“Lean your head forward,” he instructed. But the command turned out to be just a formality, because his hand came around the back of her head, pulling it forward with brisk efficiency until her chin was touching her chest. Then he placed the cloth on the back of her neck.
Immediately the nausea began to abate, releasing it’s fevered grip on her as the heaving sensation in her stomach faded away.
“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to believe his simple solution was actually working.
“Take more deep breaths now,” he answered.
She did as he said and caught his scent on the inhale. It was a good one. Plain, no-frills soap and something else… ice. That was it. He smelled just like the stuff he skated on… frosty. Unlike his lawyer, who’d smelled like he’d poured a whole bottle of Drakkar Noir on before coming over to intimidate her into signing a bullshit custody agreement.
As if reading her mind, Nikolai said, “Kevin is gone. I sent him away. This discussion will be as you said. Between you and me from now on.”
“Oh, was that a discussion?” she asked, fighting her weak stomach to achieve a withering tone. “Because it felt like you and your lawyer were trying to explain to me why I’m not fit to be anything but an incubator for this baby.”
She wanted to remain cold and removed like him, but she couldn’t help it. Her eyes clashed with his, indignant and hurt.
He returned her angry look with a cool one of his own as he removed the cloth from behind her neck.
“Kevin’s statements weren’t personal,” he said, rewetting the cloth at the bathroom’s golden bowl sink.
“Really? Because they felt awfully damn personal,” Sam answered, her voice thin and weak.
Nikolai made a scoffing sound. “You are not business person or hockey player. You do not know difference between game and personal.”
He came back over to her and once again arranged the cloth behind her neck, and dammit, the fresh rush of cold felt so glorious, a wave of sincere gratitude went through her. An emotion completely incongruous with her hot anger.
“Kevin is, how you say—proof of concept. I needed you to know I could have full custody of baby, and you could not stop me.”
And that statement solved her pesky gratitude problem. “Congratulations,” she said. “You made your point.”
If he was interested in gloating, it wasn’t evident in the neutral set of his face. “But it does not have to go this way, there is another way it could go.
She kept her mouth closed and waited, wanting to hear what he would say next more than she wanted to shoot off another angry retort.
“You can marry me,” he said.
And Sam blinked, because surely she had just heard him wrong. “Excuse me?”
“If you marry me, we will not need custody agreement. I will not need pay Kevin to destroy your reputation. I will not need—”
She held up her hand to stop his tide of potential dire predictions. “Wait, can we go back to the part where you want to marry me, because… why exactly?”
He averted his eyes. “I do not want my child to be in home where its parents aren’t married. I grew up this way. My child will not.”
Sam chewed over this one tiny nugget of information he had given her about his past, before saying, “You know, there are ways to raise a child successfully in two separate homes. In fact, sometimes it’s better that way for everybody involved.”
She thought of her own upbringing in a home that technically had two parents and shivered. Growing up, she would have given anything to have her mother leave her stepfather and raise her daughter by herself.
“We don’t have to get married to craft some kind of agreement we can both be happy with,” she told Nikolai.
But Nikolai shook his head. “Our child must have both parents. You should marry me, so we don’t fight over baby in court. It would be, how you say, marriage of convenience. Best thing for all of us. What I want. What Pavel want. He will not care about new baby, because he will have you as his mother. My lawyer tells me I must still do legal adoption of my nephew. If you marry me, we can adopt him. Together.”
Together. Her heart soared at the thought of becoming Pavel’s mother, legally and with rights accorded. However, it didn’t escape her that Nikolai seemed to be having trouble meeting her eyes as he offered to make her dreams of being a real mother to Pavel come true.
Sam found herself once again wondering about his childhood in Russia. What had happened that had turned him into the man bent down in front of her, the muscles in his neck straining as he offered her Pavel in exchange for marriage?
“What if I say no?” she asked him.
This question made his cold eyes finally meet hers. “Don’t say no,” he answered.
A bolt of fear shot through her, one he must have seen on her face, because he said, “You think I am crazy. You are scared of me now.”
“I’m…” She stopped and took careful survey of her emotions. “I don’t know how to feel. I don’t like being threatened. And I don’t like being blackmailed.”
He shook his head. “I am sorry but this is way it must be.”
It occurred to Sam then that she wasn’t going to win this argument with him. She could talk to him until she was blue in the face about split custody and mindful parenting, but it wouldn’t do any good.
For whatever reason, Nikolai was determined to be a part of this baby’s life, even if it meant marrying someone he didn’t love. And maybe…
She couldn’t believe this thought was occurring to her even as it did, but maybe he had a point. It wasn’t like her mother’s relationship had suffered from lack of love—if anything, what she’d seen of marriages over the years had involved too much love. Sick obsessions disguised as romantic love.
She thought of all the men who had shown up at the shelter. Not the violent ones, but the ones who stood outside crying, pleading for their girlfriends to come out. Apologizing over and over and promising to never do it again. The dirty truth was those were the men most likely to convince their wives to come back to them. The ones who couched their invitations to return for more beatings and more emotional abuse in proclamations of love.
So she had to give Nikolai credit. At least he’d been straight-forward about his intentions in marrying her.
“So you don’t think I’m an unfit mother?” she asked him, just to be sure.
“No,” he answered instantly. “I did not tell Kevin to say those things to you. I have seen you with Pavel and I know you will be very good mother. This is why I want to marry you.”