Page 25 of Loved By the Hacker

“Babochka?” he called, and my hands gripped the armrest with a white-knuckled grip.

I love him.A man I hardly knew who had been doing all kinds of wrong.

The man who felt like home and was going to be the father of my unborn baby. He watched me quietly from the doorway like the devil calculating a plan. One I had a feeling, no matter how he explained what I’d just found, I’d follow right through whatever gates he walked through just to be with him.

Oleg

She stilled and looked at me for a long hard moment. I hated the mask she had covering her features, the way she schooled each and every expression as she stared at my laptop.

“What am I looking at, Oleg?” Her voice, calm and collected without a mere tremble, fed fear into my gut. I had been so sure she would freak out. Scream and storm out. But there she was, looking at what I watched every single day when I came home from her place.

“Oleg, answer me.” Her voice was harder than before.

“You know what it is,babochka.”

“Why… why are there cameras in my place.”

“It’s what I do.” Her eyes popped up, and I winced inwardly, hating how terrible that sounded.

“What you do?” She straightened. Coral subtly looked around my office, and I could read what she was thinking. My girl was smart, fucking brilliant. She was trying to figure out a way to get out. To run away from me. Not that I was going to let her.

“I told you?—“

“You told me you have a security firm.”

“And I do,” I confirmed, but I could see the rigid way she held her body. “But I am also very… talented with a keyboard,” I shared.

“Keyboard,” she repeated, and I knew the moment she cottoned on to what I meant. “As in hacking?”

“Yes,” I admitted, knowing that I wasn’t doing myself any favors. But when it came to Coral, there wasn’t a sin I wasn’t willing to confess to her. She paled, and her hand moved to her stomach. Something about the movement had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

“Coral—“ I started to step forward, but that same hand that had been on her abdomen popped out to stop me.

“You’ve been watching me?” she asked, and I nodded. It was time to lay it all out. We hadn’t had as much time together, and I knew it was going to be hard as hell to convince her to give me a chance after this, but she deserved to know the man she had been sharing her bed with for the last few weeks.

“Since the night you and your sisters went out for karaoke.” I was probably oversharing, but I couldn’t stop the words as they slipped past my lips. Her brows bunched, and then her eyes widened.

“Kar—“ she started to say then cleared her throat. “That was just before Valentine’s Day.”

“And why I chose to stay in Moonlit Pines.”

“Oleg, that’s crazy!” she whispered, moving three slow steps closer to me before she stopped in her tracks. “Are you… are you saying you’ve been here for me? That you stayed because of me?”

“Only you,” I pressed, needing to make it crystal clear to her just how obsessed I was. How fucking in love I was. Jesus, I didn’t even recognize the man I was anymore. If someone had told me this was who I’d turn into after getting curious when Merritt called and booking it to this mountain town, I would have laughed.Me?Obsessed and in love with a woman who could literally figure out a way to put me in jail? Never. But there I was, in love with an attorney, knowing and confessing that the things I did weren’t always on the up and up.

“I came here for a job I did for… a friend,” I shared, and her pretty lips parted.

“A friend.” I could see the wheels turning, and when she spoke again, I knew she had put the pieces together. “The only person you know is…” Her voice drifted to nothing, and her eyes widened. “Ohmygod,” she gasped, and her hands turned to fists. “Scarlett. Merritt hired you to watch my sister?”

“He wanted to keep her safe.”

“Safe?” she scoffed, shaking her head before running her fingers through her hair. “Someone needs to keep her safe from him, from you. That’s stalking!” She stomped adorably. It didn’t go amiss that she didn’t say she needed to keep herself safe from me.

“Baby—“

“No!” she clipped. “That’s what you’re doing! Do you still watch her?”

“What? No!” I exclaimed. “That ended when the job ended. And I wasn’t the one watching her cameras?—“

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