“Why do you pack?” he asked.
No answer, and the toiletries joined the dress inside her suitcase. She went over to the couch and came back to the bed with her wedged heels from the night before. Still not answering him. Still not looking at him.
But this time he went over to the bed, closing the suitcase flap before she could put in the shoes. “Talk to me, zhena. What is this?”
She stopped, her heels in mid-air, her lips pressed into a thin line that made her look older than she was. Older and more weary.
She fixed her eyes on the view beyond the balcony’s French windows as she said, “I miss Pavel and Back Up. I’ve never been away from them this long. I’d like to go home now.”
She said this in a dull monotone, as if they’d stayed too long at a party. Nikolai shook his head, not understanding her. Or any of this for that matter.
“We have one more day,” he reminded her. “Plan is for us to go to Poros.” He pointed out the picture window. “An island across sea. We will rent scooters, eat at café, go to beach, and watch sunset from famous clock tower.”
He didn’t know where this new Sam had come from. Brusque and dismissive, as if last night had not happened. As if what had happened between them this morning hadn’t happened either. But he wanted the woman he’d woken up with. His Sam. His zhena.
He came around the bed, desperate to make her understand what he had planned for them.
“On Sunday morning, we will wake up early. I will keep my promise to eat you for breakfast, we will come back to Athens after that, and then we will fly home. Please, Sam, let us eat breakfast. Go to Poros.”
She glanced at him, her eyes conflicted.
But when he tried to take her hands in his, she snatched them back, taking a stiff step away from him as if he were a poison she didn’t want to touch.
“I’m sorry, but you asked for one day and now it’s been two,” she informed him in that same dull monotone, her lilt completely missing. “I wasn’t planning on making it three, so if your cousin’s jet isn’t available, I can make my own way to the airport and you can go to Poros. But I’m going home.”
He stared at her. Stared at her and willed her to look at him, to give him some clue as to why she’d suddenly turned on him like this. After all they’d shared, why was she acting so coldly toward him, as coldly as he used to act toward women he cared nothing about? Why was she now acting the exact opposite of a real wife?
His long, silent stare seemed to push her over the edge of her tolerance.
She cut around him and went over to the phone on the nightstand. “Fine, I’ll just ask the concierge to call me a car or something—”
She gasped when his hands landed on her shoulders, spinning her around so her back was to the wall.
“You are pregnant,” he said to her, placing a hand on the wall on either side of her head so she was trapped. “With my child.”
She gripped the receiver, which she’d hung on to, tight in her hand. “Let. Me. Make. My. Call,” she commanded. Not backing down. Not showing an ounce of fear beyond that initial gasp.
Myriad possibilities for keeping her here, for making her stay long enough for him to recast the spell that had finally brought them together the night before, ran through his head. And if that didn’t work, there were always threats. Threats that would make her wish she had never dared to cross him. He could have Marco transferred again, refuse to let her adopt Pavel. He could…
…stop this, he thought, a sad realization sweeping through him. Because none of those threats would make her want to be his real wife. They would only prove to her that he was the same as his father.
He stepped back and let her out of the trap he’d set up with his arms. “I will not let you make own way home. Of course I will make sure you return safely. I will make arrangements. Can you wait small time for me to take shower?”
Her nose flared with defiance, like she wanted to argue further with him, but in the end she nodded. “Okay,” she said.
And that was the last thing she said to him before they left Greece.
NIKOLAI TRIED TO KEEP HIMSELF from staring at his wife while they ate lunch on the plane ride home, but found he couldn’t. She looked like a portrait in the seat across from his, her eyes on the window to the left of them, so far away they didn’t seem to track the white clouds below, or notice that Dave, the flight attendant, had set down a plate of food in front of her.
He should have been enraged, and he was a bit. The way she’d cut off the trip with such a weak excuse—that had been salt on the old wounds he’d cut open last night. For her. He’d taken a chance and finally opened up to someone, a woman of all people. And for a moment, he’d felt truly rewarded when she’d come to him, called him muzehnek—only to knock him from her sky the next morning, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.
He gripped his silverware tight, thinking about her demand to come home this morning. He wanted to punish her for what she’d done. For cutting the trip short. For not eating enough breakfast then or enough lunch now.
But mostly he wanted to punish her for making him feel like this.
Watching Sam look out the window made his entire chest ache. Something between them had died this morning, he realized, and he had no idea why.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” Dave asked, his return breaking through the heavy cloud that had settled over the silent table.
The attendant blinked with surprise when he saw Sam’s untouched plate of flat iron steak, smashed potatoes, and kale. “Was the meal not to your liking?” he asked.
Sam, who always seemed to have a kind smile for everyone who wasn’t him, rushed to reassure the distressed attendant. “No, I’m sure it’s fantastic. I just had a lot to eat back at the hotel.”
A total lie. She’d only nibbled on her breakfast back in the hotel room. He’d watched her not eat enough as he made the arrangements for them to come home early, and now Nikolai had to resist the urge to command her to finish her meal.
Instead, he handed his own empty tray to Dave and said, “Leave her tray on table.”
Dave nodded, picked up Nikolai’s tray only, said something about being in his small attendant cabin toward the front of the plane if needed, and then he was gone. Leaving Nikolai alone in the large main cabin with his wife…
Whose eyes went straight back to the window as if they had a rubber band attached.
A fresh torrent of rage surged through him. And for a moment, he regretted everything about going along with this silly plan to fix things with her, for ever trying to convince her to look at him differently.