Page 133 of Ruthless Rustanovs

HE was still there.

Thel looked through the condo’s front window at Bair sitting on the steps outside.

He was dressed in a new outfit today: a pair of wool trousers and a thin sweater that clung to his massive torso.

It made her body clench with the memory of that Christmas morning when he asked her to be his pet.

The way his heavy body had felt on top of hers when they celebrated her yes.

Having his thick waist between her thighs, as he drove into her like a well-oiled machine.

Luckily she blinked before her sex-starved body could take her too far down memory lane. Focus, Thel, she told herself. He was still out there. But why?

She’d actually tried calling the police on him when she’d gotten up this morning and found him out there.

But they’d been less than zero help. As it turned out, Bair was the owner on record for not just the condo, but for the entire building.

And since she’d never filed any kind of restraining order against him, there wasn’t much they could do about a man sitting on the stairs of his own property.

So he’d remained there most of the early morning, and now it was time for her to head into work.

She hesitated at the window, torn between not wanting to go out and needing her job.

Her boss was already looking for any excuse to fire her since, according to him, she’d tricked him by not mentioning she was pregnant at the time of her interview.

So yes, she had to go to work, and yes, that meant she’d have to go outside to get there. Out there. Where he was.

She crept out as quietly as she could, but Bair turned around as she soon as she stepped a foot outside. Turned and stood, like he’d been waiting for her.

A Nine Inch Nails song chewed on her chest as she brought up the knife with a trembling hand. “Don’t!” she warned. “I’ll use this. I swear I will.”

He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, dead-eyeing her in that predator reincarnated way of his.

With an unsteady heart, she lowered the knife, testing to see what he’d do.

He didn’t do anything. Just continued to stand there. Quiet as stone.

However, his black eyes stayed on her as she backed away toward the stairs on the other side of the landing. And she didn’t dare to turn her back to him until she absolutely had to in order to get down the steps safely.

She made it all the way to the Audi and quickly yanked open the door. But she couldn’t resist looking back up at him before she got in. He was standing at the landing now. Looking down at her. Like a predator assessing its prey.

“What are you doing here?” Jimmy the other Greek asked as soon as she walked in the door.

He sat behind the shop’s counter, eyes wide and shocked, like some sort of ghost had manifested in the middle of his sales floor.

Thel, who’d been fully expecting to get reamed for being fifteen minutes late, stopped just on the other side of the door, wondering if this was some kind of employee terrorizing tactic on his part.

“Uh, working,” she answered carefully. “Since this is my job…”

His eyes narrowed like she was the confused one. “Not anymore, sweetheart. You’re on paid maternity leave, effective today.”

“Excuse me? That doesn’t make any sense. I barely even qualified for benefits! Now you’re trying to put me on paid maternity leave?”

“Yeah, well,” Jimmy shrugged, as if those two words explained everything.

“You got me fired?!?!” she screeched at Bair a few minutes later, pushing past his guard at the bottom of the stairs and chugging up the steps with the knife fisted in her hand.

“Not fired,” Bair answered, sounding almost bored as he once more came to his feet on the steps. “Paid maternity leave.”

“Un-huh,” she said. “And who exactly is funding this paid maternity leave, because I know it sure as hell ain’t Jimmy the Other Greek!”

His brow hitched up. “Jimmy the Other Greek. This is what you call him?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure he isn’t running girls on the side.”

“He is not,” Bair assured her solemnly. “I checked. Or else it would have been very different conversation I have with your boss.”

She had the crazy urge to laugh at that response, and then she just felt weak. Like the weakest woman in the world. With a steak knife in her hand.

“Why are you here, Bair?” she asked him. “What do you want from me? Because if it’s a late-term abortion or anything like that, I’m not…”

She stopped when she saw the look of horror flash across his face. Wounded and hurt like she really had stabbed him with her knife.

“So you’re not here to make me get rid of our baby?”

His nostrils flared, and then he answered with a simple, “No, Sirena. That is not why I’m here.”

Which begged the question, “Then why are you here?”

He looked at her for a very long time before quietly saying, “In two days, it will be Christmas. I would like for you to come with me to my brother’s house to celebrate holiday.”

His voice sounded rote. Uncomfortable, like he was repeating someone else’s lines.

And she had to blink, because they wouldn’t have had so much as a tree in their Berlin apartment if she hadn’t taken care of all the Christmas stuff herself back in the day. They never even exchanged gifts since, according to Bair, “Christmas is not holiday I enjoy.”

But now he not only wanted to celebrate Christmas with her, but drive her to his brother’s house to do it?

As if reading her skeptical thoughts, he added, “I have made appointment for December 26 with mediator my brother found for us. I can promise if you come with me to Texas, we will come to agreement about custody without long court battle.”

Thel sank back on her heels, trying to process his request. She liked the sound of a mediator as opposed to the battalion of sharks thinly disguised as lawyers she knew the Rustanovs kept at the ready.

And she liked the sound of a simple custody agreement as opposed to having to defend herself and her baby against a man who’d never wanted children in the first place.

But… “How do I know this isn’t a trick? Like you’ll get me on some plane and fly me somewhere I can’t escape?”

He shook his head. “You cannot fly in your condition. We must drive. If we leave now, we can make it there by nighttime.”

She shook her head at him. “So you, the man who’s been sitting here all dang morning, want to drive me, the woman who’s holding a knife on you, to spend Christmas with your family. You realize how crazy that sounds, right?”

To this he merely shrugged. “I am Siberian,” he said, as if that explained everything. He then nodded at the knife in her hand. “If you like, you can bring that with you.”