Chapter Two
Ryleigh
I have no idea how my night has spiraled so far out of control. Scratch that, not my night—my life.
My roommate, Andi, disappeared more than six months ago, leaving me high and dry with an unpaid rent bill. And then a few days ago, she appeared again out of nowhere, only this time with a baby, promising she’d pay me back and make everything right.
Stupidly, I believed her, let her in, and she stayed the night. But in the morning, she was gone, leaving little Ella behind with a note that simply said I’m sorry.
Two words. She left me a two-month-old baby and two words.
I’ve been surviving on caffeine, adrenaline, and the kind of stubbornness my mother used to call my worst quality.
Four days of figuring out bottle temperatures by dripping formula on my wrist like I saw someone do in a movie once.
Four days of Googling “why won’t baby stop crying” at 3 a.m. Four days of calling Andi’s disconnected phone number over and over, like maybe the thirtieth time would be the charm.
And now I’m standing on the cracked front steps of my apartment building with a man I met a half hour ago, a man who drives a car that probably costs more than I’ll make in my entire lifetime, and I’m about to let him inside and see exactly how I live.
This should be fun.
Alexei follows behind me, appraising everything.
I can feel his gaze moving over the peeling paint on the handrail, the buzzing overhead light with the dead moths inside the fixture, the dark stain on the hallway carpet that I’ve been pretending is coffee for the past year.
After I pay Mrs. Henderson—who gives Alexei a slow, suspicious once-over before handing Ella back to me—I unlock my front door and shoulder my way inside my darkened apartment.
Alexei is right behind me. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him at my back, which is both comforting and mortifying.
I flip the lights on and wince.
Based on this guy’s car, his taste in clothing, and the way he whipped out his gold card like it was nothing to buy a stranger seventy dollars worth of baby supplies, he has money.
Probably lots of it. I have almost none—barely enough to pay my rent and eat, and some months not even that.
The decor shows it. Everything I own is secondhand or curbside finds I hauled home and wrestled inside.
My brown couch sags in the middle from a broken spring I never fixed.
My dining chairs are mismatched—one wooden, one metal, one that wobbles if you breathe too hard.
The curtains are too short to fully cover the window, and the kitchen faucet has dripped for so long there’s a rust stain in the white porcelain sink.
I try to see it through his eyes and immediately wish I hadn’t.
I huff out an exhausted breath and set the baby carrier onto the floor by the couch.
Ella’s asleep somehow, despite everything — her tiny lips pursed.
She’s so small it doesn’t seem real. Round cheeks, button nose, little eyelashes resting on her cheeks.
She looks like a doll someone left behind, which I guess isn’t far from the truth.
I busy myself with straightening a throw pillow that’s beyond saving. Like that’s going to make a difference. Like one repositioned pillow is going to trick this man into thinking I have my life together.
Alexei follows me around like a hulking lion, his deep blue gaze seeing everything.
He takes up too much space in my tiny living room—his broad shoulders and height making the room feel smaller, the ceilings lower.
He’s close enough that I can smell him again, that combination of leather and spice and mint that I first noticed in his car, and it’s doing things to my nervous system that I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with right now.
Besides, he’s angry. That much is certain.
“It’s freezing in here,” he says, frowning.
His voice is irritated, but it still manages to rip through me like a current.
Deep, rich, and impossibly sexy. It doesn’t matter that I don’t want to notice things like this about him—I just do.
He’s spellbindingly gorgeous with this commanding presence, all sharp jaw and dark brows and eyes that look like they could see through walls.
I hate that he’s seeing me at my worst. Hate that this is the version of me he’s going to remember.
“I turn off the heat when I leave for the day.” I cross the room and adjust the thermostat, keeping my voice casual. Breezy. Like it’s a choice and not a necessity. Like I don’t turn it off because running it all day would add twenty dollars to a bill I can barely afford.
But rather than the heat humming to life like I expect, nothing happens. I try again, pressing the button harder, as if that’s going to help. Nothing. Cursing under my breath: “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. No way I’m giving him the satisfaction of knowing I might not have paid the heating bill in time. I thought I had a few more days. I always cut it close—pay the bare minimum, stretch the grace period as far as it’ll go—and this time I must have stretched too far.
“Your heat doesn’t work?” He crosses the room to inspect the thermostat, switching the shopping bags he’s carrying to one hand while he fiddles with the settings.
Nothing happens. The thing is ancient, and I’m not all that surprised, but watching him try to fix it—this massive man in designer clothes, standing in my dingy apartment poking at my busted thermostat—is surreal in a way that makes my throat tight.
Why didn’t he just drop me off and leave? Why didn’t I just take the bags out of his arms and thank him for the ride and the supplies? Why is he still here?
He still hasn’t set the bags down, like he isn’t sure where to place them. Or maybe he doesn’t want to touch anything here. Probably the latter. I wouldn’t either if I were him.
I cross the room and reach for the bags, but he doesn’t release them.
He just gazes at me with those blue eyes, darkened to the color of midnight right now—eyes that see too much.
We’re standing close, too close, and I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
He runs warm, apparently, which seems deeply unfair given that my apartment is the approximate temperature of a walk-in freezer.
His scent hits me again—leather and spice and something clean underneath—and I have to physically stop myself from leaning in.
It’s been so long since I’ve been close to a man who smelled good.
So long since I’ve been close to anyone, really.
My social life consists of Desiree at work and Mrs. Henderson next door, and neither of them makes my pulse do whatever it’s doing right now.
As if on cue, Ella starts to whimper softly, squirming in her seat. The chilly temperature is probably bothering her, and guilt floods through me. I’ve been so focused on my own embarrassment that I forgot about the tiny human who’s depending on me to not be terrible at this.
I’ve been doing my best to hold it all together, not only for my sanity, but also for Ella’s sake, but in this moment, I’m struck with sheer panic.
The kind that wraps around your ribs and squeezes.
What the hell am I going to do now? My apartment has no heat.
I have a baby who isn’t mine but is entirely my responsibility right now.
I can’t afford to fix this tonight, and I can’t keep Ella here in the cold.
Alexei doesn’t give me a moment to even process the answer to that question.
He simply walks over to the baby carrier and wraps one hand around the handle, lifting the whole thing—Ella, carrier, blankets, and all—as though it weighs absolutely nothing. Like he’s picking up a bag of groceries.
I carry that thing from the car to the apartment and my arm aches for twenty minutes afterward. I have to switch sides halfway. And he just . . . lifted it. With one hand. While still holding shopping bags in the other.
Something about watching him do that—the casual, effortless strength of it, makes my stomach do a slow, traitorous flip.
I stare at his forearm, at the muscles that bulge against his jacket and the vein that runs along the inside of his wrist, and I have a completely inappropriate thought about what those arms would feel like wrapped around me.
Stop it, Ryleigh. The man is being nice. He’s not flirting with you. He’s rescuing you, which is actually worse.
“You guys are coming back to my place. We’ll get this all sorted in the morning.”
I cross the room to stand toe to toe with him and place my hands on my hips. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you from Adam. I’m not going home with a complete stranger.”
“You don’t have much of a choice. I’m not letting you and the baby stay here and freeze tonight. In case you didn’t notice, it’s below thirty outside, and it’s not much warmer in here.”
“Not letting me?” I sputter.
The audacity. The sheer, unbelievable audacity of this man, standing in my apartment—that he walked into uninvited, by the way—telling me what I can and can’t do. I don’t care how good he smells or how easily he lifts baby carriers. Nobody tells me what to do. Not anymore.
“That’s right. Now, get your shit. It’s way past her bedtime.” His gaze flicks to Ella, whose whimper has turned into a full-on cry.
And that’s the part that gets me. Not the bossy command or the way his jaw is set in that stubborn line.
It’s that he looked at Ella when he said it.
He’s not doing this for me—he’s doing it for her.
Because it’s nearly midnight and thirty degrees, and there’s a baby in a freezing apartment, and even if I’m too proud to accept help for myself, I can’t be too proud to accept it for her.
I sigh and reach for Ella, lifting her out and bouncing her in my arms. As I expected, it does nothing to calm her. My bouncing is apparently not the right rhythm, or the right speed, or maybe she just knows I have no idea what I’m doing and she’s protesting accordingly.