She wasn’t a coward, ducking and weaving, running and hiding, staying in Paris, saying, It’s better that it ends here.
It wasn’t better. It was torment. Deprivation gnawed relentlessly at him.
But the moment her face flashed on his phone, respite arrived.
“I have to take this,” Mikolas said to his board, voice and hand trembling. He slid his thumb to answer, dizzy with how just anticipating the sound of her voice eased his suffering. “Yes?”
“I thought I should warn you,” she said with remorse. “I’ve kind of been arrested.”
“Arrested.” He was aware of everyone stopping their murmuring to stare. Of all the things he might have expected, that was the very last. But that was Viveka. “Are you okay? Where are you? What happened?”
Old instincts flickered, reminding him he was revealing too much, but in this moment he didn’t care about himself. He was too concerned for her.
“I’m fine.” Her voice was strained. “It’s a long story and Trina is trying to find me a lawyer, but they keep bringing up your name. I didn’t want to blindside you if it winds up in the papers or something. You’ve worked so hard to get everything just so. I hate to cast shadows. I’m really sorry, Mikolas.”
Only Viveka would call to forewarn him and ask nothing for herself. How in the world had he ever felt so threatened by this woman?
“Where are you?” he repeated with more insistence. “I’ll have a lawyer there within the hour.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MIKOLAS’S LAWYER LEFT Viveka at Mikolas’s London flat, since it was around the corner from his own. She was on her very last nerve and it was two in the morning. She didn’t try to get a taxi to her aunt’s house. She didn’t have the key and would have to ask the neighbor for one tomorrow.
So she prevailed upon Mikolas again and didn’t bother trying to find bedding for his guest room. She threw a huge pity party for herself in the shower, crying until she couldn’t stand, then she folded Mikolas’s black robe into a firm hug around her and crawled into his bed with a box of tissues that she dabbed against her leaking eyes.
Sleep was her blessed escape from feeling like she’d only alienated him further with this stupid questioning. The customs agents were hanging on to the money for forty-eight hours, because they could, but the lawyer seemed to think they’d give it up after that. She really didn’t care, she was just so exhausted and dejected and she missed Mikolas so bad...
A weight came onto the mattress beside her and a warm hand cupped the side of her neck. The lamp came on as a man’s voice said, “Viveka.”
She jerked awake, sitting up in shock.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s just me. I was trying not to scare you.”
She clutched her hand across her heart. “What are you doing here?”
His image impacted her. Not just his natural sex appeal in a rumpled shirt and open collar. Not just his stubbled cheeks and bruised eyes. There was such tenderness in his gaze, her fragile composure threatened to crumple.
“Your lawyer said you were in Barcelona.” She had protested against Mikolas sending the lawyer, insisting she was just informing him as a courtesy, but he’d got most of the story out of her before her time on the telephone had run out.
“I was.” His hooded lids lowered to disguise what he was thinking and his tongue touched his lip. “And I’m sorry to wake you, but I didn’t want to scare you if I crawled in beside you.”
She followed his gaze to the crushed tissues littering the bed and hated herself for being so obvious. “I was being lazy about making up the other bed. I’ll go—”
“No. We need to talk. I don’t want to wait.” He tucked her hair back from her cheek, behind her ear. “Vivi.”
* * *
“Why did you just call me that?” She searched his gaze, her brow pulled into a wrinkle of uncertainty, her pretty bottom lip pinched by her teeth.
“Because I want to. I have wanted to. For a long time.” It wasn’t nearly so unsettling to admit that as he’d feared. He had expected letting her into his heart would be terrifying. Instead, it was like coming home. “Everyone else does.”