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  Kallie flushed. Okay, so she HAD been going back and forth on things. The whole day had been a disaster, and she was so rattled by this point she had no idea what she was saying anymore. Seeing him in the flesh had brought up too many memories. He was too tall, too handsome. And had been too exquisite in bed. What if she never experienced that again? Was she prepared for that, too?

  Am I really that shallow?

  But he was turning to go, and she couldn’t bear to end things on this note. She needed him to stay, she needed to hear his voice, to be in his presence for another minute. She really was that shallow. Or still that desperately in love. Did it matter which? She struggled to find a topic, something that would make him stay, and blurted, “What about the IT guys? Are they going to be here?”

  The door was open. He really was leaving. “No. They won’t.” He sighed, and shook his head. “I really gotta go. But Kallie...”

  Why did she still melt when he said her name?

  “Yes?” Her voice came out breathless.

  “Car tomorrow. Just be out front.”

  “Thanks.”

  And just like that he was gone.

  As Kallie closed the door, she thought she would suffocate. It was torture being in his house. Their home. Everything reminded her of Sasha.

  Not every memory was good.

  But some... some were...

  In the doorway of the master bedroom, she stopped at the threshold as if an electric force field would allow her to go no further. She and Sasha had had wild, ridiculous sex in this room. She could feel the energy of the ghosts of their lovemaking. She pressed her eyes tight and felt his breath raking his throat as he pumped in and out of her. She could see his magnificent smile when he knew she had come only for him. Again.

  Now, all of that was in the past. She had seen to it.

  I needed to. I did what was right.

  But she couldn’t even look at the master bedroom, let alone step into it. She ventured down the hall to one of the other rooms she hadn’t bothered with before, and threw her bags just inside the door. It had a double bed, not a custom king-sized, but it was well furnished enough, and switching made her feel somewhat like she was retreating, which was what she wanted.

  Kallie settled onto the smaller bed and stretched out to test the mattress. If she just put her head on the pillow, she would conk out. The drive had been brutal and had left her dead-tired physically, even if her mind was racing.

  It was break-up racket. She lay there and relived every conversation she’d ever had with Sasha, trying to smooth things out, so she could avoid the incredible pain. It was the pain of losing her larger-than-life hero—a figment of her imagination. The only thing that would quiet her would be a lot of carbs or booze.

  She threw the covers off and ventured back to the kitchen, knowing, mad as he was at her, he’d probably stocked the fridge for her with all her favorites. She had only been gone for a day, but she knew that’s what he did. Sasha Petrov was the most amazing caretaker.

  So, she stood with her hand on the refrigerator door and expected to find fruits, veggies, at least two different loaves of bread—one with seeds—and probably sweets. Sasha didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, but he had a giant sweet tooth.

  Instead she found... nothing.

  Just the foods that had been there the day before. Leftover takeout. A fruit salad that had seen better days.

  This told her, more than anything else, that it was over.

  He wasn’t going to do his magical caring thing for her anymore. There would be no sparkle of fresh food. In fact, if anything, the refrigerator desperately needed cleaning out, something she’d never had to do for herself since moving in. Whatever service had delivered all the nice things to eat had kept the fridge spick and span as well. She’d never had to think about it at all.

  When was the last time he’d bought her food? She poked at a box of Chinese takeout, trying to remember when she’d last had Chinese. Had things been bad for a while now and she was only just noticing?

  Get over him, girl. Like the way he’s gotten over you.

  She replayed the sound of his voice saying ‘sweetheart’ to someone else over the phone until it created a raw wound within her. Whoever that was got the food. She got the wonderful Sasha treatment that made her feel like the most spoiled person in the world. She held on to the hurt as she dragged the garbage can over next to the fridge, and wondered where to begin.

  I wonder what SHE has that’s worth stealing? I wonder what will happen to her if SHE starts snooping. I bet someone should warn her.

  The way someone should have warned me.

  Items started hitting the can with hard bangs. She started with the oldish stuff, but the next thing she knew she was heaving everything, good or bad, into the trash can. She went berserk, dumping the contents and scrubbing each shelf until it shone. It was good medicine to work through the dull throbbing ache in her chest.

  I’m going to get through this.

  She held on to that thought for all she was worth. It alone would get her through the next dark days.

  Never had Kallie felt so confused. The man she was in love with was a criminal. She had walked away from him for a reason. He had another woman, for heaven’s sake.

  So why did she still want him? Now that he was accepting her push for a break-up, and even going out of his way to give her some space, why then was she still standing here with tears streaming down her cheeks because she wanted the only man she’d ever been head over heels in love with?

  Shouldn’t she be happy right now?

  THUNK! A container of perfectly good cottage cheese hit the trash, followed by a brand-new bottle of salad dressing.

  Oh, she was happy all right. Fucking ecstatic.

  Chapter Three

  Five-thirty in the morning came fast. It felt like she would never fall asleep even though she wound up cleaning the entire kitchen once she’d finished up with the refrigerator, and had even vacuumed every room downstairs even though the place hadn’t needed it. As usual the townhouse was spotless, cleaned by those unseen hands that had kept the fridge stocked on his orders.

  That was all liable to change, too, wasn’t it?

  She’d bathed and fallen into bed gratefully, though she’d had no idea what time it was by then. Late. Very late. She remembered only vaguely coming from the bath to bed, stark naked, wandering through the house with a certain courage she might have lacked before. This, too, was part of the new Kallie, confident in her own skin.

  Which had turned into the child Kallie, who had crawled under half a dozen blankets and slept in a soggy mess of tears and self-recrimination, listening to the air conditioner click on and off in long, slow cycles for what seemed hours.

  Which, of course, ended with her waking up late, after too many hits on the snooze alarm. For the second morning in a row, she woke up with the nearest thing to a hangover without having the benefit of drinking anything beforehand. Bleary-eyed, she threw on clothes without really looking at them, and stood outside waiting for the driver.

  The driver usually was cheerful to her. But it was the same one who had driven heaven knew how many hours of day and night to find her, with never so much as a complaint. Well, that she’d heard anyway. He didn’t seem to be much happier than she was to be up this early after such a long day. He ignored her greeting, and didn’t even bother to let her buckle up before he accelerated out into the road.

  “Thanks for picking me so early. I think I can manage it tomorrow,” she said into the angry silence.

  “It’ll do whatever Sasha says.”

  “Of course,” Kallie murmured quietly, recognizing that this, too, was a relationship she’d broken with her hasty actions.

  She sighed, and tried to see things from his point of view. She wouldn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn, dress, drive twenty minutes to pick up a client to drive them all of five minutes. For all she knew, it had nothing to do with anything she had done. Maybe he wa
s just tired.

  “Thank you,” she said, letting herself out as he pulled into the parking lot of the bakery. He never so much as acknowledged her, but pulled out before she’d even reached the front door.

  With a sigh, she paused a moment and looked at the business that had been hers and Sasha’s. This was supposed to be their project. Their combined dream. It had been a dream come true, when they’d bought the place. Sasha bankrolled the purchase of a neighborhood landmark—a mom and pop kind of place that had been right here in this building since his parents were kids. It was something he thought he and Kallie could do together. An apology for what he did to her own business. Sasha had even let her sign the contracts.

  That was all he had let her do. He worked so fast, that every time she turned around to suggest something he had already done it. He never once consulted with her. He interfaced with the remodeling contractors. He hired all the staff, and he handled all the cash. His excuse was that the people he hired were from the neighborhood, and the contractors he had used on a gazillion jobs before. There was no sense in reinventing the wheel.

  But stuff happened that seemed shady to Kallie. First, the delivery man for the bakery wouldn’t allow her to touch the food bags. But then he’d also treated her rudely. Sasha didn’t do anything about that. It began to look like Sasha was just handling everything, down to even the most boring detail. She was being shut out. Worse, he hid stuff from her. When it seemed like history was repeating itself, and he was using the bakery as a front to sell drugs, Kallie left him. She ran off with half the cash register, to Ocean City. Somewhere in her mind, she felt like she had been entitled to the cash in the drawer. That’s where Sasha found her. In a rustic old building with a great view of the ocean.

  She shivered a little in the chill morning air. With the Town Car already gone, it felt lonely and strange on the sidewalk at this hour. The lights of the bakery were buttery in the morning dark as Kallie stepped up to the front door. There were no blinds to shield the street view of the work the baker and the cook were doing. She needed to count out the drawer. The place would be open in just half an hour.

  She remembered she had left her keys when she took off a day or so before. She rapped on the window, so the baker would recognize her and let her in.

  The baker was a woman Kallie had never known very well. In a way, it was her own fault. Kallie had been jealous of her for she’d seemed to know Sasha well, and usually had a joke or kind word for him when he came around the bakery. But the baker had never so much as smiled at Kallie when it was just the two of them, and eventually Kallie had given up trying to make friends with the woman.

  Now she wondered if this might perhaps be the woman Sasha was screwing. She was certainly beautiful enough. Sasha loved beautiful women.

  He’d thought her beautiful.

  The baker glanced up and scowled. For a minute, Kallie wasn’t sure she would open the door.

  How were they supposed to work like this? It wasn’t professional.

  When the woman finally stomped over to let her in, Kallie tried to be cheerful. If she wanted to be treated with respect, maybe she needed to start treating the staff differently than she had been. Regardless of her suspicions, she would take the high ground. “Good morning,” she said, and smiled though it about killed her to do it.

  “I have to wash my hands now,” the baker complained, slamming though the swinging door back into the food prep area, and turning on the water in the sink a little more forcefully than necessary.

  Kallie decided she wasn’t going to apologize. She was still the boss. “I’ll ask Sasha for my keys back,” she said finally, trying hard to keep her temper, to not put a snarky tone into the words though she wasn’t altogether sure she had succeeded. “That way, I won’t bother you.”

  She texted Sasha. He texted back. She stared a long time at his name at the top of her screen. Her stomach warmed, and she caught her breath as she opened the text to read it. Then reality set in. Things were different, and everything felt weird. His text was businesslike, worded in such a way that she could hear his voice in her head as if he were standing right there with her.

  “Okay. From now on, unless it’s an emergency text me between nine to nine.”

  She didn’t write back. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other and to do the next right thing. She went to the back office which was unlocked by a security code, so she didn’t need a key, and prepared a drawer for the morning shift.

  She had a strong urge to search the office for clues of the other woman, or maybe even other women. For all she knew, there had been many, ones she hadn’t seen before because she hadn’t looked, or she hadn’t thought to look. But she had only been gone a day, so if there had been signs of another woman in this office, it only made sense that she would have seen something by now. She shook her head, called herself an idiot for the twelfth time that day, and set to work. Once she set the drawer in the till, she helped herself to a yogurt parfait and a grapefruit juice.

  “If you need anything, let me know. I’ll be in the back,” she said to the girl who’d come in to run the register, who only nodded in return. The baker never so much as looked up, not that it mattered. Kallie had at least been cheerful to a certain extent. That’s what mattered.

  She was very pleased with herself for being so strong, and grateful that she wasn’t weepy. She felt like she was doing good, and was actually in a fairly cheerful moon as she dropped a cherry on top of her parfait just to make it look pretty.

  “What would we need you for?” murmured the baker as she bent over her dough.

  Maybe she had meant it only for the ears of the delivery guy, who had arrived a few minutes prior. Or she might have been talking to the cook, who stood tying on his apron at the grill.

  But Kallie heard it. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t. She took a sip from her juice, praying that her hand wasn’t shaking as she cheerfully replied, “That’s a great question.” She grinned suddenly. “We’re all dispensable, aren’t we?”

  She flashed a bright, sweet smile, closing the door of the office behind her. She didn’t feel one bit sorry she was leaving the bakery. It wasn’t something that had ever felt even remotely like something that was hers. She’d never been interested in having a restaurant, for that matter. She’d only gotten into it because of Sasha. Oddly enough, she’d always hated women like that; women who were into something because the guy they liked was into it. Why she’d ever gone along with this whole thing was beyond her now. Had she really been that caught up in the idea of having something that belonged to just the two of them?

  But it was Sasha’s fault she lost the business she’d had first, and left her unable to just pick up those same pieces again. Kallie had been too embarrassed to show her face in her old business realm because of all that had happened. But maybe current events might be the blessing in disguise to give her the courage to do that. Maybe it was time she thought about re-opening her agency, come what may.

  At five minutes before opening the bakery, Kallie ditched her empties and took her position at the second register. People were already lined up outside in the rising sun. The bakery was a hot spot. Sasha definitely had a good eye for business. Buying the bakery was a good move, even if he had turned it into a front for underhanded dealings.

  Just as soon as she thought of him, he walked through the door. He went behind the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. Coffee. Pikesville had a large number of Russian Americans, and many of the places in the older downtown served Turkish coffee, the way Sasha made it.

  She didn’t know there was a name for it. He just brought her coffee a couple of times, and it was so delicious she thought he was good at making it. Emotion pinged her. She hadn’t stuck around long enough for him to teach her how to make it.

  He didn’t say two words to her. He did stare at her, though. Their eyes connected, and she got to soak up his deep, almost wolf-like gaze for a moment before he took his coffee and
left. Kallie figured he was just checking up on her. She was so busy ringing orders through the rush, and there certainly wasn’t time for angst, much less any kind of ridiculous display. If she wanted to break down sobbing, she would just have to wait until the morning rush had ended.

  The second she counted back the last penny before the bakery was empty, she slammed the register drawer shut and dashed to the women’s bathroom. It was a single unit, so she had to run the water to give herself some privacy. Whether it was over him, or just the entire atmosphere of the place which had gotten to her, she gave in to the tears she’d been fighting all morning. The baker had been sniping at her all morning. The cook and the other girl on the register had simply ignored her like she wasn’t even there. The delivery driver, though, had been another matter. He’d leered at her more than once, and even included a rude gesture when she’d stumbled upon him in the storeroom where she’d gone to get more bakery boxes. The encounter had left her trembling with rage and humiliation.

  So, she cried, and didn’t notice until too late that the plumbing couldn’t accommodate the running water, and the sink overflowed. It was an old place, and they hadn’t renovated the bathroom yet. By the time she realized that water had not only splashed on the floor, but had flowed under the bathroom door, there was already somebody outside, pounding to be let in.

  She knew that sound. Only one fist was large enough to rattle the door quite that hard.

  A moment later the door burst open. Sasha pushed into the room, filling it with his broad shoulders, with his whole being. She backed up against the sink, soaking her pants, a glimpse in the mirror showing her a wet and blotchy face, made worse by mascara that simply hadn’t been able to stand up to the onslaught of tears.

  He uttered something to the delivery guy in Russian, who had trailed behind him, too curious and full of sneers and attitude when he was safely out of Sasha’s line of sight. Surprisingly, he went without a complaint to the broom closet for a mop.

  “You okay?” Sasha asked, taking in her appearance with a single glance that let her know that he knew she wasn’t.