He nodded slowly. “Okay. Sure. But you know I wouldn’t mind.”
She looked him in the eye, both of them full of words that neither of them seemed willing to say. “I’m going to be late. We have a delivery scheduled. I need to be there for it.”
“Sure. Right. Yeah,” he said and backed away. “I’ll see you there in half an hour.”
That meant easily an hour or longer, but Alicia didn’t say so. It would start a fight and not change anything, in the end. Ilya would still be there late, and she would still be irritated, and around and around they’d go. Instead, she smiled and nodded and showed him to the front door. She closed it after him and leaned against it, eyes closed, breathing in and breathing out. Most of the time it was so easy not to love him anymore, she thought as she shook it all off, got her chin up. Most of the time it was so easy, but sometimes, it was so, so damned hard.
CHAPTER TWO
Ilya didn’t have to erase the blonde’s number from his phone, because he hadn’t even typed it in when she gave it to him. He’d meant for her to be as easily forgotten as all the women had been in the past few years. This one, though, had left her scarf on the dining-room table. He hadn’t even remembered her wearing a scarf.
Now he lifted it to his face, breathing in the scent of her perfume, to see if that would help him remember her name. Amber. Her name was Amber. Well, he could put the scarf in his “Lost and Found” box, and if they ever hooked up again, she could sift through the discarded lingerie, sunglasses, and lipsticks. One day he was going to get rid of all that junk, those mementos of his wild nights out, but for now he tossed the scarf on top of everything else and slid the cardboard file box back into its spot on the shelf in the front closet above the winter coats.
Stripping out of his boxers on the way to the shower and kicking them in the general direction of the pile of dirty laundry near the basket, he thought about running out onto the front lawn totally naked for a few minutes just to get Dina Guttridge’s motor running. If she had a hissy fit about him doing a few downward dogs in his boxers, she sure as hell wouldn’t like him doing it in the nude—but ultimately, it wasn’t worth the hassle. Sooner or later, he figured she was going to quit spying on him and get over the fact that once a few years ago they’d had a couple of glasses of wine while her husband was away. Not much had happened. A little making out, a little finger banging. As far as Ilya was concerned, it was only cheating if someone came. It had been a mistake, though, and not because she was a married woman living next door to his ex-wife, with whom he still owned a business and worked with every day. Nope, he should never have fooled around with Dina, because she was flat-out crazy for the D, and she couldn’t seem to get it through her head that Ilya was not interested in being anyone’s side piece—at least not more than once.
He wasn’t interested in being anyone’s front or back piece, either. Him and relationships? No, thanks. He’d done that already, all serious and committed and monogamous, and look what had happened. The sour sting of that experience still lingered. Probably always would. And why? Because he’d done his best to love Allie and be good to her, and in the end all he’d done was make a mess of things. That was all he was good for: screwing up.
He couldn’t blame her for it. Their relationship had been doomed from the start. Tumultuous and emotional and stupid. It had ended as abruptly as it had begun; he’d come home one day to an empty house and a note telling him she’d moved back across the street into the house her parents had left behind when they moved to Arizona. There’d been no counseling, no “working it out.” Ten years and it was over, yet they were still a part of each other’s lives and would likely always be. They were family.
They’d once filled an empty space within each other, one that nobody else could ever understand.
Maybe that was why he’d been an asshole and tried to come on to her this morning, he thought as he stood in the shower under water still too chilly for comfort. Because, despite last night and Amber, all Ilya had was a still-empty space. He pushed those thoughts away because, damn, it was too early for self-contemplation. Hissing at the sting, Ilya twisted the faucet handle sideways, to get beneath the water so he could scrub his armpits, still rank from the night’s acrobatics and not helped by his morning exercise. The showerhead had come off a few years ago, and he hadn’t replaced it, which meant the water shot out of a single pipe sticking out of the wall with enough force to abrade him in every tender place if he didn’t stand at just the right angle. He winced at the scratches along his back and sides. Next time, he told himself, he’d make sure to pick up a woman who didn’t have talons.
He heard the muffled sound of the landline ringing again but didn’t bother to get out of the shower to answer it. The only calls that came through on that number were solicitors or scams. Or his ex-wife, he thought, calling to chastise him about naked front-lawn yoga. He took his time scrubbing and rinsing, then stepped out of the water and rubbed his hair dry with a towel that smelled faintly of mildew—shit, he needed to do laundry. Again. What the hell was up with that?
Ilya tossed the damp towel toward the basket and went, still naked, down the hall into his bedroom, where he dug through another pile of clothes to give them a sniff test to determine whether they were clean enough to wear a second time. He was going to be in his scuba gear most of the day, anyway, or a pair of trunks and a T-shirt, so what difference did it make that he picked out a pair of grass-stained cargo pants and a tank top with a hole in the side? He wasn’t entering a fashion show.
His phone buzzed from on top of the dresser, then went silent, which meant he’d missed a call. A moment later, the landline rang again, sounding louder this time, since there was still a handset hanging in the hallway outside his bedroom. Pulling up his briefs with one hand and hopping on one foot, Ilya headed for the doorway. His shoulder connected with the door frame hard enough to bounce him backward, and he let out a curse of pain as he managed to unhook the phone from its cradle, but then dropped it and kicked it out of reach when he bent to lift it.
Behind him, on the dresser, his phone buzzed again.
“This better be important!” he barked into the landline when he at last was able to snag it.
“Mr. Stern?”
“Mr. Stern’s my dad,” Ilya said, ever the smart-ass, and unable to stop himself. His father had died when Ilya was two. He didn’t even remember him. “Who’s this?”
“Ummm . . . I’m trying to reach Ilya Stern?” Whoever it was pronounced the name as “Eye-lah” and not “Ill-ya,” which set him directly into telephone-solicitor territory.