over with.
By the time she leaned back on the door, panting as if she’d run a mile, she decided she should be only relieved.
Leonid had only himself to blame for whatever they did to him. If he wanted to escape those men’s punishment, he should have settled for being a king, away from her and the girls.
* * *
“Yes, I understand,” Kassandra said to Maksim.
She’d said almost the same thing to Andreas and Aristedes before him, just to end the calls with them, too.
For she certainly didn’t understand at all. How the three predators, who’d left her office out for blood yesterday, had each come back to her less than a day later, purring a totally different tune. That of urging her to give Leonid a chance.
How had he managed to get to them all? What had he said to have them so wholeheartedly on his side?
But why was she even wondering? Didn’t she already know how irresistible he could be when he put his mind to it? He’d worked the three men over but good. It was clear that their initial thoughts about having once been in Leonid’s shoes and in need of clemency were back in full force. Anything she said now would be her intolerant word against Leonid’s penitent one.
Putting down her cell phone, she pressed her fingers against burning eyelids.
So. She was out of options. There was no way she could stop Leonid herself. All she could do now was make sure he didn’t turn their lives upside down.
Suddenly, another bolt of agitation zapped her.
The bell. Leonid. He was here. Exactly two hours before Eva and Zoya’s bedtime, as promised.
She wouldn’t even wonder how he knew at what time she put them to bed. She had a sick feeling he knew everything about her life with the girls over the past two years. And that there was far more to this whole thing than he was letting on.
Yet she could do nothing but play along, and see what exactly he wanted, and where this would lead.
Crossing from her home office past the living room, she signaled to Kyria Despina that she’d get the door.
She took her time, but Leonid didn’t ring again. Stopping at the door, she could almost feel him on the other side, silently telling her he’d wait out her reluctance and wear down her resistance.
She pressed her forehead against the cool mahogany, gathering her wits and stamina. Then she straightened, filled her lungs with much-needed air and opened the door.
As always, nothing prepared her for laying eyes on him. Every time she ever had, an invisible hand wrapped around her heart and squeezed. Her senses ignited at his nearness, each time more than the time before.
Standing like a monolith on her doorstep, he was swathed in a slate-gray coat, a suit of the same color and a shirt as vivid as his eyes, radiating that inescapable magnetism that had snared her even before she’d laid eyes on him. Blood rushed to her head before flooding her body in scalding torrents.
And she cursed him, and herself, all over again. For him to still have this choke hold over her senses, when he didn’t even try, didn’t even want to, was the epitome of unfairness. But life was exactly that. As was he. Both did what they wanted to her, her approval irrelevant, her will overruled.
So she’d let him take his invasion to the next level. She only hoped after getting a dose of domesticity, he’d retreat to a nominal position in the girls’ lives, which she could deal with without too much damage to herself.
Certain she was opening the door to a new dimension of heartache, she said, “Come in, Leonid.”
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