parts. He holds my hand, Sasha. Sometimes just one finger as we’re walking. At first I was . . . ‘What the hell is this?’ Certainly someone has held my hand before. Why does it feel so awkward?”
“Maybe they haven’t? I’d had my share of sex before I met AJ, and the only handholding was in the moment.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
They reached the edge of the property and turned around.
“I didn’t expect this conversation with you,” Olivia admitted.
Sasha nodded in agreement. “That makes two of us.”
Olivia sat in an overstuffed chair, legs tucked under her with a notepad in her lap.
Leo was on her right, taking up the edge of a sofa, a laptop perched on his knees.
To his right, Isaac worked on a crossword puzzle.
Neil scowled with a computer in his lap. Whatever he was working on was not bringing him joy.
The others were scattered throughout the house.
Or maybe Sasha and AJ disappeared in an effort to not be disturbed with a stash of condoms of their own.
The afternoon conversation with Sasha rolled around in Olivia’s head. It had been a long time since she’d had a heart-to-heart with a woman. Even without being able to quantify that, she knew the conversation with Sasha was rare. It didn’t matter that she didn’t remember her life before someone in an SUV drove by, pointed a gun at her, and squeezed the trigger. Deep inside where her body knew her past, her soul knew where she’d come from . . . that part of her knew that the Sasha moment was unique.
So Olivia sat on a chair in front of a roaring fire with three men she hardly knew, one she wanted to know better . . . and wrote in a diary.
Even that felt unique.
But writing down her thoughts was helping them form.
And she wrote down everything.
Neil was pissed. Whatever he was doing on his computer . . . whatever conversation he was having was causing stress deep in his veins.
Isaac vacillated between bored and amused. Every once in a while, he’d concentrate a little harder and become amused again.
Leo . . . The man was harder to read. How was that possible? Shouldn’t the man whose tongue she had had in her mouth come in loud and clear? He was working on something. And whatever that something was he was contemplating . . . it was frustrating the hell out of him.
And because Leo was the glitch in her system, she started with Neil.
“Do you want to talk about why you’re growling at your computer?” she asked.
He looked at her . . . hesitated. “Gwen just told me Emma has been asked to the winter formal.”
Isaac started laughing. Slowly. A sharp staccato that indicated pure joy.
“And?” Leo asked.
That question was met with a death stare.
“She’s too young,” Neil said.
“She’s in high school,” Isaac reminded him.
Another death stare.
Olivia scribbled the note . . . protective of his own.
“Have you met the boy?” Leo asked.
“No.”
“When is the dance?” Olivia asked.
Neil typed on his computer and paused.
They all waited, breath held . . .
“Three weeks. Gwen is talking about dresses.”
Again . . . Isaac started with the short bursts of laughter.
“What’s the problem?” Olivia asked. She knew the problem. Daddy wasn’t ready for his little girl to have big-girl dates. But she asked the question anyway.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Olivia retreated. The man wasn’t ready for the next thought. Dates led to kissing . . . kissing led to sex.
She glanced at Leo.
He smiled her way.
“Russian World War II gun?” Isaac said, waving the crossword puzzle in his hand. “There’s a k in it.”
Olivia laughed. “There’s a k in every Russian word.”
Isaac lifted the book of puzzles in his hands. “It’s a weapon. Mosin-Nagant is the only Russian World War II gun I know.”
“Tokarev,” she said.
Isaac put his pencil to the puzzle and smiled.
Olivia looked down at her notebook. Several seconds ticked and she looked up.
The weight of the room fell on her.
Her first eye contact was with Leo.
Something inside his eyes clicked.
Isaac moved quickly back to his puzzle, his index finger pushing his glasses higher on his nose.
Neil blew out a breath.
Something was there. Tickling. “Tokarev. It came in both a pistol and a rifle. Semiautomatic rifle. But the bolt-action Mosin-Nagant . . .” Statistics played in her head like it would on a documentary. War weapons. Russian, German, American.
They were all there as if they had been all the time.
She stood, her notebook tossed aside, and she marched toward the dining room