It was such a perfect, content moment to be woken by the superbly gorgeous, wonderfully masculine Sasha bringing her fresh, hot coffee. He’d already showered and dressed while she slept.

Kallie sipped the coffee. It was over-the-top delicious. “Man!” she exclaimed. “How did you do that?” She should be apologizing for last night. Telling him what she’d thought. What had happened, but all she could think about was the heavenly taste of coffee.

He laughed.

A stab of jealousy flashed through her as she wondered if he made coffee for someone else. For now, at least, she wanted to be the only woman who knew Sasha had yet another gift. “You cook, don’t you?” she accused in a laughing tone. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“I do,” he answered pleasantly. He wore a very satisfied, content look on his face. “I’d love to cook for you.”

“I wouldn’t say no,” she said eagerly.

He was a very hard man to turn down. He was also a decent man in his own way. He stayed with her after she had her little disaster, trying to take off the night before. “I took you from something you were doing last night, didn’t I?” she said guiltily.

“I make my own choices,” he replied.

“So that’s a yes?”

“Do I seem disappointed to you?” he asked in a purring tone, firmly gripping her ankle.

Flashes of how he commanded her body as he made love to her played through her mind. Arousal pinged in her belly, practically paralyzing her. “No,” she rasped.

“I want to talk,” he said, and kissed her ankle before gently setting it down. “Come downstairs. Take your time, but let’s do this.” He left her alone.

Kallie sighed. Clearly pretending the events of last night hadn’t happened was out of the question. They did need to talk, though. As crazy as her life was, playing the psycho-woman needed to stop. Yes, she had trust issues. Yes, she’d jumped to conclusions. But Sasha had issues as well. The crazy needed to stop. So did the running.

She got up and headed into the bathroom to wash up. She brushed her hair out, wearing it long and straight. She threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then went downstairs to join him. She took her coffee with her. Jeremy never made her coffee, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to secretly stick the cup in the freezer and keep it forever or enjoy every bit.

She nervously joined him on the sofa. He helped her to sit. She should have placed her cup on the coffee table but, instead, she held onto it. “It’s really good coffee.”

“You mentioned that before.” He winked, reminding her she’d just told him as much. “What happened yesterday?”

No beating around the bush. “I got fired, Sasha. You said you were going to leave that up to me.”

He studied her. “There’s something else,” he said. “You were upset that Anya was at the bar.”

Anya! That was the bitch’s name. Now she remembered. “Yeah, she worked for Jeremy. High-end call girl. I lost my business because of her,” she said vehemently. It was just Anya. But that wasn’t the point.

Sasha touched her knee. “Tell me about that,” he said softly. “Tell me about what happened exactly.”

Did she want to tell him? Was she ready to rip off the bandage and check the wound? She took a sip of coffee and savored the taste for a moment. “I was engaged. We ran a business together,” she stated plainly. This was going to be one of those times when the subject of her losing everything hurt.

“Which came first? The business or the engagement?”

“Business. I started it. At first it was just me. Then it was me and some friends, hiring ourselves out, and it went like that until I started staying in the office to manage everything. The business kept growing and doing well. Then Jeremy was a headhunter looking to place and so I hired him. We ran the show.”

Sasha tilted his head. “So, at one point last night, did you think maybe I had something to do with what happened? Like maybe I had a connection to Anya and...” he insinuated without finishing his question.

It was a hard question to process because the answer was yes. It might have been one thing to think what he asked and get away with it by not admitting it. On the other hand, she didn’t want to lie to him. She couldn’t. He was too smart, and she just didn’t feel like it was right. “Yes, I did,” she stated honestly.

“Because you think I’m a bad guy,” he said, not losing his cool at what she admitted.

“I came to this end of town to get away...” That sounded worse than it had in her head. “I think it’s possible you might dabble in bad things. But I don’t think you’re a bad guy.”

“Dabbling in bad things...” He kept his gaze on her. “And you’re okay with that?”

It dawned on her that he wasn’t sitting her down to talk about her so much as he intended to have a conversation about himself. She wasn’t going to be the only one revealing stuff. “I guess it would depend on what those things were and whether I knew about them.” Please don’t say you’re a hired killer.

“You don’t want to know, then?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m not sure I’m ready...yet.”

“Okay,” he murmured, thinking. He cut his eyes to her again, and it looked like he was summoning courage. “It’d be an amazing coincidence if you were trying to get away from a life you had on the other side of town to wind up in a job where you worked for the guy who made a shell out of your company, wouldn’t it?”

Kallie felt more than uneasy. Either the coffee was working on her or she understood what he was trying to tell her before he said it.

His gaze never left her face.

Nervousness rattled her. “Sasha?” she whispered.

“But it might not be a total coincidence, because I have a lot of businesses. You could have wound up in any number of them.”

“Yeah,” she replied, trying to understand.

He stared at her again, but said nothing.

“You keep looking at me like you’re blinking me the answer in code. What is it?”

He cleared his throat and picked at something on his jeans. Finally, he sighed and looked up. “I did have something to do with your losing everything. Jeremy worked for me.”

Kallie shot straight off the couch. She ran right for the powder room and threw up.

He was right behind her.

“Go!” she ordered between heaves. “Get out!”

“No,” he said, holding back her hair. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She braced her arm against the back of the commode and cried until she got sick again. This time, she cursed the coffee. It burned her throat and nostrils.

She’d thought. She’d accused. But she never really believed it.

She’d let all these foolish ideas about how it was fate that brought them together sprout in her mind. It didn’t matter how random or how fast. And yet, even as she threw up he was holding her hair, his touch sending tremors over her skin. They triggered each other’s biology in a crazy passionate way that could only mean they were destined; a very good match. Then this small-world scenario shattered all her ideals entirely.

As her stomach tried to leave her body up through her throat, thoughts raced through her. Somehow this had all been a set-up. The job. The house. Trying to make her dependent on him. She wondered if the robbery in her apartment had really been her landlord after all. Maybe it was staged, too, so she would be scared enough to move.

She stood, looking away from him for all kinds of reasons, pivoting around him so she could rinse her face in the sink.

Still Sasha hovered.

When she felt confident that she was stable enough, she turned to him. “When did you know I was the woman whose life you ruined?”

“Your life isn’t ruined,” he assured her. “It needs a repair.”

“Because of you!” she snapped. “I don’t want you to fix it.”

“You don’t want money?”

“I lost everything because of Jeremy. Because of you!” She stared at him. How could he think it wasn’t a big deal? That he could just wave some money and fix it? “I lost my standing in the business community. I lost what I’d built. I lost all trust! Not only in the scum you sent my way but now, thanks to you, I lost my faith in other people! I trust no one. You ever been played? Thought someone loved you, but it was all a...a...joke?!”

“You shouldn’t have been with that loser anyway,” he muttered.

“What was that?” she demanded with disbelief.

“He’s an asshole,” Sasha stated plainly.

“Well,” she replied cockily, “he is that. But he was the best lover I’ve ever had.” She walked out of the bathroom, hoping to hurt him. She needed space to breathe. To think. Her hunch last night had been right. She should have trusted her gut feeling. She snorted. She was an idiot when it came to men. She looked around at the very comfortable house. “How much is this place worth?”

“Why?”

“How much?” she pressed.

“Around a million five.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll take it. Sign the house over to me and we’ll be even.”

He went quiet.

She glared at him. “You owe me. Give me the house and I’m offering you to a chance to make it right.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“No. It’s mine,” she stated firmly.

Sasha moved to the kitchen and she followed him. He took out a carton of yogurt and some frozen berries. He milked the frozen berries until they were soft and mixed them with a dab of honey. He topped the sweetened berries off with plain Greek yogurt. “Sit,” he ordered.

“You’re not taking care of me,” she insisted. “I won’t let you. Please leave.”

“Sit,” he repeated.

Kallie yanked the bowl from him and shoved it into the refrigerator. She went over to the couch, which was incredibly comfortable, and drew a light blanket around her.

Sasha sat next to her. “I know you’re pissed at me. You have every right to be. But I’m trying to get you through this.”

“That’s convenient,” she said into the couch. “Fuck up my life and then come rescue me. The fucking is just a bonus?” Even while she was angry, being so close to him, heat emanated from him to her and softened her like a narcotic. She needed to be careful. She might want the way he made her feel more than getting a grip on reality. “Can you please go?” she said finally.

“I will. But I’m coming back to check on you.”

Kallie waited until he left. She headed up to the bathroom and showered quickly. She wanted to wash him off her. Who would have thought she would feel like this, only hours after reveling in his scent? She dressed in cotton shorts and a tank then curled up on the couch. At least it was comfortable. Something about being cradled in the upholstery began to feel secure and cozy. It helped her to calm down enough so she could sleep. She was going to get the deed to the house. Then she’d sell it and move on. Or something. She let the tears fall, not bothering to wipe her cheeks. She was destined to live a fucked-up life. There was no getting away from it.

* * *

She woke a while later and decided she wasn’t going to wait around for Sasha to come back to the house. My house, she reminded herself.

She called a cab and decided to go for a ride. When it came, on time and no scary men hiding in the shadows, she told him to take her to her old office.

The address slipped out before she could even stop herself. She doubted there would be anything there for her, but she suddenly wanted to look. The thing about the situation with Jeremy and what it did to her became more than the fact he’d robbed her of cash and faith. It seemed to have sucked the ambition and fight out of her.

Kallie had been a person who did ten million things before hitting the office in the morning. It was coffee, workout, housework, check emails and voicemail, shower, and maybe squeeze in some breakfast.

Coming to and from the office, she was always in business development mode, exploring that untapped market for personal assistants. The wealthy stay-at-home set was her latest coup. Once she found one woman on Federal Hill to hire someone, everyone in the neighborhood suddenly wanted to hire as well. Everyone had to have their own assistant to do all the things that gave the stay-at-homes more time to lead an even greater life of leisure.

Then when Jeremy was farming out high-priced hookers to their spouses, he fired their staff and re-hired elsewhere. Kallie’s company got named in a handful of wrongful termination suits of the unemployed.

Only, Jeremy wasn’t the guy behind it all. It had been Sasha. Kallie had a new person to ignite her anger all over again. She had thought of Sasha being her bandage for the pain of her great loss, but he’d just stabbed her with his admission. He’d known what he had done and still slept with her! What kind of man was he?

Kallie had the cab sit a little while in front of the office building where she’d run her business. She took in the sight of the loftily gardened building’s front, which she had once been so proud of. Now she felt like a total outsider and she didn’t know what she wanted for herself.

Lastly, she had the cab drive through Federal Hill. Why was it, she wondered, the women who hired her clients didn’t do anything to make a living and yet, nothing threatened their world up on the hill?

Near tears, Kallie asked the cabbie to take her back to the town house. She needed to assess her finances and find her own place. There was no way he was going to give her the house. It was a stupid threat. Like the women behind the doors of Federal Hill, who were like his type, Jeremy’s type. They never paid.

She’d only gave him the ultimatum of giving her the house because she’d been so angry.

Unless... A thought began forming in her mind. Sasha had said that he had other bars beside Darkness. She suspected she wasn’t the only woman he’d strung along. He might not make financial amends for upending her life, but she could definitely get her money’s worth by fucking with him.

She returned to the house and was surprised to find a housekeeper cleaning the house. “What’re you doing here?”

“Mr. Sasha sent me.”

Kallie handed the woman her bucket and cleaning supplies. “You’re done. Have a nice day. Goodbye.”

The woman looked panicked, and it almost cracked Kallie’s nerve, but she stayed strong. “Don’t come back. While I’m here, don’t come back,” she ordered, emotion choking her words.

After she closed the door behind the woman, Kallie cleaned up the place herself. She picked up a pillow to straighten it and Sasha’s scent curled through the air. It made her press her eyelids tight. She’d been so stupid.

Not long after she let the housekeeper go, she saw Sasha’s number come through her phone. She ignored it. He called again, and again. Finally, she texted him, Fuck You. She rolled up her sleeves to scrub the place herself, and to hopefully rid herself of the intense desire to murder the giant Russian.

After cleaning she realized that, in order for her to find out what other places Sasha owned, she would have to find out his last name. The cold reality that she had been physically intimate with a man whose last name she didn’t even know made her stop and think about her foolish hastiness.

We women can be the stupidest creatures on earth just about. I jumped right in for a hot man without knowing anything about him. Well, that’s about to change.

She broke out the strategies of background searches she used to use to check out potential employees, and looked him up. She started with searching the county tax records of the address where she was staying to find out Sasha’s last name. It didn’t take long.

Sasha Petrov.

Then she plunked down the forty bucks on the Intelius website for the whole enchilada, as she called it. Property ownership, arrest records, court records, marriage, divorce, everything. The report also sometimes furnished peripheral information, like where he went to school and job history.

Kallie had some idea that Sasha was loaded, but after reviewing all the properties in his name her hunch was confirmed. His was the sole listed name as owner for four bars and three houses.

He owned a bar in downtown Baltimore, which was the next city over from Pikesville, in a spot called Little Ukraine in Patterson Park. Patterson Park had such a bad reputation that even people from Pikesville knew about it. It wasn’t a neighborhood she would ever be in by herself after dark.

By just the real estate information alone, Kallie found out what she needed to know to begin recovering her losses.

She wrestled with the temptation to root around in the rest of his personal information. She paid for the whole report, she was entitled to look.

Except you’re not like him. Or Jeremy.

“And I’m planning on screwing him over by getting money from his businesses. Yeah, totally not like them at all,” she muttered to herself. She stacked the printed papers together and decided to have a small look at one other page.

There were several hits in the criminal records category. She didn’t care what they were, though. Even if the man caused her to lose everything she’d worked for, something about him didn’t strike her as a murderer or anything like that. She piled the papers again and set them on the table.

Kallie went upstairs to make a plan.

She laid out a pair of tight capris and a gauze blouse that showcased her body without being tight. She wanted to look like she meant to go out, but she didn’t want to be too cute. Or too slutty.

She needed to figure out what to do with her hair. The blonde was a light bulb and would catch Sasha’s eye if he saw her. She couldn’t wear a hat. She would have to rinse it with temporary dye or he’d realize she was spying on him.

Kallie threw on her tennis shoes and jogged down to the corner drugstore. She bought two bottles of darker color. She used both boxes and left the color in for only fifteen minutes before rinsing it out. It was perfect. She brushed it back into a ponytail and coiled it up into a knot.

Even without much more disguise than this, she felt confident that if she walked into any of his bars and Sasha happened to be there, she wouldn’t be recognized. She wanted to be able to check him out without his detecting her. She felt like she might even catch him at something. She had to know exactly who she was dealing with. He wasn’t going to tell her, so she’d find out on her own.

Kallie then called a cab and had it drop her off a block from another bar Sasha owned.

She had a plan, and cash in her pocket.

Now she needed to wait. And watch.