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  It was an interesting image, the ancient, crazed warrior, flinging himself into battle. Maybe not the crazy part, but she could see him, a warrior in modern-day setting.

  Okay, so maybe he was hurting, but she was hurting, too. She needed him to know that. “You don’t exactly give me reassurances,” she said, genuinely frustrated.

  “I’m trying here. Maybe I’m not missing any meals, but I bought an entire building just to be near you.” He threw out a hand to encompass the rooftop and everything beyond. “That’s gotta count for something. If you left me again like you did, taking off in the middle of the night like that, I’d be very alone. Very alone and missing you like hell.”

  Kallie erupted into laughter. The whole thing was just too surreal. Well, that certainly wasn’t an everyday occurrence. There wasn’t a support group for people who had significant others who dealt with their angst by buying major pieces of property. “Why don’t we try having a conversation,” she said. “No hurtful stuff. Just talk. Maybe we can fill in some blanks. Maybe come to some sort of understanding. Right here. Right now.”

  “Okay,” he said, his tone cautious. “What do you want to know? In my opinion, you know all the important stuff. That I love you and I want you in my life.”

  He loved her. He didn’t say the words often, and she caught her breath when he made the statement so casually. Don’t let it sway you. You need some answers.

  “Who was ‘sweetheart’ then?” she asked.

  “I call a lot of people sweetheart.” He shrugged like it was nothing.

  “Hello? You know what I mean. The person on the phone the other night in my apartment. So, who was the person in this case?” she demanded, not letting him dodge the question.

  “It was Katerina,” he replied, and waved his hand as though brushing away the question. “What I meant was that I do call people sweetheart. I call old guys from the neighborhood sweetheart. Do the math. I’m with you all the time. Do you really think I have the time or the energy to fuck anyone else?”

  Kallie faltered, suddenly unsure.

  “No, I don’t believe in my heart of my hearts that you are,” she said. “But could you? Yes. I don’t think a normal person could. You, on the other hand...”

  He grinned, like he was sort of pleased by what she said. “Okay then, sweetheart, it was a dick move to get to you and I admit it,” he said.

  “Sasha, I think that you are the best, most compassionate guy I know. But then there are these little things that take away my faith in you. Then I start to wonder if you aren’t just some bad guy getting by, by looking so damn good.”

  Her answer hurt him, she could see it in his eyes. This was an old argument. He couldn’t see what his doing the occasional somewhat questionable activity had to do with her own faith and trust in him, like the two things weren’t related. He seemed to have a hard time grasping the concept of what most people called ‘integrity’, as though his own personal code was somehow superior to that. “If I make a delivery of a contraband substance, that is no one’s business but whoever takes the stuff. What’s the harm in that?” he asked. “I don’t deal hard stuff. Just a little weed to elderly people with glaucoma or arthritis.”

  She hated to throw it in his face, but she couldn’t help it. “And what about the call girl stuff?” she asked. “That does hurt someone.”

  “People need to get laid. If I had met you first, I would never have done what I did, but I can’t undo it. That Jeremy dick had a big mouth. At a party he shouldn’t have been at, he started talking big about how much money you made, only he said it was him. He said he had this agency and employed mostly women and he made money hand over fist. The wheels started turning. I said I knew how to make even more money. He didn’t even bat an eye.”

  She placed her hand on his. She let her fingertips stroke his forearm, covered in coarse hair, so masculine. Sensual currents flowed up from his flesh, through her fingers and up her arm. It made her catch her breath. “It’s so hard for my little brain to separate the trustworthiness of a guy who would bend the rules over here...” She motioned with her hands. “But can still be a stand-up guy to me over here. You feel like the best person I know, but I just don’t want to be a sucker.”

  “Did Jeremy feel like the best person you knew?” he asked directly.

  “Not ever,” she answered, reluctant to answer this, but knowing she had to.

  “But you were willing to walk down the aisle with him. I already told you I’m willing to work on whatever you want, but I can’t do it with you running away.”

  “And if I do, are you going to buy all the places where I move?” she asked, snickering.

  “I’ve been meaning to buy something at the beach for a while,” he stated, though she knew it was a lie. He’d never mentioned the beach in all the time she’d known him, except when she’d brought it up first.

  “Okay,” she said, letting him off the hook.

  The conversation seemed to pain him. “I don’t know what I have to do for you to consider me a decent guy,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t think I would have suffered so much at the thought of losing you if I didn’t believe you were a really decent guy. But you do have two sides. This wonderful Good Samaritan, and then the man who nearly hurled that jackass out of the restaurant.”

  “He spotted me right away,” Sasha said dejectedly. “That mother fucker.” He closed his eyes, and shook his head like the entire encounter had pained him.

  She hated seeing the sad look on his face, the way he seemed so depressed now with this conversation. Clearly, he’d been hurting as well. Maybe they both had things they needed to learn. All of this was going to take some time.

  Kallie pushed the table away and crawled up on his lap. She unfastened the braid in her hair that she had put in, so she could ride on the back of the bike. She knew he liked her hair. She drew the straight, pale hair around her body like a cape.

  His eyes were riveted. He stared at her as if intoxicated.

  She loved that he found her so attractive. She knew her last boyfriend might not have given her the time of day if she hadn’t been a pretty woman, but Sasha liked her for her. He found her attractive from the inside out. “Hi,” she whispered, hoping to change the mood.

  His eyes softened as he reached for her. “Hi back. So, how do you like the penthouse?” he asked with a soft laugh as he stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “It needs walls and a roof, but it’s a start.”

  “I like it just the way it is,” she replied, then smiled, unable to resist teasing him a little. “But Sasha, since you bought this place and I live here, is it kind of mine, too?”

  “Oh, I see how it is.” He bopped her nose with his finger and winked. “Yes, I did. And of course, everything that is mine is yours.”

  She closed her eyes, briefly recalling his very cold announcement that the bakery was his entirely. Whether he’d meant it or not it had been cruel, and she couldn’t help but be a little bit triggered now by this turn of the conversation. She was sorry she’d said anything. She needed to change the subject, fast.

  “How much do you own? Did you and Nikolai go fifty-fifty? And how do you do it?” she asked, throwing questions to cover her own uneasiness.

  “So many questions,” he said, but his tone was playful and sweet. Likely he hadn’t noticed her distress, for which she was thankful. “Maybe we should have gotten you involved in real estate, instead of the little bakery.”

  “How about we do both?” she said, though the real estate was a lot more interesting to her right now.

  He sipped his drink, thinking before answering. He replied with a story that took her completely by surprise. “My dad was out of the picture when I was very young. The house was all my mother had. That’s the place where she is now.”

  “Do you remember your dad?” she asked. She wondered if Sasha was like him, and whether he’d been so breathtakingly handsome, too.

  “I do some,” he said and shrugged.
“He was a big guy.”

  “Really?” she teased with playful sarcasm.

  “My mother is pretty tall, but he towered over her,” he remarked.

  “She’s a tall lady. I guess she’s what they’d call a handsome woman,” Kallie noted. “Does she date at all?”

  Sasha shook his head.

  Kallie recalled his mother; a brittle and bitter woman. She had to have been a young mother because she still looked youthful—and very attractive. She and Sasha had the exact same honey-colored hair, paired with the perfect body. Sasha’s mother could have been a model—and she knew it. She’d met her once and found the woman unpleasant, and incredibly vain.

  “So, my father died—he died on the job. He was a longshoreman in Baltimore. The house was hers coming into the marriage, so I had no claim to it. When my dad was alive, she would mention that from time to time. Said that house was hers. My dad would look at me with a pleasant face and say, ‘I guess we’ll have to get our own.’ I would have a claim to her place if she passed, but not as it stood. My father did get us a place and had a small estate that the state of Maryland made her split with me. Without a will, things got complicated. In fact, they look out more for the surviving kids than they do the spouse. She didn’t like that too much. She’s nothing if not a—um, greedy woman.”

  Kallie shook her head.

  “So, she kicked me out,” he said. “She made up reasons why I got on her nerves. Said I was bad. Threatened to have me arrested. She said she would make up a domestic abuse story about me.”

  “I don’t think I can listen to this. Why do you spend any time with that woman?” Kallie asked, wincing as the story continued.

  “That’s another conversation. No... listen and don’t worry; I don’t think I can say this more than once. It hurts. So, I was fourteen at the time, but I was big. Back then, you could be eighteen to buy beer. Not hard liquor but beer. I didn’t get carded. I could buy other kids alcohol, and I got busted doing that. I ended up in foster care with a lawyer appointed by the state. Then the lawyer and I had a talk about my situation. That I had money, but she was sitting on it.”

  “She was keeping it all to herself?” she asked, feeling sick to her stomach for the young Sasha, cheated by his own mother. “Your mother took your money?”

  “Yeah. But the lawyer knew about her owning her house and over time her neighborhood became the neighborhood, meaning she had a ton of equity. The lawyer made a deal with me. If I did something for him, he would tell her that he could make it so she would have to share ownership of the house with me. He wanted her to set up an account for me with what was due me... an account she couldn’t sign on. He made her give in. I got my money. He didn’t want a penny. He wanted me; my services. In return, I had to be this guy’s delivery boy.”

  “So, the lawyer is how you got into your life of crime?” she asked, struggling to keep the horror out of her voice. “But it was your mother’s fault.”

  “You make it sound like she’s public enemy number one.” He chuckled. “Hey, I made a great living at a very young age. That lawyer gave me another thing I could use. A tip: buy real estate. So, as kid, I bought my first place, that townhouse where you lived. That was my first home. I bought it while the neighborhood was total shit. But as a big guy, I came to the aid of the aging residents, and in return I got things.”

  “You asked them for payment?” she asked, more than a little disappointed at the turn this story was taking.

  “No,” Sasha immediately replied. “I never would. They just gave things to me in gratitude. I wasn’t looking for rewards, but it would have been rude of me not to accept. I actually inherited from one man. His kids never came to see him. I didn’t see it coming. I thought I was in trouble. He died, I got called. I went to a meeting and learned I inherited this man’s life savings, and I couldn’t believe it. The amount or the real estate. It was actually really hard to accept.”

  “I’ll bet your mother loved you then,” she said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  “How did you know?” he asked, looking at her in surprise.

  She shook her head. “When I first started working for you, and you let me have the townhouse, I did check you out,” she said, trying to remind him she wasn’t an absolute idiot.

  “I remember that,” he said, stroking her thigh.

  “I did find out that you were married before,” she said quietly, more as a question than a statement.

  “Yeah,” he said soberly. “I was young, and I thought I would find something with her that I didn’t get from home. That’s the truth. I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me. We both served a need in each other for a time. She moved out to California. I haven’t talked to her in ages.”

  Kallie lay her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry for bringing it up,” she said softly, feeling like a heel now for prying all of this out of him.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I would ask you if you want to know about me, but I have the feeling you already know everything,” she stated.

  She caught a glimpse of his beautiful white teeth as he smiled wide.

  “I guess that’s what I get for asking,” she muttered, sitting up and shaking her head. “Everything?”

  “I think so,” he said coolly.

  “Digging up my information is like watching me take a shower without me knowing it,” she snapped, unhappy with the turn this conversation had taken.

  Sasha arched an eyebrow. “Not a bad idea,” he remarked. “Is this your subtle way of revealing a fantasy to me?”

  Kallie had one more question. He was flirting, but she was going to be a major buzz kill. It had been a nagging question, answers to which she only got fragments to here and there. They never fully talked about it. Why, if he had this heart sometimes, did he choose to ruin her business? “But then what about me? You took my business away from me. Why?” she asked. “And I swear I won’t bring it up ever again. It’s just hard to wrap my head around it.”

  “It was an opportunity that presented itself, and I couldn’t resist. I’m a street person and a person of opportunity. Plain and simple,” he said. “I accept that the lawyer didn’t make me a crook. He may have given me a lot of really good ideas, but I take responsibility for the action part. Being a crook is part of who I am. I can never go quite straight. Maybe it’s my heritage.”

  “There are plenty of Russian people who aren’t crooks,” she scoffed.

  “We like to bend the rules,” he admitted with a smile. “No one made me do what I did.”

  “Necessity?” she offered, though she knew that wasn’t the case.

  “This state would have totally taken care of me. But I just couldn’t let that happen. I had a weird thing about letting people care for me,” he admitted.

  “That’s because you were programmed not to,” Kallie offered. “You were shamed out of needing anything.”

  Her words made the mighty Sasha squirm. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he muttered, and this time it was his turn to look away as he reached for his glass of vodka and drained it in one swallow.

  “Okay, change the subject. So, what’s up with buying Nikolai and Katerina a building?” she asked.

  “I went in with Nikolai to give him a start. We’ll repair the buildings and sell them off as condos. Good for me and good for him. Straight deal, totally legit.”

  She nodded, the asked a bit hesitantly. “So, what other criminal things do you do?”

  “Shh, shh,” he said, putting a hand over her mouth for a moment. “Sound carries at night. Don’t you know anything?” He shook his head. “Nothing bad. Nothing dangerous.” His finger traced the neckline of her dress. “But I think I’m about to give in to my temptation to be a very bad boy.”

  Kallie could hardly catch her breath when he flirted with her like this. “Okay,” she paused, then asked a little hesitantly. “One day, you’ll tell me?”

  “I will tell you when the time is right,” he said, rak
ing his fingers through her hair. “Not right now.”

  “I guess I gotta decide if that’s good enough,” she said, and knew that it would be. For now, it was. He’d been more open with her than he’d ever been, since she’d met him. Yes, it would be good enough.

  He pulled her close to him, slowly, and when he kissed her she knew her decision was made. Sasha was an incredible romantic, and he went to such great lengths, from little details like always getting the door for her, to creating magic in otherwise homely spaces, to literally sweeping her off her feet. It was the stuff of romance novels, and it made Kallie think long and hard about totally walking away from it once and for all.

  If she kept doing the back and forth thing, she might end up with him after all, but she could totally ruin things between them. At last he’d opened up to her about what he did and why, a little bit more than he had, and gave her hope for the future. She either needed to accept him for who he was, or leave outright.

  Can I live with that?

  She’d been asking herself that question all night long. Now, though, she thought she had the answer. Okay, yeah, maybe their relationship was a little dysfunctional, but whose wasn’t? And they were working together, trying to make this work. Wasn’t that what really counted?

  He went in for the erotic kill, kissing the base of her neck. She was unable to move away; it was just too intoxicating. Maybe it was the vodka, but it was tough to withstand the sweet pleasure as it pushed through her with surging force. Moans rose up from deep within her, scraping her throat they were so low and guttural.

  She closed her mouth, though she was breathing as if she’d been running hard. She clutched his shoulders as he bent over her to torture her so.

  She shifted so that she was standing between his legs. He adjusted to the change but continued to tease her neck with his lips and tongue as he glided his hands over her backside, downward, cupping her buttocks and guiding her legs around his hips until she was straddling him again. His fingers splayed around her curves, creeping into the soft crevice. Sasha had the unerring ability to find her heat almost instantly.