The Unwilling Bride. Jennifer Greene
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.”
“Ah. I get you. Much clearer now.” He hesitated. “I think. What is sex object?”
Paige grabbed her mug. She’d been wrong. No matter what proportion of vodka he’d splashed into the coffee, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough to be comfortable with the unexpected turn this conversation was taking. She slugged down a gulp of the brew and grappled to explain. “A sex object is when someone is treated like a thing instead of a person. Women wanted to be valued for more than just their bodies or looks. They wanted to be valued and loved for their minds.”
“Yeah? So what is the news here? This is automatic. What man with brain would love half the woman? Why waste time loving less than body, soul, mind, whole caboodle? How else would you love?”
“Um, maybe we’d better try this language lesson another time,” Paige said desperately. Her conscience shot her slivers of guilt for copping out. Before he went to town again—for his sake—he really needed to understand that it wasn’t wise to call strange women “cupcake” or warmly suggest that they “get it on” or “hit the sack.” But to summarize the whole history of feminist philosophy and politically correct language in a short conversation—it just wasn’t that easy. There was clearly a whole difference in cultures.
Or there was a difference in him. An image flashed through her mind of Stefan, making love, inhaling a woman’s mind, body, soul, “whole caboodle.” Blood charged through her veins in an embarrassing rush. He had sounded so matter-of-fact. Maybe loving “whole caboodle” was status quo for him, but it wasn’t anything she was familiar with. And she was utterly confounded how the subject had veered in such an intimately personal direction. They’d started out in the nice, cool North Pole—how had they ended up in the hot climate of Tahiti?
“You are probably frustrated with me. I learn too slow,” he said morosely.
“No, no, you learn very fast.