He didn’t care to talk.
He’d rather think.
Obviously, the food he promised to get ready on the rear porch didn’t even get unpacked. He’d been too busy eavesdropping on the terse, and sometimes loud, conversation between Demyan and his daughter. Not that Vera mentioned that when she finally came through the front doors to find he’d left it sitting on the dining room table inside the house.
They did get the food to the back, though.
At least, while he watched the lake nobody seemed to care if he wasn’t involved and engaged with their discussion.
“December first, I think,” Vera said, drawing Vaslav from his pensive thoughts.
Only because Demyan said, “Your birthday?”
“My birthday,” she agreed.
“For what?”
Vaslav’s sudden emergence into the conversation between a father and daughter, not caring who he interrupted, earned him an annoyed glance from Demyan. Vera, on the other hand, only peered up at him with sweetness. It curved her lips into an indulgent smile and brightened her eyes.
“You were spacey for a minute. I didn’t even think you were listening.”
“Hmm.” Vaslav nodded at the lake, and lifted a hand from the table to point at the speck of black emerging from the thick bush on the other side of the shallow end of the lake closest to the porch. “I was keeping an eye on Marrow.”
The dog made a loud splash when he jumped in. The only other noise but for the birds in the trees that would soon be leaving for the winter and the hum of the generator at the far end of the house keeping all the decorative lights that hung overhead stay lit. In the shade of the tall oaks, it allowed the porch a bit of light in the daytime.
At the other side of the table, Demyan made an anxious noise. “If that fucking dog comes near this porch, I’m going in the house.”
Vaslav didn’t hide his chuckle. “Ah, he was only a little bothered about you last night. Give it a rest.”
“And what about this morning?” Demyan demanded.
Well ...
Vaslav considered the aggressive behavior the dog displayed while observing the two men pounding in stakes that morning for the fence line. Marrow barked for a solid half hour before finally slinking away to jump in the lake, clearly disturbed by his master’s new companion. Nonetheless, during that half hour of non-stop barking, if Demyan even looked the dog in the eye, Marrow started creeping forward in preparation for attack, teeth bared.
“He doesn’t like guests,” Vaslav said with a shrug. Then, he tossed a tight-lipped smile Demyan’s way, adding, “Or men.”
“Can’t imagine where he picks up that attitude.”
Vera laughed into her hand but quickly hid her amusement in a bite of sourdough bread. He enjoyed the way her blush crept up her throat the longer his piercing stare lingered on her. Does she feel the way she tests every ounce of self-control I have just by being near?
He could kiss her giggles quiet. Or he could even enjoy the way she’d fluster and push back against him if he felt like correcting her behavior when men of certain status sat down at a table together. Both would end in a way he liked ... eventually. Whether it was angry or not. Vas got off either way.
Vaslav couldn’t say that for the other two people at the table.
Damn it all to hell.
Vaslav raised his brow and observed Marrow paddle closer in their direction. Every few paddles followed a loud bark that echoed over the lake, and snapped back across the property straight into Vaslav’s brain. “A breed thing, I think.” Whistling high, he called to the pup, “Get a stick to toss, you shit. Don’t come over here with that bark of yours again. You’re making my head pound on a good day, Marrow.”
“Right, a breed thing,” Demyan muttered. “That’s what’s some shit, right there.”
Another rough laugh escaped Vaslav, although at least he did try to hold it in. “I can hear the Brooklyn in you there a bit. It’s been a while since I’ve been around to that side of the world, let me say.”
“Adrik sends his regards from Jersey.”
“What did he have to say about your trip here when you told him your plans?” Vaslav asked.
An honest curiosity. Adrik Vasin, whose son Koldan had taken over his organization a while back, was one of the few vory in America that Vaslav would sit down to do business with should the need arise. Mostly because men like Adrik had started their life in the brotherhood in their motherland, and still paid respects to where they came from.
He appreciated loyalty.
Even if it did come in the form of a three-percent cut off the top of a multi-billion dollar smuggling and trafficking organization. Cocaine and weapons, for the most part. Not that it mattered. The monetary value made the difference.
“Well?” Vaslav asked after a noticeable pause from the man across the table.
Demyan, distracted by the way Vera smiled at the paddling dog who actually was searching for a floating stick in the lake, glanced his way. “He didn’t tell me anything. My father, on the other hand ... all they have to do at their age is talk. He told Anton I had a death wish. The message got passed along.”
“But apparently,” he mused, “not heard.”
Demyan wisely chose to be quiet.
Peering down at Vera again where she sat at the outdoor dining table next to him, Vaslav asked, “And what about December first, yeah? I didn’t forget.”
She finally took her gaze away from the dog in the water who had, in fact, found a stick. He really needed to join the pup down here more. It was Marrow’s favorite spot.
For obvious reasons.
“I thought it would be a good date,” Vera told him.
“Yes, but for what?”
She gestured at her father. “He asked if I’d picked one for the wedding.”
Ah.
There was the missing piece; the one bit of missing information from the initial conversation he hadn’t been properly engaging at the table.
His surprised hum had Vera’s brow lifting higher before she popped a piece of sliced pickle into her mouth, and then sucked the juice from the tip of her thumb. The staple at any Russian’s meal, the pickle gave her something to chew around her barely suppressed grin.
She put him on the spot.
Knew she’d done it.
And liked it.
Cheeky witch.
Vaslav’s gaze narrowed slightly at her challenge.
He considered asking her right then and there where she planned on sleeping that night. He had an opinion on the matter, of course, but did she want to discuss it right now?
“Vera,” he warned.
The tone should have done it.
A dainty shrug fell from her bare shoulder where the neckline of her dress draped down to expose everything from her collarbone to her shoulder blade. “Yeah. It’ll be my birthday and our anniversary on the same day.”
Vera’s gaze drifted her father’s way when Demyan said, “I hear a common complaint between wives and their husbands is the man being forgetful of certain times of the year. Like important dates. Could be useful.”
Vaslav stiffened, turning to ice in an instant. The switch that flipped on in his brain went from zero to sixty instantly. It would have been nothing, meant nothing, for him to reach across the table in that moment to get a better grip on Demyan’s head to smash it through the pristine glass beneath their plates.