Crash into Me: A BWWM Russian Billionaire Romance (14 page)

“Emma.”

“No. Whatever. It’s fine. I’ll just keep coming over here and sleeping with you and we’ll do that until one of us gets tired of the other one. Maybe you’ll overcome your issues with sending messages by then and at least let me know when you get sick of me.”

“And what if you get sick of me?”

“Maybe I’ll send you an email. I still have your card, after all.” She folded her arms, leg jiggling with her frustration.

“Are you actually
mad
about this?” he asked her.

“
Yes.
Because I’m trying to have a real conversation with you, and you’re just...making jokes and being childish. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.” Emma pushed herself up and swung her legs over the bed. “I should just go. Clearly.”

“Emma.”

“No, I mean. What’s the point, right? If that’s how this is going to go, then we should just speed up the process. I’ll get out of your hair right now, and you don’t have to worry about having this conversation anymore.”

Before she could leave the bed, though, Alexei was reaching for her, wrapping fingers around her wrist and tugging lightly. “I don’t want you to leave,” he said softly. “I don’t want you out of my hair. I’m not tired of you, and I don’t think I will be for a while. Can you just...bear with me?”

She’d never heard his voice sound so soft and pleading before, and it made her turn her head to look at him. “Why?”

“Because I meant it when I said I want you. I like this. I like how you make me feel. I like that I can just be myself around you, and I don’t even know how that happened. So just. Please? I promise I’ll think about it and we can have this conversation for real. Sometime soon. Just don’t go.”

Emma sighed, feeling the fight drain out of her. She hadn’t needed an answer right then and there, it was more the fact that he hadn’t been willing to give her one at all that had annoyed her. And hearing him talk that way about her made it better.

“Okay,” she murmured, letting him pull her back into the bed and against his chest. “That’s fair.”

“Thank you,” he replied, kissing the top of her head.

They lay like that, together in the silence.

At least it was silent until the ringing sound of gunshots outside ripped through the air.

Emma jolted upright, heart pounding in her chest. “What was that?” she hissed, eyes wide.

Alexei shook his head. “Stay here.” It should have been funny to see him getting up and going over to the large picture window that took up a good section of one of his walls with no clothes on, but panic made it hard to find humor in anything, really.

As soon as he made it over to the window, another shot rang out, and he flinched and moved so that he was covered by the remaining section of wall and could look out from behind the blinds.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked, compelled to keep her voice down.

“I can’t see anything,” he replied. “Just-” He was cut off by the sound of glass breaking, and it took them both a minute to realize that a bullet had just gone through the window and embedded itself in the opposite wall.

Alexei swore under his breath and dove for the ground, scrambling to find his clothes. “Get dressed,” he shouted at her, all the silence was broken in that moment. “We can’t stay here.”

“What!?” Emma rolled off the bed and crouched on the floor, trying to pull her clothes on with trembling hands. “Where are we going to go?”

“It’ll take five minutes, tops, for the police to get here,” he said. “But it’s not a coincidence that they’re shooting at my apartment. We just have to go.”

“Do you think they’d follow us if we went back to my place?” Emma asked. She didn’t want to lead them there, but she knew they couldn’t stay where they were, either.

“I’m not taking that chance,” he said. “You go back to your house and I’ll go to my mother’s.”

“Alexei, no! What if…”

“They won’t follow you if they’re after me,” he promised, dragging a shirt over his head and moving to get his keys. It was quiet outside now, but that didn’t mean anything necessarily. They could just be waiting.

“That’s not what I’m worried about! What if you get hurt?” Emma demanded.

He paused long enough to kiss her hard on the mouth and pull her to her feet. “I’ll be fine. I’ll call you when I get to my mother’s house. I promise. Now go.” He pushed her in the direction of the living room, and Emma stumbled and then ran for the door.

Chapter 10: Mad Dash

Waiting until Emma had left the parking lot hadn’t been part of the plan he’d laid out, but he wasn’t going to run away before he knew she was safe. That was beyond cowardly, and it was his fault that she was involved in this mess in the first place.

As soon as she was gone and it was clear that no one had followed her, he got in his own car, taking the Buick instead of the Porsche so as to blend in more. In a moment of quick thinking, he’d grabbed his gun from its safe and had it with him, so it ended up tucked into the glove compartment of the car.

He sped out of the parking lot, passing the cops who were racing by on their way to respond to the disturbance that someone had obviously called in. They were late, and Alexei was annoyed, but he didn’t have time for that. Not when he didn’t know if he was safe yet.

Thanking anyone listening for his car’s built in phone option, he called his sister.

“Hello?”

“Vera! Are you at the house?”

“Home? Yes, I am. What’s going on?”

They hadn’t spoken since he’d talked to her the last time, but he was hoping that maybe things would be easier with her than they would have been with his mother. “Someone just shot at my apartment,” he explained. “A bullet went right through the window and into the wall, and if I’d been standing there, it would have gone through me. Are you and Mother alright?”

“Yes,” Vera said. “Someone...shot at you?”

“Not at
me
, at my window. Well, I guess they were aiming for me, I don’t know. The point is, it’s not safe there, and I’m coming to the house. I just wanted to make sure things were safe there. That you two were alright.”

“It’s been quiet all evening,” Vera told him. “I’ll wait for you at the gate. We need to talk.”

Before he could get another word out, the call ended with a click, and Alexei sighed. His sister was blunt at some of the worst moments, but at least she was willing to talk to him about this.

He watched his mirrors the whole way out to the estate, sighing with relief when no one seemed to be following him.

He made it to the house in record time, and there was Vera, waiting by the gate as she’d promised, holding a large handbag. Alexei unlocked his doors and she got in the passenger seat. “Drive,” she said.

“Uh...to the house?” he asked her, confused.

“
No
. Somewhere else. Don’t you think coming here is obvious? If they’re watching you then they know you’ll run home. They’re probably watching the house, too. Go somewhere unexpected.”

“And you’re coming with me?” he wanted to know. “What about Mother?”

Vera sniffed. “She’ll be fine. She’s determined to act like this isn’t anything of importance, so.” She shrugged. “Do you want to go in there and try to persuade her to come with us?”

He really, really didn’t, so he shook his head and put the car in drive again, turning around to head back the way he came.

The car was quiet for the first few minutes of the drive, and when Alexei looked at his sister, she seemed to be lost in her thoughts, staring out the window. He couldn’t remember the last time it had just been the two of them together like this, at least when they hadn’t been fighting, and he wished it was under better circumstances.

“Did you really tell Mother that you thought I’d make a better head of the business than you?” Vera asked suddenly.

Alexei looked at her, surprised, before putting his eyes back on the road. “Yes,” he said. “Not that she listened, but. You always cared more, paid more attention. You’re much better at that sort of thing than I am.”

Vera inclined her head, long dark hair hiding her face for a moment. “I thought...I was so angry. With you. Because I thought that you just wanted everything. I know you don’t care about running the business, but I thought maybe you were just determined to have it anyway. Because you could.”

He barked a laugh. “Sorry. But, no. Definitely not. If I had my way, you’d be sitting in that seat where Father sat. But Mother seems determined to hold onto tradition.”

She nodded at that. “I know. It’s her way. I think maybe it’s all she has left.”

Alexei had never thought about it like that before, but it made sense. She’d been raised a certain way, to do a certain thing, and now that her husband was dead, there was only so much she could do, and clinging to tradition was probably much safer than anything else.

“I don’t want to end up like Father,” Alexei admitted. “I know Mother’s acting like it’s just par for the course, but I can’t do it, Vera. We need to find out who's behind this, but then there could just be someone else. Another group, another company. Someone angry and jealous and bitter because we have what we have and they don’t. It sounds
exhausting,
and I don’t want any parts of it.”

To his surprise, she smiled at him. “I understand. But someone has to take over.”

“As far as I’m concerned it’s you, Vera. We’ll figure something out, okay? As soon as we handle this mess, we’ll sit down and work it out. Deal?”

Her smile was brilliant, then. “Deal.”

Alexei hadn’t been intending for them to end up in Emma’s little town, but when he looked around, there they were. Apparently that was just where he went when he was working on autopilot, and he shook his head at himself and decided that he may as well drive on to Emma’s house.

“Where are we?” Vera asked, looking around with interest. “I’ve never been here before.”

God, was he really about to take his sister to meet his...his whatever Emma was to him? Well, if that wasn’t a declaration, then he didn’t know what was. “A friend of mine lives here,” he said. “We should be safe there. And we can wait and see if the police found out anything from being at my building.”

He parked the car in Emma’s driveway, sighing when he saw that the lights were off. It was closing in on midnight, and Emma did have to work in the morning, so he felt bad for being about to disturb her, but then a light flared to life in the living room, and he could see the curtains moving when she peeked out.

Before he could knock, the door flew open. “What are you doing here?” Emma demanded. “And what happened to calling me when you got to your mother’s? I’ve been worried sick!”

Alexei winced and held his hands up in surrender. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. I was only at the house for about five seconds, and then I was just...I’m sorry.”

She deflated and sighed, stepping out of the house to wrap her arms around his waist and press her face to his chest. “Stop making me think you got shot, you inconsiderate loser,” Emma mumbled into his shirt.

“It won’t happen again.” He brought a hand up and stroked it through her hair. “I’m trying, you know. To do this right.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

The two of them were so wrapped up in each other that it took Vera clearing her throat awkwardly to remind Alexei that she was there and to have them springing apart. Emma’s eyes were wide as she took in the other woman, glancing between them.

For a second he was worried that she was going to come to the wrong conclusion about why Vera was with him, but the family resemblance between the two of them was too strong for that, clearly, and the suspicion never formed in her eyes. There was plenty of confusion, though, so Alexei hurried to explain.

“Emma Jackson, this is my sister, Vera. Vera, this is Emma.”

“Your
friend
?” Vera asked. Her face gave nothing away, but Alexei could hear the suggestion in her voice clear as day.

“Yes,” he replied stubbornly, glancing at Emma. “A very
good
friend.”

Emma ducked her head and smiled before shaking her head. “You two should come in. Even if the weird people with guns didn’t follow you this far, the neighbors are probably getting too curious as it is.”

Vera was quiet as they filed into Emma’s house, and Alexei watched Emma shut the door firmly and lock it. He felt immediately at ease in the familiar home, but he knew that Vera wouldn’t feel the same.

“Can I get either of you anything?” Emma asked, seeming a bit nervous. “Uh...tea? Water? I guess maybe it’s too late for coffee, but I don’t know how much sleep we’re going to get tonight.”

“You’re going to sleep,” Alexei said. “You have to work tomorrow.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “It’s not the end of the world if I miss one day, Alexei. There’s kind of an emergency going on here.”

“Yes,
our
emergency. I shouldn’t have... I don’t want this to ruin your life, Em, alright? I came here because...well, because I feel safe here. Not because I expect you to turn your routines upside down for me.”