Page 26 of Empire
“Mine are fine.” He takes a step toward me. “I’m just ignoring them.”
That almost makes me smile, because if there’s one thing about Ruslan I’ve never had to doubt, it’s his willingness to walk directly into the worst possible decision if it interests him enough.
He stops close enough now that if either of us leaned wrong, this would stop being a conversation and become another problem we’ll both pretend isn’t one.
“You look different, too,” he says.
I lift a brow. “Should I be offended?”
“Depends on how attached you are to the polished little prince act.”
My smile is brief and cold. “You’re in a dangerous mood tonight.”
“Maybe I’m always in one.”
“That much is obvious.”
His gaze drags over my face, slower than it should. “No. I mean with you.”
There’s a warning in that. I hear it. Ignore it anyway.
“Should I be flattered?”
His gaze flicks down to my mouth, then he smirks. “You should be fucking worried.”
I don’t answer, because if I do, it’ll come out sounding too much like a confession.
He leans in just enough that anyone turning the corner at the wrong moment would understand exactly what this is. Not the affair itself, maybe, but enough of its shape. Enough to start asking the kind of questions that ruin men.
“You seeing how my family works should’ve made you smarter.”
“Maybe I’m tired of being smart.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I want them back.
Something dark and hungry passes through his face. “That right?”
I don’t trust myself to answer that one at all.
Before he can say anything else, one of my guards appears at the end of the corridor and stops, head lowered.
“Mr. Vieri.”
That tone alone is enough to cool the blood in my veins.
Ruslan straightens at once, not far, just enough. His face empties. Not the disappearance of feeling, but the locking away of it. I know the move because I do it too.
“What?” I say.
The guard keeps his gaze respectfully lowered. “Your father wants to see you in the smaller conference room.”
I step back from Ruslan, smoothing one hand over my jacket as though I haven’t just been standing too close to the one man in this hotel my father would most like to see me nowhere near.
The guard nods once and waits; that tells me this isn’t a request. He’s under orders not to leave until I move.
When I glance back at Ruslan, his eyes are on the messenger, then on me, and the ease has goes of him entirely.
“Seems you’re wanted,” he says. The words are light, his face isn’t. I know why he looks that way: he’s leaving tonight, and that means another six months of waiting.
