Tonight his mind was too cluttered, and he knew he was stalling. He glanced over his worktable and across his cramped and cluttered two-room apartment. Natasha was curled in the overstuffed, badly sprung chair he’d salvaged off the street the previous summer. She had a book in her hands, but Mikhail didn’t think she’d turned a page in more than twenty minutes. She, too, was stalling.

As annoyed with himself as with her, he pulled off the headphones. He only had to turn to be in the kitchen. Saying nothing, he put a pot onto one of the two temperamental gas burners and brewed tea. Natasha made no comment. When he brought over two cups, setting hers on the scarred surface of a nearby table, she glanced up blankly.

“Oh. Dyakuyu.”

“It’s time to tell me what’s going on.”

“Mikhail—”

“I mean it.” He dropped onto the mismatched hassock at her feet. “You’ve been here nearly a week, Tash.”

She managed a small smile. “Ready to kick me out?”

“Maybe.” But he put a hand over hers, rubbing lightly. “I haven’t asked any questions, because that was what you wanted. I haven’t told Mama and Papa that you arrived at my door one evening, looking pale and frightened, because you asked me to say nothing.”

“And I appreciate it.”

“Well, stop appreciating it.” He made one of his characteristically abrupt gestures. “Talk to me.”

“I told you I needed to get away for a little while, and I didn’t want Mama and Papa to fuss over me.” She moved her shoulders, then reached for her tea. “You don’t fuss.”

“I’m about to. Tell me what’s wrong.” He leaned over and cupped her chin in one hand. “Tash, tell me.”

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out, then shakily set the tea down again.

He opened his mouth, but when the words didn’t come, he simply wrapped his arms around her. Taking along, labored breath, she held on.

“You’re all right? You’re well?”

“Yes. I went to the doctor a couple days ago. He says I’m fine. We’re fine.”

He drew back to study her face. “The college professor?”

“Yes. There hasn’t been anyone but Spence.”

Mikhail’s dark eyes kindled. “If the bastard’s treated you badly—”

“No.” She found it odd that she was able to smile and caught Mikhail’s fisted hands in hers. “No, he’s never treated me badly.”

“So he doesn’t want the child.” When Natasha merely looked down at their joined hands, Mikhail narrowed his eyes. “Natasha?”

“I don’t know.” She pulled away to stand and pace through Mikhail’s collection of beat-up furniture and blocks of wood and stone.

“You haven’t told him?”

“Of course I told him.” As she moved, her hands clasped and unclasped. To calm herself, she stopped by Mikhail’s Christmas tree—a one-foot evergreen in a pot that she’d decorated with bits of colored paper. “I just didn’t give him much of a chance to say anything when I did. I was too upset.”

“You don’t want the child.”

She turned at that, her eyes wide. “How can you say that? How could you think that?”

“Because you’re here, instead of working things out with the college professor.”

“I needed time to think.”

“You think too much.”

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t said before. Natasha’s jaw set. “This isn’t a matter of deciding between a blue dress and a red one. I’m having a child.”

“Tak. Why don’t you sit down and relax before you give it wrinkles.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” She began to prowl again, shoving a box out of her way with one foot. “I didn’t want to get involved with him in the first place. Even when I did, when he made it impossible for me to do otherwise, I knew it was important to keep some distance. I wanted to make sure I didn’t make the same mistakes again. And now…” She made a helpless gesture.

“He isn’t Anthony. This baby isn’t Lily.” When she turned around, her eyes were so drenched with emotion that he rose to go to her. “I loved her, too.”

“I know.”

“You can’t judge by what’s gone, Tash.” Gently he kissed her cheeks. “It isn’t fair to you, your professor or the child.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes, I love him.”

“Does he love you?”

“He says—”

He caught her restless hands in his own. “Don’t tell me what he says, tell me what you know.”

“Yes, he loves me.”

“Then stop hiding and go home. You should be having this conversation with him, not with your brother.”

He was slowly going out of his mind. Every day Spence went by Natasha’s apartment, certain that this time she would answer the door. When she didn’t, he stalked over to harass Annie in the shop. He barely noticed the Christmas decorations in shop windows, the fat, cheerful Santas, the glittery angels, the colored lights strung around the houses. When he did, it was to scowl at them.

It had taken all of his efforts to make a show of holiday spirit for Freddie. He’d taken her to pick out a tree, spent hours decorating it with her and complimenting her crumbling popcorn strings. Dutifully he’d listened to her ever-growing Christmas list, and had taken her to the mall to sit in Santa’s lap. But his heart wasn’t in it.

It had to stop, he told himself and he stared out the window at the first snowfall. Whatever crisis he was facing, whatever chaos his life was in, he wouldn’t see Freddie’s Christmas spoiled.

She asked about Natasha every day. It only made it more difficult because he had no answers. He’d watched Freddie play an angel in her school’s Christmas pageant and wished Natasha had been with him.

And what of their child? He could hardly think of anything else. Even now Natasha might be carrying the baby sister Freddie so coveted. The baby, Spence had already realized, that he desperately wanted. Unless… He didn’t want to think of where she had gone, what she had done. How could he think of anything else?