* * * *
“Will she be joining us in the hotel room?”
Eva came crashing back to reality with a heart-wrenching thud. She had just let Alexei Rustanov dry hump her to an orgasm against a wall and in public where anyone could see. And now his date or girlfriend or mistress or whatever was proposing a threesome.
This time, she didn’t try to walk away. She ran. And she didn’t stop running until she reached the valet station.
The Pittsburgh winter air hit her with a brutal force, unlike anything she had ever experienced in her hometown, which occasionally got cold, but not this kind of wet, grey cold. Outside, she began to feel even more remorse for what she had just let happen inside. Her thoughts landed on Aaron, the love of her life, the person she’d pledged her heart and soul to. She couldn’t believe she had betrayed him like that.
She pulled her claim ticket out of her clutch and handed it to the valet. “Please hurry,” she said, hugging herself and running her palms up and down her bare arms. “I left my coat in the car.”
That wasn’t true, but she was more than willing to abandon her favorite long coat inside the Sinclair Mansion if it meant getting away from Alexei.
To her great relief the valet guys took pity on her and brought around her economy rental in record time. She sped away, just as Alexei was coming out of the mansion, that gorgeous woman by his side.
Eva tried not to look, but once again, she couldn’t help it, even though she had just been berating herself for this same kind of nonsense a few moments ago. She looked anyway and what she discovered was Alexei staring right back at her, his scowl set in stone.
* * * *
She’d run. The first chance she’d got, she’d run again. He would have gone after her, but Caroline caught his arm before he could.
“Lex, what’s going on?” she asked. Even seasoned mistresses didn’t expect to come out of the bathroom to find their dates on the verge of an orgasm with someone else.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning back to her, despite wanting nothing more than to hunt down Eva, throw her on the ground, and bury himself inside of her. One of his business rules was he could be an asshole all he wanted to his peers and rivals, but he treated those who worked for him with respect.
Caroline didn’t necessarily work for him, but he did have the upper hand in terms of their relationship. He’d bought her a two-bedroom on the Upper East Side in a building with a doorman, and put a substantial sum of money in her bank account each month to keep her in designer clothes, gourmet meals, and whatever other luxuries she wanted. In exchange, she made herself available as his date or bed partner wherever and whenever he wanted her.
But standing there in the hallway with her in the wake of what had just happened with Eva, he knew that they would be spending the rest of the evening together.
When their limo arrived back at the hotel, he said, “I’m sorry, but some unexpected business has come up. I won’t be available tonight. You can stay in the hotel and I’ll send the jet to take you back to New York first thing in the morning. Call Emilio. He’ll set it up.”
She cut her eyes, obviously stuck between the understood terms of their relationship and her own confused annoyance. “Are you dumping me?” she asked, disbelief ringing in her voice. For Caroline, who could have just about any man she wanted due to her looks and general mien, it was probably hard to fathom being dumped for a random black woman in a yellow party dress. “Who is she?”
“She’s unfinished business. And I’m not dumping you for her. I want to take care of this tonight, but Emilio will call you when I get back to New York and we’ll go out to dinner.”
Caroline gritted her teeth. He could tell she craved answers, but didn’t want to press for them for fear of talking herself out of the set-up she had with him. But he knew she would cave to his commands. All women could be manipulated with money. Eva had taught him this the hard way.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll call your assistant when I get back to the room.”
He nodded to the hotel’s doorman who had been standing patiently on Caroline’s side of the limo for a few minutes. He opened the door for her, and that was it. She was out of his space, leaving him free to deal with Eva St. James.
It only took his assistant, Emilio, about thirty minutes to track down Eva’s reservation at a chain hotel just a few blocks away from the one he’d just abandoned Caroline in. But a few minutes later, Emilio informed him she’d already checked out and a few minutes after that, Alexei found out she was on a plane back to Dallas.
Hearing this made Alexei’s usual scowl deepen. Just like eight years ago, when Eva ran from him, she really ran. Back then he hadn’t been able to track her down, as much as he had embarrassed himself trying, calling her closest friends over and over again and haunting the School of Social Work outside his shift hours, hoping to catch her on her way in or out. But she never showed up and a few weeks later one of the social work students took pity on him and let him know she had transferred to another program.
After that, he couldn’t study. He couldn’t sleep. If not for Emilio, who was back then his fellow minimum-wage security guard and three years his junior, he would have gotten fired from his job and kicked out of the MBA program. But after the third time he’d shown up for their shift switch, hungover from the night before because he’d drunk himself into a stupor over Eva, Emilio had abandoned the front desk, taken him to his nearby dorm room, and thrown him in a cold shower. From that point on, he made sure Alexei ate and studied and didn’t keep any liquor in his apartment until the worst of the heartbreak passed and he could move on.
But not forget. No, Alexei would never forget that condescending note she left on his refrigerator door. He eventually had it framed, and he kept it in the bottom drawer of his work desk in his New York offices. Whenever he felt his energy wane for the legitimate business world—which turned out to be in some ways even more cutthroat than his former crime world—he took the letter out and re-read it. That was all it took to feel his angry ambition spike again.
“I want Drummond Oil,” he told Emilio over the phone. “Set that in motion.”
A long silence came from Emilio’s end. “Are you sure about that, man? You’ve come a long way, buddy. She’s not worth going off the deep end again.”
“I know she’s not,” Alexei said. “That’s why it’s the perfect time to get my revenge. Now make it happen.”