“She just wanted to apologize for calling on me last week and promised that it wouldn’t happen again now that she knew about my accommodations.”
“Good,” he said, taking her much smaller hand into his bare one. Winters in the Tverskoy District, the fashionable Moscow neighborhood where he’d grown up before his parents’ break up and his prompt shipping off to boarding school, made Minnesota winters feel like a spring breeze.
She scrunched her forehead. “Did you put her up to apologizing to me?”
“Nyet,” he answered immediately—and truthfully.
“Oh,” she said. But then her hand tightened inside his. “Wait, did Rina?”
“You are maybe getting to know me too well,” he admitted with a wry smile, rubbing his free hand over the back of his head.
She laughed—only to abruptly cut off with, “Don’t do that again. I can advocate for myself.”
Yet she didn’t,he silently noted.
“I’m serious. I don’t want you fighting my battles for me.”
Too late.She had no idea just how far he’d already gone to protect her under his new plan.
Yom asked her about where she wanted to eat lunch.
Thankfully, she accepted the change of subject. “Well, it’s Tater Tot Tuesday at the food court….”
To the student center they went, and as it so happened, her friends Trish and Merry were already there, sitting at a booth right near the main buffet.
Yom narrowed his eyes when they beckoned Lydia and him over in a way that made him suspect pre-planning, at least on her friends’ part.
But he allowed it.
The one called Merry mostly stayed quiet, but Lydia’s best friend, Trish, began grilling him before he’d even had his first bite of the anemic broccoli the line workers had placed behind a plaque with the dubious label ofSeasonal Vegetables.
“So explain to me how I’m supposed to sleep well at night, knowing my best friend is being forced to keep company with the self-admitted bully who did nothing but make her life miserable ever since he got his fragile ego hurt in Berlin.”
“Trish, c’mon, you promised to be good,” Lydia said, confirming Yom’s suspicions about the pre-planning.
“I am being good—agood friend,” Trish shot back. “I’m not going to let him get away with treating you like trash. I don’t care how much you think you owe him for helping you save one dog.”
Lydia opened her mouth, but Yom spoke up before she could. “You have my word I will not hurt your friend again in this manner.”
“Right, you’re just planning to control her within an inch of her life,” Trish said, folding her arms over her nearly empty container of the repulsive tater tot casserole that Minnesotans calledhotdish.“I mean, having a security detail follow and escort her everywhere—that’s, like, Psychological Manipulation 101.”
This time, instead of chastising her friend, Lydia shifted uncomfortably in the seat next to him in a way that let him know she didn’t necessarily disagree.
Yom found himself clenching his jaw again. “Perhaps you know of my relative, Layla Rustanov?”
Trish tilted her head. “The vice president’s oldest daughter? Yeah, of course I do. Everyone does.”
“Are you aware that whenever she dates someone, that person must also have security detail? Even before she is becoming well-known? This is perhaps secret, but members of families at certain level of wealth and notoriety require around-the-clock protection. Lydia is my guest. Therefore, she must be protected as well.”
Trish’s indignant expression took on a hint of frustration.
Yom could tell Lydia had most likely told her everything about his terms and conditions—despite being against the first item on the Anything List. So, Lydia’s best friend had a dilemma on her hands: argue him down with information she shouldn’t have or let it go.
Making Yom respect her even more, the best friend chose the latter. But she warned him, “I plan to join you for lunch every day, just to make sure she’s continuing to thrive in your care.”
“Me, too,” Merry promised before popping another tater tot from her own bowl of the vile hotdish into her mouth.
“Guys, I’m not a pet,” Lydia reminded them with an indignant shake of her pretty head.
