Page 28 of Ruthless Rustanovs

OF ALL the deals they struck, the last few turned out to be the easiest for them to stick to.

Eva found it scarily easy to pretend she and Alexei were like any other couple.

The first few days there were one or two “you are pushing a button” moments for both of them but by the end of the first week, those had more or less petered out and they really started to enjoy each other.

It helped that they were running all over the island like twenty-somethings on Spring Break as opposed to an international businessman and a small-town social worker.

Neither, were used to taking vacations like those offered by South Padre Island.

Alexei had told her he didn’t “believe” in vacations.

“You do not become a successful businessman by taking vacations.” And the few vacations Eva had gone on since their break-up had involved Aaron and places geared toward kids.

But they’d both managed to keep up their side of the bargain, and she’d found being with Alexei like this made it easy to forget who she was in real life.

Just like in grad school, he treated her like she was the sexiest woman on the planet.

He listened to her stories and really seemed to respect what she did for a living even though her job paid so much less than his.

Like way less. He’d even stopped shaving and within a few days, he looked like a slightly older version of the bearded man she’d fallen in love with.

The days flew by and before she knew it, they only had forty-eight hours left before she was due back home.

Alexei seemed to realize their time together would soon be coming to an end, too. He didn’t say anything, but he kept them in the room more, making love to her in long, intense sessions that suggested he was trying to get his fill of her before they parted ways.

Eva didn’t mind since she was also having trouble acknowledging that their time in paradise was almost finished. But no matter which way she looked at it, she couldn’t see how to keep the relationship going without jeopardizing both her and Aaron’s safety.

If she told Alexei about his uncle, who she had heard him talking to on the phone at least three times during their vacation, he might not believe her.

If he did believe her, it might not be enough for him to want to come back to her.

For all she knew, Ms. Threesome was primed, ready, and waiting for him back in New York.

If Eva told him and he believed her, then there was still a chance he’d want nothing to do with Aaron.

He’d had a vasectomy, for heaven’s sake, which didn’t exactly scream, “I want to be a dad!” Even if he could tolerate Aaron, it was hard to imagine a scenario where he didn’t flip out because she’d kept his son’s existence from him.

Emilio had visited the suite a few times to have him sign contracts and receive instructions about how to handle some business problems that had come up.

From what she could tell, Alexei was in the habit of using whatever weapon he needed in order to win his business battles.

And if it came down to a battle with her, she had no doubt he’d use Aaron to get back at her.

“Eva?”

Eva jerked out of her thoughts and returned to the present in which she and Alexei were on their stomachs, side by side, on a large beach towel that faced the crashing surf just a few yards in front of them. “Did you say something?”

“Yes, I was saying I’d like to go to The R for dinner tonight.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “You’ve got to be sick of all the non-gourmet food I’ve been forcing on you.”

He ignored her quip and said, “Where were you just now?”

She shrugged and told a half-truth. “Just thinking about all the things I need to do when I get back to Drummond.”

He nodded. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well the business runs without me. Emilio has done an excellent job in my stead. But perhaps this is not the case with your office?”

Eva shrugged. “Berta’s supposed to be my assistant, too, but she always puts everything I give her on the backburner. I’ve never come back from vacation and not had to do all the things I asked her to do when I was away.”

Alexei responded to that with sneering frown. “You have saved the entire town of Drummond from ruin. She should be grateful.”

“Um, well, we told a cover story about me going on vacation with Layla, so she doesn’t exactly know exactly what I’m doing for the town. In any case, my dad and her blame me for getting them into this position in the first place.”

Alexei went quiet for a while, his scowl deepening before he asked, “How long did you say your father has been mayor?”

“Almost thirty years. One of my first memories was of his inauguration.”

“And he still has not found another source of industry other than Drummond Oil? That is not good business practice. As far as I am concerned, your father put your town in this position, not you. He is lucky I bought Drummond Oil. If someone else had, they might not have been as…” he pulled her closer and pressed a lingering kiss into her shoulder, “…open to negotiation.”

Eva hadn’t really thought about it that way before.

Some of the guilt she’d been having about getting Drummond into this mess started to subside, and a wave of contentment washed over her.

She leaned in closer to him, loving the way the bristles of his new beard brushed against her shoulder.

He smelled like suntan lotion and beach, the exact opposite of how he smelled when she first arrived and he took her in a frenzy of anger and reproach.

This version of Alexei, she noted, was much more into PDA than the one she used to know.

Back at UTD, she’d always been the one initiating displays of affection outside of the confines of their bedroom.

But on South Padre Island, he was constantly surprising her with kisses or pulling her closer and sometimes even sweeping her off her feet in the playful way of younger and more carefree lovers.

Eva couldn’t get over what a good time she was having with Alexei.

In the months it took her to get over him, she’d managed to convince herself that the love and companionship she thought they shared was a fluke.

After she left, Eva did some fieldwork hours at a Dallas shelter for domestic violence victims. She’d met so many women who told her their boyfriends or husbands refused to talk about their pasts.

Only to find out later that the secretive men had criminal records they’d been hiding.

Alexei’s lips moved to her neck and he easily found her most erogenous spot, sending tingling sensations all the way down to her toes with his kisses.

Eva once again wondered how he could have possibly done the things he’d done and still managed to sleep at night.

She also wondered how she could know what he’d done, who he was, who he still might be, for all she knew, and still hunger for him the way she did.

The worst part of this vacation for Eva had been having to constantly stay on her guard to make sure she didn’t fall back in love with him. And she was pretty sure she wasn’t doing a such a crack job at that.

“If you keep on kissing my neck like this, we’re going to end up breaking some of Texas’s indecency laws.” When Alexei kept kissing her neck anyway, she asked. “Aren’t you supposed to meet with Emilio at five?”

He groaned and glanced at his Rolex. “Yes, we should get back.” He turned her face to his to give her a few more soft kisses. “But trust that we will finish this after dinner.”

Eva was unusually quiet during the ride back to the hotel, Alexei noted.

Albeit, they spent most of the return trip on a Vespa—Eva had seen the scooter a few days earlier and insisted they rent one.

She showed so much enthusiasm for tooling around on the back of it with him that Alexei arranged to buy one, and have it delivered to the hotel for their everyday use.

The truth was, Alexei liked having Eva hugged up against his back wherever they went.

She had a way of laying her face on his shoulder that made him feel like she was genuinely happy to be there with him.

Eva usually spoke to him while on the scooter, even if just to point out a restaurant or activity they might enjoy later.

Even though Alexei was the one who commanded they spend two weeks together, they’d gone kiteboarding, windsurfing, dolphin watching, night clubbing, and even drove along the beach in all-terrain buggies…

all at Eva’s request. And to his surprise, he’d enjoyed everything.

In the past, Alexei only ever went to vacation destinations for business and it had never occurred to him to be a tourist for a few hours.

But between the two of them, Eva acted more like someone who had truly missed out on doing these things and she seemed determined to vacation just as hard as the younger college students the island was known to attract.

This made Alexei wonder even more about Aaron.

Did he never take her anywhere? How could she be so dedicated to him if he couldn’t even provide her with something as simple as a local beach vacation?

It would have been different had Eva not left Alexei because he’d been poor. But she did and it made her attachment to this Aaron, who was clearly not well-off and definitely not satisfying her sexual needs, all the more confusing.