“No guts, no glory, kid.” The car had warmed up and I plowed it through the drifting snow. Not only would Lev be glad to see me, but he would feed us breakfast as well. It had been just over a week since I’d tasted home-cooked food, but it felt like years. I was looking forward to eating off china instead of from a paper bag.
By the time we swept through the wrought-iron gates that guarded Uncle Lev’s house, we were fairly presentable courtesy of the now-familiar gas-station-bathroom sponge bath. Michael was in jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, the dressiest thing we’d managed to pick up for him along the way. I’d put on a black shirt and a pair of gray slacks that were miraculously unwrinkled from a week in a duffel bag. We weren’t exactly suave by any means, but neither did we look like we were living out of our car with nothing but a ferret and a half-empty jar of peanut butter.
I didn’t recognize the guy at the guard shack, and he fixed me with a suspicious glower until he received the all clear from the house. I was unimpressed. From the size of his gun, he had something to prove; at least Michael would have said so.
Parking the car on the rosy brick drive that circled before the front of the house, I climbed out into the lazy drizzle of snow. I shoved my chilled hands into my jacket pockets and started around the car. Michael joined me and stood looking up at the house with a slightly awed expression. It was something to see; there was no doubt about that. Three stories high with a multitude of leaded glass windows and masses of winter-brown ivy, it could’ve been shipped stone by stone from jolly old England. There were even miniature gargoyles on the roof that spouted water nonstop during the rainy season. It was a testament to the overblown, and Uncle Lev through and through.
As we stood at the door, I gave Michael a last once-over. “You ready? Comfortable with the story?”
He didn’t appear nervous, but considering the past ten years of his life, this was definitely small stuff and not to be sweated. “Nephew of the girlfriend you don’t have. Fairly simple. And if I forget, I’ve written it on my hand.”
I almost looked at the palm he overturned, but caught myself at the last minute. “To think I took a bullet for you,” I snorted as I pressed the doorbell. “And this is the thanks I get. Lip from a snot-nosed kid.”
Looking over at me, he haughtily pushed up the glasses with one meticulous finger. “The privilege is all yours.”
I swallowed the automatic groan that came to my lips as the door was thrown open by Uncle Lev himself. “Stefan, krestnik. My absent godson come home to roost,” he crowed as he pounced on me. Well, pounced can be a relative term when it’s applied to a man just shy of three hundred pounds. Pudgy hands seized me and patted me vigorously on the back before giving my cheeks the same treatment. “You’ve cut your hair. Finally, and after all the times Anatoly nagged at you.” He beamed at me and ran vain hands over his own hair. Slicked back and shockingly black for a man his age, it must have left a nice charcoal imprint every night on his pillowcase.
“Yeah. It just got to be too much trouble.” I reached out to sling an arm around Michael’s shoulders. “Uncle Lev, this is Michael. He’s my girlfriend’s nephew. I’m running him up to see New York for a few days. She insisted. Male bonding and all that.”
Black eyes glittering with good cheer, Lev took Michael’s hand and pumped it. “Nice to meet you, young man. Come in. Come in. You delicate sunbirds can’t handle true weather.”
In the cavernous foyer, I shook the snow out of my hair and took in the vision that was Lev Novikov. It was barely eight o’clock; yet he was already dressed in a snowy expanse of shirt with suspenders of deep blues and purples. His tie matched perfectly and the creases in his pants were knife sharp; at least they were until they reached the swell of his stomach. Both chins were damply clean and gleaming with aftershave. He was a big man, but Lev had made his way through four wives, all of whom had adored the overgrown cherub up to and even after the divorce.
“You’re looking good, Uncle,” I said, grinning. “Working on wife number five yet?”
He returned my grin with a sly one of his own. “I’ve a few damskee ygrodnik in mind, angels all.” Clapping his hands, he went on briskly. “Now, you’re just in time for breakfast, and I’ll hear no arguing on the matter.”
Behind him an unassuming figure stepped forward to take our jackets. Dressed in dark gray, he wasn’t British and his name was Larson, not Jeeves, but he fulfilled Lev’s desire for a butler all the same. He’d worked there nearly twenty years and had seen things that guaranteed him a paycheck miles above that of any other domestic servant.