Fire And Ice

‘You said eight,’ he insisted, the word coming out as et.

Daring to drag her gaze from his face, she looked at the screen. There it was, the email she had sent him three days ago about their first tutoring session. The date and time was highlighted in blue. Sure enough, she had made a typo.

He was on time, and she was an idiot.

Radiating impatience, he tucked his phone back into his bag and looked expectantly past her.

Julia did a quick check to make sure her robe was still closed and then stepped aside. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought we were meeting at nine o’clock. Come in, please. It’ll take me just a few minutes to get dressed – ah, what is your name again?’

‘Mikhail Volkov,’ he said, and eclipsed her as he stepped into the foyer.

Right. The hockey player. The Dragon.

The Bandits typically provided their own English as a Second Language programme to foreign players, but for some reason this bruiser wanted to learn French. Professor Gwynn had put Volkov in touch with her just a few days ago and, though she was already stretched thin with this tutoring gig, teaching and her master’s programme, she’d taken on this new client.

He didn’t look around and take in the house she shared with Kris. Once he stepped into the living room, he focused on the table beyond the archway in the dining room and stuck his arm out.

‘There.’

Julia was almost afraid to correct him, and it took a few more seconds to untie her tongue. ‘Actually, we’ll be doing this in here. I’ve got some videos I want you to watch on YouTube and I use the television for that sort of thing.’

He swivelled around so quickly she took a step back, and Julia waited until he had completed his assessment of the living room before she spoke again.

‘So, I’m going to put on a pot of coffee while I get dressed. Would you like a cup?’

He hauled his satchel over his head and dropped it on the sofa, then looked at her.

‘Let me make coffee as you dress, then we begin.’

She wasn’t quite sure she wanted him wandering around the house, but she couldn’t think of a reason to insist he sit down and wait, especially not after she’d screwed up their meeting time.

She pointed in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Coffee is on the counter, and the coffee maker is your standard coffee maker. I won’t be more than ten minutes.’

Once upstairs, she drained the bathtub and took her things back to her bedroom. As quickly as she could, she dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, twisted her hair at the back of her head and fastened it with a clip. Forgoing her full makeup regimen for the sake of timeliness, she settled for only a dusting of powder on her face, some mascara and a tinted lip balm.

The smell of coffee wafted from downstairs as she stepped into the hallway, computer tucked under one arm. Outside Kris’s door she paused once more, then slipped inside.

‘Kris – wake up!’

The lump under the covers didn’t move, so Julia gave it a shake.

Without so much as a groan, Kris pulled the blankets off of her head and sat up. Her face from last night was smeared under her eyes and around her mouth, and her unwashed and gelled hair stood out like the bride of Frankenstein’s.

‘What?’

‘I’ve got The Terminator downstairs for a French lesson.’

Kris scowled, and though it was ugly it was nowhere near the level of disapproval that the man downstairs conveyed.

‘Explain.’

‘Remember I told you about the hockey player that Professor Gwynn asked me about? The Russian guy? He’s downstairs and he’s downright terrifying.’

‘How terrifying?’

‘If the house was attacked by ninjas right now, I’m pretty sure he’d have the situation under control in about sixty seconds.’

Kris giggled and sank back into her fortress of pillows. ‘Have fun with that. If I’m still asleep at eleven, wake me up.’

Downstairs, Mikhail had set up an orderly area on one side of the coffee table. Emma et Olivier lined up neatly alongside a spiral notebook and a thin laptop. The other side, obviously designated her slice of real estate, was clean and empty.

‘Not much room,’ he stated as she slipped her MacBook on to the surface, and he glanced at the dining table.

‘Don’t need much room,’ she said cheerfully and plucked two remotes from the caddy on the arm of the sofa.

She turned on the television and the media streamer, then went quickly to her online video channel.

‘So how it works is that we start with the sort of things you need to know if you were travelling through a French-speaking locale. Once I’m sure you can survive a week in Montréal without getting arrested, then we’ll move on to more advanced skills – but first, I need a cup of coffee. What do you take in yours?’

‘Black,’ he said, and as she headed for the kitchen she caught an impatient sigh.

She rolled her eyes as she poured out two cups of coffee. It was challenging enough teaching French to someone to whom English wasn’t even a first language, but put the attitude on top of it and she predicted that he’d give up after less than a month of lessons.

Reaching into the fridge for the cream, Julia looked over the door and peeked into the living room. Her student had clasped his hands in front of him and was twisting his thick fingers together as he looked around. Rather than surly, he merely looked uncomfortable and out of place.

With the red film of her rage gone, Julia had to admit that he wasn’t bad to look at. She certainly wouldn’t call him pretty, but as soon as she turned her back on him she felt the tiniest of shivers, compelling her to turn around and give him another look.

She resisted long enough to splash cream in her cup, then indulged as she returned to the fridge. She caught him returning her stare, though she couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or merely curiosity in his expression.

Embarrassment mingled with the thrill of being caught, Julia finished up and returned with his black and her double cream, double sugar. She sidled next to him and slid the cups on to the table. Though the work area was evenly divided, there seemed to be a disproportionate division of space on the sofa. He took up so much of it and the weight of his sprawl put her off balance. She shifted a few times to keep from sliding closer to him before determining it was a useless effort. He seemed to be everywhere, not just his body but his presence. The air surrounding her was thick with it.

To keep from rolling into his lap, Julia perched on the very edge and resigned herself to the inevitable pins and needles in her ass.

‘Before we start, why don’t you tell me why you want to learn French,’ she asked more out of nosiness than anything else, and prepared herself for another blast of that disapproval.

Mikhail instead took a loud slurp of his coffee. His thick lashes fluttered and what sounded like a soft purr rumbled from his chest.

As the sound skittered over her shoulders and settled under the skin, Julia bit her bottom lip.

Oh, my.

It was far too easy to imagine that sound wrapping around her in the darkness, as rich as the aroma of coffee that filled the room.

Desperate to banish that most unprofessional impulse, Julia opened her laptop and turned it on.

‘I am here to play hockey for Bandits, but this is my last season,’ he told her. ‘I wish to begin studies next fall. I want to stay, and I want both English and French. More opportunity.’

Julia picked up her own cup. ‘Business degree?’