Page 52 of Wicked Proposal
So why won’t she?
“You know, you could hire someone else,” Maksim floats out there. “For this scheme of yours.”
“No,” I spit too quickly. “It has to be her.”
“Why?” he presses. “Because your enemies think it’s her already? We both know you could orchestrate a pretense twice as good as that. With a professional, that is.”
“I don’t want a professional,” I snarl. “I want?—”
I swallow it before I can say it. It feels far too real. Maksim wouldn’t understand. He’s a fucking romantic.
Me? I’m a beast. A starving, savage beast.
It’s not my fault Mia’s scent feels like the only thing that could sate me right now.
“I want it to look real,” I tell Maksim. “Mia does that. A professional won’t.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. So stop fucking questioning me.”
My gaze flicks back to the window. Mia is moving away from it now, the smell of half-burnt pancakes wafting down for a couple of seconds longer. She heaps the carnage into a plate, ruffles her kid’s hair, and disappears.
I jog back to the car, Maksim close at my heels. “Put more men on Nikita’s search,” I tell him without looking back. “Turn the heat all the way up. We can’t afford to lose her.”
“Understood,” Maks wheezes as he climbs into the driver’s seat. “Should I turn the heat up on Mia, too? Talk her landlord into an eviction, make her reconsider?”
I look back towards her apartment building. “No,” I say. “Let her come to me.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“She will.”
And once she does, she’ll be mine.
17
MIA
“Wait.” Kallie’s eyes go wide as saucers. “He offered you how much?!”
“Shh!” I glance nervously around the E.R. “Lower your voice! What if Gwen hears?”
“Oh, she’ll know either way,” Reese chimes in from Bay Three over the sound of his patient throwing up. “Last week, she knew what I had for lunch. On my day off. In my own apartment.”
In Bay Five, Kallie shivers. “That’s so creepy.”
“C’mon, guys.” I fasten the tourniquet around my patient’s arm. “Gwen’s a little strict, but she’s not, like, a Bond villain. She rides us hard because shecares.”
“Or because she gets a kick out of it,” Reese mutters, pulling his patient’s hair back as she hacks up every piece of bad sushi she ever ate. “It’s called sadism. Look it up.”
I ignore him and turn to my patient. “Alright,” I say with a bright smile. “Where does it hurt today, Mr. Konrad?”
“Everywhere,” Mr. Konrad complains.
“Business as usual, then?”
“It’s different this time.” He gestures across his body with his free hand as I prepare the blood draw kit. “This pain starts here—” He points at his right shoulder. “—then jumps and picks back up overhere.”
