Betting on Grace Read Free Page B

doctor’s appointment and Katherine will be busy preparing a feast to welcome Nikolai.”
    Her daughters. Her four beauties. Each a unique individual with her own strengths and weaknesses. Of course, Ernst had never believed his princesses were anything but perfect. For a smart man, he could turn a blind eye to the truth when it suited him, she thought, frowning. And, now, we might all pay the price for that foolishness.
    “Mom’s right, Grace,” Elizabeth said after greeting Yetta with a smile. “You’re the logical choice and it would seem kinda cold not to meet his plane.”
    Her second-born daughter rarely passed up a chance to help others, although those altruistic tendencies hadchanged since Liz’s last trip to Eastern Europe. Yetta had yet to get to the bottom of that, but she pushed the thought aside. She had more pressing issues to worry about at the moment.
    “Besides, aren’t you the one who was carrying on the other night about our need for new blood in the family?” Katherine chimed in. “Like we were a vampire cult or something.”
    “I was only making an observation,” Grace said stiffly. “Mom, tell them. In olden days, four unmarried daughters would have been considered a liability. It would have been our duty to marry strong, wealthy men with big oxen.”
    Even Yetta had to laugh at that, although she didn’t feel much like smiling. Her most recent dream had been vivid, if not easily interpreted. One of her daughters had been in great danger. Help from the outside was their only hope, even if that meant keeping secrets from her girls. She only hoped they’d forgive her when the truth came out. As it would.
    “Oh, Grace, you are too much,” Alexandra said with a laugh. Yetta looked at her eldest daughter with pride. Others might have given up or turned bitter after being cheated out of the life they had planned. Not Alex. But such bravery came at a price.
    “Yeah,” Elizabeth agreed. “No offense, but when it comes right down to it, we’re descended from a group of nomadic wayfarers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and wound up spending several centuries being slaves.”
    Grace looked at Yetta and sighed. “They’re hopeless, aren’t they? Tell them, Mom. You’re the one who’simported a long-lost family member from Detroit. This guy must have something special going for him if we’re letting him move in next door.”
    Oh, he had something. He had a badge and a gun and the right connections to local law enforcement. But for Nikolai’s safety, her daughters would need to remain unaware of his true identity and his reason for coming to Las Vegas. At least, until the threat to the family had been eliminated. Then Yetta hoped Nikolai would make peace with the past and her daughters would understand her need for secrecy.
    “Nikolai was lost to us as a child,” Yetta said, recalling Jurek’s suggestion that she stick as close to the truth as possible. “I’ve hoped for years that he might return to us. And now that he is coming back, I expect you to do whatever it takes to make him feel welcome.”
    Yetta waited for someone to speak. She knew her strident tone probably surprised them, but she’d been muffled by grief long enough. She blamed herself for the current state of disharmony within her family, and she’d taken steps to rectify the situation. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.
    Alexandra cleared her throat and said, “I might be a few minutes late to lunch. I have an appointment with my ob-gyn this morning.” A sudden presence—fear—entered the room. “Just routine,” she added, with the barest quiver in her voice.
    Yetta walked to the cupboard so no one would see her face. Alexandra had been the first to disappear in her dream. Not swallowed by the snake, like the others, she’d simply faded away. Almost as if she’d never existed. At no time in her life had Yetta felt so impotentand frustrated, not even as she’d watched her beloved husband give