The front door opened.
Her heart slammed into her ribs so hard she was surprised it didn’t leave a bruise.
Alexei walked in. Dark coat. Dark suit beneath it. He was carrying nothing, because Alexei Almazov didn’t carry his own luggage. Someone did that for him, and that someone knew better than to follow him inside.
He closed the door behind him.
And then his eyes found her.
Mia stopped breathing.
She had prepared for this moment. She had literally prepared for it, like other people prepared for job interviews or exams, by standing in front of her bathroom mirror at Whitmore and practicing what she would say. Hi, Alexei. I know this is sudden, but I’ve thought about it and I’m ready to—
All of it vanished. Every rehearsed line, every casual opener, every witty thing she’d planned to say that would make her sound confident and adult and not at all like a girl who had been in love with her guardian since she was sixteen years old and didn’t know how to stop.
Because he was here. And he was real. And he was taller than she remembered, or maybe she’d just forgotten what it felt like to be in the same room as someone whose presence made the air heavier.
“Hi,” she managed.
Brilliant. Two years of preparation and the best she could come up with was hi.
Alexei didn’t answer immediately. His eyes moved over her, and it wasn’t his usual assessment, the quick up-and-down of a guardian making sure his ward was fed and uninjured. This was different. This was slower. And when his gaze caught on the hem of her sundress, which hit just above the knee, something crossed his face that he killed so fast she almost missed it.
Almost.
Her pulse went haywire.
“You’re in my living room,” he observed.
Despite everything, a smile tugged at her mouth. “You’re very observant.”
His jaw tightened. Not in anger. In something else. Something she’d been chasing since she was sixteen and had never quite caught, because Alexei Almazov was better at hiding than anyone she’d ever met, and every time she thought she’d glimpsed something real behind those eyes, he’d shut the door before she could get through it.
Not tonight. She hadn’t come two thousand miles to be shut out again.
“Are you hungry?” she blurted. “I made pasta. Well, I tried to make pasta. Your kitchen is terrifying, incidentally. Everything is black marble and I couldn’t find a single pot that cost less than my tuition, so I may have panicked and ordered takeout instead, but I put it in one of your fancy pots so it would look homemade, and if you don’t inspect it too closely—”
“Mia.”
She stopped talking. Her mouth was dry. Her palms were wet. She was doing the thing she always did around him, which was talk too much and too fast because the alternative was saying the thing she actually meant, and the thing she actually meant was I missed you so much I couldn’t breathe some nights, and I came back because being away from you is worse than being near you and wanting what I can’t have.
But she wasn’t going to say that. Not yet. Not when he was standing by the door with his coat still on, like he hadn’t decided whether to stay.
“Sit down,” she told him. “Eat something. You just flew from Saint Petersburg. You must be—”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The words hit like a slap.
She flinched. She couldn’t help it. Two years of distance, two years of three-word voicemails and birthday checks that came with no note, and the first full sentence he gave her in person was you shouldn’t be here.
But Mia Robertson had not flown to Monaco, dropped out of college, and unpacked her bags in a billionaire’s penthouse to beundone by four words from a man who couldn’t even say hello first.
She lifted her chin. “And yet here I am.”
“This isn’t a game.”
“I know it isn’t.”
