Page 33 of Sinful Promise

“I called Mom and Dad. I told them the twins came down with a vomiting bug and gave it to all of us. I figure that will be enough to keep them away for a few days.”

“Thanks.” I perch on the edge of my bed and pull on a pair of fluffy socks. “How are you so calm about this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Dimitri is just…outthere, and you have no idea what could happen to him.”

“When you’ve been married to a Koslov for a few years, you soon learn to cope with the anxiety.”

From the deep frown between her eyebrows, I know she must be freaking out.

“Don’t get me wrong, every time Dimitri comes home even ten minutes late, I instantly worry that something bad has happened to him. That he’s got caught in some brawl and is lying in a pool of blood somewhere.”

“Christ, Zara. Why don’t you ask him to stop?”

She turns to face me. “Because I know he would. And I can’t ask him to do that.”

“You’re hiswife.”

Zara shakes her head, her blonde hair swaying around her shoulders.

“I would never ask him to turn his back on his family for me. He made it perfectly clear who he was before I married him. I had the chance to walk away, and I chose to love him instead.”

“As I recall, you got marriedbeforeyou fell in love…”

Zara shoots me a glare and goes back to staring out of the window.

“You know what I mean.”

I pull my legs up underneath myself on the bed and watch my sister closely.

“When did you know?”

She glances over her shoulder. “Know what?”

“That you loved Dimitri?”

Zara’s lips twitch as she thinks for a moment, no doubt lost in memories of her early days with Dimitri, back when it was just the two of them.

“Honestly, I don’t think I can pinpoint an exact moment. Those feelings… They grew slowly at first, and then suddenly, one day, I looked at him and…”

“You just knew.”

“Exactly.”

Zara frowns as she looks at me, and I quickly look away, my cheeks burning up as I think of Danil.

What Zara just described isexactlywhat I’ve been feeling with him.

My feelings have been slowly growing, without me even really realizing, until one day I looked at Danil, and my heart was ready to explode.

Sometimes, I feel like I might die if I don’t have him. But then I think of telling him the truth about how I feel, and him not feeling the same.

The fear of potentially losing him forever has me pushing the feelings back down into the little box inside my heart.

I only hope for my sake that, with time, they’ll diminish completely.

Suddenly, the oven timer rings, making both of us jump.

---