Page 53 of Maxim

“Want me to ask him to leave?” Dylan pipes up, flexing his non-existent muscles.

There’s an amused snort from Max’s direction and I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

“No, please don’t. The cleaners aren’t paid enough to wipe up blood stains.” I can tell Dylan wants to argue because he’s watched too many rom-coms where the hero saves the heroine from an asshole and they fall madly in love. He thinks he can woo me with some grand gesture.

Spoiler alert: he’s shit out of luck.

“The asshole and I need to have a chat about… something. I’ll catch you at work tomorrow.” Ignoring Dylan’s look of disappointment and Jakob’s expression of alarm, I walk out of the lobby.

There’s a black SUV idling on the street outside with Max’s driver standing next to it, waiting. He throws me a sympathetic smile and opens the door.

With a sigh of deep frustration, I climb in.

Chapter thirty-seven

Nat

Max folds his large frame into the SUV and we pull away from the building where I work, into slow-moving early evening traffic. The car crawls along and Max says nothing.

Tension builds until I feel like screaming. Is he doing this on purpose to fuck with me? Or is he waiting for an apology for not replying to his messages and calls?

It better not be the latter because I refuse to apologize for that. I’m not the same woman I was a year ago. Apologizing was something I did daily with Rick, but I’ve managed to break the habit in the last few months.

I continue staring out of the window. Every few seconds, Artem glances back and looks at the pair of us acting like two-year-olds but thinks better about commenting.

“Are you upset with me, malyshka?” Max asks eventually.

“No, what makes you think that?” My voice drips with sarcasm. From the way his jaw tenses, he doesn’t like my passive-aggressive reply. Well tough shit. I have passive-aggressive down to a fine art at this point.

“Whatever you thought you saw, you got it wrong.”

Anger flares white hot in my gut. I spent too long being gaslighted by Rick to fall for the same bullshit from Max.

“Really? An attractive woman threw herself at you in a way that suggested you were intimately acquainted. If you’re seeing other people, that’s fine. It’s not like we’re in a relationship or anything.” I shrug and go back to staring out of the window, seeing nothing.

From the way he inhales aggressively, he doesn’t like my reply. “Natalya, that woman was someone I took out for dinner twice. A year ago. I don’t know her other than very superficially, and she and I are most definitely not in a relationship!”

“Hmm.” Sure. Whatever.

I see his fists clench in the periphery of my vision. He’s angry with me, but strangely, I’m not scared. Whereas Rick routinely lashed out with his fists and words, for even the smallest of infractions, Max isn’t that kind of man.

How do I know this?

I don’t. Not really. But he’s never given me any reason to fear him, and so I don’t.

Time will tell if I’ve made another disastrous mistake.

“Natalya…” The pitch of his voice drops and becomes softer, more persuasive. Against my better judgment, I turn toward him and almost immediately succumb to his hypnotic gaze.

My body leans in his direction, sucked in by his gravitational pull, and I am powerless to prevent it.

“So she’s just some random woman?” I’m still not convinced but maybe he isn’t a lying gaslighting asshole.

His mouth purses like he’s tasted something bitter. “No, not quite, but I haven’t seen her for months.”

“Then why did she throw herself at you?” Gotta say I’m curious about this. Never have I done something so… embarrassing in public. I’m not one for PDAs.

“No idea. She seemed to think I’d remember her. She suggested we go out again and I shut her down immediately.” He reaches out and tucks some loose hair behind my ear. The casual intimacy of the gesture makes me shiver.

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