Stunned, blinking away tears, Alicia swallowed the ache in her throat. “I love you, too. Are you asking me to stay?”
Nikolai shook his head, looking surprised. “Huh? No. Of course not.”
“But . . .” Confused, she tried to step out of his embrace, but he held her still.
“You should go. You need to go,” he told her. “You deserve this, Alicia. Go out there. See the world. Just . . . if you decide you want to . . . come back to me.”
Come back to me.
It was better than if he’d asked her to stay. She smiled, sniffing back tears, and kissed him again. People passing stared. She didn’t care. Let them look. Let them see what it was like to be loved.
“I’m only going for four weeks,” she said. “Then I’ll be back.”
“You might decide you like traveling so much you’ll want to leave again,” Nikolai told her, his expression serious even though the corners of his mouth quirked the tiniest bit. “That’s how it works, sometimes.”
Alicia laughed, giddy with this, the two of them. “You could decide you want to come with me.”
“Stranger things have happened,” he said and kissed her again.
They stayed that way for a few seconds before she became mindful of the time and pushed away enough to look into his face. “Maybe I shouldn’t go . . . I mean . . .”
“You’re going. This is what you want, and I want it for you. You should take this trip. You’ll always be sorry if you don’t. And I’ll be right here waiting for you,” Nikolai told her.
“Right here? Right at the airport? The entire time?”
He laughed. “I’ll be at home, dealing with my mother and Ilya, but I’ll be there. I promise.”
She believed him; that was the crazy thing. All these years and all the things they’d gone through together, yet she knew with every part of her that he was telling the truth.
“I’m nervous. And scared.”
“You got this,” he told her. “I never knew a woman who could make things happen the way you can, when you want them. You’re going to have a great time. But while you’re gone, don’t forget something.”
She studied him for a second. “What’s that?”
“I’m going to miss you,” Niko replied. “Every single day.”
One more kiss, and she stepped away from him, but not apart. There was a difference, and she could feel it. She would go on this adventure, and she would come home, and they’d figure out what that meant when she did—but whatever it was, they were going to discover it together, with whatever journeys lay ahead for both of them.
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF
ALL THE SECRETS WE KEEP
Editor’s Note: This is an early excerpt and may not reflect the finished book.
CHAPTER ONE
Theresa Malone had made a lot of mistakes in her life, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of making a few more. One of them was sitting across from her right now with a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him and a smirk that looked like every kind of bad idea. She’d invited Ilya Stern out tonight, so she had nobody but herself to blame. She ought to have known he’d be no different with her than he was with anyone else. Charming and difficult.
“You are bound and determined to make my life miserable, aren’t you?” She frowned. “C’mon, Ilya. Why? What good is any of this going to do? You’re delaying the inevitable.”
“It’s not at all inevitable, Theresa. And it’ll make me feel better.” He sipped from the glass with a grimace and set it down before leaning back in the chair to link his fingers behind his head. His grin was hard and didn’t soften his expression at all.
Theresa drew in a slow, calming breath. “They’re not going to offer you more money or any kind of guarantees beyond what they already have. You’re coming across as greedy.”
“Oh,” Ilya said with a purposeful leer, “I’m very greedy.”
Theresa pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. This wasn’t funny, and though it was easy to see exactly how her former stepbrother had earned his reputation for being an alluring rogue, she wasn’t going to succumb. He could treat her the same way he treated every other woman in his life, but that didn’t mean she was like any of them.
She leaned forward. “You’re going to screw yourself over. That’s all that’s going to happen. They’re going to build that hotel and those condos up all around you and not put one cent toward developing the dive shop or diving area, and in fact, they will do their very best to make sure that you can’t do anything, either. Your business,” she said, “is going to wither and die and leave you with nothing.”
Ilya’s brows rose, and that tilting smile vanished. “Damn, that’s harsh. Why you gotta be so cold, Theresa? What do you have wrapped up in all of this, anyway?”
That was a good question. She had put her reputation on the line to get this deal together, gambling on all the pieces falling into place just right so that maybe she could come up for air instead of drowning in years of debt. She’d first convinced her former boyfriend Wayne Diamond to sign off on the offer to buy the dive shop and quarry Ilya and his ex-wife, Alicia, had owned together by telling Wayne the owners were eager to sell. Then, offer in hand, she’d encouraged Alicia to sell her 60 percent. Ilya was the only one she hadn’t been able to convince, and she was running out of both ideas and time.
“I mean, why do you care,” Ilya asked when she didn’t answer, “if my business crashes and burns or I end up in the hole, or what? What’s it to you, really?”
“Why wouldn’t I care? It’s not like we’re total strangers. You act like I should just sit back and watch you screw yourself out of what could be something really good for you.” The words slipped out of her, almost so low she couldn’t be sure he’d be able to hear her over the ambient noise in the bar, even with her leaning closer.
Ilya frowned and leaned across the table. “You don’t owe me anything, you know. If anything, my family’s the one that owes you. My mother’s the one who kicked out you and your dad without more than a few hours’ notice, then erased you from our lives like you’d never been a part of them.”
She couldn’t say anything about that; it was true, even if Ilya didn’t quite understand the entirety of what had happened back then. The truth was, Theresa didn’t, either. She’d given up trying a long time ago, even if some small part of her had always remained tied to the Sterns and that time when she’d been part of their family.
“Of course,” he said with another of those grins that had laid waste to women for years, “considering what a pain in the ass my mother is, maybe you guys got lucky.”
Lucky was far from what Theresa would’ve considered herself, but she shrugged and dipped her chin in response. They shared a look, longer than necessary. His gaze held hers, dropping for a second or so to her mouth, before his lips thinned and he looked away. Ilya sat back, raising his glass and draining it before setting it down even harder on the table.
“You’re buying, right?” He waved over the waitress for another. “One for me. Not for her. She doesn’t drink. Right?”