“Is that my room service?” I asked.
He opened the door, his body blocking whoever was on the other side.
“Pree-vyet,” a woman’s voice rang out, her tone cheerful and warm.
“Pree-vyet,” Stefan echoed, before stepping back enough for the woman to come into view. “Thank you for coming.”
But before I could get a good look at her face, she was kissing Stefan. First on one cheek and then on the other. All I could see was a thick curtain of shining black hair.
“Yak spravy?” she asked, stepping into the room.
Her face was still turned away from me, focused on Stefan, but I could see that her body was pretty spectacular. Much like the woman I’d seen with Stefan in Vienna, and all the girls at the casting call yesterday, she was tall and slim, with a narrow waist and full breasts. I tightened my grip on the robe, feeling self-conscious.
I had no idea what she and Stefan were saying. I was pretty sure she was speaking Ukrainian, but I didn’t understand any of the rapid, guttural phrases. Meanwhile, Stefan seemed fairly fluent. The information both surprised and impressed me. It was pretty hot that he knew multiple languages.
I cleared my throat, unsure if she realized I was standing there.
Immediately, the woman swung around to face me. There was an enormous smile on her gorgeous face.
Before I could really react to her beauty, though, she had pulled me into her arms and was kissing me exactly as she had kissed Stefan, with a kiss on each cheek. To make matters even worse, she smelled just as good as she looked. Like some exotic, expensive perfume made of roses and sex appeal.
I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t help but smile back. It was the first time someone had really smiled at me since we arrived in Budapest. A real smile, that is, not the perfectly polite, slightly distant smiles I got from the hotel staff.
She was also vaguely familiar and as I stared at her, I realized that I’d seen her in the ads of magazines. She had to be a KZ model.
She started chattering to me, but I had no idea what she was saying.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t speak the language.”
“Oh, of course!” she said, with a laugh and only a slight accent. “Stefan mentioned that you were a, how you to say it, a scholar of languages? I shouldn’t have assumed.”
I nodded. “Linguistics is all about languages, yes. But I’ve mostly studied the roots of words, and their histories. I’d love to speak more languages, but so far I’ve only taken Latin.”
“But that is wonderful,” she said, still smiling warmly. “Stefan has chosen a smart girl.”
I didn’t know how to feel. On one hand, I was extremely embarrassed that Stefan had told this beautiful creature that I was “a scholar of languages” only to have me stare blankly at her when she tried to converse with me. On the other hand, this meant that Stefan had told her about me. And not only that, but he clearly also knew exactly what I was planning on studying.
I shot him a look, but he was back to typing on his phone. Of course.
One step forward. Two steps back.
“You’re Victoria, yes?” the beautiful woman asked me. “I am Oksana.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, still confused as to why she was in our suite so early in the morning. I’d seen Stefan’s schedule—there wasn’t anything about a model meeting at this time.
My confusion must have shown on my face, because Oksana’s smile slipped as she looked between me and Stefan.
“I am here for you,” she told me, a wrinkle appearing between her perfect brows.
I turned to look at Stefan. “I don’t understand.”
“She’s your babysitter for the day,” Stefan told me, a little smirk appearing on his face.
I wanted to smack that smirk off his lips. Or kiss it off. I couldn’t decide between the two at the moment.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I told him.
“I’ll be back late,” he told Oksana, completely ignoring me.
