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He went to the refrigerator, and Alice forced herself not to check out his ass. She wanted to believe that her libido was just out of control because she hadn’t been with a man since she and Greg broke up. It was really about a month before they broke up that she last got frisky, if she were honest with herself.
Or maybe she was having an unexpected reaction to the stress of being undercover. Nickolay wasn’t exactly her usual type. She tended to go for clean-cut, upstanding men with legitimate careers and no ties to organized crime whatsoever.
“So, what about you?” he asked.
Alice’s brow furrowed. “What about me?”
“What’s your story? How does a pretty woman like you end up cleaning a place like this?”
There was no judgment in his voice, like she might have expected. He seemed nothing but curious.
Alice shrugged. “Not a lot of good jobs out there for a college dropout. In my hometown, I started off cleaning office buildings at night. When I got tired of sleeping all day, I switched to cleaning houses. Been doing it ever since.”
That was the exact story that Roberts had created for her, and while it wasn’t the most exciting history, Nickolay kept his full attention on her as she spoke.
“We all stumble into things like that, jobs that we don’t love that pay the bills.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
He popped the top on a bottle of beer and tossed it into the trash before coming over to where she sat, leaving only a foot of space between them as he leaned against the island.
“Sure. When I was eighteen years old, I worked at a call center for a cell phone company. Do you have any idea how miserable it can be to deal with pissed off people calling in everyday?”
Alice couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve worked retail before.”
“It’s different. People will say things over the phone that they’d never say to your face. But I stuck with it for almost a year before I finally told a caller to kiss my ass and walked out.”
“A whole year?” she asked, her eyes watching the muscles of his throat contract as he sipped his beer. Heat spread through her core, and she forced herself to look away. “I’m surprised a man like you stuck with that for so long.”
“A man like me?”
Shit.She shouldn’t have said that.
Keeping her cool, she tried to give him a flirty grin. “You seem like the kind of guy that wouldn’t put up with being treated that way.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Am I that transparent?”
“Maybe I have a sense about people.”
He shifted slightly closer to her, and she inhaled the scent of him. Cedar and sandalwood. It made a shiver run down her spine.
“Well, you’re right. I wouldn’t put up with that these days, but that was twenty years ago, and I just wanted to make some money to pursue my passions.”
She sipped her coffee and told herself to calm down. The smooth velvet of his voice was making desire seep into her bones. How was this even happening? She wasn’t here for this.
But her body didn’t seem to get that memo. She wanted this man in a way that she couldn’t even begin to understand. She’d never experienced such an immediate attraction to someone before.
“And what are your passions?” she asked, her voice breathless.
His eyes grew darker, and Alice’s lips parted slightly. The look they shared was heated, and she nearly forgot where she was until a stranger’s voice broke the moment.
“Who are you?”
Alice jumped and spun around on her stool to look at the man that walked into the kitchen. It was the Pakhan, the leader of the Bratva.
Her new boss.Alek.
“Um…hi.” She stood, trying to make herself smile at him. But the suspicious way that he glared at her made that difficult. He was lingering in the doorway, so Alice raised her hand, waving at him, and immediately felt stupid for it. “I’m Alice, the new housekeeper.”
