Demyan thought about that too.
It wasn’t in the least palatable but if it meant that he kept the status quo—the life he had built, the times with his son in the country he had, for all these years, called home...
Checkmate.
Nadia had practically called it.
No.
He looked at Alina again. ‘Have you ever been in a serious relationship?’ He watched as her cheeks turned pink.
‘Not really,’ Alina said, then looked at him. ‘Not at all.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alina admitted. ‘I knew that my dad had slept with half the village mums, I was always terrified there might be half-brothers that I didn’t know about, so that was rather offputting...’
‘Alina!’ Demyan gave a shocked laugh. ‘When you forget to be shy you are funny.’
‘I know,’ Alina said. ‘I make myself laugh all the time.’
‘Why haven’t you slept with anyone?’ He was deliberately more specific.
‘I don’t really know...’ How could she best explain it? ‘I’m not really into muscly, brawny guys, which is a shame because the pale, interesting men aren’t really...’ she looked at him. ‘What sort of a man do you think I should cut my teeth on?’
Demyan would prefer not to think about her with other men.
He lay on his back in their little green glade and tried to picture the ideal guy for Alina’s first.
He just couldn’t.
Or rather he could, but the image in his mind came with his face on.
He looked at her brown eyes and round face and imagined some sleaze giving her too much to drink, or someone awkward and shy who would simply make her more awkward and shy.
‘I was divorced with a five-year-old by the time I was your age,’ Demyan said.
‘I know.’ She was quiet for a very long moment. ‘Why did you two...?’ No one asked, no one ever had, but she was either foolish or brave enough to ask. ‘Why did you and Nadia break up?’
‘I wasn’t doing well enough,’ Demyan said, then hesitated. That wasn’t strictly true but he discussed it with no one, not even himself. Alina sat fiddling with the salt rather than look at him but her hand slipped and salt spilled on the blanket. Demyan felt the familiar clench to his throat and tried to ignore it. It was illogical to think that something as simple as spilling salt could cause disaster, but even all these years later he could hear his mother’s wailing and screaming, the slap to his cheek for a simple accident. He frowned as Alina took a pinch and threw it over her left shoulder.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You know...’ She gave a shy, embarrassed smile. ‘It’s bad luck to spill salt.’
‘And that counteracts it?’
‘It’s supposed to.’ She watched as he sat up and took some salt and went to throw it over his shoulder.
‘The left one,’ Alina said. ‘That’s where the devil sits.’