“Hey, you’re not dressed yet,” she said. “Does that mean we’re not going out?”
He held up her phone. “Who is Aaron?”
Her eyes widened when she saw her phone in his hand. “Why do you have my phone?” She ran over to him and tried to snatch it from him, but he held it above his head, too far for her to reach.
“Give it back. Give it back right now. This isn’t funny.”
He didn’t find anything funny about this situation either and his voice was much harder when he asked again, “Who is Aaron?”
Chapter Eleven
“WHO is Aaron?” he asked, confirming Eva’s worst fears after she found him in the living room, his countenance changed from relaxed and sexy to stiff and angry.
A cold hand closed around Eva’s heart and she scrambled to think how to answer his question in a plausible way. “Nobody,” she said, trying to relax her own posture.
“Eva, I operate in a world filled with sharks and snakes. I deal with half-truths on a daily basis. Do you really think I cannot tell when someone is lying to me? Who is Aaron?”
Her heart beat louder than thunder in her ears. She didn’t know how to answer this or what to say, because he was right. He’d be able to see through whatever lie she told. The safest bet, she decided, was to say nothing at all, so she clamped her lips tight.
“Answer me,” he growled, still holding the phone in the air.
“No.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“You have to do what I say if you want to save your town, so tell me who he is.”
Eva glared at him. He thought he had her with that one, but what he didn’t understand was the only thing she cared about more than Drummond was Aaron. And she’d protect him at any cost. “Fine, then. Close Drummond Oil. I’m not talking about him with you. Now give me back my phone.”
His eyes narrowed. “You love this man that much?”
She didn’t answer.
“You love this man that much, but you are here with me?”
She shook her head. “Not for much longer. May I have my phone, so I can leave?”
He studied her for a long time before lowering the phone and placing it in her palm. “You know, I do not need that. There are people I can call. I will have a dossier on this Aaron within forty-eight hours.”
“No!” she cried. “You leave him alone, Alexei Rustanov. I was stupid enough to get caught up in this with you, but he’s innocent. Just like all those people in Drummond you keep threatening to put out of work because you’re mad at me.”
His only answer to this was “Does he know you’re here with me?”
She gave him a wry smile. Finally something she could answer truthfully. “No.”
“What would he do if he found out?
Again, she told the truth. “I don’t know.”
“If you two are in love, why are you not married?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I told you, I’m not going to talk with you about him. Either you drop the subject and agree to leave him out of this, or we end this—whatever it is—right now.”
She was leaning toward the latter, but then he said. “Why did you nod?”
“What?”
He folded his arms over his chest.
“If you are in love with him, why did you not take the out I gave you?” he asked. “Why did you enthusiastically have sex with me again by pool? Are you unhappy with him?”
She saw his questions for what they were. An opening. An opening she could work with. “Listen,” she said, stepping closer to him. “I know what you want from me. You want me to be the person I used to be, the one who left you, so you can get your revenge. I can be her for you. Look…”
She hurled the phone and it arced into the pool. “It’s gone. No more Aaron. For the next two weeks, I will be who you need me to be. You just have to agree to leave him alone and never, ever tell him this happened.”
* * * *
Hot fury swirled around with cold calculation inside Alexei’s brain. And soon a new plan was forming in his head, one that would allow him to have his Eva and destroy her current relationship, too.
“Fine,” he said, borrowing a page from her acquiescence script. “We will do this.”
She licked her lips, obviously unnerved by his quick agreement. “You—you still haven’t promised me you’ll leave Aaron alone. That means you won’t get a dossier on him, or try to hunt him down, or tell him what happened between us then or now. If you don’t promise me that, I’m going to have to leave.”
“If you leave, I will close the headquarters and I will tell your precious boyfriend about us anyway.”
“Sure you can kill Drummond and really fuck up my relationship with Aaron, but that won’t be enough for you. I’ll be really upset, but you still won’t have closure. Only I can give you that. I’m the only one who knows how to help you achieve it. Believe me when I say what happened between us will just continue to haunt you, unless you let me help you.”
Curiosity now bled into the mix of cold fury. “Okay,” he said after a few moments of consideration. “I will not seek out Aaron in any way. And I won’t close the Drummond Oil headquarters. But if I am not completely satisfied at the end of these two weeks…”
He let the threat hang, but she responded with a huge, “Thank you!” She clasped her hands in front of her chest. “You will be satisfied. I promise.”
She closed the space between them and caught him completely off guard, pulling him down by the scruff of his neck. For the first time in eight years, she kissed him, rubbing her body against his and leaving no doubt she burned for him as hot as he burned for her.
Then she leaned back and said, “I’m going to tell you why I really dumped you.”
Chapter Twelve
“I’M going to tell you why I really dumped you,” Eva said.
When Alexei agreed to her deal, he’d been half-furious and half-bemused that she thought he could be so easily assuaged with her New Age-notion of closure. But when she said those words, a strange chill ran down his back.
She took a few steps back after speaking, as if she needed to put distance between them before telling him the truth.
“This whole thing with my father started before I met you. As long as I can remember, my brother has always been my parents’ favorite. And as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to measure up. The night Daddy, you, and me went to dinner, it all came to a head. Daddy and me got into that stupid fight about you. He said, ‘either you dump him or I’m going to cut you off.’” Eva shook her head, caught up in the memory. “I was so sick of him. He acted like every decision I made, everything I did outside of getting my social work degree, was wrong. So I decided to show him. I moved in with you. I thought that would make him see I wasn’t some dumb little girl he could boss around because he bought me everything and was paying my rent. The truth is, I moved in with you to get back at him.”