Page 5 of Cherished By the BRATVA Grump

“I don’t know how to answer that,” I finally say.

Her eyes sparkle. They are bright blue. I wonder if Tamsin’s are the same.

“She is fierce,” she adds after a moment of silence that stretched out too long. “I think she needs someone who can handle that. But if you can’t treat her like your cousins treat their partners, then I am going to ask you to step back, and hope that you’ll do the honorable thing.”

Tamsin appears at my elbow.

“Sammie told me to bring you this,” she says, sliding a mug of black coffee onto the table with a small plate holding a slice of pecan pie. “She also said to stop scowling, or you’ll scare off the customers.”

I lift an eyebrow and lean slightly to the side so I can see around Tamsin. Delilah and Sammie are both suppressing laughter.

“Thank you,” I say, looking back at Tamsin.

Her mother doesn’t say anything, but I can feel her watching the entire interaction.

“You were at the bookstore opening,” Tamsin says. “You were staring at me. Why?”

I try not to show my surprise at how forward she is. Women usually wouldn’t be so confident as to challenge a man, especially one of my size. Her mother is right, she is fierce. I like it.

“Because I like the way you move. It made me feel calm.” I blink a couple of times in surprise at my own admission. Where the fuck did that come from?

The big black cat, the one Eduard favors, walks over to the table and sits beside Tamsin’s feet.

“Well, Delilah and Sammie say you’re one of the good ones, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. For now.”

I watch her walk back to the counter and then turn to my coffee. I’d almost forgotten that her mother was sitting right there. She is grinning, the fat cat purring loudly beside her.

Tamsin

The coffee shop may look small and quaint from the outside, but it’s actually a beast to run. Between the drinks and the baking and the cleaning and the socializing and the cats, there’s a lot to remember. By the time Sammie turns the sign on the door to ‘closed,’ and Delilah begins filling the mop bucket with water, my head feels like it could explode with the training I’ve been given today.

The coffee maker is temperamental at best, but sinister at worst. The cats each have their quirks, and I caught one repeatedly trying to break into the pastry case. The customers are obviously part of the furniture here, having been coming somewhat daily since it opened, I think.

And then there is Demyan Federov. The man who was staring at me in the bookstore, and has spent the majority of today staring at me.

“You know, it’s really off-putting to have a man stare at you like that,” I say to him, sliding into the chair opposite. My mother was sitting here earlier, but no one has dared sit here since she left.

“Your eyes are hazel,” he says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world to just declare some random physical fact about a total stranger, to the stranger.

“Okay,” I say. “I mean, obviously I know. I see them in the mirror every morning.”

I continue looking at him, waiting for an explanation for this weird behavior.

Delilah says something under her breath about obsessive Federov men and Sammie shakes her head with a smile.

“Go to dinner with me?” he asks. I mean, I assume it’s a question but it certainly didn’t sound like one.

I bark out a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and frustration.

“Why the hell would I go to dinner with you? I don’t even know you.”

If my words hurt his feelings, it certainly doesn’t show on his face. His handsome face. His eyes are icy and look like they could cut stone. Not that I’m looking to remember these details, but he pointed out my eye color first.

His now dart across to Dee, and then back to me.

“I urm…” he swallows, and I realize that he doesn’t know what he is doing. I narrow my eyes, because this all feels a little too twilight zone to me.

Sammie walks over to the table with two plates of cake.