Her jaw firms. “He’s not my boyfriend.” She puts her hands on her hips in a stance that unfortunately makes my dick hard. She’s so damn cute when she’s mad. “I need my phone, Dima. I have to cancel the massage appointments I had scheduled this week. And what if my mom called?”
Guilt gives me a twinge of pain under my sternum. I rub it. “She called yesterday. But I texted her to say you’d give her a call today.”
“What?” She throws her arms out in exasperation. “So when were you planning on giving me my phone to make that promised call?”
I scowl at her. “Well, I promised that before loverboy started lighting up your phone.”
She rolls her eyes and holds her hand out expectantly. “Give me the damn thing.”
I can’t decide if I love or hate that she’s figured out I’m no danger to her at all.
“Fine,” I grit. “But you make your calls in my presence, and then you hand it back.”
She shakes her head and sighs. “Whatever.”
I place the phone in her hand. “Stay in this room,” I warn her.
She turns her back to me but doesn’t leave. She leaves messages with three clients saying she had a family emergency and had to leave town, then calls her mother.
“Hi Mom,” she says when the phone connects.
I hear a stream of Russian from the other end, and then Natasha answers in English, “No, everything is fine…my date?” She turns and looks at me.
My nostrils flare.
“Not great. I’m not seeing him again.” She holds my gaze as she says it, like she’s trying to prove something to me.
As satisfying as that may be, I have no right to demand anything with her dating life. I’m not her boyfriend. I can’t be. I gave my heart to another.
I can’t distinguish Svetlana’s words, but her tone sounds coaxing like she wants Natasha to give it another try.
I turn away, so Natasha won’t see my glare, my fingers curling into a fist.
“He was using me, Mama. He wanted-” she breaks off when I whirl and give her a warning look. “We just weren’t a good match, that’s all.”
There’s a little more back and forth, Natasha asks after her aunt, her mom wants to know if she watered the plants, and then she hangs up.
She hands the phone back to me with a withering look. “Did I pass the test?”
An apology is on the tip of my tongue-I definitely owe her one, but just then her phone lights up with another call from Alex, and I grind my teeth, wanting to smash the damn thing.
My phone rings at the same time, and when I see it’s Ravil, I answer, watching Natasha sashay out of the room with her head held high.
“What have you found out about Alex Volkov?”
“Nothing I haven’t already told you.”
“What about his taste in women? Has he dated much? What kind of women does he like?”
“He had a couple of girlfriends in college. Look like nice, normal girls. One played soccer, one became a teacher. Why?”
“Do you think he has real feelings for Natasha? What has she told you about him?”
Well, fuck. I haven’t exactly gotten her to open up about their past dates since I was busy stomping my feet like a toddler at the fact that they even happened.
“Why?”
“He just showed up at the Kremlin-alone. Maykl stopped him from getting past the foyer, of course, but he was throwing a fit about needing to see Natasha. Said he’d come back with a warrant to search her place if we didn’t let him up there to see her.” Ravil pauses, and his voice softens. “Lucy went down and handed him his balls on a platter.”
I relax a little. “Good.”
“She told him we have footage of what he did, and she’d be happy to send it to every news station in the city, along with every supervisor at the FBI, and then she told him to lawyer up because we’d be filing a civil court case against him.”
“Did he leave?”
“He left. But you need to have Natasha call him. Maxim and I suspect he’s the hero-type, and he fears for her safety. I want her to call him off before he gets that warrant.”
Of all the fucking orders from my pakhan.
Dammit.
“I’ll have her do it now,” I promise, even though speaking the words feels like choking glass.
“Text me when it’s done.”
“Da, pakhan.”
I stalk out of the office in search of her. I suppress the urge to bellow her name in rage and make her come running. This isn’t her fault.
Actually, yes it is.
I find her in the great room, standing at the giant window like she’s watching the raindrops trickle down the glass.
“Natasha.” Damn. I need to dial it back. It already sounds like I’ve come for her head.
She whirls, her beautiful eyes wide.
I hold her phone out. “You have to call Alex.”
She makes a pfft sound. “I’m not calling Alex.”
“No. You are. Ravil’s orders. He showed up at the Kremlin to see you and threatened to get a search warrant for your place.”
She doesn’t reach for the phone, just eyes it suspiciously. “So what am I supposed to say?”
“Just let him hear your voice and know you’re alive.”
“Fine.” She snatches the phone from my palm and opens her contacts. When she enters Alex, it doesn’t come up.
“Oh yeah. I changed his name to douchebag in your contacts.”
She gives me a withering look.
I shrug. “You can change it back to loverboy when you regain your phone privileges.”
She glares at me. “My phone privileges? Seriously? When are you going to get over it?”
“When my brother no longer has an IV in his arm and can get out of bed,” I shoot back, which is a low blow because one thing I am certain of is her despair over what happened to Nikolai.