Except my heart is still pounding. And I can still smell her perfume lingering in the room.
My phone goes off with a text from Alexei:Oleg is making noise. Call me when you can.
Reality crashes back in. I have bigger problems than a woman who got under my skin.
I dial my brother’s number. He picks up on the first ring.
“What kind of noise?”
“He’s not happy about losing his front company. Nothing concrete yet, but my sources say they’re planning something. Could be retaliation. Could just be posturing to save face.”
“Keep watching. Let me know the second anything changes.”
“Will do. You know how he operates, Menlow. He’s patient. He’ll wait until we let our guard down, then strike when we least expect it.”
“Then we don’t let our guard down.”
“Easier said than done. The man’s been running his operation for fifteen years. He didn’t get this far by being stupid.”
“Neither did we. How did everything go with the integration?”
“Fine. Just a lot of moving pieces.”
“Anything I should know about?”
“Not yet.”
I hang up before he can probe further. Alexei knows me too well. If I talk to him much longer, he’ll figure out something’s off.
I turn to stare out the window. The Chicago skyline stretches before me, all glass and steel and ambition. Somewhere out there, Oleg Volkov is licking his wounds and plotting his next move.
Let him plot. We’ve beaten enemies much worse than the Volkovs before.
But right now, in this moment, I allow myself to feel something other than vigilance.
I got rid of the rivals. Absorbed their company. Neutralized their influence.
And I found her.
Kirsten Berry. The woman who disappeared from my bed and haunted my thoughts. She’s not just some strangeranymore. She’s my employee. She works in this building, walks these halls, exists within my orbit.
She pretended not to know me today. Played along with the fiction that we’re strangers meeting for the first time. I respect that. It was the smart thing to do.
But I saw the way she held her breath when I moved closer. The way her eyes tracked my movements, even when she tried to focus on my words.
She remembers. Every bit as clearly as I do.
The question is what to do about it.
Chapter 3 - Kirsten
Three days. That’s how long I’ve been trying to pretend my one-night stand isn’t sitting in a corner office forty feet from my desk.
It’s not going well.
Every time I hear footsteps in the hall, I tense up. Someone mentions his name, and my stomach does a little flip. A glimpse of him through the glass walls of his office brings back exactly what those hands felt like on my skin.
This is a nightmare. An absolute, unmitigated nightmare.
