“It isnot.”
“It is literally my job to provide for you.”
“Whatisyour job?” she asked, her voice perking up with humor.
Ah, whether it was snark or pertness, I liked the fire. “It is not the business of a gentleman to have an occupation.”
She stopped moving as if she had run into a wall built with the bricks of my haughtiness. “Are youserious?”
A chuckle was bubbling up in my chest, her shock an absolute delight. “We don’t work, my sweet. Weown.”
She glanced behind us, noting our security detail was within earshot. “And yousaythings like that right out in theopen?”
She had a point. Swaths of my family had been gunned down by communists for owning all of Russia. “We don’t flaunt it quite like we did in the old days.”
Her long perusal was pointed like she’d dragged a sharpened stick from my monthly house-call haircut to the red soles of my Louboutin dress shoes.“Right.”
She was so much fun to needle. I dredged up just a lilt of faux outrage. “I haven’t bought a Fabergé egg in several years. Maybe three.”
Her eyes widened at the corners, and her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding,right?”
The laughter bubbled up. “Oh, my sweet. I don’t own any Fabergé eggs. They’re all in museums or stolen by the Russian mafia and hidden away in their Swiss safe deposit boxes.”
She braced her fists on her hips. “I seriously don’t know when you’re kidding. It looks just like when you say anything else.”
She was seeing my cultivated blankness, which most people didn’t understand when they saw it. They just thought that lack of expression was normal. “Maybe so. As far as the swimsuit is concerned, I can add a clothing allowance into the paperwork if you want guidelines.”
I could hardly wait to see her expression when I highballed that number, too. Playing with her was just toofun.
Lexi strolled at my side, head swiveling as she took in the club’s modern-styled interior.
Time to resume my travelogue. “My admin calls ahead if I’m just dropping by a Sanctuary for social reasons, but I usually reserve one of the residences upstairs when I’m traveling, if there is a private club in the city. For years, Vegas didn’t have a good one. Staying private is easier than in hotels for the security sweeps, if only for the staff background checks. Plus, I know the owner.”
And she would, too, later that night at John’s blowout bachelor party where she would meet many of my friends. It would be a test of their loyalty as much as a gantlet for her to run.
“That makes sense, I s’pose,” she said.
“Plus the privacy. I never have to worry about indiscreet photos from the club showing up on the internet.”
“Yeah, you do that all on your own.”
Her voice held mirth, and my mortification about our wedding livestream video’s exposure drifted lower like a falling leaf. If eloping was out of character for me, publicly livestreaming anything was a giant leap beyond that. “True, and the exclusivity keeps out the riffraff.”
“Like me,” Lexi said.
I squeezed her hand. “Never you.”
However, speaking of riffraff, my brother stood at the entrance to the bar. It was the first time I’d seen him since I’d tossed back Volkov’s vodka shots and drunkenly stumbled out of the club and onto the street.
Kostya’s arms were crossed over his chest, and he swayed slightly in the bar’s doorway, the atmosphere of the windowless bar behind him dusky even though it was not yet noon.
His eyes were an alcoholic blue flame. “Nicolai, introduce meto your wife.”
CHAPTER 28
nicolai romanov’s rumor
DEMYAN VOLKOV
