He smiled like a shark. “It should be easy for you to learn to love me again.”
“Emotion doesn’t work like that.” And she was pretty sure falling in love with this man, even if she married him, wouldn’t be the smartest thing she could ever do.
“Doesn’t it?” He pulled something out of the inside pocket of his coat. A small lacquer box that fit in his palm. “My grandmother brought this Palekh over from Russia when she and my grandfather defected during the Cold War.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“The beauty they left behind and the life they hoped to build. Deda always said Babulya was his frog princess.”
The top of the box was decorated with an image from the Russian fairy tale where Prince Ivan ended up married to an industrious and lovely princess who had once been a frog. The magical princess outdid her aristocratic counterparts set to marry Ivan’s brothers in every way.
Maddie thought maybe she understood why Vik’s grandmother Ana had told Maddie the story of the frog princess the first time they’d met.
“Does this make you my frog prince?” she asked tongue in cheek.
Vik traced the rich image painted in egg tempera on black. “Perhaps it does.”
“You know I don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“Maybe you should.”
Now, that was definitely not something her father ever would have said to her.
“Your grandfather’s promises seem to fly in the face of Russian pessimism.” But then Misha Beck had never struck her as a pessimist.
The man who had changed his last name to reflect his new country and life had a decidedly forward-thinking attitude.
Maddie had only met Vik’s grandparents a few times, but she liked them.
A lot.
Despite the fact Misha and Ana had raised their grandson, Maddie had always considered them the epitome of a normal family. The kind of family she’d always wanted.
The kind she wasn’t sure Vik was offering with whatever was in that small lacquer box.
“Deda never believed the old adage that to speak of success cursed it.” Though his shoulders didn’t move, there was a shrug in Vik’s voice.
“His life and yours prove his skepticism.”
“That is one way to look at it.”
“The other?”
“Deda gave up being a Russian and embraced the way of his new homeland.”
“The American ideology does tend toward the positive.”
“Remember that.”
“You think I have to be a dreamer because of where I was born and raised?” she demanded.
“No. You have your dreams. I have mine. It is not about where you were born, but who you were born to be. I want you to believe in both of our dreams.”
“And that takes some of the idealism this country is known for.”
“Yes.”
He wanted her to believe in his dreams.
It might be love between them, but this was more than a business proposal—no matter what had prompted it.
“AND THIS?” SHE POINTED to the Palekh that had to be at least fifty years old. “Is it a reminder for me now?”
No matter how unmoved she tried to appear about that possibility, it touched her deeply.
“Yes.”
Her breath hitched. “Of the successful legacy you promised your unborn children?”
“Among other things.”
“That kind of success is more important to you than it is to me.” Maddie wanted promises of other things.
She wasn’t naive. She wasn’t looking for undying love, despite the odd feelings deep in her heart she was doing her best not to acknowledge. Even Helene Archer had been too pragmatic to promise her princess a knight in shining armor that would love Maddie. But there was more to life than building a company that dominated the world market.
“You think so?” he asked, sounding amused.
Though she didn’t understand why. Maddie could only nod.
“It will take the significant results of that type of success to make your school a reality.”
She couldn’t deny it.
“You think money means little to you, but then you have never lived in fear of want.” If he had sounded even a little condescending, she would have been angry.
He didn’t.
“And you have?” she asked, wondering if there was something about his past she didn’t know.
“Not like my grandparents, but let’s just say the year between my mother’s death and Deda deciding I would come to live with him and Babulya was not one I would ever allow my own child to endure.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Frank’s inability to make anyone’s needs as important as his own, including the basic need to eat of his six-year-old son, taught me as much about who I did not wish to be as Deda taught me about the man I would become.”
“Your grandfather is a good man.”
“He and Babulya raised me with an appreciation for the difference between working to provide and working an angle.”
“Like your dad.”
Vik grimaced. “Frank is very good at angles.”
“You want your life to matter.”
“It already does.”
She couldn’t argue that. Didn’t want to. “I want my life to matter, too—we just have a different way of going about it.”
“Yes, we do.” He didn’t sound bothered by that fact.
Why was she?
She wanted to tell him about Maddie Grace, but wasn’t sure how she would handle it if Vik had the same attitude about her efforts as Jeremy had
