“No.”
His mouth flattened into an angry line. “Mind telling me what changed?”
She opened her mouth to tell him exactly why she didn’t want to go out with him, prepared to give him a no holds barred list of reasons if that was what it took. But she stopped when goose bumps suddenly sprang up on her skin. Her heart filled with knowing apprehension even before she turned to look. There was only one person she knew with a stare so intense, she could actually feel it.
And yes… yes, there was Nikolai Rustanov standing at the bottom of the steps with his hands jammed in his pea coat pockets, a thunderous look on his face.
18
Nikolai watched Samantha and her cop on the porch having what looked like a very intimate conversation as he approached the shelter. The cop’s hands were on her shoulders and his forehead rested against hers. Only for a few moments, but even when he stepped back, his hands never left her, and by the time Nikolai got all the way to the porch’s bottom step, the cop was still touching her. Touching Samantha. Touching what was his.
Nikolai had to work hard to hold himself exactly where he was. She was still with the cop, he realized, his chest filling up with something he recognized all too well as despair. Still with him, despite…
He abandoned that thought, feeling like a fool.
Of course she was still with him. Why had he expected anything different? Just because he hadn’t so much as thought about another woman over the past month, and had buried himself in work to keep from obsessing over Samantha and the thought that she could be carrying his baby—no, that didn’t mean she had spend the past month doing the same.
After all, he thought darkly, as scared as his mother had been of his father, that hadn’t stopped her from seeking out other male company when he pulled one of his disappearing acts. He of all people should know that sleeping with a woman, even possibly impregnating her, didn’t guarantee her fidelity.
Samantha suddenly turned, as if just now realizing Nikolai was at the bottom of the steps. And when the cop saw him standing there, his hands dropped to his sides. But even as he stepped away from Samantha, Nikolai’s mind continued to burn with the memory of what he’d seen. The cop had been touching her, stroking her hair, making her smile.
Basically doing all the things Nikolai wasn’t allowed to do in his current position as a much-regretted one night stand.
They both regarded him for a few silent seconds. Her with wide-eyed confusion. Him with petulant anger.
“What are you doing here?” the cop asked, his arm twining round Samantha’s shoulders like she belonged to him. Like he was now protecting her. From Nikolai.
Rage flared up hot as a blue flame inside Nikolai’s usually icy soul. But somehow he kept his voice level when he answered, “I am here to talk with Samantha. About a personal matter.”
Marco turned to Samantha. “You let him call you Samantha?” he asked.
“No, I don’t…” She rubbed her temple like the situation was giving her a headache. Then she said, “Marco, I need to talk to him. And then I need to get back to work.”
Marco looked at Nikolai, and Nikolai didn’t bother to keep the smug satisfaction off his face. Samantha had chosen him over Marco, and that seemed to make Marco even angrier than Nikolai’s unexpected interruption.
He put Nikolai in the mind of one of the pampered Rustanov children in that moment. He had been to a couple of family events since Alexei had legitimized the family’s business and insisted on bringing Nikolai into the fold. The current crop of Russian-born Rustanov children had grown up in the lap of legitimate luxury, untarnished by the old mafia family’s shame. They tended to be perfectly pleasant—until they didn’t get their way. Then came the Chernobyl-style meltdowns.
For a few moments, Nikolai suspected Marco might throw a temper tantrum over Samantha’s brusque dismissal. But in the end, he just said, “That’s okay. I’ll see you later, Sammy.”
He said it to Samantha, but aimed it at Nikolai.
Nikolai responded with a stony stare, his eyes locked on their iciest setting as he waited for the other man to leave,. At least he didn’t kiss her before he left, Nikolai thought. He didn’t trust himself to stay still if that happened.
Not today. Not after thirty days of either being ignored or avoided by Samantha during waking hours and haunted by her whenever he closed his eyes. No matter how much he tried to put her out of his mind during the day, he couldn’t keep himself from dreaming about her. And the dream he’d had the night before had been the worst one yet. Them making love in his bed, her belly large and round with his baby, his ring flashing on her finger.
He’d never wanted a wife, or kids, or anything remotely approaching what he’d seen in that dream, but dammit if he hadn’t woken up hard as a steel pipe. And he’d felt like an idiot, stroking himself off, unable to stop thinking about those dream images of her naked and pregnant as he did so.
That was why he was here now, using every ounce of his icy resolve to keep from exploding with rage. After a morning of barely being able to concentrate on his work, he’d gone out and bought a pregnancy test and headed over to Ruth’s House—only to find her canoodling with her boyfriend.
He’d be damned if he let this go on another day. As he waited for the cop to get back in his car and drive away, he made a solemn vow. If she wasn’t truly pregnant, he wanted her gone. Gone from his house and gone from his mind.
As soon as the cop’s car was out of sight, he came up the porch steps and held up the bag.
She eyed it and he had the feeling she knew what it was just as his mother had when he’d held up a similar bag to her many years ago. But unlike his mother, she didn’t immediately take it.
“It is pregnancy test,” he informed her. “Thirty days are up.”
Understanding shadowed her eyes, but still she didn’t take the bag. Instead she folded her arms across her chest and said, “I know it’s been a month. But I’m in the middle of a work day and I can’t invite you to have this discussion in my office, since no males over sixteen are allowed inside Ruth’s House. So how about if I shoot you an email?”
His eyes narrowed. “Shoot me email,” he repeated, wondering not for the first time if the woman he’d been near obsessed with over the past month was indeed crazy.
“Yes, an email,” she said, backing away toward the door. “That’s way better than doing this here on the steps, don’t you think? So yeah, I’ll do that right after I handle this very important call I need to return—”