She’d expected no less.
‘They didn’t give away much.’ Libby caught up with her after they had gone. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Alina...’ Libby could see her discomfort and tried to put her at ease. ‘It’s forgotten, it never happened...’
It never should have, Alina decided.
Demyan returned just as Alina was leaving. She didn’t care if he’d lost his keys, or how he might get in.
She was beyond livid.
‘Have you any idea how embarrassing that was?’
‘Alina, my son turned up...’
She really was in no mood to discuss his domestic life. ‘Well, he clearly gets his foul mouth from his father. How dare he speak to me like that?’
She was beyond reason. It was all horrible and wretched and really no one’s fault but she was in no mood to see that. ‘I’m going.’
‘Where?’
‘Where do you think? Home,’ Alina said. ‘Oh, but that’s right, you wouldn’t know what that was—after all, you’re getting rid of yours.’
She stood there, waiting for him to match her anger, to tell her not to leave, to offer to drive her, hell, call a taxi even, but Demyan was clearly more than used to an angry lover’s silent demands and he was also terribly used to ignoring them.
‘You’re not staying for coffee, then?’
She could have slapped him. She wanted to slap him but there was simply no point.
‘Go ahead,’ Demyan said, glancing at her clenched fists, but instead of slapping him Alina let out a sob and turned and ran.
You signed up for this, Alina reminded herself as she shivered on the bus ride home, remembering the teary women leaving his room.
Why had she expected anything different from him? He was leaving, could it be any clearer? She was the one helping to sell his home. How foolish to think, for even a second, that it might be different for her.
Demyan was terribly used to slamming doors—really, did women close them any other way after a night in his bed?
What he wasn’t used to was that gnawing of disquiet. Neither, when he should be thinking of the conversation he had just had with Roman, was he used to lying on a bed, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling and looking at the world from her vantage point.
‘I don’t need this,’ Demyan said out loud, because he really did not need feelings right now.
He had no intention of going after her, she was far better away from him, and, Demyan thought, noticing for the first time the picture she’d had hung, what the hell had she done to his wall?
Talk about how to put potential buyers off! Alina had said the room needed a few feminine touches but there was a blown-up nipple hanging on the wall.
Or was it an ovary?
Demyan was no art snob and barely gave paintings a glance; if he did, he was far too sullen to comment. But this thing on his wall was actually rather fascinating. So much so that Demyan peeled himself off the bed and went in for a closer look.