Total Package (12 page)

Danya listened to the hum of the washer and settled in to
imagine life with Sidney, maybe children…. Clearly Sidney loved travel and her work, and Danya had resolved that he would settle for the times she would return to him.

Her exquisite stories were filled with world travel, adventure and Ben, of course. Her former lover had been so much a part of her life and Danya understood the friendship they had shared; however, he was still uncomfortable about their sexual hit and runs and the way Sidney had expected little from a man.

Leashing his plans for marriage wasn’t easy, but he would. Until the time was right—

Sidney stared at the lovely set of china that Jessica Stepanov had placed on a lovely round walnut table. “It’s beautiful.”

A hostess, comfortable in her own home, Jessica poured tea into the ornate cup and handed the saucer to Sidney. “It was Alexi and Danya’s mother’s. I thought it would make a lovely picture for the family album you’re creating for us. By the way, did you like that vase Danya gave you? It was his mother’s, too.”

“It is?” She’d left it on the cabin table where anything could happen to it.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s the baby’s nap time and I’m dying for tea and conversation.”

“You ran a corporation once, and now you’re happy with being a wife and a mother?” Sidney asked, intrigued by Jessica’s change from a top-notch executive running her deceased husband’s company to Alexi’s wife, pleased with her home and family.

Jessica sipped her tea and then said, “Perfectly. There are business things now and then, but basically I walked away from everything. I hadn’t known I could be so happy. And I have my own work here, shuttling the elderly to their appointments when my friend, Willow, is busy…Alexi secretly loves the times I do that, because he can just sit and hold Dani through her nap time, rather than putting her in her crib. Oh,
here, I want to show you something. I thought perhaps you could do something with this, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”

She lifted a basket that was on the table closer and opened the lid. “This was Alexi and Danya’s mother’s patching basket. I feel so selfish hoarding such an heirloom, and if you could somehow use these things with our family portraits, that would be wonderful—something for all of our children to enjoy. I love to embroider, to make Louise’s designs come to life. Look—”

Jessica carefully unfolded the clothing on the table, embroidered with flowers and obviously treasured. “This was Alexi’s when he was a boy. Look at Louise’s beautiful embroidery…see how intricate the vines are, the tiny flowers. Ellie created a perfect replica for the men’s festival shirts and all of our husbands have embroidery on them—Alexi wore his to our wedding. It was traditional and beautiful. Danya’s isn’t embroidered yet.”

Sidney remembered Danya noting the same thing. “Well, that’s not fair.”

Jessica smiled softly. “Because he’s not married. His wife or sweetheart might want to do that for him. We didn’t want to take that away from the woman who loves him.”

“Oh.” Sidney ran her hand over the smooth, obviously cherished fabric. She could just imagine Danya as a little boy, wearing his shirt. “He loved his wife so much. I’m so sorry she didn’t survive. Jeannie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. But you’re good for him.”

Sidney shrugged lightly. “I’m not staying. I’ve never stayed this long in one place before and I need to leave within a week. I’m almost finished here.”

She’d promised herself that she would leave soon, and now she was already delaying leaving Danya…. “I’ll bring that vase to you for safekeeping, and then someday, Danya may want to give it to someone else.”

Jessica sipped her tea and said quietly, “Don’t pass this by, Sidney, not without really trying.”

“We’re so opposite. I’m not used to being surrounded by family, or the little homey, everyday things you and the other women here do—and Danya is all about family and home. And he hasn’t met my family yet.”

She shuddered mentally at the thought of Bulldog, Stretch and Junior arriving in Amoteh. If Bulldog discovered that she had been actually living with Danya, he would come to Amoteh and ruin everything.

Jessica’s hand enclosed Sidney’s. “Don’t worry so, Sidney. Just take it as it comes, day by day. But I am certain that Danya can handle anything your family delivers. I hear that Fadey is really pleased with the pictures you took of his new dining room table and chair designs and Mary Jo is busy working up a new brochure. We really appreciate you taking pictures of our family, in all the different groupings we’ve asked for—it’s going to be a wonderful album. Do you think you can incorporate these things, the china and embroidery into some of the portraits?”

Sidney’s mind was already designing layouts: Jessica holding her baby, rocking in a sturdy Stepanov chair, the embroidery basket nearby.

Then she thought of the men, grinning into the camera, arms looped around each other as they wore their festival shirts.

But then, Danya’s was plain, and he really should find a woman who loved him to embroider it. But the thought of another woman holding Danya irritated, not that she had any right to feel that he was hers alone, but just the same—

“I’ve never patched or embroidered,” Sidney stated suddenly.

Jessica handed her an old obviously treasured wooden hoop already fitted with fabric and a design waiting for thread. “This was Danya’s grandmother’s. If you have a spare moment, you might want to try it. I find that it settles me and I’m able to sort out whatever is bothering me very peacefully. Oh, here comes Ellie and Leigh and Mary Jo, just in time for tea and a few quiet moments. That means Fadey and Viktor are baby-sitting the children while they take their naps.”

By the end of the hour, Sidney had learned a few embroi
dery stitches and she’d taken several pictures of the women sitting together, a family of women, brought together by the men they loved. She knew that when she was far away, she’d remember and treasure each one.

“Take the hoop with you,” Jessica offered gently. “It’s wonderful therapy. It feels like—it feels like you’re sharing something with Louise.”

In the Amoteh Resort’s manager’s suite, Sidney unfolded the hoop and the cloth and tried a few of the stitches Jessica had shown her. There was no way Sidney could fit into this family. An e-mail check revealed jobs in the Andes and Egypt, photographing new archaeological finds. A horse lover’s magazine needed shots of thoroughbreds and racing, and a photographic spread was needed in an Italian cookbook. All were good paying jobs. She could take several assignments, back to back, and—

The next e-mail was from Bulldog. She answered his typical brief question “Where are you?” with “Africa. Am fine. Doing a witch doctor ceremony in the jungle shoot. The spear came out okay.”

Sidney rubbed her forehead where a heavy ache had just lodged. She couldn’t stay much longer and couldn’t explain the tears that had begun to fall. She wiped her face roughly, ashamed that she was so emotional, and tried a few of the stitches.

Suddenly the sound on her laptop announced another incoming e-mail. It was her father. “Where exactly? Stretch and Junior are in Africa doing some beach volleyball tournament.”

Sidney turned off her laptop. It was only a matter of time before her father pinned down her location and came to see “what the hell you are doing by taking these sissy assignments?”

She didn’t have much time and she’d better make the most of it. Waste not, want not had always been her motto and she didn’t intend to waste a moment with Danya.

Danya was just folding clothes taken from the dryer when he heard Sidney yell, “Stepanov, I know you’re in there.”

Evidently Sidney had discovered his secret sooner than he had planned, Danya decided as he walked to his new house’s front door and opened it. He welcomed Sidney with a broad sweep of his hand.

She was wearing a bikini top, a Hawaiian-print pareo around her waist and her hiking boots. Price tags fluttered from the scanty yellow bikini top and the brightly floral pareo as she tramped into the spacious barren living room.

With her hands on her hips, she frowned and surveyed the house and Danya thought how a small woman, swaggering in that outfit could cause a man’s mind to go blank.

“So this is it. The house you just bought. I was in Leigh’s swimwear shop at the resort, trying on clothes and some woman—the previous owner of this house came in, chattering away about moving to Missouri. She was just winding up packing up their old house, buying some goodies for relatives, and was thrilled to make a sale of this home to a Mr. Danya Stepanov. Then some other woman—Marcella, I think—moaned over how the Stepanov men got free of her clutches and that you—”

She pushed her finger into his chest. “She said how you, Stepanov, had the look of the next one who intended to get married. So they stood there, chatting—the two women, one who had sold the house and one who thinks
that you’ve got marriage on your mind—with me.
And those are freshly planted rosebushes outside—probably the very same one that you harvested for that bouquet yesterday.”

“So?” Danya was having trouble focusing on the problem at hand, that he didn’t want anything to upset the way they were living together at the cabin. But Sidney was out of breath and flushed, and in her taut anger, her pale breasts were shimmering and soft. From the look of the price tags on her clothing, she had just hiked out the shop located within the resort, through the Amoteh’s door and down the steps and across the town’s streets and up over to the hill to this house. He traced the upper edge of the yellow bikini and took a slow
look down Sidney’s neatly curved waist, those rounded hips and the length of one leg, bared by the pareo to the boot that she was tapping on the floor, a definite sign of anger. “Nice outfit.”

“I’d planned to ask you out for a date, but I’ve changed my mind.” She tramped back to the laundry room where another load of their clothing was washing. Danya followed, appreciating the sway of her hips, the way the pareo flirted around her thighs and legs. Sidney lifted the lid of the washer and when it stopped, she reached down to peer inside.

That allowed Danya a mind-blowing view of her curved backside and little kept him from holding those hips and lifting her and—

“You’re washing my clothes, dammit.” Sidney fished out her jeans and turned angrily to him.

Danya’s vision of entering her feminine warmth, holding those hips in his hands, bending her over and having her slid reluctantly away. “Is that a crime?”

Sidney’s eyes were dark with anger as she threw the jeans on top of the washer. “I haven’t asked you to baby-sit me. We’re just sharing quarters, you know. I take care of myself.”

Danya leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder, lady. And we’re doing more than ‘sharing quarters.’ We’re sharing a bed and we have steady ongoing activities in it.”

She inhaled sharply, clearly struck by the outright and sharp reminder of their lovemaking. “Back out of my life, buster.”

He pushed away his anger to ask grimly, “So what gives, sweetheart?”

“I told you, no one takes care of me. You were planning marriage, weren’t you? All the time, I thought we were honest with each other, you were planning this.”

“You make it sound like a crime. And that cabin is my family’s, not mine. I want my own place. It’s natural—”

“For you, maybe. Not for me. I wasn’t cut out for staying in one place, planting flowers and doing housework.”

His curt “Who asked you to?” slammed into her, taking away her breath.

Sidney pushed herself back together and realized that this was the first harsh emotional argument she’d ever had, one that cut more deeply than all the rest, the bare bone bloodletting kind of argument…the kind where emotions ran deep between love and hate and could flip and ruin relationships at a heartbeat. She could either back away, or she could—

Danya was already in motion, grimly picking her up and carrying her into another barren room. It was spacious and big and overlooked the ocean. “If this had a bed in it, we’d be in it now, you contrary, sexy, tormenting, half-pint, frustrating—That’s the vanity I made for you there. Not exactly the way that I wanted to give it to you, but it’s for you anyway. I thought I might lie in bed and watch you do the things women do.”

“For me? You made it for me?” It was lovely, small and perfect, with a mirror framed in walnut and a small stool in front of the knee hole.

“There’s no cushion. Women sometimes like to match the fabric-whatevers, pillows and bedspreads.” Carrying her still, Danya walked through another doorway. “But on with the tour—I thought you’d like this for an office where you can do your own graphic work on your photos, and in here, there’s no windows. I thought a dark room, maybe. You said that if you didn’t do digital work, you wanted to develop film, and not just send it to someone to process for you.”

“But—”

“You’re damned irritating, sweetheart,” Danya stated grimly and strode into another smaller room. “There are four more of these and a good-size playground out back. Stop squirming.”

“Put me down, you big ape.”

“Now those are words every man wants to hear, dear heart.” Danya dropped her lightly to her feet and glared at her.

She tested the emotional static between them. Caught by the small rocker and the crib, obviously of Stepanov design,
Sidney couldn’t move. This room was meant for a nursery, for children that Danya should have.

As if reading her mind and not wanting to define the furniture’s real purpose in his house, Danya stated roughly, “I’m keeping them here for storage.”

Chills ran up Sidney’s spine. She couldn’t imagine living in this house, raising children—She’d only taken care of herself and the world of things that needed to be done for an infant, a tiny little infant—

“You’re white and trembling, Sidney. Just because we’re ‘sharing quarters’ doesn’t mean you’re doomed into anything else.”

“You’re really mad, aren’t you?”

“There’s nothing like a woman in a romantic mood,” he stated curtly, his eyes blue-gray and fierce. The lines around his mouth were tight and angry. “All sweet and receptive and—”