Page 3 of Conquer
“Good job! It’s not so bad, is it?” I praise as she paddles with all her might to stay afloat.
Her tiny lips twitch. Fighting a smile? A frown? In the end, an impishly self-satisfied grin shapes her mouth for just a second. I let her practice for a few more laps before bringing her to the end of the pool. The second she can touch down with her own feet, she lets me go, but her mouth is stretched wide. Definitely a smile this time.
“You’ll teach me more?” she asks, barely managing to disguise her eagerness. “So, I can swim by myself?”
I nod and then playfully flick my wrist splashing her. “You’ve got it—”
“What on earth is going on here?”
We whip around to find Vadim standing at the opposite end of the pool, his arms crossed, the picture of playful discipline. I feel my toes curl, and my heart drop in the same conflicting motion. One might never guess that, seconds ago, he had to deal with a literal demon from his past. Staying in the pool feels preferable to confronting whatever reality might await inside the house.
His disarming smirk gives me no clue, only unnerving me further. “Whose idea was this?”
“She did it!” Magda scuttles from the water, waddling to his side as her sodden clothing clings to her tiny frame. Crossing her arms, she copies his posture, eyeing me disapprovingly. “I told her not to.”
“And you were right,” Vadim agrees, his tone ringing with authority. “Ena will kill me if you two track water throughout the house.” His smile lessens the impact of that statement, however. Gone is the darkness I feel I should see in his gaze, and my unease nibbles deeper. Is Irina still here, lying in wait to meet her daughter?
Have they reconciled about her custody, already?
Together?
I try my damn hardest to make eye contact with Vadim as I swim to his corner, but his attention is fixated firmly on his daughter.
“What am I going to do with you?” He raises his hand to her, only to falter partway. Then something in his gaze hardens with resolve, and he tentatively ruffles one of her damp braids. Remarkably, she doesn’t cringe from him—a fact that makes his dark eyes soften with such gentleness I bite back a groan. “You’re soaked,” he tells her, some real concern slipping into his teasing murmur. “Let’s hope you don’t catch a cold,oui?”
“Yeah,” Magda says, wrinkling her button nose.
A teensy bit of guilt dampens my enthusiasm as I climb from the pool and rise to my feet. “Maybe you should grab us some towels? That way we won’t make too much of a mess—”
“But I’m little,” Magda says, shifting toward Vadim conspiratorially. She tugs on his pant leg like a queen commanding a servant. “You can pick me up, and I won’t drip likeshewill.”
The little minx. She’s so intent on her apparent victory that she doesn’t seem to notice she gave him permission to touch her. Permission he accepts with a strained look of awe so potent my heart aches.
“Right you are.” He shrugs off his sweatshirt and drapes it over her before lifting her gingerly into his arms. She eyes me smugly from her new height, and I can’t resist seizing a chunk of her hair as I come up beside them, giving it a tug.
“Tattletale.”
She swats me off, and I finally meet Vadim’s gaze from over her head. Only for him to turn away. “Let’s head inside,” he says.
I follow them into the house without complaint, and I’m relieved—yet unnerved—to find the lower level seemingly empty. Even Ena isn’t lurking in view. Neither is a breathtaking blond with more of a claim to this budding family than I have.
But as we cross the foyer, Magda stiffens, clinging to Vadim to the point that he has to adjust her grip around his neck to keep her from accidentally choking him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his expression drawn with concern.
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes worriedly scan the corners of the foyer, her nostrils flaring. Out of fear of Maxim?
“No one’s here, sweetheart,” I say, stroking through her damp hair. As the words leave my mouth, however, I realize that I’m not even sure of that fact.
“That’s right,” Vadim insists, his tone hard. “No one.”
He forges onward upstairs and pauses only to grab a towel for me from a hall closet before carrying Magda straight into her room. As he ushers her into the bathtub, it’s as if his entire demeanor changes without him seeming to realize it. His voice deepens, soothing but stern as he urges her to wait while he runs the water until it’s warm enough.
While I slip into her closet and procure a nightgown, he scours her bedroom for anything out of place and then turns back her blankets. By the time she emerges from the bath, bundled in a robe, he descends on her with an army of towels and patiently dries every last curl.
I’m completely enthralled. Like a shameless voyeur, I find myself leaning against the doorway to the closet, as he grabs her brush and diligently tackles her hair, braiding it with a skill that leaves me both awed and seething with jealousy. To think that only a few days ago, he’d been worried about failing her. As it turns out, he’s damn good at this dad thing.
When Magda huddles beneath her blankets, freshly dressed and pampered, he starts to pull away.
