Page 38 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

I go up to my room, and I’m hardly through the door when it opens behind me, and the frame shudders when the door slams closed. Maxim stands in my bedroom with a face I’ve never seen.

Not the boardroom, bedroom, or the garage. His cold blue eyes are ice. Lips set in a line. Everything else is frosted granite, hard set. He steps closer, and I back into the window seat and sit down. There’s nowhere else to escape his wrath.

The words quietly snarl out of him. “A dockmaster’s wife who knew nothing was held for four days in a fish plant so cold her skin and lungs never recovered. She was released not because Alexei got what he wanted, but because her coughing annoyed him. She lived another four months before the damage suffocated her.”

“I know it was stupid to⁠—”

“An accountant’s mother suffered the loss of her fingers. Each was mailed to her son. Ten digits to encourage him to fix the ten digits in a tax return that Sokolov thought he had screwed up.”

I swallow hard. “I get it, Maxim⁠—”

“A journalist’s dog, left on a doorstep, and I’ll spare you that one on account of your cat.”

“Okay. I know I shouldn’t have tried to leave, but⁠—”

“There’s no floor, do you understand me? No line, no code, nothing underneath Sokolov’s surface. The man has no soul, Thea. And this afternoon you walked into an open forest, alone. No weapons, no plan, no map, nothing. Your nothing won’t survive his nothing. Tell me you understand⁠—”

“I do.” I stare down at my hands, because I can’t take the expression on his handsome face. It’s worry and disappointment and sadness, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.

The room’s very quiet. My heart’s everywhere. And the part I hate most is that I can’t find anything unfair in what he said. There’s nothing to fight against with Maxim. He’s trying to keep me alive.

He didn’t build this prison for me. Another man did.

“I get it,” I say, sanded flat. “But I can’t just exist in here. Give me a purpose, or I swear to God I’ll burn this gorgeous mansion down with both of us inside out of boredom.”

His shoulders slump, the fear settling now that I’ve stopped swinging. He takes off his coat and drops it on my chair.

“As it happens, I came home to offer you one. My son fed three years of files into a shredder. Somewhere in what survives is the thing he was hiding, and my forensic men don’t know how Klaus thinks or where he buries what he wants to ignore. On top of that, you’re the only person alive who can read his handwriting. Help me.”

I felt relief with Pasha. This is something else. Something light in my chest. “You’re giving me a job? A real job?”

“I’m employing my guest.”

“Your guest needs better coffee and a desk that isn’t in her bedroom.” I stand, steadier, because I know how to do this.

“I can arrange that.”

“And I get the office with the fireplace twice a week.”

There’s that smirk of his. The one that got me naked. “If you prefer.”

“I prefer a lot of things, but I suspect I won’t be getting any of them here.”

“Such as?”

I bite my bottom lip and look up at him, closer with every step. “I want to walk the grounds. I promise to stay in the fenceline.”

“That could be arranged. What else?” He crosses to me slow, giving me every chance to object.

My heartbeat kicks up when I smell his cologne. “I prefer you without your shirt.”

“Is that a fact?” His big hand works the top button.

“It is. Pants, too, if we’re talking about my preferences.”

When his shirt is unbuttoned, he reaches past my shoulder to pull the curtain across the glass and asks, “You’re done running for tonight, aren’t you, bratty girl?”

I grab his collar with both hands and pull him to my mouth. This. This is what I needed. His tongue sweeps past my lips, and then his hands are on me. Everywhere.