The glass door—seldom used anymore—sticks when I pry it open and step inside the sweltering room. Valya turns, her eyes wide, as I close the door behind me.
“Wow,” I say, tucking my hands in my pockets and taking in the room. No one has cared much for these plants in decades except to water them. The multicolored bougainvillea, which was my mother’s favorite, has almost completely taken over, growing up the walls and over the domed glass ceiling. “This place is a disaster.”
A small smile tugs at the corners of Valya’s plump lips. “It’s beautiful. Did you see this?” She motions behind her to the southern wall, where a lemon tree has taken over, its branches heavy with yellow fruit as it takes up the entire space around it.
I scowl. “That will stink when all the fruit rots.”
“Surely your cook will be able to use them.” She reaches up and palms one of the large fruits. My eyes trail up the line of her legs and over the curve of her ass. She isn’t any bigger than she was our last year of high school. “It’s amazing that it’s not only grown but flourished after all these years.” She turns to me suddenly. “Do you remember when we planted it?”
There’s a reason I don’t come in here anymore. It reminds me of the only two women in the world who have ever had a piece of my heart. “No,” I lie, moving to stand behind her. I remember everything about that year. My mother, her ring, the lemons, and the woman in front of me.
“Sure you do,” she says, not picking up on my mood. She always was horrible at that. “It was just after…” Her face falls.
“My mother died?” I finish for her. Reaching over her head, I pluck one of the lemons. It’s plump. Ripe. Perfect. “I think you were trying to teach me a lesson about lemons and life.”
She smiles shyly. “Or I just really wanted fresh-squeezed lemonade.”
We’re standing close together, so close that it would be awkward if it were anyone else. But with Valya, it feels right, like we’re meant to constantly be in each other’s space. Suddenly, it’s too hot in here. I can feel sweat dripping down my back. But I don’t want to leave, damn her. I dig one of my nails into the lemon and begin to peel it, dropping the yellow pieces of flesh to the concrete ground.
I try to act indifferent when I ask, “What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh.” She looks around uncomfortably, but there’s nowhere for her to escape. “I run a cleaning company.”
How fucking perfect. Valya, always clean and pristine. I smirk. “Once the help, always the help.”
Her lips purse slightly, and I think she’s going to fight back, but she stays infuriatingly neutral.
“What kind of cleaning?” I dig my thumb into the lemon and pull it apart.
“Residential, mostly. We have some commercial contracts.”
“Do you clean?” I ask, picturing her on her hands and knees wiping down the baseboards or whatever mundane thing it is that housekeepers do. My dick grows hard, though, at the image of her ass in the air, of my palm sliding across it.
“Not often,” she answers.
“Here.” I take a slice of the lemon and hold it up to her lips.
She gazes up at me, those big, brown eyes so wide and trusting. Then, like the last fifteen years never happened, she parts her rosy lips. I run the lemon over them and then push it inside. Her mouth closes around it, her teeth scraping my finger, her lips soft and wet against my skin.
“It doesn’t get much fresher than that,” I say, my voice a husky growl.
I’m hard as a rock and my heart is racing. How does she do this to me? Every. Fucking. Time. I take a step forward, then another, until her back is against the trunk of the tree and the branches drape around us. It smells sharp and sweet. Like her. My mouth waters. I want desperately to press my lips to hers, to lick the juice off of them, to invade her. I want her to scream and cry and beg.
Just like she used to.
Her small breasts rise and fall with her panicked breaths, and I smile down at her, a wolf moving in for the kill.
Suddenly, the door opens with a groan behind us. I don’t move, but Valya startles and quickly ducks sideways away from me, making her escape. I turn and find her father in the door, staring at me. His face is an unreadable mask.
“Are you ready to go?” he asks his daughter.
“Yes,” Valya says, “let’s go.” She doesn’t look back, not once, as her father pulls the door shut behind him, leaving me alone and hungry in the sweltering room.
Chapter Four
Valya
I stare down at the slice of lemon floating in my tea and cringe. I will never be able to taste lemon again without thinking of Andrej. That was cruel of him, but also probably intentional. He knows it’s one of my favorite flavors—if he remembers, that is. The way he looked at me, though, leads me to believe he remembers everything.
And he hates that he does.
There’s a gentle knock on the door behind me. “Valya?”
Turning, I find my receptionist, Charity, lingering in the doorway. “Yes?”
“You have a call on line one. A potential job.”
“Oh.” I pick up my tea despite my misgivings and carry it down the hall from the small break room to my office. Valor Cleaning Services rents a space in a much larger building, so there are only a few offices, a conference room, and a reception area. It’s nothing glamorous, but it works as a headquarters for our administrative duties and client meetings. Most of our work is done on-site.
Charity returns to the front and I sit behind my glass desk to pick up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Ms. Strakova?”
“It is.” I slide my tablet in front of me, ready to take notes. “Who is this?”
“My name is Elya, I’m Andrej Novak’s personal assistant.”
The phone nearly slides from my hand with shock. My eyes dart to my tea, cooling a few inches from my hand.
“Are you there?”
“Uh, yeah—yes—yes, I’m here,” I stammer. What in the world kind of torture has Andrej cooked up now?
“Mr. Novak is looking for someone to assist with cleaning and organizing his father’s recently vacated estate. It will involve some cataloging, and assistance with the estate auction. I wasn’t sure if your company did that kind of work, but he insisted I try you first.”
He insisted? A small smile plays on my lips, but I banish it quickly. Cleaning out the Novak estate would be a huge job with a huge fee. It would be great for business.
But it would be dangerous for me. Yesterday was proof of that. We were surrounded by dozens of people and I still could hardly keep it together. Andrej still has a piece of my heart. The two of us in the Novak house again—alone? A recipe for disaster.
Although…there’s nothing that says I have to be there. My father is probably more familiar with that house than anyone else alive, and he has the respect for Andrej’s father to do the job well. I can take the job, get the contract, and then put my father in charge. He would love it, and it would keep some much-needed distance between Andrej and me.
“Yes, I think we can help,” I finally answer. “When would you like to meet?”