Page 16 of Wyatt

She got up to check on the chai. The silence pressed into her back.

“So…you think he came here to find you?”

She drew in a breath. “I don’t know.”

“But he wanted you to leave with him. It sounds like he thinks you fit into his life. You might consider taking him at his word.”

“He doesn’t…understand. And if he did, he wouldn’t want me.”

Roman got up and turned the chair around. “A man doesn’t go to another country and risk his life to rescue the woman he doesn’t want. Trust me, I know this.”

She stiffened. “I can’t leave Russia, Roman.”

He frowned. “You’re an American, right?”

“Yes. But—”

“You’d be safer in America is my guess.”

Sarai had come back to the door and now folded her arms, leaning against the doorframe. “We love having you here, but Roman is right—”

“I can’t leave Russia!”

Sarai recoiled, frowned, and Coco closed her eyes, wincing. “Sorry.”

“What’s going on?” Roman said quietly. Carefully.

She drew in a breath. Glanced at the chai.

“Sit down, both of you,” Sarai said and pulled out three cups from the cupboard.

Roman sank down into his chair.

Fine. Coco also sat down. Took a breath. “I can’t leave because I…I have a child.”

Nothing. Sarai continued to pour chai into the cups. Roman’s mouth stayed a grim line, his hand flat on the table.

“He’s Wyatt’s.”

Roman’s eyebrow raised. “No wonder he wants you to leave—”

“He doesn’t know.”

Sarai set down the teacup in front of her. Pushed a sugar bowl and a spoon her direction. Then she retrieved cream from the fridge.

“I’ve tried to tell him, three times now. When I first got pregnant, then a year later, when I went back to Montana for a visit, then a couple years ago in Moscow and…yeah, I was trying to find the courage to tell him today. But…”

She dropped in a sugar cube, played chase with it around her cup with her spoon. “How do you say that, really?” She looked up, and her gaze met Sarai’s eyes. Then Roman’s.

“Hey, Wyatt. Great game. Your son would have loved to see it. Oh, who?” She returned her gaze to her cup. “In my head, I have this perfect time to tell him, and it was five years ago when I was at his college hockey game. I went with his sister, Ruby Jane—the one who I was helping escape Russia, by the way—with the intention of telling him. But while we were visiting, his father had a heart attack and…”

She took a sip of the tea. Her stomach clenched, and she hadn’t realized she was so hungry.

Roman and Sarai hadn’t moved.

“It was crazy—the fact that I even got pregnant. We’d only slept together once and…well, I don’t know what I was thinking…”

“There’s usually not a lot of thinking going on.” Roman looked at Sarai and winked.

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