“What do you mean?”
He shot me an exasperated look. “What do you think I mean?”
There were all sorts of things I was thinking but I didn’t want to believe any of them, especially not about my sister. Worried about my own position with the company that I had faithfully served for years, I asked, “Do I need to start looking for a new job, Juan?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “You’re one of my best employees. If I didn’t know about your plans to start your own business, I would push you into managerial training. No,” he said emphatically. “Your job here is yours until you don’t want it anymore.”
Relief rushed through me. “Thank you, Juan.”
He waved away my gratitude and tapped his fingers on his clipboard. “Since you’re here, would you like a few hours of overtime? I’m having hell filling a last minute cleaning call because of that concert tonight. No one is answering their phones.”
You have no idea, I thought crossly while thinking of the way Shannon was dodging my calls.
“Sure, I’ll take it.” Happy for some extra cash on my paycheck, I swiped my ID and clocked in for work. “Where am I going?”
“Sarnov Luxury Autos.”
The mere mention of the high-end dealership that sold outrageously expensive cars to Houston’s movers and shakers sent a zip of delight down my spine. An excited, tingling feeling settled in my lower belly. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see him again.
Him.
Alexei Sarnov.
Last Christmas, the dangerously sexy and overwhelmingly alpha businessman had rescued me from a run-in with Houston’s most notorious drug dealer, Lalo Contreras. Alexei had faced off with Ruben, his crew and my sister to save me from what had promised to be a forced double-date from hell. He had offered me his protection that night and a promise of safe harbor.
If you ever need anything, Shay, you come to me first. I'll take care of you.
His gruff, deep voice echoed in my ears, even all these months later. Since that cold, wet night, we had developed an odd sort of friendship. We never interacted outside of his car dealership and my weekly cleaning visits, but I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I asked for his help, Alexei would come through on that promise he had made to me.
“Hey, girl!” Kylee, my best friend, greeted me by bumping her hip against mine. She flashed me one of her bubbly, sweet smiles while gathering her honey blonde hair into a high ponytail. “You want to borrow some perfume and makeup from my kit? Because I know you want to look good for that sexy Russian fox you like to make eyes at,” she mercilessly teased.
“Hush!” I laughed it off but my cheeks were burning hot. “I do not make eyes at him.”
“Girl, please.” She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re over there blinking all pretty at him, and he’s standing there brooding and staring at you like he wants to just eat you right up.”
I squeezed my thighs together at the images her words evoked. Sometimes I let myself imagine that maybe, just maybe, Alexei was as infatuated with me as I had become with him. But those hopes died quickly when I considered how rich and powerful he was compared to me. He lived in a world that I would never understand. There was nothing good to come from crushing on a man who would never notice me.
“Do you want to come over tomorrow and see the new dresses I’ve designed?” Kylee adjusted her employee lanyard. “I’m trying to decide which two or three I’m going to include in my end of year portfolio. I could use your help choosing.”
“Sure.”
“And maybe you could loan me some of your purses and accessories for the photos?”
“I still owe you big time for loaning me the outfits for my graduation project earlier this year so consider it done. You can have whatever you want.”
“What I want is for us to finally scrape together enough money to open our own boutique,” she said before giving me a rib-cracking hug. “Because I’ve had it up to here with scrubbing urinals and mopping floors!”
“Two more years,” I reminded her. “We need two more years to save our capital, Kylee.”
She made a face but didn’t argue. Like me, she was conservative with money and terrified of debt. After watching her parents go through a humiliating and painful bankruptcy, foreclosure and an SEC investigation that had driven her father to take his own life, she pinched her pennies so hard that poor ol’ Abe Lincoln begged for mercy.
“Kylee! Let’s go!” Judy, one of the shift supervisors, stood in the doorway and waved her hand. “We’ve got a lot of stops to make before sunrise.”
“I’ll see you around, chica.” Kylee playfully tugged my ponytail. “Make sure you bat those thick eyelashes of yours when you tell that Russian fox do svedaniya.”
She was too quick for me to whack as she scampered toward the door, her giggling lighting up the room. I stuck my tongue out at her back. There was no way in the world I was going to flirt with Alexei. The odds of embarrassing myself were too high, and I valued our friendship too much.
But as I climbed into the front seat of the work van Manny was driving, I wondered if tonight was the night I would finally break down and ask Alexei for help.
Chapter Two
Alexei Sarnov blew out a noisy breath of frustration and flopped back in his desk chair. He wiped his hands down his face and rubbed at his tired eyes. His irritated gaze landed on the computer screens on his desk. His stomach swirled like a pit of black despair as he took in the evidence of what he was beginning to fear might be an attempt at full-blown theft of his clients’ financial information.
All that money he had spent hiring Kostya’s little hacker to set up his computer system seemed to finally be paying off for him. He hadn’t been sure that investing in that blue-haired tattooed pixie was a good idea but now he thanked his lucky fucking stars he had taken Kostya’s advice. The former spy could be overly paranoid at times, but he had been right about this.
But who would be stupid enough to try to steal from me?
That question perplexed him the most. Although he had left Nikolai Kalasnikov’s mafia family and created a new, clean life for himself, Alexei still had a reputation as a brutal street enforcer and a businessman willing to cut his rivals off at the knees. When he discovered the identities of the people who had tried to compromise his clients and ruin his business? He was going to make them hurt.
For now, though, he was reassured that no client information had been stolen from the finance department. And thank God for that! He had built a solid name for himself among Houston’s elite and moneyed crowd as the go-to guy for high-end luxury vehicles. If people lost their trust in him, he would lose everything. Thinking of all the hard work he had put into growing his business empire, he experienced a wave of nausea.
He refused to lose anything. He had fought and clawed his way off the streets of Solntsevo and into the Prokhorov crime family. He had proven his loyalty and his worth and earned a spot on Nikolai’s hand-picked crew.
Later, he has used his fists and cunning to buy his way into a better life here in Houston. From one dealership, he had grown to a string of them up and down I-45 as well a trucking company, a couple of automotive parts stores and a small fleet of tow trucks and tire service shops. He had built something real and successful. He would fight to the last breath to protect that.
Still seething with fury that some stupid bastard had dared to steal from him, Alexei ignored the soft knock at his closed office door. More than an hour after closing, there were only a handful of employees remaining and he had given them explicit instructions to leave him alone. When the knock grew louder and more insistent, he shoved out of his chair and stormed across his office with forceful strides. He jerked open the door and shouted, “What?”
He instantly regretted his snarled outburst when he spotted Shay Sandoval standing in the hallway. The discovery that he had just yelled at the sweet soft-spoken beauty hit him like a punch to the gut. Those dark eyes of hers, the ones that
tormented his dreams, were now wide with fear. Her luscious pout wasn’t curved with its usual smile either.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered out quickly. Seemingly shocked by his angry greeting, she shrank back and quickly retreated from his doorway. She gulped as if suddenly nervous and tightly gripped the small plastic tote packed with cleaning supplies and a microfiber duster. “I’m really sorry.”
Her gaze dropped to the gang tattoos visible on his forearms and hands. Not expecting to be bothered for the rest of the night, he had rolled up his sleeves. The inked evidence of his history in the Russian mafia were now on full display, and he was painfully aware of her reaction to them. Remembering what he knew of the men who had knocked her around when she was a little girl, he felt instantly shamed at scaring her.
“Blin,” he muttered under his breath and took a careful step forward. Thankfully, she didn’t flinch when he touched her shoulder. It was the first time he had dared to touch her so intimately. A quicksilver spark of need burned his fingertips, and he had to fight down the urge to slide his hand toward the sleek curve of her neck where he could stroke her silky brown skin. “I’m sorry, Shay. I didn’t realize it was you.”
“It’s fine.” Her voice was quiet and tense. “I shouldn’t have bothered you while you were working.”
“It’s not fine, and you are not bothering me. I enjoy your company. Always,” he said, the dark intensity of his voice drawing her attention. A curious expression played upon her gorgeous face. For the briefest of moments, he considered finally being honest with her and telling her the truth about the feelings that had been tormenting him since last Christmas.
How would she react if he told her that he purposely stayed late on Wednesday evenings just because he wanted an excuse to talk to her? What would she say if he told her that his heart was thumping against his ribcage right now because he was getting to see her a second time in the same week? Because he was close enough that he could breathe in the tantalizing scent of that barely-there hint of beach and sunshine from the perfume she wore?
Clearing his throat and abandoning that line of thought, he asked, “Why is your crew here again?”
“Your manager called and asked for us to come back because of all the mud and rainwater that got tracked onto your showroom floor. Apparently you had a busy day,” she said with a timid smile. “She wanted everything to be bright and shiny for the weekend.”
Happy to talk about something positive, he nodded. “Fridays are always good for business, but today was one of our best Fridays ever. I have a good feeling about this weekend.” Despite the knowledge that his office was perfectly clean and tidy, he still moved aside and waved toward his desk. “Come in, please.”
She tried to slip by him, but he purposely angled his body to force her to brush against his chest. It was a provocative move but he couldn’t stop himself. As soon as they made contact, he noticed the flush that deepened the color of her face and neck. She never wore makeup when working so he could easily see the blush spreading. His entire body thrummed as he imagined having Shay in his bed, naked and writhing under his greedy hands, and watching that sweep of pink spread from the very tips of her toes to the top of her head.
Shay whacked his arm with the duster. “Behave or else I’ll send Manny up here to tackle your office.”
There it was. That sweet, flirty smile that he sometimes managed to draw from her. It was the smile that brightened his whole day. Playing her game, he drew a little cross over his heart. “I swear I’ll be on my best behavior.”
She laughed. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
He didn’t follow her into the office. Tempted to overstep the line of friendship that existed between them, he remained near the door because he truly didn’t trust himself to behave. On edge with the discovery of the attempted theft from his business, it would be too easy to give in to the walking temptation that began to dust and polish his furniture. He respected Shay all the more for the way she never allowed their friendship to get in the way of her job. She had a work ethic that he wished he could bottle up and force feed to the new employees who tried to make the cut on the showroom floor.
“Looks like you’ve been busy.” She eyed the mess of paperwork on his desk before glancing at him with obvious concern. “You shouldn’t work so late, Alexei.” Her gaze drifted to the gym bag in the corner of his office. “Were you training this morning, too?”
“It was just a workout.”
“At what time?”
“Six.”
“So you were up at five?” When he nodded, she said his name in a censorious tone. “Alexei! You’re going to run yourself ragged!” She looked at his trash can and surely noticed the containers from his uneaten lunch. “Have you eaten today?”
“I had breakfast.”
She shot him a look of consternation. “Do you remember two months ago when you got onto me about my schedule? About how I needed to drop one of my jobs and take better care of myself?”
He remembered it clearly. He had discovered her damn near dead on her feet with her stomach growling so loudly he could hear it all the way down the hall. He had forced her into his office, closed the door and ordered her to sit on the couch. He had leaned against his desk and watched her eat an apple and Cliff Bar from the snack basket in the employee lounge.
It was the night he had nearly broken the rule he had created for his friendship with Shay. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t get involved with her but that night? Christ, that night he had wanted to smash that wall he had built between them, sweep her up in his arms and smuggle her away to some place private where he could keep her safe and protected and pampered.
But Shay was proud and independent. If he offered her the same sort of arrangement he had given the other women in his past? She would smack the shit out of him. Even now, he could feel the phantom sting of her small hand slapping his cheek. He couldn’t decide if such a hit would anger or arouse him.
“I thought you stopped working Fridays and weekends.” He needed to steer his thoughts and the conversation into safer waters.
“I did but my sister needed me to cover her shift.” She rose on tiptoes to drag the edge of the duster along the top of a bookshelf. The undershirt she wore prevented him from getting a peek at that smooth plane of stomach he hadn’t glimpsed since the weather turned colder. He wanted to rip that damned shirt to shreds. “But it turned out that Shannon got fired yesterday so she wasn’t on the schedule. Juan offered me a couple of hours of overtime to come here and take this job so—”
“Wait.” He held up a hand and tried to follow what she had just said. “Your sister was fired? For what?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
He had a few of his own. From what he had seen of Shannon’s attitude during her weekly stops at his dealership, he could only imagine the long list of complaints CleanRite had on file for her.
But something else she had said had piqued his interest. “If she was fired yesterday, why did she ask you to work for her today?”
Shay didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she seemed very interested in a corner of his desk. She wiped and swirled a microfiber cloth over the already polished wood. “I think she wanted me out of the house tonight.”
There were only a few reasons he could think of for such a thing. None of them were very good. “Why?” Again she hesitated. “Shay?”
She stopped cleaning and lifted worried eyes toward him. “Some guys came by the house looking for her as I was leaving.”
“Guys? What guys?” His protective instinct raged to life. He shot off the door frame he had been leaning against and crossed the office with purposeful strides. His mind raced as he tried to figure out who might have come after Shay. Knowing what he did of the underworld’s recent and very violent power shifts, he worried it might have been Nikolai’s men. “Who was it, Shay?”
“Those crazy skinheads,” she said, her dark eyes flashing with fear. “There were thre
e of them in a truck. They had tattoos all over them. Ugly ones, if you know what I mean.”
He did. Her body language confirmed his worst suspicions. “Did they threaten you?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “If Spider and his crew hadn’t rolled up, I’m not sure what would have happened.”
Alexei bit his tongue rather than unleash the stream of expletives that burned his mouth. He had always feared that Shannon and her drug dealing boyfriend would put Shay in danger. “What did they want?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t get that far before Spider tossed them off his property.”
He made a mental note to send the motorcycle club vice president a bottle of Dalmore from his private collection. He and Spider had done business over the years and had run in the same underworld circle back in the day. He was a complicated man but a mostly good one. Right now, Spider was the best chance Shay had at staying safe when at home. Alexei wasn’t above bribing the man to keep a close eye on her.
“Alexei?”
The sound of his name coming from that sweet mouth of hers was nearly his undoing. “Yes?”
“They wanted me to go with them. They said their boss wanted to have a chat with me.” She wrung the microfiber cloth between her hands now. “What do I do if they find me again?”
Chat my fucking ass, he thought crossly. Mueller played the role of upstanding citizen and successful real estate developer but Alexei knew exactly what sort of man he was.
That massacre out in eastern Montgomery County a few weeks earlier had been reported as meth dealer on meth cooker violence, but Alexei and everyone with connections to the murky undercurrent of crime running through Houston knew the truth. Mueller and his men had ambushed that meth den with shotguns blazing.
There were whispers that Mueller and his men had let some young black kid go but he didn’t believe that. Not unless there was big money involved or some sort of favor that had been traded for the kid’s safe return.
If they got their hands on Shay? Blyad. He couldn’t bear to even think about what those hateful thugs would do to such a beautiful Latina girl. The image of her supple skin marked by bruises or worse made him want to hurt someone. His tattooed fingers curled into fists at his sides. He would beat those men bloody if they put one fucking hand on Shay.