“Tell us!” Jess shoved her shoulder against mine, nearly sending me off my bar stool. “We’re all drunk, and it’s obvious that you and I are long-lost sisters—which means I can’t fuck you.” Leaning in, she added darkly, “In certain states.”
“Anything you tell us stays between us.” Natalie hiccupped.
“Okay, well, um, I needed some money quick. So I . . . took my friend’s place on an escort date. Máxim ordered tall and blond, but I went instead. He’s my first and only client.”
When I saw the disgusted look on Jess’s face, I instantly regretted my admission. Then she said, “You mean I’ve been doing it all this time for free? Who’s the chump?” She pointed a thumb at herself. “I’m the chump.”
Natalie was more romantic about it. “If you hadn’t gone that night, you never would have met him!”
Never to have met Maksimilian Sevastyan? The man steadily turning my world inside out?
“How do you feel about him?” she asked.
“I’m falling for him, but I try not to. I know he’s a player. He’s a gorgeous billionaire and could have any woman he wanted.” Even with his issues. Maybe they were fixed now? “Yet sometimes I get a sense of déjà vu around him, like we’ve known each other before. Does that sound stupid?”
“It sounds romantic,” Natalie said.
Jess nodded. “Totally romantic. Hey, do you read romance novels? Of course you do. I’m sending you some faves. Give me your addy when I sober up.”
I smiled and nodded, though I had no addy. It was such a simple request. No one else would give it much thought. But I had no home. I wanted a home. And a Russian. And a dog. “I’ve only known Máxim for thirteen days. I can’t be feeling what I think I’m feeling.”
“I was half in love with Aleks after a single night.” Natalie twirled her ring with a secretive smile.
“You mean after a single glance,” Jess said. “I was there. I witnessed the whole thing. Love at first sight exists. What did you think of Maksim?”
“DDG. Drop dead gorgeous. Thought beyond that was impossible.”
Natalie said, “He’s got it so bad for you.”
“If she tells you that, then listen,” Jess said. “We call her the Manalyzer.”
“I can read any guy. Except Aleks.” Natalie waved that away. “And Maksim is lost for you. He called you moyo solnyshko.”
“Tell me what that means!”
“ ‘My sun.’ It’s a fairly common endearment, but for a guy like Maksim to say it? And it totally fits with what I heard him tell Aleks about you.”
“What’d he say?”
“Just before they came over here, Aleks asked what he was doing with a nice girl like you, and Maksim said, ‘She makes things . . . brighter.’ ”
Pang. “But can he ever truly get past the fact that I had sex for money? After he told me I was going to this wedding, he also told me he expected a heated negotiation for clothes and jewels.”
“He doesn’t know he was your first client?”
“He refused to believe me.”
Natalie frowned. “Oh. That sounds not so good.”
I couldn’t disagree. “Now I want to see if he can love me despite my past.”
Jess squinted at me. “Let me get this straight. You want him to love you even though you’re an escort, even though you’re really not?”
“Exactly!”
“But what was all this about you being a hostage?” Natalie asked.
“I got drunk, and we had sex without a condom at my peak time of the month and all.”
Jess nodded. “As you do.”
“He accused me of trying to trap him with a pregnancy and refused to let me go.”
Natalie sighed. “It might have started like that, but his feelings have deepened. Aleks told me he’s never seen Maksim look so satisfied. Not even when they were young. Apparently, Maksim was an anxious kid who rarely cut up.”
He’d told me he never laughed naturally. “It’s so strange, since I love his humor.”
My phone chimed from my clutch. I fished it out. M Sevastyan: having fun?
I told the girls, “Hold on, it’s him.”
Me: I loke natlie & jse! So fn!
M Sevastyan: ah, the tequila hits. are you being a good girl? or do i need to put you in chastity?
I moaned.
“Cat, did you say something?” Natalie asked.
“No. Nada.”
Me: fuck’g devillll!1
M Sevastyan: little witch
With a shaking hand, I stowed my phone.
CHAPTER 30
“I wasn’t going to come down here,” Máxim snapped when he reached me outside the lodge’s garage later that night. He looked more pissed than I’d ever seen him. “You’re a grown woman. How much trouble could you and Jessica get into in a garage? Then I realized that I didn’t know who was in the building before one of my men followed you here.”
“I knew you had someone following me!” I was slurring. Weird. I wasn’t even that drunk!
“What the fuck were you doing in there?”
“Had work to do,” I said breezily.
With a thunderous expression, he loomed over me. “And by work, do you mean a blond farmer? If I go in there, what will I find?”
“The limo—and sheer brilliance!” I laughed, then covered my mouth. “There went the surprise!”
Voice like ice, he said, “You’re wearing a man’s coat.”