Chapter 27
not your secretary
LEXI
When the shower was running and steaming, Nicolai stepped through the shower stall’s glass doors and walked inside to splash the water, then came back and handed me into the warm enclosure.
A towel bar was screwed into the back wall. I tucked the fluffy towel into the bar where it would stay dry because the danged shower stall was that freakin’ big.
The stone walls were warm to my fingertips and radiated heat as my hand moved by.
My bare feet walked six long steps through the shower stall, over the rough tile under my soles and toes, to where the wall jets sprayed and a flat faucet poured a steaming waterfall that flowed into the floor drain.
Oh, I could get used to this.
The steaming deluge sluiced everything off my skin—sweat, dust, the whole crazy day and all the insanity, some sticky stuff—and the tension in my muscles dissolved.
I was glad Nicolai knew how to set the dials on the screen. I would’ve probably ended up taking an icy shower out of sheer technical ignorance about how to work the computerized bathroom.
Somehow, for the next year, I was going to be living a life of computerized bathrooms.
I absolutely should not get used to this.
Nicolai’s lifestyle was on loan for one year, maybe less.
Afterward, it was back to regular ol’ taps and spigots for me.
But I could enjoy the silly computerized bathroom in the meantime.
I could enjoy the frightfully gorgeous man who’d had his mouth between my legs.
A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the water temperature.
Yeah, I’d really, really enjoyed that part.
But I needed to stay grounded and focused. I was not a princess. I was a salt-of-the-earth, common-as-dirt Nebraska working-class girl, barely working class.
Not actually working class.
Barely-scraping-by, poverty-level, choose-between-food-and-medicine lower class.
This life was not mine.
I’d been soaping and shampooing the whole time I’d been ruminating, so now I was a clean salt-of-the-earth, common-as-dirt Nebraska not-quite-working-class girl, so I grabbed my perfectly dry towel off the dowel at the back, pushed open the glass door, and stepped out of the shower enclosure.
Nicolai had shucked his pants and was wearing a fluffy white towel that hung past his knees, and he was laying out bottles from a leather ditty bag into an open drawer.
Every time he lifted a tiny bottle out of the bag and moved it over to the edge of the counter like a loading crane, his heavy muscles flexed under the ink-scrolled skin on his arm and pectoral.
He caught my eye through the mirror. His gaze down my shoulders and over the towel wrapped around my body was hotter than the warm shower water still clinging to my skin.
I looked behind myself at the closed shower door for a second. “What?”
Nicolai shook his head and went back to lining up the dark green bottles.
“I don’t know how to turn off the shower. Do you have to do it on the touchscreen?”
“Leave it running. I’m getting in.”
The hotel bill likely included the water, and the building probably had a huge water heater, so okay then. I’d just let the shower run if that’s what he wanted.
I went out into the bedroom to dig through my bag to find my jammie shorts. When I came back in to brush my teeth, splashes and humming told me Nicolai was in the shower.
Humming?
I sneaked closer to the glass door.
A low rumble rose and fell with the water splashing in the shower enclosure.
He was humming in there. Not singing. Just humming to himself. And it was definitely music, not muttering.
His humming was cute.
I listened, leaning my head against the marble wall outside the shower and trying to identify the song, but he wasn’t performing for me. It was just a little moment for himself.
I brushed my teeth quickly and smeared some lotion from the small hotel-brand bottle on my face and skin, where it absorbed as I was putting it on and didn’t leave a greasy residue.
Even the complimentary lotion in this hotel-club-thingee was better than anything I’d ever bought for myself.
I bolted from the bathroom and climbed into the bed on the right side, the one closer to the bathroom door. I plugged my phone and charger into a power strip integrated into the heavy wooden nightstand.
Fancy.
The night before, when Nicolai had been off his rocker with drink, he’d staggered over to the left side of the bed like it was a habit, so that must his accustomed side. His phone was already plugged in over there.
But should I even be sleeping in the bed?
Last night, Nicolai had insisted that I sleep in the bed and not on the floor, offering instead to sleep on the floor himself, but he’d passed out in the bed right after he’d said that.
What would he think if he saw me hogging the bed? Would he be mad?
As I started to spiral, Nicolai strolled out of the bathroom wearing loose pajama pants and a tee shirt, and he wandered around to his side of the bed.
The blue-black ink of his tattoo sleeve emerged from his tee shirt and covered his left arm almost to his wrist.
When he wore a dress shirt, the sleeve and collar of the shirt barely but completely covered the tattoo. The top of the design swirled just over the crest of his shoulder and dipped to emphasize his pectoral muscle.
“I can sleep on the couch in the living room if you want,” I blurted. “Or on the floor. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. They say it’s good for your back.”
Nicolai frowned at his phone, angling it as he looked, but set it down without swiping anything. “Is something wrong with the bed?”
“No. It’s fine.”
“Because I can have them bring up a different mattress if you’d prefer something softer or with more support.”
“Dear God, no! I just don’t know what you’re comfortable with.”
He sat on his side of the bed. “Have you changed your mind about what you want from me?”
Saying out loud that he could go downtown on me any time he wanted to seemed too forward, so I shook my head.
“Tell me the real reason.”
The real reason?
There were too many.
I might snore. Or kick. Or hog the covers.
Because I wasn’t used to sleeping with someone else because I never had, because Jimmy had never stayed over, because I had a twin bed in my tiny studio apartment, because I didn’t even have a cat to sleep with me, because Nicolai might not want to sleep in the same bed as me or anyone, because of all of it.
“This is a fake marriage, and we shouldn’t pretend it’s anything else because you’ll break my heart,” I blurted. “And I don’t want that to happen again. Because it hurts.”
Nicolai squeezed his eyes closed, and his head tilted downward. “Oh, my angel.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know whether you should even call me things like angel.”
“It really was just a few days ago, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, and you’ve had years to get over from when Hanna broke your heart.”
He snorted a quiet laugh. “Hannelore didn’t ‘break my heart.’”
“But you were together a long time. You were engaged to her.”
“Yes.”
I waited for him to say something else, anything else, about Hanna and him.
But he didn’t.
He said, “You don’t have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone. And I won’t ever again. Nothing matters.”
“Yes, that’s quite a refrain. ‘Nothing matters.’ Did you say that before that fool left you at the altar?”
No. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
He nodded. “You didn’t, then. You don’t have to trust me because we’re already married. We’ll have a post-nup contract soon enough. First thing in the morning, if you like. It will state that I cannot leave you or attempt a divorce for one year.”
“Yeah, or else, what? That Ueli guy will spank you?”
His quick glance at me had amused crinkles at the corners of his eyes and a pressed smile. “Or else I’ll pay you triple.”
The insanity of that shook me like an earthquake. “Holy Christ on a cracker, Nicolai. No!”
“You’re right. It’s not enough. Let’s say, five times. You’re a very good negotiator, you know.”
I started backpedaling like I was on a unicycle heading for a cliff edge. “You don’t have to do that. No, don’t do that. I don’t want you to.”
“I’m glad we took this time to think the contract through,” he said, looking up at the chandelier on the ceiling and nodding. “Yes, five times is a proper round amount. During this year, I will be financially responsible for your expenses, and I will be at your beck and call.”
“That sounds like you’re my secretary.”
He turned like a panther and stalked me as he crawled across the bed to where I was sitting up against the headboard. “I’m not your secretary.”
SEC-ruh-tree. Oh, his cute little English accent.
“I’m your lover, Empress.”
Nicolai was obviously messing with me. “Oh, come on.”
His blue eyes were bright as sapphires as he crawled across the comforter to stare directly into my eyes.
“You do realize that being married to me makes you the Empress of Russia in some circles, even though we will not acknowledge that. You’re not a princess.
You’re a queen. Now stop being worried about me leaving you, because I can’t.
That’s why we need the annulment. Because I can’t. ”
Now I was worried about him not being able to. “I don’t like the thought that you can’t.”
His arms pinned the comforter around my hips, pressing my thighs into the mattress.
“We will sign the marriage contract tomorrow morning, likely against the strenuous advice of counsel.” He chuckled to himself.
“I can hardly wait to see my lawyers’ faces when they see the quintuple-or-nothing clause. ”
Wait a gol-danged minute. “Or nothing?”
He tilted his head. “That’s only fair. If you leave me in a way that breaks the contract, then it’s nothing.”
“In a way that breaks the contract,” I repeated.
His eyes creased with a suppressed smile. “We’ll define the terms, but there’s always the option of an attic on the moors.”
I was never going to live that down. “Oh my God! Stop!”
“Well then, I guess we’re stuck together.”
Stuck together for a year.