LITMIR.BIZ

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rate.

      But he’d woken up thinking of her. After he’d gone to bed thinking of her, wondering where she’d been and what she’d been up to. He’d lain there, sleep slowly leaving him, but the sense of needing her hadn’t.

      Plain and simple, he’d come to a place where if he didn’t pursue her, he’d be lying to them both.

      Then she’d brought up that date she had later. A year ago he’d have had a pang of jealousy. Wondering what if he’d ever given in to his attraction to the strange woman who worked in his shop.

      A year ago he’d still been trying to make his relationship with Rada work though they’d both given up by that point and were just going through the motions.

      Now that he’d settled in to life after that engagement had finally been broken in public—they’d broken up privately three months before that—there was a lot more than a pang.

      He hated the idea of Maybe being with anyone else. Hated the thought of this date she was going to being the one she decided to give this other man a chance to be with her.

      Hated, too, that if she ended up with someone right then, it would have been his own damned fault for not just making his move months before.

      But he’d been antsy. Needed to roam a little. To turn over in his head whether or not he wanted to be serious with anyone at all, despite his craving for Maybe.

      And for a while, he’d led with his dick and had enjoyed himself that way.

      But he always turned his attention back to her. Over and over and finally he’d realized he was done fucking around and needed to pay attention to his feelings about her to see if they were worth investigating further.

      Not his type, or what he’d always thought was his type until he’d met her. Perhaps it was more a measure of that, the fact that no one was like her. Maybe never shut up. At first he’d been stunned by it, but over time, he tended to have better days when she was working than when she was off. Whiskey Sharp was too quiet without his little bird flitting around, chirping and chattering.

      She was the heart of the shop. Like an annoying little sister who managed to keep them all in line.

      Except for him. He had absolutely no brotherly feelings about her whatsoever.

      First things first, he had to deal with this visit from his mother and the resulting fallout among his family. Then he’d turn his energy and focus to seeing if he could nudge Maybe into a date or two. See if he could get himself into double-digit territory.

      His mother was arriving from New York in just a few hours. She’d been in New Jersey with her new husband, who’d gone back to Moscow.

      Alexsei wasn’t a fool. He knew she was only coming because his aunt had guilted her into it. His younger brother had recently bought a house with his partner. They hadn’t told her about the purchase yet and had asked Alexsei if he’d be there when they did.

      He would always be at his brother’s side. Especially to protect him from whatever mayhem his mother brought into their lives.

      The following night they had a big dinner planned at Irena’s house, where this would all take place. He only hoped his mother reacted well. For his brother’s sake.

      And deep down inside, maybe he wanted his mother to see how far her children had come, how much they’d grown, and be proud.

      Maybe finished up and her work, as always, was exemplary. It gave him a bit more confidence about the next few days. A small control, but one that was all about something he could do.

      The heaviness of what he might be facing that night and over the next few days had killed his hard-on, but it twitched back to life when she slid the palm of her hand down the center of his chest, straightening his tie and adjusting his vest just exactly the way he preferred.

      “I don’t know a single mother who could look at this man and not be proud. You’re so handsome.” She grinned and then turned to clean up her station.

      He risked one long look from the heels of her boots, up long, denim-clad legs, across her shoulders where the tip of her ponytail hung.

      When his mother left, he’d need to circle back to this developing thing between him and Maybe. The time had come to finally make that move or risk losing his chance forever.

       CHAPTER THREE

      BEFORE SHE WENT HOME, she needed to return the call she’d been dreading. So she sat in her car and, noting that it wasn’t quite nine yet, called her parents back.

      “Hi, Dad. Returning your call from earlier. What’s going on?” Maybe tried to keep her tone light. Wanting to keep the mood positive instead of the negative it generally ran to after a few moments with them.

      For a year or so after the kidnapping, they had a reasonably civil relationship but it’d begun to deteriorate fairly soon after that. She just wanted it to get back to bland civility, damn it.

      “Thanksgiving is coming,” he clipped out.

      “Yeah, in just three or so weeks.”

      “Three weeks exactly.” Naturally he had to correct her. “Your mother would like Rachel, and you, at the table for such an important family holiday.”

      The “and you” part brought a sigh to her chest, but she let it go. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know they had all this difficulty between them. Also family holiday? Puhleeze. She’d never even been invited to a holiday with her parents since the age of sixteen. Not until she and Rachel had moved to Seattle and bought their house did they find it within them to include her for anything at all, much less holidays.

      “I’ll talk to Rachel about it and get back to you.” Rachel had enough experience with other people making her choices for a lifetime so Maybe wasn’t going to agree without talking to her first.

      She went out of her way to give her sister the reins of her life. So that Rachel made her own decisions. That sort of independence was a necessary step to the life she had to build for herself since she got out of the hospital.

      “She does what you tell her to. Tell her to come to her parents’ house at Thanksgiving.”

      This time she didn’t hide her sigh. Sometimes, though they adored Rachel, they really didn’t seem to know her at all. They acted as if she was fragile, but to Maybe it felt more like they wanted it to look that way, but really, they were desperate to take over. To explain away the things Rachel had done as something someone else influenced her over. So they could swoop in and control her every move.

      They still treated her as if her medical situation was precarious. Constantly bringing it up. Going out of their way to baby her.

      Instead of making Rachel feel safe, it made her feel constricted and weak. Helpless to guide her own fate.

      Rachel needed to be her own life’s captain and they didn’t see it as anything but some phase Maybe brought on for her own manipulative reasons.

      And they didn’t know Maybe at all, damn it.

      Bitterness surged, even as she tried to pretend it didn’t matter they believed she’d be capable of anything to cause deliberate harm to Rachel.

      “She’s a grown woman who makes her own choices. I’ll let her know she’s invited.”

      “Just get your life out of the bar for five minutes and put someone else first for once in your life,” he said.

      The tone he used in private with her, a hard, mean voice full of disdain was so totally different than how he spoke to Rachel. It still startled Maybe after a lifetime of hearing it.

      It sent her back to a time when she didn’t have any choices. When she’d been far more helpless than she was now.

      It was that knowledge,

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