“Not a fairytale, it’s contemporary romance.” I frowned.
“Contemporary.” His accent thickened as he sounded out the word. “I know not what this means.”
“Never mind,” I dismissed him, going for the pantry and the table salt. If we were staying, I would have already told Ivan I needed my phone to order Celtic sea salt. But we weren’t, so I hadn’t.
Ivan stepped in front of me. He didn’t touch me, but he didn’t have to. Something crackled between us. A strange sensation that made the little hairs on my arms stand up.
The funny part?
I wasn’t scared. Not truly.
I pushed down the emotions, not wanting to feel the rush of excitement that came with smelling the mint and leather wafting off him like an exotic wind’s howl. If I breathed too deeply, I would be in danger of reaching for the forbidden fruit.
“Don’t do that,” he growled.
Holy Mother, that sound. It was the shiver of bones in the dead of night. A tingle rushed through me, and there was no denying it this time.
Instead, I sniffled. The sound was humiliating.
Ivan frowned. “Are you well?”
“Perfectly fine,” I snapped. “And what am I not supposed to do now?”
His scowl deepened. This grouchy, bossy kingpin was an entirely different side of him. Stupidly, I didn’t know if I preferred the swaggering, smiling mobster or this.
Neither.
I don’t like either.
“Dismiss me,” Ivan answered. “I asked a question. One I wanted very much to know since this is what intrigues you.”
It was my turn to be taken aback. He was mocking me, surely!
But no, there was something pulsing in his dark gaze. That stare that held me in complete focus and studied me like I was caged at the zoo.
“What is contemporary, Poppy?” Ivan pressed. He took a step closer, inviting me to take another sniff of that scent.
Which, given the state of my nose, was a miracle I could smell at all.
“It means real world. No fairytales, not make believe. Just the opportunity for two people who have the odds stacked against them to fall in love.” I could not believe I just explained that to him.
“So, a fairytale,” he repeated, speaking slowly as if I were deaf.
“Fairytales have monsters!” I threw up my hands, catching myself at the last minute so I didn’t spill the mug. “And princesses. And Fae with batwings!”
Ivan looked as though I’d sprouted a second head. “I don’t know what most of that means. But anything that has love in it is a fairytale, Poppy. It doesn’t exist.”
And there, through the language barrier, I saw the real crux of our dilemma.
“Oh, well, explain that to a billion-dollar industry, because many of us believe it does.” I pushed past him and went to the bathroom. I turned on the fan and the shower to cover the noise of my gargling.
As the salt stung the back of my throat, the realization of what just happened hit me.
I choked on some of the liquid.
Bending and coughing into the sink, I replayed the conversation in my head. What had happened was that we got lost in translation. Ivan spoke English pretty darn well, but clearly there was something he missed. So fixated on not letting him tease my favorite pastime, the thing I lived and breathed for apart from my family, I didn’t realize that he’d approached me initially with a gesture.
He asked my son what I liked to do, and the observant boy truthfully told him that I liked to read. Read fiction. Romances.
