LITMIR.BIZ

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for doing without. “A few doses aren’t going to make you slavishly dependent on them.”

      His best friend in high school had succumbed to addiction. And then just succumbed. Life was long and he intended to enjoy it. Unencumbered. But he had no desire to get into that now. So Jesse merely shrugged it off.

      “I know, but it’s really not that bad,” he told her. Realizing that he was still standing in the doorway, he opened it a little wider and stepped back. “Can you come in for a minute?”

      It was Tania’s turn to shake her head. For all intents and purposes, he seemed nice. But no one knew where she’d gone and there was no way she was about to walk into his domain.

      Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

      Jesse Steele didn’t come across like a spider, but then, neither had Jeff. There was absolutely no way she was ever going to be anyone’s fly again, anyone’s victim. Everything was always going to be on her terms, or not at all.

      “I can’t,” she answered. “I need to get home,” she added. “I just thought you might miss your watch and I wanted to drop it off.”

      He seemed disappointed, but didn’t push. “I would like to pay you back for going out of your way,” he told her. “Dinner?”

      “Not tonight,” she began.

      He’d already assumed that. “Tomorrow?” he queried, then asked, “The day after?” when she didn’t answer.

      Despite her efforts to the contrary, she was amused. “If I say no, are you going to keep going?”

      He nodded, crossing his arms before him. “Pretty much.”

      “What if I have a jealous husband?” she asked with a straight face. Did a little thing like marriage make a difference to him? Or was he accustomed to getting his way whenever he wanted something?

      She saw him looking at her left hand, then raise his eyes again. “Do you?”

      It was the perfect excuse, the perfect out. All she had to do was say yes and walk away. Something inside of her played devil’s advocate and kept her from cloaking herself in the lie.

      It was almost as if she was daring herself, seeing how far she would go. To see how far she would inch along the plank before it would bend beneath her weight, threatening to make her fall into the water. It was her usual modus operandi. She’d always scramble back to safety, but it seemed that each time she pushed herself a little harder, a little further.

      Someday, she was going to hit that water.

      No, she wasn’t, she thought with confidence just before she answered his question.

      “No, I don’t.”

      “Good, then I’ll just keep going.” He thought a moment. “I think I was up to Thursday. Thursday night?” he asked.

      She tried not to laugh. “I—”

      Jesse just kept going. “Friday, then. Or Saturday. Saturday work for you?”

      She gave up and laughed, shaking her head. “Okay, okay, dinner. Wednesday evening. You pick the place, I’ll meet you there.”

      “I could pick you up,” he offered.

      “You could meet me there,” she countered.

      He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you sure there’s no husband?”

      “Just two nosy sisters.”

      He was an only child who had grown up longing for siblings. “You have two sisters?”

      “Four, actually,” she corrected. “Three older, one younger.” And then she added with the same touch of pride that everyone in her family felt, especially her parents. “All doctors at Patience Memorial.”

      Now that was unusual, he thought, not to mention impressive. “Sounds like a really nice family.”

      Had he planned it, he couldn’t have said anything better to her. Her family was everything to her. “It is. So, which restaurant?” He gave her the name of one and she nodded. “Expensive. Dinner there will probably cost more than that watch did when it was new.”

      “Some things,” he told her, “you can’t put a price on.”

      It was the sincerity in his voice that finally won her over. Part of Tania still felt that she might be making a mistake, since she really knew nothing about him except what he’d told her, but then, a man who comes to the aid of a stranger couldn’t be all bad.

      Right?

      Chapter 4

      Tania found herself looking at Kady as the latter threw open the door to the apartment she, Kady and Natalya shared.

      “Well, it’s about time. I was all set to fill out a missing person’s report on you,” Kady told her, one hand on her hip in a gesture that fairly shouted Mama. Apparently her older sister had flown to the door the second Kady’d heard her putting her key in the lock.

      “Not me,” Marja offered carelessly.

      She came walking in from the kitchen after having foraged through her sisters’ refrigerator. Her search had yielded a half-empty carton of chicken lo mein and she was well on her way to making it a completely empty carton.

      Marja paused to render a wide, wistful smile. “I was all set to put my stuff in your room and move in.”

      “Antsy to get out from underneath Mama and Daddy’s protective eye, are we?” Natalya laughed.

      They’d all been there, all but smothered in genuine affection and concern. Not a one of them would have traded either of their parents in for any amount of riches. They all knew how very rare a couple Magda and Josef Pulaski were. Selfless, willing to work twenty hours a day if necessary to put them all through college and medical school.

      Her father had said more than once that education was a blessing, which made it a family affair.

      But right now, Marja was apparently focusing on the downside and she rolled her eyes in response to Natalya’s teasing question.

      “God, yes.” The words were accompanied by a dramatic sigh. The drama she got from her mother. “I love them both to pieces, but they still think of me as a child,” she wailed.

      “No,” Sasha corrected, keeping a straight face, “they think of you as the baby. The last little bird to fly out of the nest.” She felt for her sister, but at the same time, she couldn’t help teasing her. Lifetime habits were hard to break. “I’m not sure they’re ready to acknowledge your flight plan, Marysia.”

      Marja preferred answering to her nickname, but she only allowed her family to use it. Didn’t even mention it to anyone else. They had enough trouble with Marja. For the outsider, “Marysia” became nothing short of an unrewarding, gabled tongue-twister.

      “Well, whether or not they acknowledge it, I’m out of there the second Natalya says ‘I do’ to Mike. I’m not even going to stick around for the reception,” she said loftily, licking her fork to get the last of the lo mein, “just hitching the U-Haul to Sasha’s car and bringing my stuff over.”

      Finished, she crossed back to the kitchen to throw the empty container out and toss the fork into the sink.

      Natalya and Kady exchanged glances, shaking their heads. Marja might have graduated at the top of her graduating class, but she still had a bit of growing up to do.

      Sasha grinned. As if leaving the house where she was born were that easy. One by one, they had moved out of the house in Queens, to be closer to the hospital where they all ultimately worked. Her parents had gone through the experience four times already. The fifth and last time was definitely not going to be a piece of cake, not if she knew Mama. Or Daddy, who was more versed than most about the kind of lowlife that was known to sometimes walk the streets of New

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