The thought of leaving Quarrytown had always seemed like a no-brainer for Alicia. College. A job. Someday a family. Visits home at Christmas and Thanksgiving, the way her parents did with their parents. She hadn’t thought much about what, exactly, she wanted to do or where she wanted to go, but the world was a big place. Plenty of choices and plenty of time to make them.
For now, she was content to sit with her butt going numb on a splintery old picnic table in the Sterns’ backyard, looking up at the sky, waiting to see something that only came along once in a lifetime.
Theresa handed Alicia the pen—a heavy, fancy Parker fountain pen that seemed perfectly made for signing papers of such importance. Alicia carefully wrote her name and the date in all the places she was supposed to. She put the pen on the table gently, so it wouldn’t roll into a splash of coffee or a dusting of crumbs.
“Congratulations,” Theresa said with a smile. She pushed a thin envelope across the table. The check.
“It’s a lot of money,” Alicia said with a peek at the contents. “It’s going to let me do a lot of things.”
Theresa nodded. “Money is freedom, that’s for sure.”
Alicia grinned. She did feel free. “Coffee’s on me, okay?”
“Oh, you bet it is.” Theresa also smiled and leaned back in her chair. “I’ll get the final paperwork over to you as soon as possible.”
“I’ll cash this check as soon as possible—you better believe it.” Alicia tucked the envelope into her bag, a little giddy at all the zeroes on the check.
Theresa laughed. “I’m sure. So . . . if you don’t mind my asking, what are you planning to do with it?”
“I haven’t decided just yet. Travel. I know that. See things.” Alicia stretched. “Do things. Get out of here. That’s all I know.”
“Sounds fantastic. Good luck.” Theresa looked sad for a moment.
Alicia noticed. “You okay?”
“Oh. Yeah. Just wish I could’ve sealed the entire deal.” Theresa bit her lower lip for a second or so. “Sixty percent is better than nothing, though.”
“Ilya is a pain in the ass,” Alicia said flatly. “I’m sorry. It’s not going to make it easy for you, having to deal with him. My extra twenty percent might end up being more of a hassle than Diamond Development planned for.”
“They can build around the dive shop and still develop the property—no worries there.” Theresa shook her head and lifted her coffee mug. “Hey, it’s not champagne, but I still think we should toast. To freedom!”
“To freedom,” Alicia agreed, clinking her mug against Theresa’s. “Let it begin now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
This was a bullshit business. Selling the quarry to that real estate development company so they could build that hotel and water park and take over everything he and Alicia had built over the past ten years and turn it into something bland and neutral.
“And profitable,” Alicia said when Ilya let this last bit of his rant out. She offered him coffee, but he waved it away so he could pace in her kitchen.
He flung out a hand. “We’ve done all right. Look at what we started with.”
“A cheap piece of property tainted by a high-profile tragedy that made it almost impossible to sell, and we still paid too much for it,” Alicia said quietly. “Ilya, sit down or stand in one place, but stop pacing. You’re driving me nuts.”
He pivoted on his heel. “Fine. You want me to sit here at your kitchen table and talk to you about this like we’re, what . . . having tea and biscuits?”
“Like we’re partners,” she snapped, then softened. “Like we’re friends, okay?”
He gripped the back of one of her chairs until his knuckles turned white and the wood creaked in protest. “Right. Partners. That would mean agreeing on things, wouldn’t it? Giving me a say on how things should happen?”
“We were married for a long time, and I always thought that meant that I’d get a say in how things would happen, but it didn’t. I tried to talk to you about it. I told you what I wanted. You refused. You wouldn’t listen.” Alicia clinked her spoon deliberately against the side of her mug.
Ilya’s lip curled at that old accusation, and he fixed her with a look. “Seems to me that at the end, you were the only one who got any say in how it all went down.”
“Here we go again,” she muttered, and got up to pour herself another mug of coffee. “Do you want me to call for the wa-a-a-a-ambulance? Are you going to complain again how I never really gave you a chance to . . . what, be the man I wanted you to be? That I walked out on you without any warning? That if only I’d told you what it was that I wanted, you’d have changed? Is that the conversation we’re going to have, again? It’s old news.”
“Old news for you, because you’re the only one who ever got to say a word about it.” His fingers curled again on the back of the chair.
Angry, not so much at Alicia as he was at Niko and Galina—hell, at Theresa and the company she worked for that was trying to come in and take away everything he’d worked so hard to build, no matter if Alicia wanted to give him any credit for taking any part of it.
Alicia rolled her eyes. “Oh, we talked about it. Lots of times. You never listened.”
“I listened to you!”
“Then you didn’t do a very good job of hearing me,” she told him.
Ilya shrugged, then shook his head. “You’re just so hard to understand, Allie. You don’t make yourself clear.”
He waited for her to make that face, the one that told him she was getting ready to explode. They’d battle it out, go round and round, but he knew in the end he’d give in to her just to keep the fight from turning endless. Allie always had to be right, the way his mother always had to have her way. He’d set his life around giving in to women who nevertheless always found him to be a disappointment.
Now, although her lips firmed into a grim line and her eyes narrowed, Allie kept her voice smooth and calm as the quarry’s water on a chilly spring day. She stirred cream and sugar into her mug and sipped while she eyed him over the rim. When he gave her a gesture, wordlessly telling her he expected an answer, she shrugged.
“Not going to argue with you about this,” she said simply. Solidly.
Ilya frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not arguing with you about our marriage or anything else. That’s it. If you want to talk about your mother, I can listen and offer some advice, but I’m not going to fight with you about her, either. And if you want to talk like adults about this offer Theresa brought us, well, I’m ready for that.”
“Theresa.” Ilya shook his head, thinking of the fourteen-year-old girl in braces and ponytail who’d become the sort of woman he knew he would never be able to impress. “I knew she didn’t just come back to offer her condolences. She’s as sneaky as her creep of a dad.”
Allie looked up at that, tilting her head to stare at him. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“Barry. Her dad. He was a creep back then when he started coming around my mom. I always thought so, but she didn’t want to hear it, and Niko was always looking off to his own adventures. Didn’t give a damn about anything beyond himself.” Ilya went to the coffeemaker to help himself. “Don’t supposed you have any Baileys to splash in this?”