Page 68 of The Beast of Moscow

“There really isn’t much to tell,” she admitted while the two watched a group of loud friends walk directly under the tower, never stopping their laughter during their stroll.

“There must be something, Vera. You flew—chartered—with a man who you’re also sharing a private apartment with while you’re here, and you don’t have anything else to tell me about it?”

Nope, that was about it. Vera hadn’t given Hannah anymore information to go on about Vaslav, or the unexpected trip to Paris that allowed the two girlfriends a chance to catch up. It was obvious to Vera that Vas was peculiar ... and maybe a little particular ... about his business and life; he took his privacy seriously, and she wouldn’t share more than he had made it clear she was allowed.

Even to her best friend.

“We had tea,” Vera offered quietly. “Once.”

Hannah blankly stared back.

Vera eventually glanced away with a laugh. “What?”

“Was the tea good at least?”

“Nutty, mostly.”

But not in a bad way.

“Vera!”

“What?” she asked again.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Well, that’s what you asked,” she returned just as easily.

“You won’t even tell me his name?”

“It’s definitely not Viktor,” Vera replied.

“Damn good thing, too.”

Their quiet giggles were only hushed when the sound of rolling tires drew Vera and Hannah’s attention to the crowd pushing a large piano over the stone walkway closer to the edge of the tower. Before long, a violin’s whine echoed over to their spot while the other handful of people who had been moving the heaviest instrument began to pull other cases off the top and started to set up. The classical sound the group created attracted more people milling around the immediate area and before long, they had a crowd.

“Are we getting music and lights?” Hannah asked, beaming Vera’s way. “The whole show.”

She smiled right back. “I think so.”

“I wonder if they’d mind if we danced. You’d waltz with me, wouldn’t you? Don’t make me find a stranger, Vera.”

“Hannah ...”

The warning was for nothing, though. Vera knew it before she said it. Hannah had a way of getting everything she wanted.

21.

Finding her in the crowd wasn’t difficult. Even if Vas hadn’t known what to look for to draw his eye to the middle of the square under the tower, she still would have been hard to miss. A temptation made up of glowing skin and a twinkling smile with every laugh that passed her painted-red lips. She showed off a great deal of that porcelain skin with a sleeveless white droptop that was knotted between her breasts.

With blue skinny jeans painted-on-tight, and hourglass curves swaying in a fast dance with a tall redhead, why wouldn’t people look?

Every man in the square certainly was.

Even him.

It was just too damn bad he also wished he was the only man able to see her dressed the way she was, dancing so freely, and offering her smiles like candy to anyone who got close. Vaslav came from a different time, from different men. He’d seen a woman get beaten for wearing more clothes than Vera had on currently, but it wasn’t her lack of modesty that had awakened the monster gnawing on his back, colored entirely green.

It was that the men in the crowd watching her—maybe even a handful of the women, too—wanted her. But if he acknowledged that it irked him as much as it did, then he’d have to admit why, just as well.