Chapter 5: Wet for Him

Marcus was in the office when the door burst open.

The building they shared was small, just two floors.

One floor for him, one floor for her.

He had gone into Nadia's office with her spare key which he stole, when three men entered without knocking.

Cole was the largest, his scar cutting through his left eye. The others fanned out behind him, blocking the exit.

"We're looking for Nadia," Cole said.

"She's not here," Marcus said. He stayed seated. "But I am."

"Then you can tell her when she gets back that she has no more grace left and serious people don't have patience."

Cole moved toward Nadia's desk, his fingers trailing across the surface.

"We're going to take everything in this office until she pays."

The second man opened her filing cabinets. The third stood by the window.

"Close those drawers," Marcus said. His voice was quiet but carried weight.

"Close them, turn around, and leave. Tell whoever sent you that Nadia will have the money in forty eight hours."

"That's a rude way to tell us off, but I'd ignore it because you look like you mean business." He paused and asked again

"What if she doesn't?" Cole asked.

"Then we have a different conversation," Marcus said.

"But not today."

Cole studied him for a long moment, calculating. Something in Marcus's eyes told him he meant business. Cole told off his men with a gesture.

"Forty eight hours," he said as they moved toward the door.

"And if she tries anything funny, we would destroy everything."

They left and Marcus called her immediately.

She picked up on the second ring.

"Your debt collectors came to the office," he said. "They're giving you forty eight hours before they destroy everything." There was no space for pleasantries, like he wasn't the one who put her in that mess.

Nadia trying to be calm and reasonable asked him.

"What did you tell them?"

"That you'd have the money of course what should I have said." Marcus said.

"I will," Nadia said. "By the end of today."

"How?" Marcus asked clearly surprised.

"I have a lucrative job with a client. I'll figure it out," she said.

Marcus didn't like the certainty in her voice. It had the ring of someone making promises they didn't fully understand the cost of.

But he said:

"Okay. Make it happen."

And he hung up.

Nadia spent the rest of the afternoon on Sarah Vance. She'd memorized the file by now, every meeting, every contact, every detail Roman had given her about the woman he wanted watched.

Her mind worked through it methodically, cataloguing information, planning approaches, building the foundation for the infiltration that would begin tomorrow.

But her hands kept stilling on her laptop keyboard.

She closed her eyes and saw Roman's face.

The way he looked at her when she stood to leave his study.

The way his eyes had tracked her movement like she was the only thing in the room that mattered.

And that was all her illusion though.

Her heart did something strange, a skip, a betrayal of every instinct she'd trained herself to maintain.

She stood abruptly and walked to the window. Her apartment was still hers, at least for now.

Her belongings were still in their places. And in less than two days, she'd have enough money to keep it that way.

If she could just focus on work.

But when she closed her eyes again, she thought about the way Roman's suit had fit him.

The way his shoulders had filled the space of his office like he'd built it around himself.

The way his voice had dropped when he'd explained what he wanted from her, and how she'd wanted to ask him questions that had nothing to do with Sarah Vance.

She opened her eyes and forced herself back to her laptop.

Work.

That was the only thing that mattered. She stayed there for hours, long after the sun had set, building the framework for what would become her infiltration of Sarah Vance's life.

By the time she finally closed her laptop, it was past eight o'clock, and the manor was quiet around her.

Roman arrived at the manor just before nine.

The drive back from the city had been long, and the meeting that had kept him there was longer.

He could still taste the frustration of it, people who wanted things they couldn't articulate, commitments they couldn't keep.

He pulled into the garage and sat in the car for a moment before moving.

He showered the day off and changed into something more comfortable.

By the time he made it downstairs, Mrs. Stella had left a plate for him in the dining room. He ate without a great appetite for the food, his mind still caught on the business that had consumed the day.

He heard her footsteps before she appeared in the doorway.

He didn't look up immediately, just registered her presence in the space, the shift in the air around him.

"Nadia," he said. His voice carried a question. "It's late."

"I needed to talk to you about something," she said. She moved into the room because standing in the doorway felt like asking permission.

"I have a situation. A financial one. And I need to be honest with you about it because it could affect my work."

Roman set down his fork. He didn't speak, just waited.

"There are people I owe money to," she said.

"They came by today. They're not patient, and they're not going to wait much longer. I can handle it, but I need to handle it now, and I was wondering if there was any way you could accelerate the payment structure we discussed."

He studied her for a long moment.

Then he stood and walked to a cabinet in the corner of the room. He pulled out a checkbook and a pen.

"Come here," he said.

She moved to the desk. He wrote the check without asking her for details, without asking her how much she needed or who she owed.

He just wrote it and handed it to her.

"This should resolve your immediate problem," he said. "The rest will come when you deliver on Sarah Vance, clean information, nothing less."

Nadia looked at the check in her hand. It was enough. He had given her $96,000. Not everything, but enough to buy her time.

"Thank you," she said.

"Don't thank me," he said. He moved back to his chair. "Earn it."

She should have left then.

She should have taken the check and gone upstairs and planned her next move.

She should have been thinking about Sarah Vance and infiltration strategies and the mechanics of deception.

Instead, she stood there.

Roman picked his fork back up. He didn't look at her, just continued eating like her presence in his room was completely unremarkable.

Like her standing in his dining room at eleven o'clock at night wasn't strange.

Like the air between them wasn't suddenly thick with something she couldn't name and didn't have the self control to ignore.

"You should rest," he said finally, still not looking at her.

"Sarah keeps late hours. You'll need to be sharp tomorrow."

"Right," she said. She moved toward the door.

She made it three steps before she turned back. Not because she planned to.

Not because it made any sense.

But because the pull was too strong and her body had decided to stop listening to her mind.

She reached down to take his empty plate, not like he asked her to, but she did.

Their hands brushed and there was a spark.

Roman went absolutely still.

Nadia felt it like an electric current, the shock of skin on skin, the sudden and violent awareness of him as a physical presence instead of an idea.

His hand was warm. His fingers were long.

And when she looked down, she saw his hand open slightly, like maybe he was going to pull away, except he didn't.

Neither did she.

The silence stretched between them. Long, loaded and dangerous.

When he finally withdrew, it was slow and deliberate.

Like he was giving her time to stop him. Like he was acknowledging what had just happened instead of pretending it was accidental.

"Goodnight, Nadia," he said. His voice was rough in a way it hadn't been before.

She couldn't speak.

She took the plate and left the room, and it wasn't until she was upstairs in her bedroom with the door closed that she realized her hands were shaking again and she slipped her hands down to her stomach, and then lower.

Oh! She was so wet for her boss.

So wet.