LITMIR.BIZ

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TWO

      ALEXEI POURED SCOTCH into a tumbler and handed it to the woman sitting so forlornly on his couch. The walk through the cold city streets had chilled her, he was certain, but a stiff drink would bring her around. And then he would find out why she’d been in Red Square at the precise time he’d been supposed to meet with his informant. Considering she was one of Chad Russell’s employees, it was quite a coincidence.

      He did not believe in coincidences. Hard work and sacrifice had gotten him where he was today, not belief in mystical concurrences. If he’d left his life up to luck and circumstance, he’d probably be lying in a crypt with the rest of his family.

      She accepted the glass without looking and took a big drink. Then she coughed. “That’s horrible!”

      Alexei sipped his own scotch, enjoying the notes of caramel and oak as it slid down his throat. The fifty-year-old single malt was perfect. And so was her performance. She definitely knew how to play the innocent.

      His mouth twisted in disdain.

      Like his father before him, Chad Russell had always believed he could ruin Voronov Exploration if he threw enough money at the right people. He hadn’t yet succeeded, nor would he.

      Alexei would die before he would lose the next round in their epic battle. Whoever could convince Pyotr Valishnikov to sell his Baltic and Siberian holdings first would reap a huge reward—and effectively leave the other company in the metaphorical dust. This deal was the culmination of everything Alexei had ever worked for. With the stroke of a pen, Valishnikov could give him the power to finally crush Russell Tech once and for all.

      Then Katerina would be avenged. It was all that mattered.

      Alexei studied the woman on his couch.

      Was she here to dig up information about his plans? If so, she would be sorely disappointed. But if she was supposed to distract him enough to let down his guard, she wasn’t doing the best job of it. She was beautiful, though in an unstudied way. He’d known many beautiful women over the years, but this one seemed quite unaware of her beauty. She hadn’t once tried to fix her hair or asked to see a mirror so she could primp and preen. Her makeup was so understated as to be practically nonexistent.

      And she seemed to be in shock, which was why he’d given her the scotch.

      As he watched, she reached into one of the pockets of her very unstylish coat and pulled out a pair of glasses. Then she glanced up at him and shrugged as she put them on.

      “I can see pretty well without them, but I get headaches if I go too long.” She dropped her gaze to the glass in her hand. “They fogged up when I went outside and I just never put them back on.”

      “What were you doing in Red Square alone?”

      She looked up at him again, her dark eyes shiny with unshed tears. Once more, he got that little kick in the gut he’d felt earlier when he’d breathed in her scent. His sister’d had dark eyes like those. Dark, haunting eyes that he couldn’t escape, no matter how successful he became or how much he tried to put the past behind him.

      “I don’t even know your name,” she said numbly.

      “Alexei,” he replied. He did not doubt that she knew exactly who he was. Perhaps he should have taken her up on her offer to return her to her hotel. He hadn’t believed it was genuine at the time, nor did he now. But what would she have done if he’d said yes? That would have caused a bit of consternation, he was certain. When he’d first told her she needed to come with him, before he’d known who she was, he’d had every intention of driving her back to her hotel once he’d reached his apartment.

      Afterward, it had seemed unnecessary—not to mention counterintuitive to her plan. He wondered why she’d even told him she worked for Chad Russell in the first place.

      “Alexei,” she repeated.

      “Da. Now tell me about your sister.”

      He would play her game. For now.

      Panic threaded into those smoky eyes. She took another swig of scotch, coughed. If she was acting, she was doing a fine job of it.

      “Emma’s twenty-one, as of yesterday. She’s nothing like me. She’s tall and blonde, and she likes to have fun and go shopping. She went on a guided tour this afternoon while I worked to prepare Chad’s papers for his meeting tomorrow. I ate dinner in Chad’s suite while we worked, and stayed with him until about eight-thirty. I had a text from Emma around eight, telling me she would be in the hotel bar for a while. She wasn’t in our room when I got back, but I didn’t think anything of it until she didn’t return by eleven. I tried calling her, but she never answered.”

      The twinge of feeling he got when he thought of this woman with Russell surprised him. Because he doubted very much that she’d simply been working with her boss all that time. A beautiful woman like her with a man like Russell? He’d lay odds they’d been doing far more than going over paperwork.

      She plunked the tumbler on the table and stood. But she must have gotten up too quickly because the color drained from her face and she sank back down again. Then she put a hand to her head.

      “I don’t usually drink alcohol,” she said more to herself than to him. She looked up again, her eyes slightly glazed. How could anyone get drunk on two gulps of scotch? “I have to find her,” she whispered.

      “I will find her for you,” Alexei said smoothly. Let her believe her plan was working. “You looked for her in this bar?”

      She clasped both hands in her lap, her knuckles whitening. “Yes. I asked if anyone had seen her, but they claimed not to remember.”

      “So you decided to wander alone through Red Square at midnight?”

      Her eyes were huge and liquid. “It was stupid, I know. But I thought she couldn’t have gone far, thought maybe she was outside. And then someone said there was another bar, so I went there. Each place I went was farther than the last until I found myself in the square and those men started bothering me.”

      “Where is your cell phone?”

      She patted her coat, came up empty. “I think I dropped it when they grabbed me.”

      Alexei took his phone from his jacket and handed it to her. “Try to call your sister.”

      She punched in a few numbers. He could hear the error message on the other end as she handed the phone back, her expression a mixture of frustration and fear. “I don’t know how to dial it from a foreign number.”

      “Tell me the number.” He punched it in while she recited it, adding the proper codes, then handed the phone back when it began to ring. Her face screwed up while she concentrated, as if she were willing her sister—assuming there really was a sister—to answer.

      It didn’t work, however, because she gave the phone back to him a moment later, her expression crumpling.

      Alexei dialed another number. After issuing instructions to his head of personal security, he hung up.

      “Why don’t you give me your coat? I will turn on the fire to warm you.”

      “I really should be going,” she said, her pretty bow mouth drawing his attention as her teeth scraped her bottom lip worriedly.

      Alexei tried very hard to ignore the arrow of arousal that shot straight to his groin. She’d been uncertain earlier, but she’d warmed up to their kiss, coming alive beneath his touch. It had been everything he could do to push her away when all he’d wanted was to sample the rest of her. To see if the fire in that kiss would translate to the bedroom.

      Odd, when she wasn’t his usual type of woman. He liked glamorous women, effortlessly feminine women who wore their confidence like a second skin. Paige was neither glamorous nor confident, though she was definitely feminine. Authentic was the word that came to mind—though of course that couldn’t be the case when she was working

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