he asked. “Luke is one of my favorite Howards.”
She shook her head. “Not tonight.”
“You’re doing the nose-scrunch.” So, so carefully, he cupped her cheek. “Don’t nose-scrunch me tonight. Not when things are going great.”
She kicked at a loose asphalt pebble with the toe of her ballet flat. “Can I be honest?”
“I like honesty.” He dropped his hand.
“I can’t do this. The us thing. I want to. I just…” She didn’t know what to say. This hurt now, which was all the more reason she had to end it before it became anything.
“If you want to, then why resist?” He reached for her hand, pressing it in his own.
Interlacing their fingers, she embraced the way they felt so good entangled together. Why couldn’t it always be like this?
New. Fresh.
This was a singular moment, though, a snapshot in time. It wouldn’t last. Not on a do-over.
“I’m sorry, Rome.” She dropped his hand, took the final steps toward her car, climbed inside, and refused to look back.