Staying On Top(35)

“What were you thinking about just then? Your face looked exactly like the one on a possum treed by a dog.”

“That’s flattering.”

Silence hung in the air between the three of us until he accepted there wouldn’t be any more information forthcoming about my state of mind.

“I was introducing you to Marija.” He nodded toward her as though he were speaking to some kind of daft child, or a recluse who didn’t own a television. “Marija, this is Blair Paddington, a friend of Quinn’s.”

“Any friend of Sam and Quinn’s is a friend of mine,” she replied in perfect, perky English. Even though she played for Serbia, she’d trained in the United States since she was ten years old. Common enough knowledge. “Would you like to go?”

“Wait, where are we going?” I turned to Sam. “I thought we were just borrowing a car.”

“Calm down, devil girl. We are borrowing a car; it’s at Marija’s house. And since it’s almost midnight, I was thinking we could grab a shower and catch a few hours of horizontal sleep.”

Agreeing meant going against everything I had been telling him since we set out on this misguided field trip, but the mere mention of a hot shower brought tears to my eyes. I stunk like four-day-old body odor, and even though it wouldn’t have stopped me from making out with him for another twenty minutes, Sam didn’t smell so hot, either.

In fact, I was pretty sure Marija had taken a few steps back after hugging him. Using her house didn’t make much of a difference to me, but with the omniscient picture I had painted of my father, it could send up imaginary warning flags for Sam.

Still, it was midnight. We would leave first thing in the morning. It would be okay.

I nodded. “Okay. But we need to be out of there early.”

Sam groaned, then reached over to slide my backpack off my shoulders.

I grabbed for it. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to be nice. It’s heavy.”

“And it will be lighter if you carry it? I’m fine.” My shoulders ached, my back wrenched every time I moved, and the balls of my feet were as sore as if I’d hiked Michigan Avenue in stilettos, but letting him carry my bag felt like an admission of something. Weakness, maybe.

I didn’t want to go there. I’d already gone enough places today that frightened me—in front of a gun and onto Sam Bradford’s lap—and it was hard to say which was more terrifying.

“Fine. Whatever.”

He turned and strode toward the bus terminal door, skirting a couple of men in dingy business suits and a family with five kids, all of whom were running in different directions. Marija looked at me as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what. She gave up after a minute and shrugged, then followed Sam. I trailed after them both, taking a six-year-old elbow to the ass on the way. The girl babbled something that appeared to be an apology, an endearing, half-toothless grin easing my irritation.

I smiled back and patted her arm, then stepped out into the blustery night.

*



Marija’s house lived up to the image in my mind and then some, even if it was ugly as sin. The tan and chocolate stucco and wooden beams stretched four stories high and resembled an especially grand vision of how I imagined the cabin in the woods that belonged to the seven dwarves.

I kept my opinion to myself, largely because I was too tired to even think about opening my mouth and also because now that the idea of a shower and bed were within reach, doing anything to screw that up seemed like a particularly bad idea.

“Are you two hungry?”

Sam’s eyes wandered toward me, waiting on my answer. I wished he would stop playing the gentleman; we all knew he was nothing more than an overgrown man-child who had never wanted for a damn thing.

“A little, but I don’t want food as much as I want a shower. Or sleep,” I admitted.

Marija nodded. “I’ll have the servants bring a little something up to your rooms. You can get ready for bed and have a snack before you crash.”

“Thank you, Mari.” Sam kissed her cheek, then headed toward the giant winding staircase.

It climbed out of the center of the great room, which had too much brown and ivory furniture, an abundance of rugs, end tables, and antiques, and way too much velvet. The floor was slate, or made to look like slate, and my lack of sleep made me slip a few times.

“Yes, thank you,” I echoed.

“You know,” she said, her voice taking on the same tone she used when someone in the press had talked to her as if she were a dumb blonde. “I haven’t asked exactly what’s going on here, or why the two of you showed up in Belgrade needing to borrow a car in the middle of the night, and quite frankly, I’m not sure it’s in my best interest to know.”