Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [36]
He nodded to her and smiled. Kissing her cheek, he let her go, watching her scamper up the steps with a newfound energy.
“I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” Annika said.
Jack’s gaze was fixed on the place on the stairs where Alli had vanished. “That makes two of us.”
MILLA TAMIROVA opened the door the instant Alli knocked. She must have been waiting at the door. She was another in a long line of Slavic blondes with magnificent bone structure, porcelain skin, cornflower blue eyes, and breasts with no need of being inflated with silicon. She had the kind of feral, predatory face men found irresistible, at least around the bedroom, which meant that she wore her sexuality outside her skin. Alli despised her on sight.
Nevertheless, she smiled winningly as she stood on the threshold, aware that the older woman was scrutinizing her as if she were a frog pinned to a board, its insides exposed for study.
“Pajalyste chawdeetzye,” Tamirova said, taking an abrupt step back. “Oh, forgive me, I forget that you don’t speak Russian. Please come in.”
She continued to peer at Alli as she shut the door and led her guest into a tastefully furnished room full of chintz and striped satin fabrics. Heavy drapes half covered the windows, the furniture was large and looked deep enough to get lost in, which, Alli thought, was probably the point.
Tamirova, her painted lips moving softly, said, “I find it odd that a child of Karl’s wouldn’t speak Russian.”
“I was brought up in America,” Alli said with an ease that amused her almost as much as lying to her doctors. “It’s only recently that I found out my origins—a photo, a name, a date, and a street name. I Googled it and came up with Kiev.”
The scrutiny clearly over, Tamirova raised her arm. “Sit down. Please.” She spoke English almost as well as Annika, one of many languages, she said, part of her training to be all things to all clients. She wore a long sea green robe of some material that both clung to her slim curves and seemed to foam around her ankles, which were strapped into high-heeled shoes. Who wears high-heeled shoes when they’re home, Alli asked herself.
When they were comfortably settled, Milla Tamirova said, “Have you any idea who your mother is?”
“Not a clue,” Alli lied without hesitation. She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not my mother, are you?”
“Heavens, no!” Milla Tamirova chuckled deep in her throat. “I’ve never been pregnant—well, except one time and then, you know . . .”
“Don’t you ever think of what that baby would have been like?”
“I wouldn’t have been a good mother, I don’t have—what do you call it in English—?”
“A conscience?”
“A maternal instinct.” A small smile played around her full lips. “Perhaps someday you’ll understand.”
“I hope to Christ I never do.”
“Is that what they teach you in America? Religion?” She lifted a hand. Her nails were longer than Annika’s. “You can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“Good lord!” Milla Tamirova stared at her without seeming comprehension.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Alli said.
“Down the hall, second door on the left,” the older woman said as if still in a trance or plunged deep in thought.
Alli made use of the bathroom, flushed the toilet, ran water over her hands and dried them. Then she did a bit of reconnoitering. She saw Milla Tamirova’s bedroom directly across the hall, lushly feminine and inviting,