Jennifer Greene - The Unwilling Bride

As innocent as a virgin, he picked it up. “Stefan here,” he barked, adopting her method of answering.

Her words gushed out like water tumbling from a faucet. “Stefan, for heaven’s sake, are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need help?”

He stroked his beard, thinking he should probably be feeling big guilt for trying such a ruse. Perhaps the guilt would come. Momentarily he was captured by the sound of her voice. “You would help if I were in trouble? You barely know me?”

“We’re neighbors. In America, neighbors help each other.”

“This is wonderful quality,” he said. “We need to spread this American quality of kindness across the world. It would make a difference.”

He heard her release a quick sigh. A lustily, loud impatient sigh. Full of passion. “Stefan, we can talk about philosophy another time. I was worried why you wanted to dial 911. Did you have a break-in?”

“Break-in? I don’t know this phrase.”

“Did you have a robbery? A thief?”

“No, no. No break-in. I am just figuring out how to do things. Not easy. I had much trouble in the grocery store today. Nothing is the same here. I like everything, you understand, this is my country now. But being able to read fluently and talk fluently is not the same, and I seem to be culturally gapped big-time.”

He heard her make another sound—the chortling hint of a chuckle.

“You would laugh at my problem?” he asked her.

“Oh, no.” She sobered quickly. “No, Stefan, I wasn’t laughing at you—”

“I worry fiercely about offending by saying wrong things, doing wrong things. But this is truth—I am utter confusion.” He didn’t have to work to make his tone sound mournful. A little talent for drama was in his Russian genes. “How kind, your neighborly offer to help. Much welcomed.”

“Ummmm…”

“I am close to desperate in this confusion, so your offer to help could not arrive at better time. I feel relief. Big relief. Be over in five minutes to accept this help, maybe quicker.”

Actually it didn’t take him four minutes to burrow into a jacket, hike the snowy road, leap her fence and exuberantly knock on her door. When she opened it, her face had an expression of bewilderment as if she had no idea how this impromptu visit came to be.

Stefan stomped the snow off his boots and closed the door—biting winter wind was gusting in the foyer. Then he smiled at her. Her forehead had a dusty smudge. Her thick brown braid had wisps escaping in a halo around her cheeks. Her black sweater had a hole, as did her jeans, and she was wearing socks, no shoes. But beneath all that was a breathtakingly beautiful woman, and it was a luxury to just look into those velvet brown eyes. “You still working so late, and here, I come and interrupt you. How about I make you something to drink while you keep working, so you not mind this interruption so bad?”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“You’re not thirsty? Not hungry?”

Paige had no chance to consider whether she was hungry or thirsty. She wasn’t sure if she was coming or going, by the time Stefan had been there an hour.

She vaguely recalled his exuberantly insisting that she continue working as if he weren’t there. What a joke. Stefan was an impossible man to ignore. He’d raided her kitchen for a simple glass of water and emerged with a pot of hot coffee, a bottle of vodka under his arm, two mugs and a six-inch-high sandwich—for her. “You forgot to eat, yes?”

It was true—she had forgotten dinner—and because there was no convenient place to set up the snack in her work studio, they’d ended up in the living room.

There’d been no lights on. He’d switched on her grandmother’s ruby thumbnail globe lamp. There’d been no fire in the fieldstone hearth, but he’d fixed that, too—stacked the wood, checked the flue and then lit a match to the kindling. He’d tossed her some couch pillows, pushed a claw-foot stool under her feet and had tipped the vodka bottle into her coffee mug a couple of times now.

“Cold tonight,” he kept saying. “As cold as Petersburg in a blizzard. Need to warm your toes.”

Her toes were cold, not from temperature but from nerves. Stefan seemed to have settled in as solidly as an oak tree taking root. It wasn’t exactly as if he were pushy. It was more like being stuck with a big, effusively friendly bear. Somewhere in that gnarly, wild beard was a boyish grin, a winsomeness—he was clearly trying to help her, to please. It was just…those weren’t a boy’s eyes looking her over by the lap of firelight.

Paige kept telling herself to bury the silly nerves. She’d been working all day, looked like something the cat would refuse to bring home. There was no reason to think he was attracted, no reason not to share a companionable drink with a neighbor. Stefan had thrown himself in the overstuffed blue recliner, a nice three feet away. He hadn’t said one word on any other subject but the reason he came—and heaven knew, he did need help with the language.

“…so I pay this woman, and I say ‘thank you, we hit the sack anytime, chick.’” Stefan shrugged. “Something clearly wrong with what I say. I meant compliment. But she turned color of roses, real quick, real red, and started talking so fast I couldn’t follow. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“Oh, Stefan.” Paige shook her head. “Who taught you English?”

“I learned in school, from early days. But that was always reading more than speaking. In university years, I met Ivan. A friend, a physicist, thirty years older than me, but he had actually lived in America. He knew the real English, the kind people spoke every day. Nothing like textbooks. I studied with him, hard.”

“Um…Stefan,” she said tactfully, “he taught you a lot of slang.”

“Yes, slang, thank God. I discovered on instant arrival that no one here speaks with grammar. Learning all that grammar useless. I am relieved to know slang. I not want to stick out like sore toe.”

“Sore thumb.” Paige corrected him automatically, and then hesitated, unsure how to approach his language misconceptions without hurting his feelings. “About your friend…I’m sure he was a really wonderful friend, and I certainly don’t mean to criticize him…but I’m afraid he taught you some slang expressions that aren’t used anymore. Especially some of the phrases referring to women.”

“Yeah?” Stefan was clearly one of those highenergy, physical men who couldn’t sit still for more than two seconds. Not for the first time, he sprang from the recliner, checked her mug, noted it was empty and splashed in another double dose of vodka and coffee. More coffee than vodka this -time, she hoped. “Explain to me some examples, okay?”

“Well, the thing is, Stefan, if your friend lived here a long time ago, he just wouldn’t have any reason to know that we’ve had a strong political women’s movement in this country over the last couple of decades. There was a time it was okay to call a woman cupcake or chick or doll. In another time, those were terms of endearment or affection—”

Stefan’s shaggy eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Endearments are now forbidden? American women no longer want affection?”

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s just that certain terms have become symbols of women being oppressed.”

“Paige, you are throwing me for a rope. I know about oppression. Oppression has nothing in common with word meaning of affection, not that I understand. You American women seek to oppress affection?”

“No. No, I…” She shook her head, starting to feel utterly confused herself. “The point is that some of those words and phrases became symbols. Symbols of the ways women had been treated like sex objects.”