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“Uh…why?”
He flashed a grin. “I just want one. Can I have a sister?”
“I thought you didn’t like little girls.” I forced myself to start walking again, the confusing shock making my heart beat fast.
“No, I just don’t like Gina, she’s noisy and Auntie Anna is always tired. But I want a sister.”
“And Gina doesn’t count?” I teased gently as we drew near the auction house.
“No, she doesn’t! She’s my cousin. Auntie babies are cousins. You said!”
I winced. I had no older relatives to nag me about having more babies, but now Michael was starting up. At three. “Maybe someday,” I reassured him. “I need to find someone to be her daddy first.”
“And mine?”
You have a daddy, I wanted to say.He just has a job so scary that I can’t have him around.
“We’ll see, sweetheart.”
Sometimes I still dreamed of Viktor—his eyes, his smile, that silky voice, and most of all, that one wild night we’d had together. I hadn’t been on more than a few dates since then. I used raising Michael and having a busy job as my excuse, but the truth was, Viktor had ruined me for other men.
It wasn’t just the fear that the next guy I went to bed with might turn out to be a criminal too. Nobody I had met since then had made my body light up like that. Nobody since had intrigued me, mentally and physically, so quickly after meeting them. And nobody but him had left me craving him, years afterward—even as I prayed I never saw him again.
Plus, nobody else was my boy’s father. It felt… It felt odd, when I went out with other men. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong, no matter how much I tried.
Was I ever going to meet anyone who turned me on like that, who wasn’t a career criminal? What the hell did it say about my taste in men that a damn Russian mobster was the one who had really done it for me?
When we finally stepped out of the crowd into the cool, quiet depths of the auction house, I let out a sigh of relief so intense that Marcie, our receptionist, looked up from her desk and chuckled.
“Hey, Marcie. Any messages for me?” I asked as I let Michael go over to her for a hug.
She got out of her seat to give him a squeeze, then settled back in with a bemused smile that left me wondering what was up. “Yeah, actually. We had a guy come in looking for you. He’s setting up an auction for his uncle’s estate and insisted you be the one to handle it.”
“All right.” I took the sticky note with his phone number on it and glanced at it. I frowned. The name on it was Viktor Ivanov.
“Interesting guy,” she went on, as I blinked down at the note. “Polite, suave, kinda hot too, if you like Russians.” Marcie was off the market, and her tastes were totally different, her husband was a giant Black man who looked more like a quarterback than a pediatrician.
I was shaking a little, but struggled to keep my voice steady. “Did he have green eyes?”
“Yeah, really bright ones, kind of like Michael’s. Why, do you know him?” Her soft brown eyes swept from Michael to me and back again. “Is he bad news? You look a little nervous.”
“No, he’s fine. He’s just an acquaintance I have to have an…awkward talk with.” To say the least.
I hoped I could trust him not to bring any bad news into the auction house. And maybe he wouldn’t. The whole thing could just be business, instead of him seeking me out after four years.
But somehow, I didn’t think so.
Chapter 6
Viktor
Boris was as good as his word, and I had a dossier on Olivia Martin before the day was over.
She was a single mother with no family, a product of America’s dubious foster care system. She had come up in her job, and was now handling auction accounts for herself, instead of for a superior. No addictions, no serious medical issues, no debts. But she had stayed in the same small apartment for almost a decade now, probably to make sure there was enough money to take care of the boy’s needs.
The boy. Michael. Michael Martin, born May thirtieth, three years ago. No father registered. No man in her life, apparently, either. I wondered if she’d even dated anyone since me. Probably not, as she had been dealing with motherhood by herself.
Michael Martin. Cute little guy. Probably a bit of a hellion, if he took after me as a kid. Very likely my son, though of course there was no easy way of getting a DNA test without her cooperation. And we weren’t there yet, especially if she’d been scared off by my carrying a firearm. But if the boy was mine, I had an obligation to him—and to his mother.
