And the only woman he’d ever wanted, unstoppably, on sight.
From that first glance, the desire had been mutual and beyond either of them to resist...which they hadn’t.
“For the next few weeks, as Alex and I became close friends again, I plunged into a passionate but secret affair with her.” He leaned forward as echoes of this magical interlude that had never stopped haunting him deluged him again. Body hardening and heart thundering at the mere memories, he raked a hand through his hair, dragged himself back to the bleak reality. “I was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of being with her, not to mention by the delight of being with Alex again. Yet it haunted me that I might expose them to danger if one day the past caught up with me. And though that was my main fear, there was another problem.
“Through the escape and identity changes, not only had their family never lost contact with mine, they’d become like one family. My parents were like a second mother and father to them, with my sisters Anastasia’s best friends and Alex in love with my youngest sister, Katerina, Cathy now. I knew being involved with Anastasia and Alex would bring my family crashing back into my life. My dread was validated when Alex kept trying to suck me into their extended family. It all came to a head when he asked me to be his best man.”
He closed his eyes as memories of Alex, alive and in love and eager for his closeness, tore at him all over again.
His breath left him on a ragged hiss. “I considered putting the past behind me, for his sake, for Anastasia’s. But I couldn’t do it. I was unable to bear the thought of being around my family again. It was the shove I needed to leave them alone. So I told Anastasia and Alex that I had inescapable business on his wedding day and withdrew from both their lives.”
Silence lengthened in the wake of his last words.
Then Antonio asked, “Without explanation?”
He’d driven himself crazy ever since thinking how he could have handled it better. He’d always come to the same conclusion. “Any excuse I invented to explain my withdrawal would have only hurt more than letting them think I was just an unfeeling jerk.”
Antonio inclined his head. “So now you don’t want her going back to her life because you can’t walk away again and you’re worried your family might somehow recognize you when they eventually see you with her? Or are you afraid you’d change your mind about punishing them once you see them again?”
“Neither. The years haven’t lessened my aversion to being anywhere near them, but intensified it. If she goes back to her family, I won’t be able to be there for her anymore. And she still needs my support, my protection. She isn’t ready to face the world without them yet.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “So now you have the reason you asked for.”
After another beat of silence, Antonio rose to his feet. “I will still discharge her, Ivan.”
Ivan heaved up to his feet, blood shooting to his head. “What? After what I just told you?”
“I actually now believe it’s even more imperative to let her go back to her life.”
“You bastard, you make me spill my guts—”
“Which you should have done ages ago. But what you told me only reinforces what I already decided.” An outstretched arm aborted Ivan’s outraged step forward. “When you first told me you’d be there for her during the hard journey back to her old self, I assumed she had no one else. But she has a family who loves her. She needs to go back to them, to bury her brother, so she’ll get closure and start the healing process. Keeping her isolated with only you hovering over her is keeping her in a limbo of unresolved tension and grief.”
“That’s only your opinion.”
“It’s the truth. And there’s also another reason why I will discharge her against your wishes.”
“Brilliant. You have more bloody reasons to screw me over?”
“You always turn into Richard when you’re frustrated.” Before Ivan could blast him for likening him to that pain-in-the-ass Brit partner and former jailor of theirs, Richard Graves, Antonio sighed. “But yes, I do have another reason. You.”
“Me?”
“Believe it or not, I’m stopping you from making a catastrophic mistake with the woman you care about.” Antonio waited a moment to let his words settle on Ivan before he went on. “No matter how justified you think you are, the day she discovers you kept her away from her loved ones when she most needed them for your own ends, you’ll find yourself in my same position with Liliana, with her feeling manipulated and betrayed, and with you unable to reach her again. And you already have a huge strike against you with her for the way you deserted her in the past. I don’t want you to meet my same fate.”
Ivan almost staggered back under the barrage of truths he hated to hear. “Dammit, Tonio. You were supposed to be too messed up to offer any resistance, let alone come up with a reasoned argument this ironclad.”
“Just your luck I have a separate compartment in my head for my inner Vulcan.” Antonio took him by the shoulders this time. “Let her go, Ivan. And after she’s done what she needs to do, find a way to be there for her, to help her become strong and whole again, while staying out of your family’s range.”
Ivan’s gaze held Antonio’s grim one, aversion and dread bubbling up to the surface. “Do I even have a choice here?”
Antonio’s attempted smile came out as a grimace. “None.”
* * *
Anastasia was sitting by the window overlooking the ocean—the Pacific, since Ivan had mentioned they were somewhere in Los Angeles—when he and Dr. Balducci walked in.
Apart from a couple of nurses and orderlies she’d barely seen, those two had been her only company for the past five weeks. It sometimes felt as if she’d see no one else for the rest of her life except for the two men who’d saved her.
She watched them approaching her, and thought that if the gods came down from Mount Olympus, they wouldn’t look that magnificent. She wondered again how they could look so much alike when one was one hundred percent Russian stock, like her, and the other was pure Italian. Their ethnicities were clear in their bone structure, but in their bodies, vibes and many other intangible things, they seemed to have been forged in the same higher-being manufacturing plant.
They stopped a couple of feet away, where the golden rays of a declining sun shining in through the window made them even more gorgeous. But though she mentally knew they were each other’s equal, it was Ivan who embodied male beauty in her book. Or in her ledger. It felt as if everything that made her a female with these kinds of appreciations was frozen. Even gone.
Dr. Balducci spoke first. “Good news, Anastasia. I’m discharging you. I only ask that you resume your activities gradually and come to me when you can for a checkup. Of course, if you have any unusual symptoms, which I don’t expect in the least, contact me at once. Ivan will provide you with every method to get hold of me day or night.”
She blinked. “You mean...I—I can go?”
“Medically speaking, you’re almost as good as new.”
She hadn’t even been considering her health.
