Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“One would think I would learn,” she said. “What’s wrong with me that I can’t learn?”
You need to sleep.
“I can’t sleep. I’ll have to go running until I can’t move like I did last night.” And every night after refusing to give Joshua her phone number or last name.
I like running. Gatita stretched languidly.
That made Sonia smile. “You just hope we’re going to meet up with your mate.”
So do you.
Sonia groaned. “I hate it when you’re so smug.”
You hate when I’m right.
“That too.” Sonia jumped up and paced across the long length of the verandah. The wraparound porch was very long, just like the house. That gave her a lot of room to pace and she took full advantage. “He’s so bossy. Doesn’t it bother you that they boss us around? Even Sasha didn’t tell me what to do.”
No, but he did try to kill you.
“Maybe it wasn’t Sasha. Maybe it was Nikita.”
I smelled Sasha’s scent. Papi made bombs. He let you plant dynamite charges when you were working with him, learning to build things. You learned to plant charges in the rock. You knew Sasha built the same kind of bombs. You smelled the chemicals on him when he came home.
She hadn’t asked him about it either. She’d told herself it was because she didn’t want him to know she had such a keen sense of smell. She’d known she smelled things others couldn’t, and the few she’d told had accused her of lying. Mostly she hadn’t told him because she’d been afraid to know what he was doing. By that time, she’d learned the dynamics of the household. The secrets. She’d always been good with languages, and her parents had spoken some Russian. She’d picked up even more living with Sasha.
She had been young enough and shocked enough by her mother’s death to enjoy the privileges of being his wife without question. Once the shock was over and the wild grieving lessened, she’d taken the time to look around her, to listen when no one thought she was.
She had to admit, she had begun to suspect the Bogomolov family was involved in crime and that Sasha was a big part of that. She’d made up her mind to ask him, but she never got that chance. Her class at the college, the one on historical architecture, had been canceled due to a professor’s illness. She’d gone home early and overheard the conversation between her father-in-law and Sasha. Her world had once again crashed.
She’d snuck more money and clothes into her “go” bag every chance she got, planning her getaway down to the smallest detail. She hadn’t known that while she was planning to run, her husband and his family were plotting her death. She couldn’t go to the police because some might be on the Bogomolov payroll, but more, she didn’t have anything of value to trade for her life. She’d never heard one single deal go down. Not one. In her presence, they’d talked business, but it had always been a legitimate one.
Sonia pressed her fingertips to the corners of her eyes to try to stop the tears from leaking out. She’d loved Sasha and she’d believed in him. Looked up to him. If he’d been able to deceive her like that, what would happen with a man who didn’t have his smooth, polished edges? His gentlemanly ways? His charm? Sasha had expected her to agree with him over most things, but he hadn’t minded an argument and had listened to her. Joshua appeared to be a first-class dictator. It occurred to her that was a leopard trait. So was temper and moodiness, if her leopard was anything to go by – and Gatita wasn’t in the least bit alpha.
Oh God. She was back to Joshua. The road always seemed to loop back to him, and she couldn’t have that.
5
She wasn’t going to text him to come to her. Joshua Tregre paced back and forth along the upper balcony of the plantation house. In the past two hours, he’d looked over toward Sonia’s home a hundred times. Evan had told him repeatedly he was going to wear a hole in wood that had withstood a hundred years or more of wear and tear.
“She’s afraid, Joshua. Look at you. You’re intimidating as hell and you scared her,” Evan pointed out.
He knew that. He didn’t want to hear it. He’d been crazy with her. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. “Never thought I’d find her,” he admitted to his best friend. “Never. Not in a million years, and certainly not now, not when I’ve got this mess on my hands. We’ve got a huge deal coming up and I can’t afford to be thinking about my runaway mate.” That was all he was thinking about.
Normally, Joshua was known for his cool. His utter calm. He wasn’t a hothead like so many leopards, that was why he’d been chosen to take over Rafe Cordeau’s territory. He didn’t get ruffled no matter the circumstance. Until Sonia. She was beautiful, sexy, intelligent and scared to death.