“No, you don’t.” She cut him off, her voice so thick with tears that she had to fight for every word. “You never wanted to understand, Alexi. You never wanted to hear the one thing I needed you to believe. Now the only thing you need to understand is that I don’t want to see you again.”
He felt something rip apart in his gut. “You can’t have that.”
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll call Security. I’ll call your captain, I’ll call the mayor.” Desperation was rising like a flood. “Whatever it takes to keep you away from me.”
His eyes narrowed, sharpened. “You can call God Almighty. It won’t stop me.”
“Maybe this will.” She gripped her hands tightly together and looked just over his shoulder. “I don’t love you, I don’t want you, I don’t need you. It was fun while it lasted, but the game’s over. You can let yourself out.”
She turned away and walked quickly up the stairs. There had been hurt in his eyes. If there had been anger, she knew, he would have come after her, but there had been hurt, and she made it to the bedroom alone. With her hands over her face, she waited, biting back sobs, until she heard the door close downstairs. With a sound of mourning, she lowered herself to the floor and tasted her own tears. They were bitter.
Impatient and unsympathetic, Mikhail paced the floor of Alex’s sparsely furnished apartment. “You don’t answer your phone,” he was saying. “You don’t return messages.” He kicked a discarded shirt aside. The apartment was a shambles. “Lucky for you I came instead of Mama. She’d box your ears for living like a pig.”
“I gave the staff the month off.” With the concentrated care of the nearly drunk, Alex poured another glass of vodka from the half-empty bottle on the table.
“And drinking alone in the middle of the day.”
“So, join me.” Alex gestured carelessly toward the kitchen, where dishes were piled high. “Bound to be a clean glass somewhere.”
Mikhail washed one out before coming back to the table. He sat, poured. “What is this, Alexi?”
“Celebration. My day off.” Alex took a swallow and waited for the vodka to join the rest swimming through his system. “I caught the bad guy.” With a half laugh, he toasted himself. “And lost the girl.”
Mikhail drummed his fingers on the table as he drank. It was no less than he’d expected. “You fought with Bess?”
“Fought?” Lips pursed, Alex studied the clear, potent liquid in his glass. “I don’t know that’s the term, exactly. Found her with another man.”
Mikhail’s glass froze halfway to his lips. “You’re wrong.”
“Nope.” Alex reached for the bottle with an almost steady hand. “Walked in and found her lip-locked to this guy she used to be engaged to. Bess has this hobby of getting engaged.”
Mikhail merely shook his head. Something was not quite right with this picture. “Did you kill him?”
“Thought about it.” Before he drank again, Alex ran his tongue over his teeth. Good, he thought. They were nearly numb. The rest would follow. “Too damn bad I’m a cop.”
“What was her explanation?”
“Didn’t give me one. Got pissed, is all.” He set the glass down so that he could use both hands to rub his face.
“Because you accused without trusting.”
“I didn’t accuse,” Alex shot back, then pressed his fingers to his burning eyes. “I didn’t have to. What I didn’t say was unforgivable. She tossed me out on my ear, but not before she told me she didn’t love me anyway.”
“She lies.” Before Alex could lift his glass again, Mikhail grabbed his wrist. “I tell you, she lies. A few days ago she visited Rachel and the baby. I made her sit for me and sketched her while she talked of you. There’s no mistaking what I saw in her eyes, Alexi. You’re blind if you haven’t seen it yourself.”
He had seen it, and the pain of remembering what he’d seen clawed through him so that he stumbled to his feet as if to escape it. “She falls in love easily.”
“So? There is love, and love. How many times have you taken the fall?”
“This is the first.”
“For this kind, yes. There were others.”
“They were different.”
“Ah.” Patient and amused, Mikhail held up a finger. “So it’s okay for you to play with love until you find the truth, but it’s not okay for Bess.”
“It’s—” Put that way, it was tough to argue with. Especially when his head was reeling. “Damn it, I was jealous. I have a right to be jealous.”
