Chapter 5
Kian
“For fuck’s sake, she lost the shoe again,” Amir grumbled. “Should have glued it to her feet or her finger… whatever.”
He despised chaos, and Dr. Baldwin seemed to embody it perfectly—brilliant, capable, and yet perpetually chaotic, leaving disorder in her wake as if it were an unavoidable side effect of her presence.
It was how River had described her. And then there were his entertaining texts that were slowly but surely getting annoying. I recalled a few, shaking my head.
River: This woman is trouble on two legs.
She ran into a centuries-old statue with her ice cream while staring at the buildings.
An old woman started to scream about vandalism and cops were called.
She’s lucky the Croatian police officer found her, and her red hair, cute and decided to give her a free pass.
River: She’s eating ice cream again. Someone really has to tell that woman there’s such a thing as too much ice cream.
River: She’s stopped at an ice cream shop again. The woman eats it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I guess we should be thankful she isn’t lactose intolerant.
The man tailed her through Croatia before deciding he’d had enough, handing her over to Astor, who was something of a chaos demon himself. His reports were less theatrical… in the beginning.
Astor: 8:46 a.m. coffee on the balcony.
Astor: 9:44 a.m. Subject has left the villa, en route to the village.
Astor: Subject never made it to the village. Got sidetracked by local goats.
Astor: Subject got lost on her way back to the hotel.
Astor: Subject stopped for ice cream and lost her car keys.
Astor: Fuck. God help me with this woman.
Needless to say, even he ended up feeling nauseated by Sophie’s patterns—or lack thereof—and was more than happy when she crossed the border into Albania.
Lucky fucking me.
Amir and I stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the SUV fishtail out of the parking lot. Gravel sprayed beneath its tires and above the pavement, sending dust billowing up in a choking cloud that burned the back of my throat.
The engine howled once—angry, panicked—and then the vehicle tore down the road, vanishing around the bend. All that remained was silence and a single sandal abandoned on the asphalt, twisted and lonely like a casualty left behind on a battlefield.
The snake—if there had ever truly been one—was long gone. Probably fled the mayhem. Smart creature.
“She drives like the devil himself is stalking her,” Amir muttered beside me, arms folded tight across his chest.
“We’re not far off,” I said dryly, eyes still fixed on the empty road.
So much for hoping Dr. Sophie Baldwin wouldn’t come to Albania. This encounter had been anything but a chance, but I hadn’t expected her to collide with me quite so literally.
The woman was gorgeous, which wasn’t new to me with the amount of updates I’d been sent these last few months, but I really didn’t need a distraction or extra responsibility right now.
Still, I couldn’t help but look her way, hoping for another glimpse of the beautiful redhead with curves in all the right places.
“I’ve never seen a woman move that fast in my entire life,” Amir continued, squinting into the fading dust. “My back ached just watching her launch herself at you. That whole scene”—he shook his head—“was like a damn ambush.”
I exhaled slowly, her floral perfume still clinging to my skin and my suit.
It was entertaining, yet something about the woman unsettled me.
The feeling lingered like a question I couldn’t frame.
Every instinct I had told me she was fleeing from something, but after all I’d learned about her, the answer refused to surface.
As far as Kristoff—and by default, my team and I—were concerned, she was taking a much-needed sabbatical.
Right.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, adjusting my cuffs.
“Americans,” Amir scoffed, still unsettled by the fiery woman. “Only they would attempt to tip you twenty euros after mounting you.”
“Maybe we should’ve taken it and invested. You know, diversify our portfolio,” I joked, shooting him a side-glance.
“I’m not sure if you’re insulting me or yourself.”
Letting him ponder on it, I turned toward the black Mercedes idling beside the stone wall where my driver, Dina, waited with practiced patience, observing the scene through a mask of carefully concealed judgment.
Yes, she was a petite woman, but her personality was greater than her five-foot frame.
And yes, my associates never failed to judge me for employing a female driver, just as Dina never failed to judge me for being a criminal.
But Dina, like her mother before her, had driven for my mother, and her loyalty was the kind that couldn’t be bought.
Because of that, I accepted her judgment—and her occasional advice—and would continue to do so for as long as I lived.
She opened the door just as I stepped up to the car, and I shook my head. “Dina, how many times have I told you not to open the door for me?”
Shrugging her shoulders, she said, “What other excuse could I have to stand out here and watch you two stalking a woman and acting like fools?”
I arched my eyebrow. “Fools?”
“She could have stabbed you,” she hissed. “I mean, if American redheads are your thing, be my guest. Get stabbed.”
I let out a chuckle. “Oh, you’re worried about me. That’s sweet.”
She rolled her eyes just as Amir stepped forward and added, “As if I’d ever let my boss get stabbed by a redheaded American. Now get behind the wheel and get us out of here.”
I slid into the back seat, tuning out their brief round of bickering before motioning for Amir to follow.
Dina slammed the door behind him, narrowly missing his foot. He shot the door a glare over his shoulder as she rounded the car, her expression unapologetic.
“She’s going to be the death of me,” he muttered under his breath.
“Why don’t you just marry her?” I suggested, leaning into the leather. I suspected they regularly had secret rendezvous, although both pretended they couldn’t stand each other. “You already behave like an old married couple.”
I really should have known better than to go down that road because Amir turned the tables on me.
“Are flaming redheads your thing, boss?” he asked casually, leaning into the leather.
I raised a brow. “And that matters… why?”
“It doesn’t.” He shrugged. “I’m just filing it under things I’ll bring up later to annoy you.”
“You should have pulled her off him,” Dina muttered as she pulled out of the lot, heading in the opposite direction of the speeding SUV. The road curved gently down the mountainside, all rolling green hills and sharp stone ridges.
My men would follow Sophie to her destination and report back to me and I wouldn’t give her another thought.
“Honestly,” Amir continued, “if you hadn’t stopped me, I’d have pulled her off you. The lady has some curves.”
Jesus Christ.
My shoulders tensed and an emotion I wasn’t quite familiar with shot through me. Why would Amir take notice of Sophie’s curves? That wasn’t what I paid him handsomely for.
“She didn’t weigh that much,” I replied flatly. “And it’s nice to see a woman with curves. Although, I suggest you stay focused on her body parts above the shoulders in the future.”
“Aha,” Amir replied while Dina snickered in the driver’s seat, muttering curse words in Albanian. “Duly noted, boss.”
I let out a sardonic breath, the sound dry and sharp in my chest. They were both hopeless romantics, disguising their soft hearts beneath layers of sulk and silence, and some days I feared they’d be the end of my patience.
Still, I couldn’t deny it—even if only in the privacy of my own thoughts—the woman was striking. She carried herself with a natural balance, an hourglass curve that caught my eye before my mind could catch up, stirring an unwelcome flicker of curiosity.
Dammit. Maybe I’d been single too long.
I wasn’t a saint, and I’d never pretended to be, but age had made me selective. Faces blurred together now, voices faded as soon as they spoke, and in the past year, no woman had managed to hold my attention. This one had—without trying, without even knowing.
She hadn’t asked for my name. She’d been too busy talking in hurried, breathless fragments, fingers tight at my collar, her warmth ghosting my cheek.
Then she was gone, off to make a new friend out of some unsuspecting shop owner or other, no doubt.
A reluctant smile tugged at my cheeks.
Something about her—about the way she lingered in the air even after she’d disappeared—caught at a loose thread in the back of my mind. And when that happened, I knew better than to let go.
Good thing I’d be seeing her again.