Which meant, odd number.

Which meant, someone would be left behind without a partner, and that would---

Not be me, Fredericka thought determinedly as she swiped her phone from the tiny table next to her lounge chair. Lifting it up over her face, she began typing fast.

There’s a difference between having no one to dance with, she told herself, and choosing not to dance because you’re busy texting.

She was the latter, obviously.

Fredericka: Hey, what’s up?

Sergei: About to meet someone.

Sergei: As for you…

Sergei: Shouldn’t you be dancing now?

Sergei: Says so in your itinerary.

Fredericka: We don’t have an itinerary.

Sergei: You do.

Fredericka: And even if we had one, how would you know what’s in it?

Sergei: Magic.

Fredericka: HA!

Sergei: It comes in various currencies.

Fredericka: Oh my God, can everyone be bought now?

Sergei: Da, pchelka. Shouldn’t you have accepted that by now?

Fredericka: CYNIC.

Fredericka: There’s still hope for humanity, you heartless billionaire.

Sergei: How can you say that when right this minute I am actually spending my precious time humoring this woman who has no friends?

Fredericka: I have friends!

Sergei: Your cousin and former therapy-session-partner do not count.

Fredericka: They’re still my friends, and what do you mean you’re humoring me?

Sergei: You only text me out of the blue when you don’t want to look like a loser.

Fredericka: Well, sorry if we can’t all be the life of the party like His Ego-ness.

Sergei: Ya znayu ob etom.

I am aware of this, Fredericka translated. Her Russian had improved by leaps and bounds, mostly thanks to the times when the billionaire was acting all mysteriously brooding. In those instances, he would insist on talking to her only in Russian, and conversely he’d only pay attention to what she was saying if she answered back in Russian.

He was a perverse jerk, in other words, but because he was also one of the few persons she couldn’t live without, she had just let it go.

Well, that and fact that it was also sort of cute that the normally mature Sergei Grachyov had a secret childish side to him.

Smiling, she typed her answer to the billionaire. You could have just typed IKR.

Her phone vibrated a moment later, with Sergei’s concise answer making her accidentally laugh out loud. He had simply typed, IKR.

She suddenly pictured the powerful-looking billionaire saying IKR in that wonderful accent of his and bit her lip hard. It would be like a Russian James Bond saying…BRB.

Fredericka bit her lip harder at the thought. Damn you, Sergei Grachyov. The man had to know that his answer would have her in stitches, just as he knew how much she hated it every time he could make her laugh silly like all those foolishly infatuated girls that followed him everywhere.

A shadow fell over Fredericka, jerking her out of her reverie, and she thought, Shit. It was probably the host, about to ask her why she wasn’t dancing. She glowered down at her drink, knowing that politeness forbade her to say the truth, which was that it was entirely his fault she was the 101^st wheel.

Odd numbers, you idiot, Fredericka wanted to yell. One-oh-damn-one!

The man in front of her started to crouch down.

Shit, shit, shit.

Fredericka started racking her brains for a plausible excuse. She couldn’t dance because she had…sprained her ankle from sitting? She had her period? She---

Oh.

Familiar dark eyes collided with her, and she gasped, “Sergei?”

An arrogant, wicked grin curved on his lips as the Russian billionaire murmured, “In the flesh.” As always, his thick accent made his voice sound seductive and dangerous at the same time, and behind her she dazedly took in the way the commanding aura of his presence had everyone freezing and gaping at him.

It was like the entire world had stopped in motion, and all because His Ego-ness was here.

“W-what are you doing here?” Fredericka stammered even as she struggled to get past her befuddled state. The billionaire was still gorgeous than ever, with his neatly cut black hair and dark eyes making his features seem more chiseled. His white V-neck shirt and lightweight cotton pants, which screamed designer-brand elegance despite its casual style, served to accentuate the exquisitely sculpted muscles of his lethally ripped body.

HOT, in other words.

Instead of answering, the billionaire only said, “I missed you, Erie.”

“Hmph.” But her toes had already curled hard, not just because he had told her he missed her but also because he was calling her ‘Erie.’ Even now, remembering how that came to be made her heart skip a beat and made it even harder to feign irritation.

The first time he had paid her a visit at the law firm in Miami, the billionaire had been oddly quiet and unsmiling. When they had a moment alone to themselves, she had worriedly asked him what was wrong, and he had told her stiffly, “They all call you ‘Freddie.’”

“That’s because they’re different from the guys in Rockton. Those guys didn’t treat me as their equal. The people here are cool, and we’ve become friends.” She had thought the answer was sufficient, but when the frown on the billionaire’s face only became more pronounced, she had asked tentatively, “Something’s still wrong?”

“It makes them sound they’re intimate with you.”

“They’re not,” she had gasped.

“But it’s how they sound, because they call you…Freddie.”

“B-but you call me pchelka,” she had stammered, all the while wondering if it was possible that the billionaire could be jealous.

“That’s an endearment, not a nickname.”

The difference was lost on her, but the look in the billionaire’s dark eyes was clear as day. She hadn’t dared put a name to it, but she knew what it was, and the thought had her knees buckling. “D-do you want to call me Freddie, too?” she had asked weakly.

She had only wanted to appease him, but instead the billionaire had dealt her a cold look, and his voice had been dangerously silky when he asked, “Does that mean I am at the same level with the other men here?”

“No way.” She hadn’t even taken the time to think of what to answer, and when she had seen his form visibly relax, the tension leaving his powerful body, she knew she had said the right thing, probably the only answer he would have accepted.

“Erie,” he had then said after a moment. At her blank look, he had clarified, “I will ignore the ‘Fred’ part in your name because that is what most of them seem to concentrate on. So it leaves ‘Ericka.’”

Her confusion cleared. Erie, taken from Ericka, was to be his special nickname for her. The thought of him calling her a name that was his alone felt strangely intimate, and heat suffused her face.

“Erie?”

The past faded and blended with the present, and Fredericka realized with a start that Sergei had been calling for her.

When she looked up, the billionaire murmured smoothly, “Let’s dance.”

Before she could even think of protesting, he had already pulled her up to her feet and into his arms.

As he drew her closer, she hissed under her breath, “You’re making them hate me.”

“It is for your own good,” she heard the billionaire say calmly over her head.

Fredericka looked up with a gasp. “Excuse me?”

“Hate is better than pity,” he murmured.

Oh. A reluctant smile touched her lips as she was forced to acknowledge the truth in the billionaire’s words. So much had changed in the course of a year, Fredericka thought reminiscently. After having won the case for the Christakos twins, her dream had come true and she had been made state’s attorney a short while after.

For a time, it had been everything she wanted, and every morning she would look at herself in the mirror and imagine that it was her dead father she was seeing on its surface.

Can you see me now? I’m the child you ran out on and refused to acknowledge. Look where I am now, and look where you are.

But soon, the pleasure she derived from her success began to pale and the emptiness of her life began to gnaw at her. Two months ago, she had finally submitted her resignation, determined to start her life over. She had realized she wanted to build a law firm that operated on contingency fees, which would allow it to represent clients who weren’t presently able to afford effective legal presentation.

But as this weekend’s event had made Fredericka realize, her dream was a nightmare for most other lawyers. Even worse, she had learned that most of them believed that her resignation had merely been a ruse, meant to cover up the fact that she had pissed off a high-ranking official and had been forced to quit.

She looked up at the billionaire, saying wryly, “You’ve known from the start, didn’t you? What people were thinking?”

Sergei answered evenly, “There was no reason for you to know about the opinion of people who should mean nothing to you.”

So overprotective, she thought helplessly. Knowing that there was no point discussing his high-handedness, a trait that was as intrinsic to him as his Russian lineage, she changed the subject instead, asking, “What do you think you’re doing?” For the past five minutes, the two of them had been swaying slowly to a beat only the billionaire seemed to hear, and it had everyone staring at them.

Sergei raised a brow. “Dancing, of course.”

Fredericka was torn between laughing out loud and rolling her eyes. This was dancing? The music was a fusion of techno and house, fast and upbeat, and he called this slow, almost intimate sway of their bodies dancing?

He suddenly pulled her closer, and Fredericka’s breath caught as she felt his hardness against her belly.

Oh. God.

He was so rigidly aroused, she thought, her throat drying. Did he know she was aware that he had an erection? She slowly, nervously looked up at him., and when their gazes met, the billionaire smiled at her, a devastating sight that had her body tightening with need.

“People here need to be reminded that you’re not just anybody,” Sergei murmured.

Oh, the arrogance. And yet Fredericka also knew he was merely stating a fact, and the way he was so unabashedly unapologetic about his power just made him even more attractive.

Her breasts started to feel heavy, and her folds started to become creamy with moisture.

Oh no.

She was becoming aroused, too, and if she didn’t do something quick, Sergei would realize this as well.

Fredericka pushed the billionaire away, mumbling, “I n-need to go to the powder room.”

The billionaire’s hold on her slowly loosened. “Shall I accompany you---”

“No!” The shrillness of her tone made Fredericka mentally wince, realizing that she was giving herself away even more. “I mean, it’s okay, I’ll be back---” She felt a sneeze coming, and stopped talking.

Sergei frowned when Fredericka suddenly sneezed. “Are you alright?”

“I had a slight temperature last night, but it’s nothing serious.”

“You’re certain?”

Fredericka temporarily forgot her discomfort as Sergei’s zealous concern filled her with amusement. “A fever’s not going to kill me, Sergei.”

Even as a flushed expression fell over his face, the billionaire countered, “It isn’t something to take lightly either.”

Her smile widened into a grin. “Stop being fussy. You’re younger than me---” As always, the reminder of their age difference had the billionaire scowling, but she ignored this, saying, “So lighten up, will you?”

Ignoring her words, the billionaire asked instead, “Do you still need to go to the powder room or not?” He took a step closer towards her. “Because if you don’t, then we can just go back to dancing---”

She hurriedly moved back before he could reach her, stammering, “I still need to go.” More than ever now, since his words had practically set her body on fire.

Sergei checked his watch. “Perhaps we can meet in my room instead?”

“Sure.” At this point, Fredericka would have agreed to anything, so desperate was she to leave his presence before the billionaire figured out what was wrong with her. He gave her his room number, and she nodded, mumbling, “Got it.” And then she spun around and walked away as fast as she could, not allowing herself to look back.

The story of her life, she thought, torn between laughing and crying.

Sergei Grachyov had become an obsession, and these days she only had to see him and she would want him so, so bad.