Circumstances kept them apart.
Life.
Her career, too.
The few times she had been stateside for productions before her accident didn’t even lead to extended stays with her parents. In a way, Vera became a woman—or stumbled into adulthood, rather—far away from the prying eyes of the people she knew loved her most. At least, when she failed, that made swallowing it easier.
Less humiliating. Even if the isolation had eaten her heart up to its last lonely shred.
At the same time, it also left her feeling like a stranger to the people she left behind. Maybe that was the problem making her nerves stay on high alert, lost connection.
Vaslav reached over to unbuckle her seatbelt, and with a single wag of his finger, she begrudgingly climbed out of the side-by-side. As she tugged off the helmet, shaking her head a bit to settle the wild strands of her hair, she could hear the approaching footsteps on the ground behind her.
She handed the helmet over.
Vaslav took it with a measured smile. “I’ll see you shortly, krasivyy.”
“You told me the post would fall, Vaslav!”
“But only your pride took a hit, comrade,” came the rueful reply.
Vaslav jerked the sporty ROV out of park and into drive once more, but he didn’t step on the gas as he pulled away that time. Thankfully. Vera couldn’t say she was in the mood to face her father in a cloud of dust.
Instead, she turned to find her father facing her while the backdrop of the lake painted a picture of a serene, natural beauty around his tense posturing.
“I held that for more than thirty fucking minutes,” Demyan said.
Vera’s brow furrowed. “Held what?”
“The post!”
She glanced at the log post in question that still stuck up straight, reaching ten feet high from where it jutted out of the ground toward the sky. Out of all the other posts, it was the only one as tall as it was, and facing a more center section of the wide lake. Another one of a similar length waited nearby on the ground.
“Did it need to be held or—”
“Apparently not!”
Vera blinked at the high pitch of annoyance coloring her father’s tone of voice. “You were helping Vaslav build the fence?”
Demyan scrubbed a hand down his mouth and chin, eyeing his daughter warily but not closing the six or so feet of distance between the two. “He woke me up at five.”
“In the morning?”
He nodded.
Vera squinted a bit at that. “No, thank you.”
“Tell him that.”
Um ...
Vera didn’t really have to think about that option. “Another pass for me, Papa.”
One didn’t refuse Vaslav.
He took what he wanted.
When and how he wanted it.
Maybe it was the papa that did it, but Demyan’s tension melted out of his strong, broad shoulders in a flash. He still didn’t step toward her, but the softness in his gaze urged Vera to inch a little closer to her father.
A part of her held back, though. She kept enough space between them that he couldn’t reach out and hug her just yet.
She stared into the stretch of dirt in front of them needing those few seconds to think about the things her father probably needed to hear her say. As a young girl, everyone had liked to tell her how much she looked like her dead, biological mother, Gia. That her dainty features, even her mannerisms and sprite-like demeanor was all Gia right out of bed.
Yet, Vera found familiarity most when she stared into the eyes of her father. They were the same sky-blue as hers. Cold when they were angry. Icy, even. His black hair had passed on the genetics to the mop she called her own. Maybe they weren’t identical mirrors of one another, but home was still home all the same, and she felt it unquestioningly when she looked at Demyan.
A piece of it, anyway.
“It fits, I see,” her father said suddenly.
His gaze had locked on the sparkling diamond sitting perfectly on her ring finger. Vera didn’t even consider covering it with her other hand or hiding it behind her back to keep him from seeing a truth she bet he had already figured out by now.
“Papa, I’m engaged,” Vera said, then.
She needed the words out.
One hurdle over.
Demyan released a heavy breath. “And without even saying a word about it to anyone, too.”
What could she say to that?
Vera opted for nothing.
The pregnant pause of awkwardness didn’t deter Demyan from pushing harder.
“Do you have anything to say to me?”
“About this?” Vera asked, lifting her hand to show off the large diamond.
“About anything!”
His raised voice echoed over the quiet lake.
Vera shrugged in response. “No, not really.”
Her father blinked. Whether it was from the shock of her frank answer or the situation facing him, she didn't know.
“You’re always doing that to me,” he murmured. “Demanding distance. Taking space. But I don’t think you realize how it looks from my perspective. You don’t see what I see. Every time I turn around and blink, you’re someone different, Vera. Look at you.”
Nobody ever said Vera was perfect. Sometimes, though, she didn't recognize her own selfishness until it stared her down to the ground. Or rather, how it reflected in the eyes of her father. She never actually considered how her need to learn and express herself away from her family would hurt them.
He clapped his hands without warning, making Vera jump in place.
“You stopped holding my hand to cross the road one day, and the next you wanted to do ballet,” he said. Then, Demyan clapped again. “Boom—sixteen, and you’re off to Russia without as much as an argument from me because I knew you’d hate me forever if I refused you.”
He clapped once more.
Vera spoke for him that time. “I’m all grown up, only talking to you on a screen, and getting married.”
His hands fell to his sides, but he nodded. “It’s just ... a part of me thinks this is your way of running. I never could figure out what you were running away from, though. Was it me?”
“No.”
Of that, she was positive.
Demyan didn’t look like he believed it. “You scared me to death.”
Vera let out a laugh. “How?”
He jerked a hand toward the guesthouse. “How, are you serious? Who is more like it!”
“You only know that because you paid someone to keep tabs on me and bring the information back, Papa.”
“Which is my right, the very least I can and will do!”
To him, he was allowed his opinion, and Vera wouldn’t argue the point.
What was done was done.
“You were hiding something from your mother and I,” Demyan said, “and you can’t fault me for finding what it was.”
“No, I omitted details that weren’t your business.”
“You’re getting married and that’s not my business?” he demanded.
“The engagement is still new,” she tossed back.
Weakly.
Demyan outright scowled. With her twenty-seventh birthday approaching in only a couple of months, Vera shouldn’t have folded in on herself as much as she did in the face of her father’s disappointment.
You’re a grown woman. Act like it, she told herself.