Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
A shadow fell over Fredericka, jerking her out of her reverie, and she thought, Shit. It was probably the host, about to ask her why she wasn’t dancing. She glowered down at her drink, knowing that politeness forbade her to say the truth, which was that it was entirely his fault she was the 101st wheel.
Odd numbers, you idiot, Fredericka wanted to yell. One-oh-damn-one!
The man in front of her started to crouch down.
Shit, shit, shit.
Fredericka started racking her brains for a plausible excuse. She couldn’t dance because she had...sprained her ankle from sitting? She had her period? She—-
Oh.
Familiar dark eyes collided with her, and she gasped, “Sergei?”
An arrogant, wicked grin curved on his lips as the Russian billionaire murmured, “In the flesh.” As always, his thick accent made his voice sound seductive and dangerous at the same time, and behind her she dazedly took in the way the commanding aura of his presence had everyone freezing and gaping at him.
It was like the entire world had stopped in motion, and all because His Ego-ness was here.
“W-what are you doing here?” Fredericka stammered even as she struggled to get past her befuddled state. The billionaire was still gorgeous than ever, with his neatly cut black hair and dark eyes making his features seem more chiseled. His white V-neck shirt and lightweight cotton pants, which screamed designer-brand elegance despite its casual style, served to accentuate the exquisitely sculpted muscles of his lethally ripped body.
HOT, in other words.
Instead of answering, the billionaire only said, “I missed you, Erie.”
“Hmph.” But her toes had already curled hard, not just because he had told her he missed her but also because he was calling her ‘Erie.’ Even now, remembering how that came to be made her heart skip a beat and made it even harder to feign irritation.
The first time he had paid her a visit at the law firm in Miami, the billionaire had been oddly quiet and unsmiling. When they had a moment alone to themselves, she had worriedly asked him what was wrong, and he had told her stiffly, “They all call you ‘Freddie.’”
“That’s because they’re different from the guys in Rockton. Those guys didn’t treat me as their equal. The people here are cool, and we’ve become friends.” She had thought the answer was sufficient, but when the frown on the billionaire’s face only became more pronounced, she had asked tentatively, “Something’s still wrong?”
“It makes them sound they’re intimate with you.”
“They’re not,” she had gasped.
“But it’s how they sound, because they call you...Freddie.”
“B-but you call me pchelka,” she had stammered, all the while wondering if it was possible that the billionaire could be jealous.
“That’s an endearment, not a nickname.”
The difference was lost on her, but the look in the billionaire’s dark eyes was clear as day. She hadn’t dared put a name to it, but she knew what it was, and the thought had her knees buckling. “D-do you want to call me Freddie, too?” she had asked weakly.
She had only wanted to appease him, but instead the billionaire had dealt her a cold look, and his voice had been dangerously silky when he asked, “Does that mean I am at the same level with the other men here?”
“No way.” She hadn’t even taken the time to think of what to answer, and when she had seen his form visibly relax, the tension leaving his powerful body, she knew she had said the right thing, probably the only answer he would have accepted.
“Erie,” he had then said after a moment. At her blank look, he had clarified, “I will ignore the ‘Fred’ part in your name because that is what most of them seem to concentrate on. So it leaves ‘Ericka.’”
Her confusion cleared. Erie, taken from Ericka, was to be his special nickname for her. The thought of him calling her a name that was his alone felt strangely intimate, and heat suffused her face.
“Erie?”
The past faded and blended with the present, and Fredericka realized with a start that Sergei had been calling for her.
When she looked up, the billionaire murmured smoothly, “Let’s dance.”
Before she could even think of protesting, he had already pulled her up to her feet and into his arms.
As he drew her closer, she hissed under her breath, “You’re making them hate me.”
“It is for your own good,” she heard the billionaire say calmly over her head.
Fredericka looked up with a gasp. “Excuse me?”
“Hate is better than pity,” he murmured.
Oh. A reluctant smile touched her lips as she was forced to acknowledge the truth in the billionaire’s words. So much had changed in the course of a year, Fredericka thought reminiscently. After having won the case for the Christakos twins, her dream had come true and she had been made state’s attorney a short while after.
For a time, it had been everything she wanted, and every morning she would look at herself in the mirror and imagine that it was her dead father she was seeing on its surface.