Page 24 of One Last Shot

There is about half a second where I’m so captivated by his body—by the ridges and valleys of each muscle stretching and contracting as he drags his shirt up and over his head, by the sheer size of his powerful abdomen, chest, and shoulders—that I stop breathing. I forget who I’m looking at.

But then the shirt crests his head and I see his face and I remember: the loss, the devastation, the desolation. I feel it all like it was yesterday, and I remember how I promised myself I’d never let him, or any man, make me feel that way again. I am who I am, and how I am, because men like him exist.

“Can you hand me that towel,” he gestures opposite me. I tear my eyes from his body to see another dish towel hanging on the bar of his eight-burner Wolf range and oven combo. Grabbing it, I take opposite corners in each hand and spin the fabric around itself until I have a long rope of towel. He eyes me warily. “Don’t you dare.”

For so many reasons, I should heed those words and keep my distance. Instead, I take another step toward him.

“But it was always so funny when it was you chasing me around the big kitchen at Whitehall.” I can’t help but smile at the memory of us as kids, and how the Ivanov’s cook would always chase us out of the kitchen threatening to butcher us and serve us for dinner if we didn’t learn to behave ourselves. “Not as funny if you’re on the receiving end?” I walk toward him slowly, each step measured so I can retreat if needed.

“You realize I have a dish towel right here,” he says, nodding toward the towel he used to wipe Stella’s face and then the counter. It’s covered in cake batter, which makes this game twice as risky because I don’t have anything to change into if he decides to whack me with that dirty towel.He wouldn’t dare.

“You wouldn’t get me covered in cake batter before your sister-in-law shows up,” I remind him. “I’m counting on you to be a gentleman.”

“I am so many things,” he says, his voice low and steady, “but a gentleman is not one of them.”

He covers the space between us in two huge steps and a fraction of a second. For a man of his size, he moves with remarkable speed and before I know what’s happening, he’s directly in front of me, ripping the towel out of my hands.

“You always were terrible at this game,” he says, looking down at me. His voice has that growly quality that competition always brings out in him, but it’s the heat in his eyes as his body holds mine in place against the cabinets that startles me most. It seems impossible, but it’s like his pupils are molten—liquid steel churning over and over.

“Maybe I was never trying to win,” I say, my voice barely audible. It feels like the most vulnerable thing I’ve said in a long time. I watch him process this information—is it a revelation to him? Because losing at this game is not just getting whipped with the towel, but getting caught.

Is that what I wanted? To be caught by Sasha, not just temporarily in the game, but for good?

He tilts his head to the side, studying me, and I watch those molten steel orbs as they skim across my face—assessing, questioning, affirming. He opens his mouth to say something when there’s a bloodcurdling shriek somewhere in the apartment.

He’s through the door so fast I only see his back for a second before the door swings shut behind him. I follow, heading through the dining room, into the entryway, and then down the hallway where I hear his footsteps. The door to Stella’s room is open, and by the time I catch up, he stands in the doorway with a sobbing six-year-old plastered to his legs.

He looks over at me and mouthsspider, rolling his eyes so hard that it makes me laugh. I cover my mouth just in time, so the laugh is inaudible. I’d never want Stella to think I was laughing at her expense.

I approach slowly, ignoring the way Stella’s death grip on Sasha’s leg has his jeans riding low on his hips and the waistband of his briefs standing out against the deep grooves of his abdomen. I sink down so I’m sitting on my heels with my arms wrapped around my knees.

“Hey,” I say to her, and she looks at me with enormous tears spilling over her eyelids. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a spider in my bathroom.”

“I don’t like spiders either,” I tell her. “You know what I like to do when I find them in my apartment?”

Her eyes get even wider. “What?”

“I like to catch them in a cup. Then I slide a piece of paper under them so they are trapped. Sometimes I let them crawl around in there for a couple hours thinking about the error of their ways.” Above us, Sasha’s chest shakes with silent laughter. “But then, because I’m benevolent, I take them outside and let them go so they can eat all the bad bugs.”

“What’s benevolent mean?” she asks, perking up as the tears stop falling.

“It means I try to use my powers for good.”

“Even to help”—her lower lip is practically trembling at the word—“spiders?”

“Spiders don’t want anything to do with us. They’re just looking for bugs to eat. So if I put them outside, they can eat bugs, like mosquitos, that might bite me and then they’re actually working forme, right?”

“Do you want to catch the spider on the wall by my shower?” she asks.

“Sure thing,” I tell her. “You know, girls need to know how to catch bugs.”

“Why?” The word is part curiosity, part revulsion.

“Well, what if when you’re older there’s a spider in your room and there isn’t someone else around to catch it for you? It’s important to know how to do these things for ourselves.”

Her face manages to perk up a bit while still looking skeptical. I slide my eyes up to Aleksandr, who looks at me with that same mask he wore when I first entered his kitchen. Gone are the eyes that were burning as they slid across my face.

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