Total pages in book: 172
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she started. Her tone was soft. Pleasing. There was no remorse, but her voice did tremble the least little bit.
He frowned, his eyes on that little smudge. He took a step toward her, caught her chin in a firm grip and angled her face toward the sun. “What the hell happened? Did someone hit you?”
There was barely controlled fury in him, although his voice sounded the way it always did—calm. He knew someone had struck her. Recently. Within the last half hour. That was the reason she was late. While he’d been pacing up and down in his front room, furious at her, some asshole had hit her. Struck a woman. When he turned her face toward the sun, he caught sight of a large lump on the side of her head, up high in the hairline. Hidden, but it was there. He forced himself to let go of her.
She glanced over her shoulder as if it was possible she was being pursued. She hesitated, as if she might not answer, or she might try to lie, but then she simply told him the truth. “Unfortunately, yes, I’m so sorry. I know we’re getting off to such a bad start, and it’s so unprofessional. Our company is really the best. We’ve just had bad timing with our scheduled meetings. I really tried to get here but . . .” She was babbling. The words stumbling over one another.
“Ms. Carver,” Sevastyan interrupted, his voice a whip. He was used to giving commands and having them obeyed. He’d been trained from the time he was a young boy and as he had taken over the duties of head of security for his cousin, his natural dominant character had come out more and more. “Tell me what happened.”
She stood blinking up at him. She was already more than a foot shorter than he was and with him standing a step above her, it only added to her diminutive stature. Once he realized what that smudge was and had seen that swelling on the side of her head, Sevastyan hadn’t brought her fully into the house, where she might feel vulnerable alone with him. Still, he intended to take advantage to get the information he needed to hunt down whoever had struck her.
Flambé shrugged in an attempt to be casual, but the movement hurt and she winced visibly. “There’s a man who is very angry with me for a lot of different reasons. I refused to take his calls and he’s been watching me. I called the police and reported him numerous times, but because he hasn’t actually done anything, well, until now, they said there wasn’t anything they could do.”
“He’s stalking you.”
She made a face. “I hate using that word because it sounds like something everyone uses now, but yes. He turns up everywhere I go. He stands across the street from places I go to eat with my friends. I made him angry. I should have just kept quiet, but I got so sick of him always pushing at me. I confronted him and told him to keep the hell away from me.”
Sevastyan detested that she thought she had to be the one to give in to her stalker’s demands in order for her to have peace. That was what the women in their lair felt; in the end, all of them knew they would be murdered and yet they quietly accepted their fate. There was no rising up. No fighting back. Again, that place inside of him that roared with rage turned red with anger, threatening to erupt like an angry volcano, but on the outside, he appeared completely calm. He had to. The last thing this woman needed was to fear him.
“Why do you think you should have to keep quiet? He’s the one doing something wrong, not you. You had every right to tell him to stay away from you, although you shouldn’t have been alone when you confronted him.”
“I wasn’t when I confronted him. But he waited until I was coming out here and he forced me off the road.” Her entire body was shaking, whether she was aware of it or not.
Sevastyan was unprepared for Shturm’s furious reaction. The leopard leapt at him, raking and clawing for freedom as if he would go hunting right then and find Flambé’s stalker. Sevastyan remained absolutely expressionless but he couldn’t stop himself from stepping in to her and circling her the way his leopard would, inhaling as he did so. The moment he did, his leopard went crazy. He felt a little insane himself. Her stalker was leopard. He wasn’t Amurov. He wasn’t from Russia, or from one of the lairs Sevastyan was familiar with, but none of that mattered, he was leopard and he was stalking Flambé for a reason.