YURI (Her Russian Protector #3) (10 page)

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to have to bribe my way into Houston's most notorious gay bar," he grumbled. "This girl had better be worth it."

"She is."

"Are you headed here?"

"As soon as I get a flight arranged, I'll be on my way."

"I'd suggest you spend that time coming up with an apology. Flowers and diamonds aren't going to cut it this time."

The line went dead and Yuri tossed his phone onto his bed. Quickly, he washed his face and brushed his teeth. There wasn't time for a shower but he hopped into clean jeans and a shirt. He was tossing things into his suitcases when Anna knocked on his door. "Come in."

She stepped inside but stayed near the open door. "You're on a private jet leaving in fifty-five minutes. The car is waiting to take you. Jake and Derek will be in the lobby in ten minutes. I'll have Tony waiting at the airport in Houston. I've emailed the details."

Yuri glanced at his watch and made the calculations. It would be noon Houston-time before he arrived. He hoped Lena could sleep off her hangover by then. They needed to have a serious talk, one that required her to be sober.

"Thank you, Anna."

"Is there anything else I can do?"

He started to say no but remembered something Nikolai had said. "When you have a chance, I want a full background dossier on Lena. Concentrate on her parents."

Surprise colored her face but she nodded nonetheless. "I'll get it done as soon as possible."

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry for whatever problems I've caused tonight."

"You didn't cause them. This was all me."

He prayed Lena would forgive him and give him a chance to try again. Thankfully, he had a trans-Atlantic flight to figure out a way to make this right.

Chapter Six

It had been the longest flight of his life. Now sitting in the backseat of his car, Yuri rubbed the back of his aching neck. He had a few short minutes until they reached Lena's apartment. He still had no idea what the hell he was going to say.

On one hand, he was irritated that she had jumped to such a nasty conclusion. Did she really think so little of him? Did she honestly believe he could be so cruel?

On the other hand, he had seen the glossy photographs posted to his company's social media pages. They didn't look very innocent. Though he considered Tanya a friend, it was clear from the expression on her face that she thought differently. It wasn't difficult to understand how Lena had arrived at her conclusion.

He could only imagine how hurt she must have been to sit at that damn restaurant waiting for him. He still didn't understand how she had missed the email from Anna but it wouldn't be the first time correspondence had disappeared into the online ether. How she'd ended up with Ty Weston still confused him. He hadn't even realized they were friends. It occurred to him there was a lot he didn't know about Lena Cruz. Hopefully Anna's dossier would fill in those blanks.

Picking up his phone, he tormented himself again by scrolling through the photos on her timeline. She'd been a very busy girl last night. The photo of a half-naked, tattooed male dancer licking lime and salt off her neck drove him crazy. It had been snapped at a gay bar but the way the man looked at Lena told him he wasn't playing for the home team. The man looked like he wanted to flip up her skirt and fuck her right there on the bar.

The photos of Lena knocking back shots with a group of friends would have been amusing if he hadn't been so worried about her. He cringed at the idea of how much alcohol she must have imbibed. Only the knowledge that Vivian would never leave Lena in danger soothed his raw nerves. If there had been any question of Lena's health, Vivian would have demanded Nikolai take them to an emergency room.

But Vivian's text from earlier had assured him that Lena was home and in her own bed. The short, snippy tone of Vivian's message told him he was on her shit-list. Getting off of it wouldn't be easy. She was so damn loyal to her friends. It would take a miracle to convince her not to hate him for hurting Lena.

The car pulled into the parking lot of the complex. He exhaled slowly before unlatching his safety belt and climbing out of the backseat. Derek stood at the ready and glanced around the quiet complex. "You want me to come in, Boss?"

Yuri shook his head. "I should probably do this on my own."

"I don't know. If Lena wings you, Dimitri is going to have my ass." The bodyguard said it with a joking smile but it didn't ease Yuri's anxiety any.

Yuri clapped Derek on the arm and walked toward the building. Jake followed him down the sidewalk but stayed back from the front door, giving Yuri some privacy. He was suddenly very glad he'd had a non-disclosure agreement inserted in their contracts. Lena was probably going to tear into him when she came to the door.

Gathering his courage, he knocked three times and stepped back so he could be seen clearly through the peephole. He heard the deadbolt flip and his heart raced. The door opened to reveal a frowning Vivian. For a long time, they stared at one another. Finally, she sighed dramatically and stepped aside. "You'd better come in."

"Thank you." He entered the apartment but didn't dare go farther than the entryway. Glancing around, he noticed the bohemian décor. Everything looked so cozy and welcoming. Unfortunately the look on Vivian's face wasn't.

"You're a real jerk." She addressed him in Russian. "I don't know why you led her on like that but it was cruel and mean. I've never seen her cry like that.
Never.
"

Yuri winced. "It wasn't like that, Vivian. It was a mix-up. An honest-to-God mistake."

"Well, don't tell me! Tell her."

"Will you see if she'll speak to me?"

Vivian glanced at the hallway. "She's going to be a real beast with that hangover but I'll see if she'll talk to you."

Vivian left him standing there and disappeared into the room on the left. He strained to hear but their voices were muffled by the half-closed door. When Vivian came out some time later, she gestured to the couch. "You'd better get comfortable. It's going to be a while."

He didn't think he could sit still so he paced instead. Vivian grabbed some books from the coffee table and stuffed them inside her backpack. "Are you leaving?"

"I'm not sticking around for this shouting match."

He knew enough about Vivian's family history to understand why she was sensitive to couples yelling at one another. "I'm not going to yell at her."

"I wasn't talking about you." She hefted her bag onto her back. "Just a fair warning—Nikolai is in a really bad mood after last night. He was groped and kissed and had his ass smacked by about five different drunk guys before we got Lena out of there. It was mayhem."

"Shit." Yuri closed his eyes and wondered if this situation could get any worse. With Nikolai's background, he could only imagine the awful memories being groped and manhandled had dredged up for his friend. "I am sorry that you two were dragged into this."

She stared at him for an unnerving moment and then left without a word. It was another five minutes before Lena finally emerged from her bedroom. She looked like hell but he wasn't about to tell her that. Her dark hair was pulled into a low, messy bun. A rumpled cotton camisole and stained, ripped yoga pants completed her ensemble.

Her angry gaze seared him. Gulping, he took a step toward her but no more. "Yelena, please, let me explain."

She held up a hand. "I need coffee and something for this damn headache before you start with the groveling."

A flutter of hope invaded his chest. "Where do you keep your coffee?"

"You can manage that on your own? Are you sure you don't need to email one of your assistants for help?"

The barb hit its mark. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left it to my assistant. I wasn't—"

She put up her hand again. "I said coffee and pain killers first."

"Right." He followed her into the kitchen. While she dug around in a basket for some acetaminophen, he found the little cups for the coffee maker. She hadn't been far from the mark with her assistant come-back but he did still remember how to make a cup of coffee.

While she washed down the tablets with some water, he made two cups of coffee and carried them to the dining room table where she waited for him. He found a spoon in a drawer and a bottle of flavored creamer in the refrigerator

Sitting across from her, he watched her stab her spoon into the sugar bowl on the table and dump the heaping scoops into her steaming hot cup. She splashed in a liberal amount of creamer and stirred the syrupy sweet slurry. He wasn't sure how anyone could drink coffee that sweet and sipped his cup of strong black coffee.

"I suppose you expect me to say thank you for sending Vivian and Nikolai to rescue me from that den of iniquity."

His lips twitched at her description of the rowdy gay bar where she'd been partying. "No. I was simply worried about you. I heard all those men and I was terrified you would be taken advantage of or hurt."

"I don't think there was much chance of that. Now Ty?" She drank some of her coffee. "That's a different story."

"I didn't realize you were friends."

"My relationship with Ty is complicated."

"Like ours?" he asked the obvious question.

She stared down into her cup. "Do we have a relationship?"

"I was a complete jackass."

Her surprised gaze jumped to his face. She stirred her coffee. "Go on."

Amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth. "I should have called you personally. I should have told you that the negotiations were going badly and I needed to make an appearance at that charity gala to prove that I was serious about addressing the environmental concerns associated with the pipeline. I should have told you about Tanya."

"Yes, you should have, Yuri. You
really
should have told me you were going out with an old girlfriend."

"She means nothing to me, Lena. She's simply an ex-girlfriend with connections I needed to get the deal done."

"That's harsh."

"It's the truth."

"And me? Are you after me for my connections?"

"I'm only here for you, Yelena Cruz.
Only you
."

She ran her finger around the rim of her cup but didn't drink. "I was so humiliated. I just sat there waiting for you like some big dummy and you were off in Berlin having the time of your life with some rich, beautiful model girl." She made a disgusted sound and buried her face in her hands. "The people at the restaurant probably think I'm some psycho stalker with delusions of dating you after making them check the book and get me a table."

"Then we'll have to put in an appearance there later this week to prove that you're not a psycho stalker with delusions of dating me."

She frowned at him. "It's not funny, Yuri. You really hurt me."

The vise-like grip on his chest tightened. "I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for you to feel like you weren't important to me." He reached across the table and grasped her hand. "Because you are important to me, Lena."

She stared at his hand. Eventually, she rotated her wrist and clasped his fingers. "This is your second chance, Yuri. Don't fuck it up because I won't give you a third."

"Understood."

She sipped her coffee. "Are you hungry?"

"Famished," he answered honestly. "I ran out of Berlin before sunrise and couldn't eat on the flight."

"God, now I feel so guilty."

"Why should you feel guilty? I'm the one who screwed everything up."

"Yeah, but I'm a terrible cook." She bit her plump lower lip. "You're famished and the best I can offer is, like, toast or a bowl of cereal."

"Cereal is fine."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

She slid out of her seat. He let his hungry gaze roam the sloping plane of her belly as she reached up to grab cereal boxes from a high shelf in the small pantry. Her top rode up on her stomach and revealed more of her silky skin. He caught another tantalizing glimpse as she dragged down bowls. She carried her armload of boxes, milk and bowls to the table. When she came back with spoons, she smiled at him as he pushed aside the boring, bland bran cereal with raisins for the box with the cartoon captain emblazoned on the front.

"What?" He returned her grin.

"Vivian is always on my case about eating this sugary stuff but it's so addicting."

"When I was a kid, we dreamed about eating something other than thin oatmeal porridge." He shook the crispy, sweet cereal into his bowl. "The first time I had real money of my own, I gorged myself on so much junk food. I puked for an entire weekend."

She smiled at him with understanding. "I was raised on food stamps so junk food rarely made it into our grocery carts because the budget was so tight. It wasn't until later, after my dad got out of the pen and was working, that we had extra cash for luxuries like name-brand cereal."

Yuri splashed milk into his bowl. He didn't know if it was all right to ask about her father so he erred on the side of caution and didn't bring it up. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Finally, she said, "You can ask. I'm not embarrassed."