Claim

13

Kira was feeling calmer by the time she arrived home from the Lake Forest house. The incident with Jean-Luc had been uncomfortable, but the music room was all but done. The piano movers from the Orchestra would arrive next week to move the piano and that would be the end of her dealings with him.

She took off her coat and braced herself for another awkward conversation with Aksana. Kira had always considered herself a friendly person who enjoyed making conversation with pretty much anyone, but the older woman got under Kira’s skin in the worst of ways.

It wasn’t just the dismissive way with which she spoke to Kira, the way she ordered everyone around as if she were a queen and they her loyal subjects.

No, what bothered Kira most of all — what made her truly angry — was the way Aksana ignored her son.

Lyon was a big man, a dangerous man, but it hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time he’d been a boy, and while he’d given no indication he cared one way or the other whether his mother showed him any attention, Kira had to imagine that somewhere inside the Lion was a little boy who wanted his mother to be nice to him.

And nice was clearly a foreign concept to Aksana Antonov.

She hadn’t seen her son in years, and Kira knew they never talked on the phone or kept in touch online. Still, the woman hadn’t asked Lyon a single question about himself in the time she’d been staying with them, hadn’t shown the slightest interest in Lyon’s life or well-being.

She sighed and headed for the living room, then cut into the kitchen when she spotted Zoya doing dishes.

She turned to look at Kira, her eyes spitting fire. “Your mother-in-law is upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” The only two suites upstairs belonged to Lyon and Kira. “What is she doing up there?”

“You’ll have to ask her.” Zoya sniffed. “I tried but she made it clear I am not to question.”

Anger spread in a flush through Kira’s body. Zoya was family, as much a family member to Kira as Aksana was to Lyon, and probably more from what Kira had witnessed.

Her blood boiled as she headed for the stairs. Was Zoya in Kira’s room? Snooping through her personal things?

But when she got to the top of the stairs it was Lyon’s door that was flung wide open. She heard the slamming of a drawer and hurried to step into the room.

It was empty, but the door to the walk-in closet was open. Guilt washed over her. Hadn’t she gone into Lyon’s closet without permission when Lyon had gone after Musa?

She hesitated, not wanting to be a hypocrite, but this felt different. She’d gone into Lyon’s room to be close to him after her attack. Had wanted to smell his clothes and lay on his bed while she waited for him to come home to her.

True, she’d found the photograph of Lyon and his mother while in Lyon’s closet, but she hadn’t been looking for anything. The photo had stuck out of a stack of Lyon’s running clothes after she’d taken a sweatshirt of his to wear. She hadn’t been snooping.

Still, her footsteps were less urgent, her blood running a little cooler when she stopped into the doorway of Lyon’s luxurious closet and found Aksana bent over, rifling through one of the drawers.

“May I help you?”

Aksana straightened suddenly and turned. For a split second, Kira saw fear in her eyes, her mouth parted in surprise. A moment later the regal mask Kira had grown used to descended over Aksana’s face.

“No, you may not,” she said.

“Let me rephrase that question, Aksana.” Kira hadn’t been invited to call Aksana “Mother” and had no desire to do so. She was as far from Kira’s mother as the earth from the sun. “What are you doing in Lyon’s room?”

She lifted her chin. “Lyonya is my son.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to go through his things,” Kira said. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for nothing. I simply wanted to… understand my son,” Aksana said.

The words might have moved Kira if they’d been said with any sincerity, with any emotion. Lyon was a complicated man.

A man with secrets and no desire to share them.

A man who guarded his heart like a secret fortress.

But Aksana’s words were cold. She was lying, Kira was almost sure of it.

“Lyon’s closet isn’t the key to his soul,” Kira said. “Perhaps you should try talking to him.”

“I’ll thank you not to interfere in my relationship with my son,” Aksana sniffed.

Kira folded her arms over her chest. “And I’ll thank you not to use that relationship as an excuse for snooping in our home while you’re a guest here. Now, why don’t you come downstairs and have a drink while I start dinner?”

The other women hesitated, and Kira braced herself for a fight, but a few seconds later Aksana moved toward her.

Kira moved aside and waited while Aksana passed into the bedroom, then shut off the light in the closet and shut the double doors.

She made sure Aksana was in front of her all the way to the bedroom door.

They didn’t speak again. Not while Aksana made herself two stiff drinks, one right after the other, or while Kira started gathering ingredients from the fridge for dinner. By the time she heard Lyon’s footsteps in the hall, the silence between her and Aksana had grown more comfortable even though Kira’s mind spun with the implications of Aksana’s foray into Lyon’s room and the quandary of whether or not to tell him.