Barefoot With a Bodyguard (28 page)

“My
pollo caribe
,” Poppy finished, leaning close to whisper, “Which is
my
version of what
he
thinks is his—”

“Why do you mess with perfection?” a man hollered.

“Because my perfection is better!” Poppy called out, and one second later, a man’s footsteps pounded. “Oh, here he comes,” Poppy said under her breath. “Nino Rossi, who thinks he’s the only person on God’s green earth who can cook and if you don’t do it his way, you’re not doing it at all.”

Robyn turned to the door to see a little old grandpa who had to be near eighty lumbering into the closet, a furry frown crinkling up his face even more than age had.

“Lemon chicken is not spicy,” he announced.

“
Pollo caribe
is not lemon chicken,” she replied.

“But that’s my recipe.”

“Not anymore. I fixed it up with a little jerk seasoning, ol’ mon.”

Big brown eyes grew wide at the Jamaican-sounding expression.

“And is this any way to act in front of a new staff member?” Poppy chided. “Nino Rossi is an assistant to one of our senior security executives,” she explained. “And this is Robyn Bickler, a brand new housekeeper.”

“Hi,” Robyn said shyly, getting a quick nod from a man who was way more intent on yelling at Poppy than greeting the new kid. “Listen, you have to…” His frown deepened, and he glanced back at Robyn, studying her for a moment. “What did you say your name was?”

“Robyn,” she replied.

“Bickler?” he asked pointedly, making her suddenly warm and uncomfortable, mostly by the way he was staring at her.

“Yes,” she said. He certainly couldn’t know her, right? “Why?”

“Because…” He searched her face again. Like he recognized her, but that was impossible. “I knew a Bickler once.”

He had? “It’s…not that common.” Could he know someone in her family? Her dad? No, this old man didn’t hang out with guys like her father, and there weren’t that many Bicklers running around.

“Nino, why are you staring at the poor child like that?”

Yeah, why
was
he staring at her?

“Robyn Bickler?” he asked again, and this time a slow heat rolled through her as another possibility hit her. Vlitnik! He could have people anywhere. Hell, he could have already infiltrated this place looking for Alec, just like she had.

Why the hell had she used her real name? Because she was an idiot, like her mother always said.

She barely nodded, and the old man backed out the door quickly, without even saying good-bye.

“Well, that’s some kind of magic you work there,” Poppy said with a laugh, turning back to the uniforms. “When he gets on a rant, ain’t nothin’ can stop him. Okay, now, this one should fit.”

She should get out of here. This was stupid and crazy. She probably walked right into a hornet’s nest of Vlitnik’s people.
Dumb!

“Actually, I’m not going to take the job,” she said, backing away just like the man had.

“What?” Poppy barked at her. “Don’t let him scare you off! He’s actually quite sweet when he’s not—”

“No, I can’t. I have to go.” She darted out the door and zipped through the little office, ignoring the surprised stares of the two ladies at their desks. “Bye,” she said lamely, looking at Mandy’s closed door and wishing so hard she could run into that lady’s arms for help. But there was no help for her. “Sorry,” she whispered, yanking open the front door and rushing out into the sunshine.

She practically tripped over the stone walkway trying to get to her car, the rest of the world whizzing by. Now that she was on Vlitnik’s radar, she’d never, ever be safe again.

“Robyn Bickler?”

She froze at the man’s voice behind her. A low, strong, serious voice that sent chills up her spine. Very, very slowly, she turned and met the eyes of a man who looked intense enough to kill her.

She couldn’t even speak.

“You’re not going anywhere until we talk.”

She put her hand on her belly and felt her knees give way.

Alec sat on the love seat in Kate’s room and listened to the shower run for well over fifteen minutes. It reminded him of her first day here, when she was hiding from him. Was she hiding from him now?

He knew the bathroom door wasn’t locked and that she was, most likely, in the shower, naked and fully accessible to him. Her desire to sleep with him was clear and strong.

But it couldn’t be casual or meaningless, not now, not with Kate. She wanted inside his head, and, damn it, he wanted to let her there. The first time he ever wanted anyone to know his truth. And, like her, he didn’t want to roll around and…and…

Yeah, he did. He wanted to more than anything. But sometime in the last few days, his desires had gone way past simple, easy sex. He had to tell her. Everything. And then she wouldn’t want him anymore, and he wouldn’t blame her.

But he wasn’t going to tell her afterward. That wouldn’t be fair. She needed to know before they got in this bed. Which, by the way things were going, wasn’t going to be tonight. It would be soon. It would be now.

The shower water stopped, and he sat a little straighter, expecting her to step into the bedroom, but only hearing her humming. She sounded happy and free. Free from her worries, free to leave if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to. Which meant—

The door popped open, and she sucked in a quick breath at the sight of him, involuntarily tightening the white towel wrapped around her body. Soaking wet hair curled over her bare shoulders, and the flush on her face from the hot water deepened.

“I didn’t know you were there,” she said.

He gnawed on his lip, staring at her for a good twenty seconds. Good God, she was gorgeous. No doubt, the prettiest woman he’d ever—

“Do you think I made the wrong decision to stay?” she asked.

“You tell me…after I tell you.”

She frowned, sliding a lock of wet hair over her shoulder. “Tell me what?”

“Everything.”

A smile tipped the corners of her lips. “’Bout time, Petrov.”

He grimaced at her light tone, because she didn’t know. She really didn’t have any way of knowing, so he had to forgive her efforts to take the lid off this pressure cooker.

He stood and crossed the room, somehow needing to be closer to her when he made his confession. “You know I’m hiding from people. From one man in particular. A man who essentially owns me.”

A shadow darkened her eyes, the look of a person who got it. Of course, she’d been “owned,” too. Only in a different way. Hoping for sympathy he didn’t deserve, he took a breath.

“I was promised to him as a kid, bought and paid for. He technically owns me, at least in his world.”

She narrowed her eyes, confusion making them a deeper green than usual. “So this
is
a Russian mob thing?”

It was a Dmitri Vlitnik thing. “Yes.”

“Was your father in the mob?” she asked, more tentative than when she normally grilled him like a lawyer. Probably because she didn’t want to know the answer. But, oh, honey, it was so much worse than that.

“He was not,” he said, dropping onto the edge of the bed, but she stayed standing. That was good. She’d probably want to run after he finished. “But he paid into the system to protect his business and his family.”

She sat down next to him. “Why don’t you start at the very beginning, Alec?”

He puffed out a breath of raw resignation. After a second, he took her hand and closed it in his, her fingers lost in the mass of his. For a long time, he stared at their joined hands, his gaze locked on the letters were nothing but a constant reminder of what he was.

Okay, the beginning.

“When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, only he really understood the risk of leaving us alone,” he finally said. “My mother could run the business, and I was a decent enough butcher to help her. But she didn’t know about the payments and likely wouldn’t be able to afford them and stay in business. Plus, she was…defenseless.” He closed his eyes at the thought, just remembering how his father had worried. “I was a big kid, but I couldn’t protect her if someone wanted to…if he wanted to…”

“Who?”

He shouldn’t tell her the name. She shouldn’t know. “The man at the head of all this is…was…” He shook his head. “All of his guys were thugs who couldn’t be trusted, but he, in particular, seemed to be interested in my mother.” Just saying it made him sick. “So I guess my father was worried about more than just the business.”

Kate nodded, getting his drift. “What did your father do?” she asked, stroking his hand with her thumb, sliding over the letters like she could erase them. And she could. That was why he was doing this, because she
could
erase his pain. She probably wouldn’t; she’d probably run like hell. But she could be the one to heal him.

“Get it all out, Alec.”

With encouragement like that, she
could
heal him.

“This guy was in the process of building an empire in Brighton Beach,” he said. “And emperors need armies, and armies need foot soldiers. My dad promised him that if they left the business alone and, more important, left my mother alone, then they could have me as an enforcer once I was old enough.”

She blinked at him. “As a hit man?”

“Exactly. Using these.” He splayed his hands in front of himself, letting go of hers.

“He could just give you away like that?”

“I guess, because he did. There was probably a drink, a blood oath, and promises to Mother Russia.” He closed his eyes, not even close to forgiving his father for the decision, even though he understood why he’d made it.

“So how have you managed to avoid this life imprisonment?” she asked.

“What makes you think I have?”

She studied his face for a moment. “Besides gut instinct and my sense of people? You’re not running from them because you’re sick of the life. My guess is you’re running from them because you don’t want that life.”

“Yes, that’s right.” And the fact that she had that much faith in him was like balm on his wound. Didn’t take away all the pain, but it helped.

“Which makes you good,” she assured him. “Bone-deep and genuinely good.”

He couldn’t help looking hard at her crystalline green eyes, seeing his reflection in them, or at least seeing that she perceived him to be a different man than he’d spent most of his life believing he was. That was more intoxicating than her brain and body, more attractive than her personality and fire. That was magic to him.

“You
are
good,” she whispered, as if she read his mind and saw the lingering doubts that hung in every corner of his conscience.

He put his finger over her lips as if he could seal that thought there, forever.
You are good.
She looked at him for a long time, then kissed his finger lightly.

“What happened, Alec?”

He turned away, the lovely sight of her replaced with…a different girl. Barely seventeen. Pretty, innocent, scared out of her mind.

Oh, fuck. Now he was there. In that warehouse. On that night. With that girl.

Bile rose up and made his stomach turn.

“Alec?”

He’d never told the story. Not in its entirety, since the only person who’d ever discussed it with him was Gregg, who knew enough of the details that he didn’t have to pull them out of Alec.

“They tried to break me in early. Not a month after my dad died.” No surprise, his voice came out husky. “It didn’t go well.”

She sat silent, waiting. And he tried to dig for his inner calm, for the Zen he could muster before a fight, for the wall he put around his conscience and the world. None of his tricks would cooperate as he realized his hand was trembling.

“There was a girl, a teenage girl a couple of years older than I was.” He swallowed.
Anna
. He never knew her last name, but he remembered her name was Anna. “Her father wasn’t cooperating with the
Mafiya
, and they wanted to make a point. Actually, they wanted
me
to make a point to prove my worth.” They being Vlitnik, the heartless bastard.

“Oh.” It was more a groan than a word, a syllable of fear about what she was going to hear.

He turned to her. “You asked, counselor.”

She nodded, her face pale.

He gave himself a second to get composure that wasn’t really there for the taking, but he tried anyway. “I didn’t want to…hurt her. I didn’t want to hit her.” But he’d watched one of Vlitnik’s enforcers rough her up so badly that Alec had peed his pants.

And Vlitnik had howled with laughter.

He closed his eyes. “But then they made me hurt her.”

“Alec, stop—”

“No,” he said, not caring that his voice cracked. “I won’t stop. You have to know what I am.”

“You were a kid, and they forced you—”

“Don’t make excuses for me! There are no fucking excuses. I did it. I hit her. With this.” He bunched his fist and turned it so the dark letters were in front of their faces.

бить

“How did they force you?”