Lovely carved and painted figures danced across the shelves, some of them so tiny and exquisite it seemed impossible that any hand could have created them.

A miniature house with a gingerbread roof and candy-cane shutters, a high silver tower where a beautiful woman’s golden hair streamed from the topmost window, a palm-sized canopy bed where a handsome prince knelt beside a lovely, sleeping princess.

“He brought me this one yesterday.” Natasha picked up the painted figure of a woman at a spinning wheel. It sat on a tiny platform scattered with wisps of straw and specks of gold. “The miller’s daughter from Rumpelstiltskin.” She smiled, tracing the delicate fingertips that rode the spindle.

“They’re lovely, all of them. Like a magical world of their own.”

“Mikhail has magic,” Natasha said. “For me, he carves fairy tales, because I learned English by reading them. Some of his work is more powerful, tragic, erotic, bold, even frightening. But it’s always real, because it comes from inside him as much as from the wood or stone.”

“I know. What you’re trying to show me here is his sensitivity. It’s not necessary. I’ve never known anyone more capable of kindness or compassion.”

“I thought perhaps you were afraid he would hurt you.”

“No,” Sydney said quietly. She thought of the richness of heart it would take to create something as beautiful, as fanciful as the diminutive woman spinning straw into gold. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt him.”

“Sydney—” But the back door slammed and feet clambered down the hall.

The interruption relieved Sydney. Confiding her feelings was new and far from comfortable. It amazed her that she had done so with a woman she’d known less than a day.

There was something about this family, she realized. Something as magical as the fairy-tale figures Mikhail carved for his sister. Perhaps the magic was as simple as happiness.

As the afternoon wore on, they ebbed and flowed out of the house, noisy, demanding and very often dirty. Nadia eventually cleared the decks by ordering all of the men outside.

“How come they get to go out and sit in the shade with a bottle of beer while we do the cooking,” Rachel grumbled as her hands worked quickly, expertly with potatoes and a peeler.

“Because…” Nadia put two dozen eggs on boil. “In here they will pick at the food, get big feet in my way and make a mess.”

“Good point. Still—”

“They’ll have to clean the mess we make,” Natasha told her.

Satisfied, Rachel attacked another potato. Her complaints were only tokens. She was a woman who loved to cook as much as she loved trying a case. “If Vera was here, they wouldn’t even do that.”