I find the essay she wrote last time. It was decent. A little plain. I send it off to Lucy, Ravil’s wife. Lucy is a brilliant attorney with top-notch writing skills. She might be able to retool the essay into something spectacular. That’s my hope, anyway. I send her my ideas for it—that it opens with a story about attending births with her mother and the miracles she saw and tie together that natural act with the body’s natural healing, or something like that. I don’t know—I can’t write in English past a sixth-grade level, but I’m sure Lucy can make it brilliant.
When I finish, I cancel every debit and credit card Alex has just to fuck with him.
He’s tried calling Natasha about a dozen times, and every time he does, I come back to my workstation to mess with him some more. His latest text says, I really did enjoy our time together--I wasn’t faking that.
As much as that makes me want to kill him in a hundred messy ways, it’s definitive proof that Natasha had no idea he was playing her. Something I can show Ravil if he questions her loyalty.
Natasha corners me in the office in the afternoon. The rain that’s been pouring down all morning just abated to a sprinkle. “May I have my phone back?”
She’s in the same ridiculous fishing shirt and my boxer shorts, somehow managing to make the outfit look both chaste and pornographic at the same time.
“No.”
She lets out a surprised puff of air. “Why not?”
“I haven’t sorted things out yet with your boyfriend.” I’m being a dick. A total baby.
She said she hasn’t had sex with him. She told me she wore the dress for me, not him, and she’d brought him to force my hand. I shouldn’t still feel threatened by this guy.
Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t claim Natasha as my own that makes me crazy possessive of her. Knowing she’s fair game—or will be the moment we leave this cabin and she returns to her life—makes me want to commit murder.
Her jaw firms. “He’s not my boyfriend.” She puts her hands on her hips in a stance that unfortunately makes my dick hard. She’s so damn cute when she’s mad. “I need my phone, Dima. I have to cancel the massage appointments I had scheduled this week. And what if my mom called?”
Guilt gives me a twinge of pain under my sternum. I rub it. “She called yesterday. But I texted her to say you’d give her a call today.”
“What?” She throws her arms out in exasperation. “So when were you planning on giving me my phone to make that promised call?”
I scowl at her. “Well, I promised that before loverboy started lighting up your phone.”
She rolls her eyes and holds her hand out expectantly. “Give me the damn thing.”
I can’t decide if I love or hate that she’s figured out I’m no danger to her at all.
“Fine,” I grit. “But you make your calls in my presence, and then you hand it back.”
She shakes her head and sighs. “Whatever.”
I place the phone in her hand. “Stay in this room,” I warn her.
She turns her back to me but doesn’t leave. She leaves messages with three clients saying she had a family emergency and had to leave town, then calls her mother.
“Hi Mom,” she says when the phone connects.
I hear a stream of Russian from the other end, and then Natasha answers in English, “No, everything is fine…my date?” She turns and looks at me.
My nostrils flare.
“Not great. I’m not seeing him again.” She holds my gaze as she says it, like she’s trying to prove something to me.
As satisfying as that may be, I have no right to demand anything with her dating life. I’m not her boyfriend. I can’t be. I gave my heart to another.
I can’t distinguish Svetlana’s words, but her tone sounds coaxing like she wants Natasha to give it another try.
I turn away, so Natasha won’t see my glare, my fingers curling into a fist.
“He was using me, Mama. He wanted—” she breaks off when I whirl and give her a warning look. “We just weren’t a good match, that’s all.”
There’s a little more back and forth, Natasha asks after her aunt, her mom wants to know if she watered the plants, and then she hangs up.
She hands the phone back to me with a withering look. “Did I pass the test?”
An apology is on the tip of my tongue—I definitely owe her one, but just then her phone lights up with another call from Alex, and I grind my teeth, wanting to smash the damn thing.
My phone rings at the same time, and when I see it’s Ravil, I answer, watching Natasha sashay out of the room with her head held high.