Chapter 3 #3
Biscuit padded over and pressed his enormous head against her hip. She dropped her hand to his ears automatically, and her fingers were trembling, and her legs were still unreliable, and her whole body felt like it had been taken apart and put back together in a new order.
Mia leaned against the kitchen counter. The one he'd pressed her against. She could still feel the ghost of his hands. On her waist. In her hair. Between her thighs.
She pressed her palms to her burning face.
A mistake.
He'd called it a mistake. He'd picked up his tablet and walked out like a man heading to the office after a routine morning.
But his hands were shaking.
And he'd whispered her name when he held her.
Pressed it into her hair like it was the only word he knew.
And the tremor in his arms when he caught her, that wasn't a man who'd made a mistake.
That was a man who'd done the thing he'd been terrified of doing and discovered it was worse than he feared, not because it was wrong, but because it was right, and the rightness of it was going to destroy every wall he'd ever built.
Biscuit whined.
"I know, baby." She scratched behind his ears.
Her voice was calm now. Calmer than it should've been, given that her knees still felt like water and her skin was still humming and the taste of him, cologne and heat and something that was just Alexei, was still on her lips from where his mouth had grazed the corner of hers en route to her throat.
She straightened up.
He'd called it a mistake. He'd walked out. He'd put his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking and told her to walk the dog on the terrace.
Last night, he'd closed a door.
This morning, he'd left the building.
The retreats were getting bigger. More dramatic. More desperate.
Which meant the walls were getting thinner.
Mia glanced down at Biscuit. He met her gaze with the patient, unsurprised expression of a dog who had been observing this particular human make questionable romantic decisions for two solid years.
"He ran," she told him.
Biscuit's tail thumped once.
"He'll come back."
Another thump.
She stood there for a long time. The penthouse was too big and too silent and still smelled like his cologne, and the counter was still warm where her back had been pressed against it, and the morning sun was filling every room with the kind of golden light that made Monaco look like a painting.
Then she picked up her phone.
She didn't think about it. If she thought about it, she wouldn't do it, and Mia Robertson hadn't flown two thousand miles to lose her nerve over a text message.
Her thumbs moved before her brain could intervene.
Your hands were shaking. That wasn't a mistake and you know it.
She hit Send.
The screen went dark. Her pulse was so loud she could hear it in her ears. Biscuit tilted his head.
"Don't give me that face," she told him. "That was brave."
He tilted his head the other direction.
"Okay, that was insane. That was the most insane thing I've ever done, and I once snuck a cat into a billionaire's penthouse."
She put the phone face-down on the counter. She wasn't going to check it. She wasn't going to stand here in his kitchen with her wrecked hair and her trembling hands and her still-unreliable knees, refreshing a screen and waiting for a man who had just walked out of his own apartment to—
The phone buzzed.
Mia's hand shot out so fast she knocked over her coffee. The mug hit the marble, the milky dregs spilling across the counter, and she didn't care, didn't even register it, because her eyes were on the screen.
One word.
From Alexei.
I know.
MORGAN
Monaco was smaller than he expected.
Smaller and louder and full of people who confused wealth with taste, which amused him, because Morgan Gurin had both, and the difference between the two was something most people spent their entire lives failing to understand.
He sat at an outdoor café on the harbour and drank his coffee black and let the Mediterranean sun warm the back of his neck.
The yachts were magnificent, he had to admit.
Row after row of them, white and gleaming, rocking in water so blue it hurt.
He appreciated beauty wherever he found it. He always had.
The casino was called Ace Royale. He had found it within hours of reaching the city. It was exactly where the letter's trail had brought him: one body in Saint Petersburg, one folded note in a dead man's lap, one reader.
Alexei Almazov.
He turned the name over in his mind as a jeweller turned a stone, examining it from every angle.
Eldest brother. Head of the family. A man who ran an empire from a building on the cliff's edge, who moved through the world with the unhurried menace of someone who had been dangerous for a very long time.
Interesting.
Morgan finished his coffee. The cup was porcelain, thin and white, and he set it down with the care of someone who understood that beautiful things deserved gentle handling. Even temporary ones.
He was in no hurry. Hurrying was for people who feared the outcome. Morgan never feared the outcome. The outcome was always the same.
He left the café. The sun hit his hair, and a woman at the next table turned her head. He smiled at her, because smiling cost nothing and made everything easier, and walked up the hill toward the casino.
He had time. He always had time.
The game would begin when he was ready.