An Engagement in Seattle - Debbie Macomber [43]
Maybe not, he decided after a moment. Perhaps he had been wise. Only time would tell.
He felt Julia stir some time later and was surprised to realize it was morning. Slowly he opened his eyes to discover her face staring down at his, studying him. “Good morning,” she whispered.
He waited, thinking she might be angry at finding him in bed with her, but she revealed none of the outrage she had the morning before. Still, her eyes were clouded and her grief was evident.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
She nodded shyly, her gaze avoiding his. “What about you?”
“As well as can be expected.” He stretched his cramped arms and yawned loudly. They were fools, the pair of them. His sister had said as much yesterday morning. They were sleeping in a single bed when there was a perfectly good king-size bed in the other room.
Alek didn’t have a single excuse to offer his sister and finally told her to mind her own business. But Anna was right.
“Thank you, Alek,” Julia said, climbing out of bed. Her face was turned away from him.
“For what, staying with you?”
“No…well, yes, that, too, but for…you know, not…”
“Making love to you?”
She nodded. Reaching inside her closet, she took out a set of clothes and held them in front of her as if to shield her body from his view. She’d spent most of the night cuddling against him. He’d felt every inch of her creamy smooth skin; there wasn’t anything left to hide. It didn’t seem right to point that out, however.
“The next few days are going to be very busy. I’ll be spending a lot of my time finishing up the funeral arrangements and…and going through Ruth’s things, so we probably won’t see much of each other for a while.”
She didn’t need to sound so pleased at the prospect, Alek mused.
By the time he’d showered and dressed, Julia had already left the condominium. His sister was eyeing him critically, clearly displeased about something.
“What’s wrong with Julia?” Anna asked in an accusatory voice. “She looks as if she was crying.”
Naturally it would be his fault, Alek thought, ignoring his sister’s glare.
“Her grandmother died,” he explained and he watched as Anna’s eyes went soft with sympathy.
“You love this woman.”
“She’s my wife.” He saw now that it was a mistake to have hired his sister. It was obvious that she was going to be what Jerry called “a damned nuisance.”
“You did not marry her for love.”
“No,” he admitted gruffly, resenting this line of questioning. He wouldn’t have tolerated it from anyone else and Anna knew it.
“She knows that you did not love her. This is why she sleeps in the small bed.”
“Thank you, Dear Abby.”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” Alek said impatiently. He grabbed a piece of toast from the plate and didn’t wait for the rest of his breakfast. He turned to leave the room.
“Aleksandr,” she said sharply, stopping him. “You’ve become very American.” Her face relaxed into a wide smile. “I think this is good. You teach me, too, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, chuckling.
Sorting through Ruth’s possessions proved to be far more difficult than Julia had expected. Her grandmother’s tastes had been simple, but she’d held on to many things, refusing to discard life’s mementos.
Disposing of her clothes was the easiest. Julia boxed them up and took them to a shelter for the homeless. It was the little things she found so difficult. A token from the Seattle World Fair, an empty perfume bottle that had long since faded. The photographs. She could never part with the photographs.
Julia had no idea her grandmother had collected so many snapshots. The comical photos Ruth sent Louis Conrad while he was away fighting in the Second World War made her smile.
Julia came across a packet of pictures that caused her to laugh outright. Her grandmother, so young and attractive, was poised in a modest-looking swimsuit in front of a young soldier’s photograph. It had to be Julia’s grandfather, but she’d never seen pictures of him at that age.
The whole thing must have been rather