All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(11)

He moved away from her with an anxious snicker. Alicia’s small, obnoxious titter was nothing like her normal laughter. Or her normal reaction to being embraced by a hard-bodied, gorgeous guy.

Then again, it had been a damned long time since she’d been held like that by anyone. No wonder her body had reacted that way. Hormones, she told herself sourly. Stupid.

“You don’t have to go back in,” Nikolai said quickly. “I can call you if she takes a worse turn. Really, if you need to get back home . . .”

If she had to go back to soothing Ilya, she was going to lose her shit. If she went home, she would simply fret and stew about what was going on at the nursing home. She cleared her throat. “I need to check in at the shop, for sure.”

Nikolai nodded. “Right. I’ll call your cell.”

“Thanks.” She hesitated, half hating herself for having a single second of concern about what Nikolai thought, but unable to stop herself from asking, “I’m not a terrible person, am I? If I leave? The doctor said he thought it could be any time. Or she could rally and linger on. They don’t know.”

“I don’t think you’re terrible.”

She studied him. On impulse she hugged him again, harder this time. Arms around his neck. Cheek pressed to his. She clung to him with her eyes closed, wishing she could forget all the bad things that had ever happened between them, but that wasn’t the way bad memories worked, in her experience. Those bitches stayed around.

“It’s good to see you,” she told him, and it felt like the truth.

The breaking off of the hug wasn’t as awkward this time. Nikolai smiled. The small scar at the corner of his mouth made it crooked. She’d been there when a stray tree branch had caught him along the trail to the quarry, making him bleed. She’d been there with Nikolai through so much, and he with her.

And there’d been so much he’d missed.

“I’ll call you,” he said again. “If anything changes. You can be here in twenty minutes. Don’t feel bad. Just go.”

She did feel bad—there was no getting around that—but something in his off-kilter smile made it a little easier for her to leave. He would be there to take care of everything, to make sure his brother was all right. No matter what had happened between her and Nikolai, she knew she could trust him to do the right thing.



In her office at the dive shop, she handled a few deliveries and rescheduled the classes she’d had to cancel so she and Ilya could make it to the nursing home. The classroom sessions were easiest—she could do those herself. The confined water classes that took place in the pool were a little trickier, since she had to go through the local VA hospital for the use of their facilities. The final certification classes were the hardest, though, because those students were the ones on a deadline. Ilya was supposed to be running a trip next month to Jamaica, but if the students didn’t get their certification in time, the trip would have to be canceled. They’d be out a lot of money, nonrefundable, not to mention how disappointed everyone would be. Stuff like that turned customers to other places.

He was the one by Babulya’s side at the end, when she’d been the one there with the old woman all along. A wave of irritation swept over her at all the paperwork in front of her. Ilya was the only one who could teach the water classes because, like the shoemaker’s barefoot children, Alicia had never learned to dive. Everything would have fallen to her, anyway, though. She was the steadfast one who stayed behind. Ilya was the one who got to go to crystal waters and warm sands, hooking up with bronzed and bikini-clad hotties, while Alicia kept the proverbial trains running on time but never, ever left the station herself.

“Stop it,” she told herself aloud. “There’s no point.”

And there wasn’t, really. Ilya was the same as he’d ever been. His brother, on the other hand, had seemed to change quite a bit. Physically, obviously. Nikolai had been a short, skinny, geeky kid who’d always seemed to be all bony knees and elbows.

Now Nikolai Stern stood a few inches taller than she did, which put him at about five eleven. He wore his dark hair to his shoulders, shaggy and unkempt, though not hanging in his eyes. Greenish-gray eyes, clear and bright, not at all like Ilya’s, which were a darker, greenish brown. And Nikolai’s body, Alicia thought a little guiltily, letting herself remember it as she sat back in her chair to spin around with her eyes closed. Thinking of those hard arms, chest . . . his thighs—damn, they were like tree trunks. Nikolai felt like he’d been carved out of stone.

She couldn’t name the cologne he wore, but the scent lingered in her memory. Something fresh. Clean, not overbearing. Like she could bury her face against his neck and breathe him in and in and in . . .

“Umm, Allie?”

With a small shriek, she stopped spinning in her chair and slapped her hands on the desk to bring herself to a stop. Her throat dried at the sight of her brother-in-law—former, she reminded herself. Her former brother-in-law.

“Nikolai. Hey. Is everything all right?” She coughed lightly into her fist, certain her sexy musings were shining right out of her eyes all over him. She lifted her chin and kept her expression neutral, pushing away anything remotely resembling a naughty fantasy about Nikolai. Because that was—no way—going to keep happening. Ever. No matter how his biceps bulged and flexed or how hard his body was . . .