I can feel my father enjoying it.
Not openly. Papa never enjoys anything openly unless he wants the whole room to know. But I know him too well. Every timesomeone leans in to say how handsome the boy is, or how much presence he has, or how he has the ‘Markov look,’ my father’s expression shifts by a fraction.
I stand there holding Sofia’s hand and smiling when required, and all I can think is that the moment dinner ends, I’m taking the children upstairs and leaving as early as I can without making a scene. If Papa wants them seen tonight, fine. He’s had his audience. He will not have the rest of the evening.
I turn my head, already checking the nearest exit, and then I see him.
I stop breathing.
At first, my mind refuses to make sense of it. The man is too tall, too familiar, too impossible. He’s moving through the room with the sort of ease no one can fake, and people shift around him without seeming to realize they’re doing it. He’s dressed in black, no tie, no smile, and there’s silver at his temples now that was only just beginning when I knew him.
Roman.
For one terrible second, I think I’ve imagined him into the room.
Then he lifts his head and looks straight at me.
My body reacts before my thoughts can catch up. My heart slams once so hard it hurts. The edges of the room blur. I take a step back, catch the hem of my dress under my heel, and lose my balance.
It happens so fast I don’t even have time to be embarrassed.
One moment I’m upright, and the next I’m falling.
Then Roman catches me.
His hand closes around my waist. His other hand catches my arm. The grip is strong, instant, familiar enough to make heat rush through me at the worst possible time.
I look up at him.
For one insane heartbeat, everything else disappears. The music, the voices, my father, Vika, the children, all of it goes quiet behind the simple fact of his face being this close to mine again.
He does not look shocked.
He does not look angry.
He looks…composed. Cool. Like I’m a woman who stumbled in a crowded room and nothing more.
“Katerina,” he says, low enough that only I can hear it.
My name in his mouth should not still sound like that.
I straighten too quickly and nearly make things worse. “I’m fine.”
“You nearly fell.”
“I noticed.”
He lets go of me at once.
That hurts more than it should.
I don’t know what I expected. A crack in the face, maybe. Some sign that he remembers the same things I do. That he sees me and feels the shock I’m still trying to breathe through.
There’s nothing.
He steps back as if there has been no history between us at all.
And suddenly I feel foolish.