Page 2 of Secret Husband
“What happened?”
“When?” He drew back.
“Sorry, my breath probably stinks.”
“No. I wanted to get a better look at you. Your hair is …” He murmured something in Russian and pushed a strand behind my ear. (My hair, not Elvis’s, which had slipped off, like it had a life of its own.)
“What does that mean?”
“A bird’s nest.”
The. Nerve. I thumped him, but his chest was so hard that my hand bounced off it.
“Seriously, though. I remember Elvis and Marilyn and not much else.” More flickers, more bursts of neon. I now pronounce you …
I shot upright. “Did we get married? Oh my fucking hell, tell me that didn’t happen!” I looked down. No ring, thankfully. I was still in my coral Carissa blazer and pants from Theory. Just one shoe, though, the left Birdie loafer—had I lost the right one? There was a metaphor in there somewhere. The other shoe dropped? Cinderella’s glass slipper? I couldn’t think straight.
In my sitting position, I was blessed with a better view of the man in my bed. Classic Oxford in a cool lilac, not a button askew; dark rinse jeans in the perfect, thigh-snugging fit; Chelsea boots, both present and accounted for; that appealing jaw scruff I wanted to rub with my cheek like a horny kitten; the sunlight-streaked hair. All natural, of course. Alexei Nazarov wasn’t vain enough to buy that color from a salon.
Adding insult to head-pounding injury, he had the unmitigated gall to look not a smidge bloodshot or hungover. The only discrepancy was the Marilyn wig sitting on the pillow between us, looking like it might spring to life at any moment and offer a breathy coo.
“Nazarov, tell me we didn’t do anything stupid.”
His eyes turned frosty—or frostier—for the briefest moment before his expression relaxed.
“Nothing happened. It was just a joke gathering of people who like Elvis and Marilyn.”
“But people got married, didn’t they?” The memory was fuzzy, but that part existed in a spotlight of focus. Several people had shouted, “I do,” and there was that one couple close to us who burst into tears and proceeded to maul each other while Nazarov and I laughed our heads off.
“Other people,” he confirmed. “We were merely spectators.”
The absurdity of it … Alexei Nazarov and Lauren Yates, the woman he had once told “nyet” in the clearest of terms.
Thank God.
I relaxed, the tension leaking out of me like a pricked balloon. He watched, his eyes sweeping my face with an intensity that shivered through me.
“I know I’m not at my best in the morning.”
“You look beautiful, Lauren.”
I turned away, my cheeks simmering. Compliments from Nazarov were weird. Of course there was a time when we had nothing but praise for each other. That feels so good. Amazing. Perfect, that’s perfect. And we weren’t talking about our hockey skills.
I was a kid then, foolishly crushing on the Russian hotshot who had every girl drooling. He had broken something inside me—young Lauren would say my heart or my innocence, but I recognized now that it was something even more precious: my trust. No way would I allow him inside the moat again.
But we had always enjoyed each other’s company, so it was nice to be on speaking terms once more. Maybe at the grand old age of thirty-five, I was finally becoming an adult.
“I need to shower.” What I really needed was space to corral my thoughts and figure out next steps.
He pushed my hair back again, a curiously intimate gesture. “Maybe we could get breakfast?”
That flutter in my chest was just the vodka making a lazy circuit through my bloodstream.
“Sounds good,” I said casually.
“I will go back to my room to shower and change.” He smiled, and there it was, even more beautiful for its rare appearance. “Order something for me?”
“Still a fan of waffles?”
