Page 29

The day off to recover from my ordeal became two, and then three. I couldn’t find anything to complain about because I was having such a great time. All of a sudden, Nik didn’t have anything pressing to do, either, and he stayed close, watching one ridiculous romcom after another without a single protest. I was the one who eventually caved and forced him to pick a movie, then clung to him like a limpet when he picked a terrifying space horror.

That was probably his intention all along, but it was kind of cute and charming. To think that scary, stern Nikolai Fokin was finding sneaky ways to get me into his arms. Not that I needed much persuasion during that downtime. I barely thought of the restaurant, and I only caught Nik with his phone a few times.

He gave me a few more self-defense lessons and they both increased my confidence and deflated it at the same time. It was great knowing certain moves, and I was getting better at slipping out of holds, but my size was always going to work against me. Nik wouldn’t let me get down about it, encouraging me to lift weights if I enjoyed it, and to always keep my wits about me.

“A little smart person can always find a way to defeat a huge idiot,” he told me.

I wanted to believe, because living with constant fear wasn’t my idea of an ideal life. After the third day, the same stir craziness started to set in, exactly like when Nik first brought me here. Cooking for the two of us was only so fun, and not at all challenging. Worries about the restaurant began to creep in, and couldn’t be distracted away with kisses.

We had important people with reservations that had been booked for months and we couldn’t keep switching them around. As nice as it was for a short time, I was much too conscientious to keep lolling around at home.

When I broached the subject on our third evening at home, Nik balked.

“You didn’t manage to find extra guards?” I asked.

“Of course, there are plenty of guards. The place is safer than Fort Knox.”

I shrugged, none too innocently, ready to back him into a corner. “Well, if you say it’s safe, then it must be safe.”

His eyes narrowed at me, knowing there was no arguing with that logic. I liked that he didn’t try; he only sighed and said we’d both go in the following day and get things back to normal. If this—whatever this was—was going to work, then he couldn’t keep me a prisoner.

Was it going to work? Did I want it to, all of a sudden? I hadn’t thought about trying to get someone to help me escape in a long time. Right now, I wanted to go back to Khoroshiy solely because I loved cooking there, not because I was looking for an ally.

As promised, I was at the restaurant in time for the deliveries. I hardly noticed anything out of the ordinary when Nik insisted on greeting the drivers and even going into the trucks with me to inspect the produce, meat, and fish on offer. He had every right to do so since it was his restaurant, and he was almost as passionate about food as I was. But then he decided he needed to brush up on his rusty knife skills and planted himself in the kitchen alongside the prep cooks.

After an hour of everyone being weirded out about the big boss in their workspace, I called him out into the hall.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I gave him a kiss to soften the blow. “I love working with you, but you're scaring the crap out of my boys.”

He snorted. “Two of those boys are the nephews of my second in command. I’m not scaring them in the slightest.”

I sighed long enough to blow away. “You’re determined to stick to me like glue, aren’t you?”

He nodded, kissed me again, and headed back into the kitchen, where he kept his promise for the next several days. If any of the staff really was disconcerted by his presence, they got over it quickly enough, and by the third day, they were barking orders at him when we started to fall behind. In his defense, he took it all in stride and made a mean potato gratin.

After a few days, nothing out of the ordinary happened, so Nik started to step aside to check his phone more often. His brow was furrowed more, too, and as soon as I had a break, I asked him if I needed to be worried.

“No,” he answered after finishing sending a message. “According to my intel, Arkadi is still in Moscow.”

“Then why do you look like something bad’s about to happen?” I asked, then grabbed his arm and tried to shake him. Of course, he didn’t budge. “You’re missing out on important meetings, aren’t you?”

“You’re the most important thing,” he said. The phone buzzed angrily in his hand, but he refused to check who was blowing it up.

“I believe you, but I’m going to feel like crap if you lose business playing babysitter. The place is crawling with guards, and you just said Arkadi is still in Russia.”

“You don’t have anything to feel bad about,” he argued. His phone was ringing now.

“But I do. Please go take care of whatever you need to take care of.” I kept prodding him, getting more agitated about him going completely broke or causing trouble for his brothers because of me.

He finally agreed to leave, but promised to return by closing to take me home. When he was gone, I breathed a sigh of relief. As well as we were getting along, I was starting to feel stifled, and that he was acting like a prison guard again.

However, not long after Nik left, Mila showed up. Coincidence? I didn’t think so. She swore up and down that she was there to do the accounting, but it seemed awfully convenient. It was clear she was there to be Nik’s eyes and ears.

I couldn’t stay mad at her though, because as soon as she entered the restaurant, I noticed she had been crying. Her normally flawless complexion was mottled and her eyes were rimmed with red. When she paused to speak to Jeremy at his host station, it was as plain as day that she was putting on a brave face. Forgetting my annoyance at the siblings, I cut short my visit with the diners, led her toward the small office she was using, and asked what was wrong.

“Oh, nothing,” she said breezily, her nose still stuffy.

I gave her a look. “You can drop the act.”

Her eyes welled with tears. “It’s really nothing, or at least it should be nothing. A little while ago, the shop where I had my boutique was sold, and now the new place is already having its grand opening. It was hard enough to let it go— I must have eaten every cupcake in this city to help me cope— but seeing it as a new, thriving shop hit way harder than I thought it would.”

“That would suck,” I agreed.

Her long blonde hair fell across her face as she lowered her head. “It’s stupid to feel like my heart is breaking over a shop.”

“It’s not stupid at all. You’re doing the right thing by keeping busy. If you get bored with the accounting, one of my servers called in sick.”

I was teasing, but Mila’s head shot up, and she looked eager to help out. She headed toward the kitchen and asked where she could change into one of the server uniforms. No amount of telling her it was only a joke would stop her, especially when she saw how frazzled the other servers were trying to cover all the tables themselves.

I refused to let her change into the simple black pants and sturdy white shirt, and since she didn’t want to get anything on her designer outfit, we compromised on her refilling water glasses and just making sure everyone had what they needed. Her social butterfly came out of its cocoon, and she flitted from table to table so I could go back to the kitchen without worrying about my new friend sobbing her eyes out in the back office.

A little while later, I was on my way out to the dining room to do my round of greetings, and just as I was about to leave the hall, I heard a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. A few of the patrons applauded like they always did, and in my lifetime, I’d never figure out if that was to make the dropper feel better or worse.

Turned out it was Mila who’d spilled an entire tray of drinks. She stood frozen, her linen pants splashed with ice water and whatever mixed drinks had been on there. Broken glass surrounded her, but she only stared toward the front of the house, where a group was being seated. I rushed to help her since she continued to just stand there like she was in a trance, and Jeremy met us with a horrified look on his face. Mila snapped out of it and hustled the two of us into the hall.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

Her face turned red. “No. Didn’t you see who just came in? Oh my God, why did I have to drop all those drinks in front of him ?”

“Who?” Was it some celebrity she had a secret crush on? She didn’t seem the secret crush type. And why was Jeremy close to hyperventilating?

“What are we going to do?” he asked, wringing his hands. Mila had her phone out, tapping furiously. “We’ve got the mayor here tonight, Senator Blanton, two movie stars… the last thing we need is a huge scene.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” I demanded.

“Arkadi just walked in the door,” Mila snapped, not looking up from her phone.

“What the hell? How? He’s supposed to be out of the country.”

“Well, he’s back in somehow.”

“It was a reservation that was made three months ago, obviously either fake or they coerced the other party to give it up.” Jeremy looked like he was about to have a heart attack, and I didn’t want a huge scene either once the guards noticed Arkadi was here.

Oh crap, the guards.

I flew to the dining area to see two of the security team members, dressed as staff, easing toward the table where Arkadi and his group were seated. Certainly, Nik had warned them to be as discreet as possible, but these guys loved knocking heads, and Arkadi’s head definitely needed it.

I held up my hand, giving them the meanest look I could muster under the circumstances. “Wait,” I mouthed in their direction, nodding toward the tables of VIPs. Great, there was a newscaster and one of those obnoxious social media people who filmed every damn thing in the restaurant this evening as well. Perfect.

There had to be a way out of this without causing a scene, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of it. Back in the hall, I took Jeremy’s hand to stop the looming panic attack.

“I’m going to calmly walk to his table and ask him to leave.”

His eyes widened, and Mila snorted. I turned to her with a glare. “Don’t you dare tell Nik.”

“Too late,” she said.

I had next to no time and had to do what was best for the restaurant. “Do you believe that all publicity is good publicity?” I asked Jeremy.

“No,” he wailed. He knew as well as I did that we didn’t want the reputation of a place where tawdry fights broke out while senators dined.

“Me neither.”

With my heart pounding out of my chest, I grabbed one of the guards who was disguised as a busboy— an incredibly huge busboy— and took him to Arkadi’s table to kindly ask him to leave. If he knew what was good for him, he’d take the advice.

I just didn’t believe he knew what was good for him.