All the Secrets We Keep (Quarry Book 2) Read online

  She’d caught her breath by the time he withdrew. She deliberately did not meet his gaze in their reflection and took her time rearranging her clothes while he took care of cleanup. She smoothed her hair. Ran her fingers over her lips, feeling them a little tender, a little bruised. She closed her eyes again for a second, drawing in a hitching breath, unable to stop the smile from twisting her mouth.

  He came up behind her to nuzzle at her neck. “Better than popping a bottle of champagne, huh?”

  “Yes.” She relaxed for a second into his embrace because she could; it didn’t have to mean anything.

  She thought for sure that Ilya would pull away, but he held on to her for another half a minute until at last she was the one to twist from his grasp. He was smiling at her. She gave him an assessing look.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Ilya said. “When did that happen?”

  It had happened the moment it occurred to him that she was beautiful, Theresa thought. Before that, had it mattered about the shape of her face or the alignment of her eyes? If her mouth was lush and full and her hair luxurious? Beauty only mattered when it meant something to someone else.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” was her light reply.

  It had been meant to put a little distance between them. To remind him she couldn’t take him seriously. Ilya frowned, though, as if he were taking her words to heart.

  “Only to the pretty ones,” he said. “And aren’t they all pretty?”

  Stung, and knowing she had no right to be since she’d been the one to push away first, Theresa half turned. “We should start making some lists of things we’re going to want to replace. Get moving on things. That’s why we came here tonight, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. Of course.” Ilya nodded. His fly was down, something he seemed to remember right in that moment because he zipped it, then stuck his hands in his pockets and looked around the kitchen. “I guess you have some ideas about that sort of thing already.”

  She pulled the list from her pocket to show him. “I started something, yeah.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We started something, all right. Hey. Theresa.”

  She looked at him.

  “I didn’t take her home. I didn’t go home with her. Amber. We didn’t . . .” He trailed off, shrugging, letting his expression finish the sentence for him.

  “It’s not any of my business.”

  “I wanted to tell you, anyway,” he said.

  “What makes you think I’d care?” Theresa said quietly.

  “Maybe I want you to care.”

  Another few moments of silence passed with neither of them smiling. Then she held up the list. He leaned closer to look at it. They talked about that list for the rest of the night, and that was all they discussed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Alicia had pulled up a website that offered home-away rentals in exotic locations. The trip she’d taken on her own had been spent in hotels, hostels, and bed-and-breakfasts. She’d spent no more than a few days in each place, eager to the point of excessiveness to experience as much as she possibly could. But now she wanted to spend some real time in one place, getting to know it.

  “I like this one.” She pointed at the picture of a stone cottage surrounded by a garden of wildflowers. “Scotland. Near Loch Ness. Have you been there?”

  Nikolai leaned forward to look. “Nope.”

  “One of the few places you haven’t been,” she said. “It would be fun to explore someplace brand-new with you.”

  “I won’t eat haggis,” he warned.

  Alicia made a face. “Yuck. Me neither. But . . . Scotland? Is that a yes? This says it’s close enough to town to ride bikes. There’s a pub there.”

  “I think that’s a requirement, isn’t it?” Nikolai shifted on the couch to let his arm run along the back of it so his fingers could tickle her nape. “Looks good to me. Let’s book it.”

  “You sure?” Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard.

  “Absolutely.” Nikolai’s fingers curled around the base of her neck, a touch that had her mind going swiftly to sexy places. “Admit it, this is just a way for you to get me into a kilt.”

  She laughed and leaned against him to offer her lips in a kiss he easily took. “With those legs? You know it.”

  Nikolai kissed her again, and Alicia put aside thoughts of planning their trip. There were other things to think about. Like sliding onto his lap and taking his face in her hands. Like kissing him long and slow and then faster, harder. Like feeling him get hard against her body as his hands roamed—

  The sound of the front door opening had them both scrambling to settle on the couch as though nothing had been going on, although Alicia couldn’t stop herself from giggling when Theresa walked in. Asking the other woman to be her roommate hadn’t been the wrong decision, and it wasn’t like she was regretting it, but it had certainly made things a little less . . . spontaneous.

  “Hey,” Theresa said, eyeing them both with a look that said she suspected she’d interrupted, “I’m going to bed. Carry on.”

  “I don’t have hot dogs in my pants,” Nikolai blurted, an homage to a show they’d all watched one afternoon a million years ago in which the cartoon character had been lying to his father about sneaking out to feed alligators.

  Alicia burst into laughter, followed a moment later by Theresa, who shook her head and covered her eyes for a second.

  “Okay, weirdo,” she said. “I’d forgotten all about that.”

  Nikolai shrugged. “Me, too, until just now.”

  “How’d your meeting with Ilya go? Did you get things settled?” Alicia asked.

  Theresa nodded. “Yep. We signed the papers and got the keys and it’s going to happen.”

  “Exciting,” Alicia said, watching Theresa’s face carefully. She didn’t look that excited. “Are you nervous?”

  “I’m not putting too much of my money on the line, to be honest. I don’t have any to put on the line,” Theresa said with a rueful chuckle and seemed to relax a bit. “But, yeah, I am a little nervous. It’s a big commitment. It’s going to take a lot of work.”

  “The best things usually do,” Nikolai said.

  Theresa hadn’t moved out of the doorway, though now she shrugged out of her lightweight coat. She’d dressed up for the meeting, Alicia noticed. Pretty dress. Heels. She’d done her hair a little differently.

  Interesting.

  “So, where are you two crazy kids off to next?” Theresa asked.

  It was clear she wanted to change the subject, so Alicia let her. She turned the laptop on the coffee table toward Theresa. “We’re thinking of renting this place for a month.”

  Theresa moved closer. “Looks great. Hey, Nikolai, I got a lead on something the other day you might be interested in. You know the Mutter Mansion north of town?”

  “Is that the museum we all had to visit in high school? The one that’s set up kind of like colonial Williamsburg?”

  Theresa took off her heels and picked them up with a sigh of relief, wiggling her toes. “Yeah, the museum is the main house, the outbuildings and barn, and some part of the grounds. There’s a winery there, too. The original owners kept the summer house for their own use, and guess what?”

  Nikolai laughed. “I can’t begin.”

  “They keep bees. Have for years. They sell the honey, and the museum makes candles, lotions, and stuff like that from the beeswax,” Theresa said. “Mrs. Mutter is now in her nineties and needs to hire someone to look after the hives. She has about a hundred.”

  Alicia’s eyebrows rose, and she turned to him. “Wow. How’d you find out about this?”

  “I never knew how many different people I’d met and knew until I started doing this freelance stuff,” Theresa said with a grin. “I met Mrs. Mutter’s son, Ron, a couple years ago because he was the guy who built that apartment complex over by where the drive-in used to be.”

  “The shoe factory,” Alicia said, since it was unlikely Nikolai woul