“What are you – oh, thank you, Lord,” Maxim hummed, easily stepping around Emin and striding toward Glory.
Emin couldn’t move.
“What did you do to her?” Emin asked AJ.
Some of the light fell out of Glory’s eyes at Emin’s words. “You don’t like it?” she asked. But then she was grinning and glowing again as Maxim fell to his knees in front of her.
“My light, my wife, my only. Let me take you away from here,” Maxim crooned, reaching out with his hands for hers.
Emin still couldn’t move. AJ had changed Glory’s hair a little, lopped off a few inches and made it even more… tumbly. And given her blunt bangs that fell just over her eyebrows. Her hair framed her face in a shiny, crimson cloud. Emin could smell it from across the room and it made his skin pull tight over his muscles. He felt irrationally irritated.
He strode across the room and slapped Maxim’s hands away from her. “Do not talk to her like this. She does not know better. She will think you are serious.”
Maxim, intrigued by a feral glint in his brother’s eyes that he’d never seen before, stood. “I am serious.”
“No, he is not,” Emin growled to Glory, gripping her by the hands and dragging her up. Which, he realized immediately, was a mistake. As now he got a good view of what she was wearing and it definitely wasn’t his old baggy clothes.
“What is this?” Emin gestured at her outfit, turning to glare at AJ.
AJ wisely bit back her smile. “The only thing of mine that she could fit into.”
Emin surveyed the yoga pants damn near splitting at the seams and the soft jersey sweater, stretching over her breasts.
“You call this ‘fit’?” he spat out.
He was too busy trying to keep his eyes from flopping out of his head to notice the look that AJ and Maxim shared at his expense. Surprised, amused, delighted at Emin’s discomfort.
“You bring one but not all my sons?” Katya asked as she entered the kitchen, a basket of laundry on her hip.
Glory tugged her hands out of Emin’s and went to relieve Katya of the load. Glory buried her face in the laundry. “Ah! It smells so good! Like fresh water and wind and-”
Emin interrupted her. He couldn’t possibly hear her gush about one more thing. He was already this close to having to murder Maxim anyways, just for being in the same room as her. “Danil and Dora will be here soon. Papa was with them. Anton, well, he said ‘later’.”
“Then we go to living room while we wait,” Katya said, one eye on the oven where dinner bubbled.
All the children obediently followed, Emin purposefully blocking Maxim’s view of Glory’s sinful ass.
They were just settling down into the living room when the front door kicked open.
“You could not just wait for me, Ptûska? You simply MUST go on your own?” Danil’s irritated, sarcastic voice preceded him into the hallway.
“Oh, don’t worry, Danil. Whenever you’re not there to hold my hand, my legs just up and fall off. I never get anything done without you, darling.” Dora came into view first, walking backwards to look her husband in the face and teasingly fluttering her eyelashes. Her stylish cap of mahogany hair caught the light as she whipped off her bomber jacket and tossed it in the general direction of the coat hooks.
“The boy is having problems telling his wife what to do,” Ilya Malashovik said as he skirted around the arguing couple, and entered the living room, grinning.
Katya gave an appreciative laugh from where she sat in her rocking chair, working on a crossword.
Ilya stopped still when he saw Glory, blinking his eyes against the sheer beauty of her. “So,” he grinned. “Which one of my sons will you marry?’
“Papa!” Emin growled as Glory grinned and laughed, utterly delighted by the question.
Danil ignored the rest of his group. “Not even a phone call, Ptûska? You had to go that very second?”
“Danil,” Dora fisted her hands on her hips. “It wasn’t dangerous and we both know it!”
“Danishka,” Katya said to her youngest son, “you cannot make a lion into a lamb, no matter the haircut.”
Dora crossed the room and kissed Katya on the cheek. “You’re a smart lady, Mama.”
“You’re a lion?” Glory exclaimed, leaping off the couch and knocking Emin to the side in her hurry to get to Dora. “I’m a tiger!”
Glory whipped her arms around Dora’s middle, hugging her close and unabashedly sniffing her hair. Danil cleared his throat and loosened his tie, lowering himself to the couch next to Maxim. The two brothers grinned in tandem at the pained scowl on Emin’s face.