Yikes!
Too late, she saw the multiple hickeys the billionaire had left on the side of her neck and quickly rummaged through her suitcase until she found an oversized plaid scarf to hide Dmitry's marks.
Maybe one day, Tahey thought, she could proudly wear the marks of his passion. But not now. Not just yet, when everything was still too new.
Ada and Panda were having brunch in the balcony when she got to the other suite, and Tahey couldn't help looking around expectantly, wondering where the others were.
"Are they in another meeting?"
Ada frowned. "They are, but..."
Tahey frowned as well. "But...?"
Too late, Ada realized the truth. Oh no. Although none of them had ever discussed Dmitry or Tahoma, everyone knew why the two had been complete no-shows yesterday. The attraction between Dmitry and his secretary, albeit unacknowledged, had nevertheless been palpable and impossible to ignore. And though Ada had thought the girl too innocent for the billionaire, she had still hoped for the best.
But apparently, things had taken a turn for the worse.
Ada turned to Panda in a mute appeal for help, but the younger man was already making an excuse to leave the table. Hack government websites and get his hands occasionally bloody, he had no problems with. But emotional scenes like this?
Count me out, Panda thought and went off to the kitchen to finish the rest of his meal.
"Ada..." Tahey was beginning to feel a little strange.
"I'm sorry, T.G. I thought you were told."
"Told what?" Tahey's chest had become so strangely tight.
"Dmitry took a six o'clock commercial back to Miami this morning," Ada said miserably. "You're to fly back with Sasha in the jet."
Tahey lowered her head and glared at the floor. "I see."
"Have you checked your phone? Perhaps he left a message..."
Tahey finally finished counting. Forty-nine. A new record, or more to the point, a new personal low for her. Forty-nine seconds for the urge to cry to fade, and yet her heart still felt...strange.
She lifted her head and mustered a smile for the older woman. "It's fine. He's my boss," she managed to say lightly, "and he doesn't really owe me an explanation or anything."
And that was the truth, no matter how much it hurt to accept.
SASHA SILENTLY CURSED his brother as he watched Tahoma glare hard at the view outside the window. At this time of the night, there wasn't much to see save for darkness, but when he had told her that, Dmitry's secretary had only nodded. But she had continued to glare, just kept glaring without blinking until he had come to realize it was the girl's way of keeping her tears in check.
Damn.
A picture spoke a thousand words, and a look on the girl's face did exactly that. Something had obviously happened between Dmitry and his secretary. Something that had made the girl believe his brother had come to treasure her...only to wake up and find her lover gone from her side, without so much as a word of goodbye.
Dmitry's secretary insisted on taking a cab as soon as they were out of Miami's airport, but Sasha would hear none of it. He still had one last thing to say, and he waited until they were in the privacy of his limousine before once again addressing the elephant in the room.
"I know you probably won't believe me, but Dmitry has his reasons for being like this."
Tahey slowly averted her gaze from Sasha and switched her attention to the window. The scenery passed by swiftly, the limousine cruising down the road in a speed that turned everything into an incandescent blur.
"And tomorrow...I wish I could say he'd be at the office, waiting to grovel on his knees and beg for your forgiveness, but he won't. Tomorrow, Dmitry and I..." Sasha exhaled his breath in a harsh hiss. "Not many know we have a half-sister. But she died three years ago, and her death...it wasn't natural."
Tahey wasn't so in pain that she could ignore Sasha's own grief. "I'm so sorry."
"My sister's murder changed him," Sasha said quietly, "and it's why he's the way he is. He put up Strakh Inc. in her honor, thinking it would help him deal with the grief. But it didn't. It only changed him, made Dmitry harder—-"
"Why are you telling me these things?" Tahey interrupted painfully. "Can't you see that he doesn't care—-"
"The fact that he's gone out of his way to hurt you," Sasha gritted out, "says otherwise. You make him human—-."
"Oh my God." Tahey let out a shaken laugh. "Are you saying that him being an asshole to me...is what makes him human?"
"I know it's not my place to ask this," Sasha said harshly, "but I'm asking it all the same. Don't give up on my brother. You're the only one who can reach him now. Just you. No one else."
Chapter Ten
Just as Sasha warned her, Dmitry didn't show up at work the next day, and Tahey told herself it was for the better. She was done with him. Could no longer trust him after what he did. And while she was sorry about his sister's death, it didn't change a thing. She...she hated him, too.
Or so she thought...until someone knocked on her apartment door late at night, and the billionaire's face showed up on the monitor of her security system.
Dmitry's golden gaze focused on the camera, and it almost felt as if he was staring straight at her. He looked exhausted and unusually unkempt, days-old stubble covering his chin and his unknotted necktie draped limply over his shoulders. But despite this, he still looked heartbreakingly beautiful in her eyes, and when she finally heard him speak—-
"I'm sorry."
More than those two precious words, it was the raw vulnerability of his tone that cut through her, and even as she tried to glare, even as she tried to harden her heart and play deaf to his words—-
"I need to see you."
Tahey covered
