Page 32 of Ten

I got away finally—but it cost me something so precious. It cost me the one thing I could never replace.

Lorelai. My daughter.

Chapter Eight

“Nisha?Youokay?”

I glanced up from my iPad and found Ten standing in the doorway of the bathroom with only a towel around his waist. Staggered by his incredible physique, I was left speechless.

I had expected he would be muscular and strong, but the definition of his chest and abdomen stunned me. The chiseled muscles in his arms flexed as he scratched idly at his naked chest, his fingers moving across the tattoos marking him as part of thevory v zakone.Had he earned one of them for killing Tony?

“Nisha?”

“Uh, yeah.” I glanced away and gulped. My face burned with embarrassment for the way I had been gawking at him. “I’m sorry.”

“For?” He crossed the bedroom and stepped into his closet.

“Staring at you like that.”

He laughed, and a drawer opened and closed. “You can stare all you like.”

I caved and looked at the closet, secretly hoping for another glimpse of his body. He emerged in loose shorts and nothing else. I felt simultaneously overdressed and underdressed at the same time. I wore zebra print sleeping shorts and a matching tee. My hair was tucked up into a satin-lined pink slap. I was more covered up than he was, but I was showing more of my legs than he had ever seen.

I could feel the heat of his gaze moving over my exposed skin as he shut his closet door. What was he thinking? Could he see the ripple of cellulite from over there? Were my love handles and belly too much? Was he wondering why I had my hair tucked up and out of the way?

In these pajamas, without any shapewear, there was no hiding my excess weight. It was all out in the open, all two hundred and seventy-plus pounds on my 5’10” frame.

“I’m sorry I took so long getting ready for bed.” I self-consciously touched my ear before glancing at his alarm clock on the other side of the bed. “It’s kept you up so late.”

“Don’t apologize for taking care of yourself. If I was that worried about getting a shower, I would have used the guest bathroom.”

“And braved Wilford?” My furious fur ball had taken up residence in there and seemed less than thrilled by the cheap throwaway litter trays Ten had picked up from an all-night Walmart on the way home. Wilford was used to his pampered life and automated space-age litter box. I had anxiously expected him to go straight psycho-cat mode after the trauma of being picked up by a strange giant and carted all the way across Houston in his carrier. Wilford had hissed and yowled, but two snaps of Ten’s fingers and lowly uttered Russian words had silenced my persnickety cat.

“Wilford and I have an understanding.”

I glanced at his unmarked arms. “You should give lessons in cat handling to his vet’s office.”

“Wilford isn’t much different than Vivian when she’s in one of her moods.”

My eyebrows rose. “I can’t wait to tell her that the next time I see her.”

“If she disagrees, ask her to tell you about the nursery rug.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Not unless you want me to get on the floor with a measuring tape and start hysterically crying because the pile was 2.25 inches instead of 2.”

I let loose a shocked laugh. “You’re joking!”

“I wish I was. Nikolai tried to send Boychenko to buy a set of sheep shearing clippers to shave the rug down so she would stop crying.” Ten grimaced. “I don’t think I’ll survive them having a second child.”

“Well, I’m sure it will be a while before she has another piroshki in the oven.”

Ten smirked at my little pun. Still hovering at the foot of his bed, he asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep in the other room?”

No. Please. Stay. Hold me.

But I wasn’t brave enough to ask that. Instead, I tried to play it cool. “Do you snore?”

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