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“Good. We’re out,” Snow announced. He quickly walked over and grabbed the pair of coats on the back of the dining room chairs.
“What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“We’re going to take Sven with us and do a grocery run.” Jude accepted his winter coat from Snow and pulled it on. “I figure it’ll take us at least an hour, probably two. You’ve got nothing here.”
“But—” He most definitely had enough food here. He’d had it delivered. He narrowed his eyes.
“Definitely two hours,” Snow confirmed. He fastened a few buttons of his heavy wool pea coat and stepped in front of Lucas. “Use the time wisely.”
Lucas could feel his shoulders suddenly slump. His friends were giving him some time alone with Andrei, who was essentially trapped there as Snow took the one remaining bodyguard. “Snow…”
“Talk to him,” Snow said firmly.
“Apologize,” Jude added.
“Beg if you have to.” Lucas opened his mouth to argue but Snow grabbed his shoulders and gave him a hard shake. “I’m serious. Beg. He is perfect for you and you deserve to be happy.”
Lucas nodded, drawing in an unsteady breath, touched that Snow had completely accepted his man into their world. Even wanted him there. “Thank you.”
“Two hours,” Snow warned. “You’ve got two hours. I expect you to be happy and rug-burned by the time we get back.” Snow stared at his friend for a heartbeat and then pulled him into a fierce, tight hug.
Then both Snow and Jude were gone. Lucas had a moment to soak in the silence, order his thoughts before Dominic was coming back down the stairs.
“Andrei released me for the night,” the bodyguard said, but there was a question hanging in the air as if he were waiting to see if Lucas wanted him to remain.
“That’s fine. Snow and Jude are taking Sven with them to the grocery store. They’ll be back in two hours.”
“I can stay…”
“No. Andrei and I can hold down the fort for two hours. Get some rest.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, Mr. Vallois. I’ll be back tomorrow morning at eight.”
Lucas followed the bodyguard to the door and locked it behind him. As he turned back, his eyes skimmed over the open floor of the penthouse. He hadn’t given much thought to the place when he’d first purchased it. He liked being close to downtown and looking over the city that had become his home. He’d bought it with the idea that the people of Cincinnati would have to look up at him, which was so much better than an entire town that had looked down on him and his poor family where he’d grown up, so sure that he’d never amount to anything or rise above his pathetic status of white trash.
He and Snow had crawled out of nothing and changed their fates. Created a family who made this place a home. With Snow, Rowe, and Ian, he’d rarely been alone. Someone was always sleeping over or Ian was cooking in his kitchen. There had been drinking and dinners and so much laughter. It had stopped being about status. Hell, outside of bodyguards, he never allowed anyone up who wasn’t in his inner circle, wouldn’t allow an outsider to enter his sacred domain.
And then Andrei stepped into his life. It all changed. Within the span of a few weeks, Lucas knew that he wanted to build something entirely new, and he wanted to put Andrei at the center of it all. He’d known so fast that the man with liquid black eyes and the hesitant grin was everything he could possibly want, but he’d been so damn afraid to reach out and grab it.
Now he was afraid it was too late. That Andrei had slipped through his fingers and no words, no amount of begging would ever change that.
His heart wouldn’t survive.
Andrei’s boxes were still scattered around the living room and in the dining room, stacked against the walls, waiting to be unpacked when their lives finally returned to normal. He did a quick count. Were there more boxes now? Boxes that had been unpacked before…
He grabbed his briefcase as he walked past the kitchen island, his eyes snagging on a key lying near the edge. Stopping, he picked it up and turned it over. It was a key to the penthouse. But whose key? Andrei’s? He quickly put it back on the counter and stepped backward.
He had to fix this.
Tightening his hand on the handle of his briefcase, he stalked toward the stairs, taking them two at a time to the second floor. He paused only briefly at the guest room to find several articles of clothing tossed across the bed and Sergeant, Snow and Jude’s cat, curled up in the middle of the chaos, asleep. His first night home he discovered that all of Andrei’s clothes had been moved out of the master bedroom closet and into the guest room. Once it was decided that Snow and Jude would be staying at the penthouse, Lucas had personally moved each and every article of Andrei’s clothing back into the master bedroom closet, putting it all back the way it had been just a couple of months ago.
