Page 28 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

Not nobody, nobody. The important people to her would be there, and that counted for something. It still wouldn’t be a terribly big event, clearly. That helped with the planning aspect, anyway. It wasn't exactly how she imagined her wedding day, but then again, the man sitting in a tub fifteen feet away wasn't the knight in shining armor that the world promised little girls, either.

Maybe this was better.

He tipped his chin up and watched her like he was an eagle soaring high that had just landed sights on its prey. “Well, nobody but me and you.”

She shivered.

His voice alone could do it.

“And you like that, don’t you?” she asked.

Vaslav smiled. “Me and you?”

She nodded.

“Oh, kisska, you know I do.”

6.

“What are you doing in my den?”

Not even the anger heating Vaslav’s tone could make Vera move from where she sat. The piles of papers in her hand were just too heavy; they kept her locked in place, glued to the plush leather office chair she’d once been mesmerized by when she found him sitting there, too. Staring down with an unseeing gaze she couldn’t really look away from what she’d discovered on his desk, but the words she’d read on the paper no longer made sense.

Or maybe ...

It made too much sense.

And it hurt.

“I said, what are you doing in here?” Vaslav demanded.

His footsteps padded one after another on the hardwood floor. Closer to her, but she still didn’t move an inch. He’d used the stairwell attached to the master suite upstairs to come down. She’d only noticed the hidden door at the far end of the walk-in closet by total accident. A few dirty items of laundry caught her attention in the bedroom, and so she’d opted to pick it up and take it to the basket she knew was in the closet for Vas even though she was well aware that Mira had a job to do.

That information just happened to be one of the first rules made clear to Vera on her first trip to the house while they were walking the property.

“Vera, I know good and well you’re not deaf—”

“I only meant to tidy up the den,” she said, stopping his next words from stabbing into her like the first had. He could be so careless with the way he said things; unwilling to bend even if it meant breaking her in the process. Words hurt, too. “Like I did in the bedroom.”

Which was clearly the wrong thing to do.

It must not have taken Vaslav long to realize Vera didn’t leave right after their conversation in the bathroom as he came to a stop in front of the desk with only a bath towel wrapped around his waist. He hadn’t even taken the time to dry his hair; his trembling shook the water droplets down from each dark strand to his shoulders.

Igor hadn’t given her a time frame, and she wasn’t scared to make the walk back to the guesthouse, anyway. It wasn’t that much more of a walk than the one she’d make almost daily to The Swan House not too long ago.

“I know I told you not to go snooping more than a cursory walk around,” Vaslav said.

Not with as much anger, though.

He’d noticed what she held.

“I didn’t snoop,” she returned hotly. “I picked up a few things because even though you have Mira to do that, it doesn’t look like she has lately.”

At least, not in the bedroom and master suites.

Or the den.

Vaslav didn’t dignify her statement with a response.