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Her phone vibrated a moment later, with Sergei’s concise answer making her accidentally laugh out loud. He had simply typed,IKR.
She suddenly pictured the powerful-looking billionaire saying IKR in that wonderful accent of his and bit her lip hard. It would be like a Russian James Bond saying...BRB.
Fredericka bit her lip harder at the thought.Damn you, Sergei Grachyov.The man had to know that his answer would have her in stitches, just as he knew how much she hated it every time he could make her laugh silly like all those foolishly infatuated girls that followed him everywhere.
A shadow fell over Fredericka, jerking her out of her reverie, and she thought,Shit.It was probably the host, about to ask her why she wasn’t dancing. She glowered down at her drink, knowing that politeness forbade her to say the truth, which was that it was entirely his fault she was the 101stwheel.
Odd numbers, you idiot, Fredericka wanted to yell.One-oh-damn-one!
The man in front of her started to crouch down.
Shit, shit, shit.
Fredericka started racking her brains for a plausible excuse. She couldn’t dance because she had...sprained her ankle from sitting? She had her period? She—-
Oh.
Familiar dark eyes collided with her, and she gasped, “Sergei?”
An arrogant, wicked grin curved on his lips as the Russian billionaire murmured, “In the flesh.” As always, his thick accent made his voice sound seductive and dangerous at the same time, and behind her she dazedly took in the way the commanding aura of his presence had everyone freezing and gaping at him.
It was like the entire world had stopped in motion, and all because His Ego-ness was here.
“W-what are you doing here?” Fredericka stammered even as she struggled to get past her befuddled state. The billionaire was still gorgeous than ever, with his neatly cut black hair and dark eyes making his features seem more chiseled. His white V-neck shirt and lightweight cotton pants, which screamed designer-brand elegance despite its casual style, served to accentuate the exquisitely sculpted muscles of his lethally ripped body.
HOT, in other words.
Instead of answering, the billionaire only said, “I missed you, Erie.”
“Hmph.” But her toes had already curled hard, not just because he had told her he missed her but also because he was calling her ‘Erie.’ Even now, remembering how that came to be made her heart skip a beat and made it even harder to feign irritation.
The first time he had paid her a visit at the law firm in Miami, the billionaire had been oddly quiet and unsmiling. When they had a moment alone to themselves, she had worriedly asked him what was wrong, and he had told her stiffly, “They all call you ‘Freddie.’”
“That’s because they’re different from the guys in Rockton. Those guys didn’t treat me as their equal. The people here are cool, and we’ve become friends.”She had thought the answer was sufficient, but when the frown on the billionaire’s face only became more pronounced, she had asked tentatively, “Something’s still wrong?”
“It makes them sound they’re intimate with you.”
“They’re not,”she had gasped.
“But it’s how they sound, because they call you...Freddie.”
“B-but you call me pchelka,” she had stammered, all the while wondering if it was possible that the billionaire could be jealous.
“That’s an endearment, not a nickname.”
The difference was lost on her, but the look in the billionaire’s dark eyes was clear as day. She hadn’t dared put a name to it, but she knew what it was, and the thought had her knees buckling.“D-do you want to call me Freddie, too?”she had asked weakly.
She had only wanted to appease him, but instead the billionaire had dealt her a cold look, and his voice had been dangerously silky when he asked,“Does that mean I am at the same level with the other men here?”
“No way.”She hadn’t even taken the time to think of what to answer, and when she had seen his form visibly relax, the tension leaving his powerful body, she knew she had said the right thing, probably the only answer he would have accepted.
“Erie,”he had then said after a moment. At her blank look, he had clarified,“I will ignore the ‘Fred’ part in your name because that is what most of them seem to concentrate on. So it leaves ‘Ericka.’”
Her confusion cleared.Erie,taken fromEricka,was to be his special nickname for her. The thought of him calling her a name that was his alone felt strangely intimate, and heat suffused her face.
“Erie?”
The past faded and blended with the present, and Fredericka realized with a start that Sergei had been calling for her.
