new rings
LEXI
Clementine rode to the Billionaire Sanctuary club with us after the ordeal with the designer gowns and rifled through Nicolai’s closet, pronouncing a few of his suits marginally acceptable for the next few nights’ events but others would have to be accessorized orsomethingto pass muster. Ueli drove her back to her hotel while Nicolai and I stared at each other across his suite.
What are you supposed to say to a stranger you’d ended up married to?
Especially when you couldn’t say anything around the security guys who were trying but failing to blend in with the walls because they might narc on you?
So Nicolai glared at his phone, texting with his thumbs, and I stared at mine, not texting anyone because nobody from my former life was speaking to me.
When I’d been going to marry Jimmy, I’d thought I would never be lonely again, that I would cheerfully bound into his family ties with bridal-white ribbons and bows, and yet now I was trapped in a soundproof cage of my own making.
Everything was my fault for being too eager to do anything they asked, and nothing mattered now, anyway.
Nicolai snatched his ringing phone off the table, listened, and said into it, “Yes, they’re mine. Bring them up.”
“What’s that?”
“Hmmm? Oh, supper.”
And indeed,instantly,a waiter knocked and then wheeled in a room service cart with silver-domed plates. Nicolai had handed me a menu and ordered them about an hour before.
“Oh, great. Supper sounds great,” I said and hated my babbling.
Weirdly, another guy showed up right after the room service cart and handed Nicolai a shiny black gift bag with something short written in bold capitals on the side, but I didn’t get a good look at it before he whisked it into the bedroom and left it there.
“Ueli,” Nicolai announced to the head security guy who was sitting on our couch. “We’ll be dining alone. You can retire to the conference room headquarters downstairs.”
“Of course, Mr. Romanov.”
Ueli and his compatriots peeled themselves off the drywall and left, their strides almost a march as they crossed the room and shut the door gently behind themselves.
Now that the constant observation by the security guys was gone, I deflated. The stress of having to monitor everything I said, did, and even the way I moved was getting to me.
Nicolai saw how I wilted, his appraising glance sharp. “About tonight?—”
Oh, I’d been thinking about that, too. “I don’t know how to act around your friends. I’m going to screw this up,” I blurted, which seemed as mortifying as if I’d barfed out those words with the security guys right there.
He shrugged and sat down at the table where the waiterhad arranged our supper to eat before we went to the party. “Considering our back story, it won’t matter. If something goes awry, I’ll cover for you. You should probably try to look pleased and happy but slightly stunned by everything around you.”
“I can sure as heck do the stunned part, but I didn’t grow up like you. I feel like I’m standing wrong, like my posture sucks.”
Nicolai lifted the silver dome off his plate, revealing a steak flopped atop a salad, and then removed the cover from my chicken dinner with a potato and corn. “Come eat.”
“I’m going to mess it up—” I protested.
“Come, eat.”
“Okay, fine.” I walked over and tried to elegantly settle into the chair, but I knocked it sideways with my hip and dang-near fell off. “Ouch.”
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” Nicolai asked as he knifed a piece off his steak.
“Nebraska isn’t that backward. We have cars,” I grumbled at him.
Of course I’d ridden horses. Some of my friends grew up on farms. I could even rope cattle a little.
But I couldn’t have him thinkingthatabout me.
