“I was half in love with Aleks after a single night.” Natalie twirled her ring with a secretive smile.
“You mean after a single glance,” Jess said. “I was there. I witnessed the whole thing. Love at first sight exists. What did you think of Maksim?”
“DDG. Drop dead gorgeous. Thought beyond that was impossible.”
Natalie said, “He’s got it so bad for you.”
“If she tells you that, then listen,” Jess said. “We call her the Manalyzer.”
“I can read any guy. Except Aleks.” Natalie waved that away. “And Maksim is lost for you. He called you moyo solnyshko.”
“Tell me what that means!”
“ ‘My sun.’ It’s a fairly common endearment, but for a guy like Maksim to say it? And it totally fits with what I heard him tell Aleks about you.”
“What’d he say?”
“Just before they came over here, Aleks asked what he was doing with a nice girl like you, and Maksim said, ‘She makes things . . . brighter.’ ”
Pang. “But can he ever truly get past the fact that I had sex for money? After he told me I was going to this wedding, he also told me he expected a heated negotiation for clothes and jewels.”
“He doesn’t know he was your first client?”
“He refused to believe me.”
Natalie frowned. “Oh. That sounds not so good.”
I couldn’t disagree. “Now I want to see if he can love me despite my past.”
Jess squinted at me. “Let me get this straight. You want him to love you even though you’re an escort, even though you’re really not?”
“Exactly!”
“But what was all this about you being a hostage?” Natalie asked.
“I got drunk, and we had sex without a condom at my peak time of the month and all.”
Jess nodded. “As you do.”
“He accused me of trying to trap him with a pregnancy and refused to let me go.”
Natalie sighed. “It might have started like that, but his feelings have deepened. Aleks told me he’s never seen Maksim look so satisfied. Not even when they were young. Apparently, Maksim was an anxious kid who rarely cut up.”
He’d told me he never laughed naturally. “It’s so strange, since I love his humor.”
My phone chimed from my clutch. I fished it out. M Sevastyan: having fun?
I told the girls, “Hold on, it’s him.”
Me: I loke natlie & jse! So fn!
M Sevastyan: ah, the tequila hits. are you being a good girl? or do i need to put you in chastity?
I moaned.
“Cat, did you say something?” Natalie asked.
“No. Nada.”
Me: fuck’g devillll!1
M Sevastyan: little witch
With a shaking hand, I stowed my phone.
CHAPTER 30
“I wasn’t going to come down here,” Máxim snapped when he reached me outside the lodge’s garage later that night. He looked more pissed than I’d ever seen him. “You’re a grown woman. How much trouble could you and Jessica get into in a garage? Then I realized that I didn’t know who was in the building before one of my men followed you here.”
“I knew you had someone following me!” I was slurring. Weird. I wasn’t even that drunk!
“What the fuck were you doing in there?”
“Had work to do,” I said breezily.
With a thunderous expression, he loomed over me. “And by work, do you mean a blond farmer? If I go in there, what will I find?”
“The limo—and sheer brilliance!” I laughed, then covered my mouth. “There went the surprise!”
Voice like ice, he said, “You’re wearing a man’s coat.”
“Jess bought it for me with most of my pin money.” I whispered, “I suspect she pocketed the money and stole it off a rack. I was coming to get you because I don’t think she should sleep in the car, but she won’t leave because someone might wash it.”
Jess’s cry sounded from the garage. I turned back. Vasili was exiting, with her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She wore the other coat she’d “bought.”
Upside down, she yelled, “Faster! Fun!” She slapped his ass with both hands. “Run, bald Russki!”
Vasili said something in Russian that made Máxim’s meany face fade, then the bodyguard toted Jess away.
Sevastyan exhaled a gust of smoky breath. “You were shoe-polishing the limo? I didn’t expect that. You had me very worried, Katya. You didn’t answer any of my texts or calls.” He signaled someone behind me—probably more mafiya security—then started squiring me to ward the lodge.
“Jess thumped me in the boob each time I tried to text, and accused me of being dick whipped. Natalie told me it’s futile to fight her. Psst, it is.”
He opened the lodge door, ushering me inside. As warmth washed over me, I frowned. “Did I have a curfew?”
He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “No, it’s not that—”
“You believed I was sleeping with someone in the garage?” My frown deepened. “Aren’t I your date?”
“You are. I didn’t know what to think when you wouldn’t answer your phone. Worrying about my woman is uncharted territory for me. I feared I hadn’t made things clear enough to you.”
When we reached our room, I asked, “What things?”