“Thank you,” I managed again. It seemed to be the best I could do when it came to acknowledging her hospitality, especially since she so obviously wished that I didn’t come as part of Sam’s unexpected visit to Serbia.
Marija gave him one last pointed look, then jerked her head toward the kitchen. “Garage is through the laundry room. Keys are in it.”
Sam leaned over and pressed a kiss to her head. “Thanks, Mari. We’ll bring it back safe and sound.”
She nodded, leaning into his lips for a second too long. “I might be out at a meeting this afternoon. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen, or the staff can prepare lunch.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to snap that we could make our own lunch, and that we would be gone before mooching another meal, but I couldn’t figure out why. She knew that Sam wasn’t used to preparing meals. I assumed Sam dined out, ate room service, or took advantage of spreads at his events. Dad and I had a cook before I went to college, and even though the dining hall left something to be desired, it sufficed.
We left through the laundry room, where someone had moved our clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, stepping into the garage. It had an air of disuse, of cleanliness, that didn’t match up with my mental image of such a place, and the black Mercedes gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the windows on the doors.
It smelled new, and the leather of the passenger seat was shiny and stiff under my legs. Sam and I clicked our seat belts into place at the same time, and he ran his fingers over the sun visor until he found the opener and the garage door rumbled up behind us. Dust motes trembled in the blast of sunshine as we backed out into the day, still not speaking.
Instead of thinking about how Marija’s helpfulness irritated me, I pulled up a map to the old Belgrade mansion on my phone, then hit “start” on the navigation app.
“It’s down on the shore of the Danube,” I said as it pulled up directions. “Doesn’t look like far.”
He paused at the end of the driveway, squinting into the sun. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and breath went in his nose, then blew out his mouth.
The picture of nerves, or anger, made me cold. The idea that Marija had voiced her suspicions or, worse, done some digging and found out more about my dad and my life, throbbed in the base of my skull.
“Why are you being so cold to Mari when she’s helping us?”
“I’m not.”
“Blair, you are. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous. But you’ve made it very clear that you have only limited interest in me, and she’s my friend. She’s doing us a favor. Stop treating her like she’s some kind of insect buzzing around your face.”
The quiet force of his request hit me square in the chest. It swelled the shame and guilt I’d acquired over the past week so big that it was hard to swallow. He was right. There was no reason to be bitter with Marija just because she’d come unwittingly into the landscape of my con. It happened all the time. I had to roll with it or risk making Sam more suspicious than he already was.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll be nicer to her.” I swallowed, finally, and managed to choke down enough of my pride to say what needed to be said. “I guess I’ve been getting used to having you to myself, that’s all. It felt strange having someone else around.”
“But you’re not jealous.” He glanced over at me, eyes holding mine.
“Why would I be jealous? Are you guys a thing?”
He shook his head. “Not for a long time, and never seriously. She’s a good girl. Lots of fun, super loyal. Great instincts. Doesn’t trust you, though.”
There it was—the bomb I’d been waiting for since he’d stopped driving. Marija had voiced her suspicions to him while they were on their own. The part of me that knew how special it was to have caring, protective friends respected her. The rest of me, which was trying to accomplish something specific, wanted to tear her hair out for making my job even harder.
“She said as much. Very protective of you, for a never-serious fling.”
He shrugged again. “The tour’s an interesting place, Blair. Its own kind of life.”
When more seconds ticked past without him stepping on the gas, my palms started to sweat. It felt like some kind of crossroads, here, as though he was waiting on me to say something, to share something, to defend myself against Marija’s accusations. If he started to trust her instead of me, I might as well go home and wait for whatever retribution my father had planned.