Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
I’m not a man who will ever tiptoe around, particularly when it is something I want.
I want Zoya—desperately.
“I met her earlier and would like to finish the discussion we commenced before we were interrupted.”
“You saw this address on… Zoya, was it?” she checks. When I nod, she continues. “If you saw this address on Zoya’s medical record, you must have been perusing it at Stoltz and Hemway.”
Again, I nod, hopeful it will hurry her along.
I am not a patient man in general, and my interest in Zoya has siphoned the cup empty.
“Then there’s the cause of the mix-up, dear. My daughter attended an appointment there earlier today. Perhaps some information in their patient records got mixed up.” She screws the cap back onto the engraved bottle before pivoting to face me, nursing the overzealous serving as if it is a glass of water. “She was previously outside the criteria you had set, but made the cut earlier today.” She checks her watch, her smile picking up as she says, “At 11:03 a.m., to be precise.”
“Today is your daughter’s birthday.”
“Yes,” she answers as if I was asking a question. I wasn’t. “She just turned twenty-two, making her, no doubt, an ideal candidate for your current political campaign.”
“Just,” I quote, my annoyance picking up.
A woman’s warmth wrapped around my cock for the first time just shy of my fourteenth birthday. I am now thirty-five. That puts a twenty-two-year-old on the cusp of being young enough to be my daughter.
“I’m not being biased when I say she is exactly what you are seeking.”
Mrs. Sakharoff drags her finger along a long line of photographs on the mantel before she stops at one that looks recent. All the pictures are of one girl. A young blonde-haired, blue-eyed preteen with an almost doll-like complexion.
“My youngest daughter is well-spoken, smart, and reared for a dignitary.” Her eyes return to mine. “She is aware of her self-worth, but even more than that, she understands her place.” My neck thrums when she murmurs, “She is also untouched.”
As she hands the framed photo to me, the butler announces that Mrs. Sakharoff has a guest. She looks panicked until he adds words to his interruption. “The birthday girl has returned.”
“Lovely.” She snatches the frame out of my hand and returns it to the mantel before twisting me to face the formal entrance of the living room. “Her beauty can’t be captured in an image. It is far better to witness her loveliness in person.”
I’m about to snarl out a warning for her to remove her hands from my back before I use more than words to remove them, but the clumsy stumble of a platinum blonde halts my words.
My cock pays more attention to her near trip than the generous swell of her breasts, and her staggered walk has me convinced it wasn’t the addresses muddled up in Dr. Hemway’s patients’ records.
It was their names.
I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t hopeful their diagnosis was also awry.
“They didn’t have mедови́к, so I got пирог с ревенем instead. I hope that’s okay.”
“Not now, dear. You have a guest waiting for you.” After blocking the blonde from my view for the quickest second to snatch a boxed cake from her hands and place it on the mantel, she introduces, “Arabella, darling, please meet Kazimir Dokovic, grandson of our beloved president, and hopefully your soon-to-be husband.”
Introducing me as a descendant of my grandfather instead of the architect behind one of Russia’s largest and wealthiest entities would usually raise my hackles to the point of no return. But since my ego is leading the procession of democracy today, I grind my back molars together before stepping closer to the blonde who’s had my cock in a constant state of erection for the past hour.
Her chips have been bartered.
Her hand has been exposed.
The game is over… until her chin lifts enough to expose her eyes.
They don’t hold Zoya’s intensity.
Her grit.
They’re as dull as every other pair pinned to the patient files Dr. Hemway compiled over the past month. But since they’re also not attached to a word that could end my crusade before it has truly begun—infertile—I accept the hand she is holding out in offering and return her sheepish grin as if I’m a wolf willing to hide under a sheep’s skin.
I’m not, but there’s no need to announce that just yet.
“Kazimir Dokovic. It is a pleasure to meet you, Arabella.”
5
ZOYA
“Are you sure you don’t want me to refrigerate that for you?”
The bartender, who has been serving me water for the past four hours without a single grumble of annoyance, nudges his head to the giant slice of mедови́к I purchased from the restaurant of the Broadbent Hotel.
It cost me a fortune since they had to make it fresh, but because I was just as confident my effort would be returned tenfold, I acted like the dip in my bank balance was half what it was.