His body goes rigid. “He can easily figure out where you live and wait for you there.”
“He was after my valuables. He’s not coming after me.”
“You don’t know that,” he growls.
To be honest, the thought did cross my mind. “I’ll go to my mom’s.”
“No.” He starts walking again, pulling me along.
I have long legs, but I can barely keep up with his strides. Frantically, I consider my options. “Look, thanks for helping me. I owe you. I just—”
He stops dead. Something I can’t decipher flashes in his eyes. “You don’t owe me.”
“If you hadn’t shown up—”
“Don’t.” He lifts a finger, briefly pinching his eyes shut. “Don’t say it.”
“You have guests to get back to. I’d be grateful if you could just call me a cab.”
“Like hell,” he says, taking his phone from his pocket with one hand while keeping the other locked around my wrist, as if he’s scared I’ll run again.
He punches in a number and presses the phone to his ear while walking us closer to the car. When whoever it is answers, he barks out something in Russian. The conversation is short. He ends the call before we get to the car and holds the back door open for me, helping me inside.
I’m without money, bank cards, keys, or phone, and I do need a ride, so I shift all the way to the other side and make myself small against the door. Yuri turns in his seat, handing me a bottle of water and a box of pills.
“Painkillers,” he says. “Mr. Volkov said you may need some.”
So he’s the person Alex spoke to in Russian on the phone. I’m so grateful I don’t bother to ask where he got painkillers from so quickly. As I push two pills from the foil casing and swallow them with the water, Alex gets inside and tells Yuri to go.
When the car pulls away from the curb, Alex puts an arm around me and pulls me against him. He makes another call and fires off something in rapid Russian. His presence is warm and comforting. His smell wraps around me, making me want to burrow my nose in his neck and soak up the safety he offers, but then a vision of the dark beauty pressed up against him in the restaurant flashes through my mind, and I stiffen.
“Don’t you have guests to get back to?” I ask.
“They can wait,” he replies with that exotic foreign accent. “You’re more important.”
“Really?” I ask with sarcasm.
He looks down at me. “Yes. Really.”
“Is that why you never contacted me?”
He rubs a thumb over the padded shoulder of my jacket. “I had to take care of business in Moscow.”
I add a heavy note of sarcasm to my voice. “And I suppose you didn’t have roaming.”
His features soften. “Did you want me to call you?”
“No,” I say, crossing my arms.
A faint smile caresses his lips. “Right.” His tone matches the soft look in his eyes. “It’s not that I didn’t want to. I was busy.”
Right. I wriggle out from under his arm. “When did you get back?”
“Yesterday.”
“Ah.”
I turn my face to look through the window, but he grips my chin and forces me to face him. “It’s not what you think.”
“What am I supposedly thinking?”
He traces my bottom lip with his thumb. “It was business.”
I feign ignorance. “What was business?”
“Tonight.”
“You don’t owe me explanations.”
His steely blue eyes tighten. “I disagree.”
The car comes to a halt, preventing me from arguing more. Alex says something to Yuri in Russian before getting out and opening the door for me. When we’ve stepped onto the pavement, Yuri pulls away.
“Come,” Alex says, guiding me to the door with his hand on my back.
The broad expanse of his palm burns through my jacket, but I ignore the effect as I climb the steps to his front door.
The house is quiet. A dim light shines in the entrance. The temperature inside is comfortable. I shiver a little as my cold body adjusts to the warmth.
Gripping my shoulders, Alex turns me to face him and reaches for my jacket zipper. My eyes are drawn to his with the same pull I experienced the first time I felt his gaze on me. He’s staring at me like he may eat me alive, but there’s also something dark underneath the desire, something almost violent.
Mesmerized, I stand quietly as he pulls down the zipper and brushes the edges of my jacket open. Sliding his hands under the fabric over my shoulders, he frees my arms from the sleeves. Heat gathers in my core from the simple act. Even if I have unanswered questions, such as the real reason he didn’t call and who the woman at his side tonight truly was, I’m helpless against the reaction he elicits.
He watches me with that sharp blue gaze as he takes off his own jacket and hangs it with mine on the coat stand. I feel like the mouse who’s about to become the cat’s dinner as he advances on me until our bodies are flush together.
Gripping my chin between a forefinger and thumb, he says, “You’re never to wander the streets alone again.”
The unreasonable command reignites my anger. We’re nothing to each other. Since he made that clear by ignoring me, he has no right to make demands of me. “I’m not never going out again because of a mugging.”
He drags his gaze over me, pausing on my breasts before meeting my eyes again. “Why did you come to the restaurant tonight?”
“Don’t worry,” I say with a sardonic smile. “I wasn’t spying on you.”
Annoyance flashes across his face. “I apologized for that. I explained why the background check had to be done. Do you want to hear it again? I’m sorry I made you feel bad. It wasn’t my intention. In my world, security precautions mean the difference between life and death. I don’t know you well enough to exempt you from how I treat everyone who comes into my house for the first time, but I do intend to rectify that.”
If that speech is supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t work. Backing away, I escape his touch. “Do you say that to all the women you bring home?”
He advances a step, the set of his jaw hard. “Only to the ones I intend to sleep with more than once.”
I’m not sure I can do this. I thought I could handle a one-night stand with him and look where that has left me. In the span of a short week, I’ve turned into a mass of nerves just because he thinks little of me and hasn’t called. How will I react after a second no-strings night with him? I have to face the truth. I’m not the one-night stand type. Sex has never been meaningless for me the way it has been for him. That’s the problem. That’s why this can never work. The sooner I get out of here, the better. First, though, I have an urgent matter to attend to.
I take in a tremulous breath. “May I please use your phone? I need to cancel my bank cards.”
His voice is clipped. “It’s done.”
I gape at him. “The call you made in the car?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” I say slowly, not seeing at all. Does he have a private banker on standby that he can call in the middle of the night? Probably. And since he’s already accessed my bank account, what’s getting his unorthodox banker to cancel my cards? The thought is disconcerting, but I try to focus on what still has to be done. “In that case, may I please call a locksmith?”