Now he put down his menu, but held up his hand when one of the waiters tried to approach the table. Behind him, the man took the silent command and immediately resumed his waiting position.
“So you regret our time together?” Alexei asked. There was not a trace of warmth in his cold, green stare.
“How do you want me to answer that? Like me now, or the old me?”
“Like you now.”
“Me now has worked really hard to become a better person,” she said carefully. “I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger, but I’ve spent the last eight years trying to help people, and to make up for those mistakes, but somehow it never seems to be enough. Me now wants to get these two weeks over with, and then maybe move away from Drummond, away from Texas, to some place where no one knows me or sits in continuous judgment of me for stuff that happened a long time ago.”
“You want to run away again,” he all but sneered. “And you hate that I am keeping you here, that I will not let you be the irresponsible girl again.”
Now she really wanted to scream at him. She was responsible. At this point, she was the most responsible person she knew. What would he do, she wondered, if she just told him the truth? Told him his beloved uncle had threatened her. That she left because she had been commanded to. That afterwards, she had considered risking her life to be with him. She had picked up the phone so many times to call him and explain everything, but then all her stuff had been delivered to Layla’s front doorstep in neat boxes, all marked with the same label: “From: Sergei Rustanov To: Eva St. James.” It had been an effective message. Unlike Alexei, who still hadn’t been able to pin down her whereabouts, his uncle let her know he could find her anywhere, any place.
Three weeks after that, she’d realized she hadn’t gotten her period in all the weeks of worry, fear, and confusion following her leaving Alexei. The plus sign on the pregnancy test stick had been her final answer. She’d keep this baby, but if she wanted to protect it, she’d have to let go of its father.
But now she was once again sitting across the table from Alexei, being accused of things she couldn’t deny, the old feelings roiling around with new fears. No, she couldn’t tell him, she decided for what felt like the millionth time in the past few days. She had no idea what he’d do if she told him. And she couldn’t take that risk.
Alexei thought he was impressing her with his hotels, his private jets, and his empty restaurant, but all he was doing with his displays of wealth and power was scaring her more.
“I have to go to bathroom. I’ll be right back,” she said. She didn’t wait for his permission, just threw down the napkin she’d had on her lap, and all but ran out of the restaurant.
“Ms. St. James,” the hostess said as she ran past her.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Eva said over her shoulder.
“There’s a restroom inside the restaurant—“
Eva didn’t hear the rest. Instead she made a beeline for the gift shop across the lobby, where she found and bought a pay-as-you-go phone, which the clerk assured could be used to make international phone calls.
Five minutes later she was in a stall in the nearby women’s restroom, dialing Aaron’s number with trembling fingers.
“Hello?” he said, his voice groggy.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she tried to keep her voice light when she said, “I’m sorry for waking you, sweetness. I just wanted to hear your voice. Did you have fun at Disneyland Paris?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We did the Star Tours ride and went down Space Mountain—it’s just like the one in California. And then Serafina started crying, but I gave her some of my gelato and she stopped.”
She could hear the pride in his voice and smiled. “Wow, you’re one amazing cousin.”
“Yeah, that’s what Aunt Maria says. She says I should come out next summer, too. Can I, Mama?”
“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll talk about it when you get home.”
“You can come, too, and you can see Disneyland Paris.”
They talked for a few minutes more about the differences between Disneyland in California, which they’d visited a year ago, and Europe’s version. Then they talked about what he had for dinner and the action movie he’d gone to see with Steve and how they’d gone to a park and kicked around a soccer ball earlier in the day. There was a lot of Uncle Steve this and Uncle Steve that, and she realized how much Aaron must have missed have a male figure in his life who wasn’t a cranky old man.
She wished, not for the first time, she could give Aaron the father he so obviously craved. One who wouldn’t use all the money at his disposal to take him away from her, not because he actually wanted children, but to punish her for not telling him he had a son.
“Mama, I’m sleepy. Can I go now?”
She glanced at the phone read out. Almost forty minutes had passed. She was surprised Alexei hadn’t sent someone in there to fish her out. “Okay, baby, I’ll try to call you again in a day or so.”
The world and her myriad problems had fallen away while talking with her son, but as soon as she hung up, they came crashing back down on her shoulders and it felt like she had feet made of lead as she walked out of the bathroom, forcing herself to go back to the restaurant and face Alexei.
But she didn’t have to go far because Alexei was standing right outside the bathroom door in his well-tailored linen suit, looking exactly like what he was: one pissed off billionaire.
“What is it with you and standing outside of bathrooms?” she asked.
He did not laugh. “You were talking to him.”
Eva didn’t have to ask who he was referring to. She clamped her mouth closed, once again preferring to tell him nothing rather than having to tell yet another lie. It had been hard enough to pull off the one she spun for him last night. And she suspected she wouldn’t have gotten away with it, if he hadn’t already been so inclined to believe the worst of her.
He clenched and unclenched his hands, as if restraining himself from doing her physical violence. When he reached for her, she actually took a step back, afraid.
But when he caught her by the arm, he didn’t hurt her, he kissed her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, his other hand snaking around the back of her neck as he all but devoured her mouth in a kiss that took not only her breath away, but also all of her troubled thoughts.
She welcomed this, welcomed him, threading her arms around his chest, kissing him back with all the frustrated passion and residual love she didn’t want to feel.