Page 24 of The Dancer and the Grumpy Billionaire

Gigi:I saw it on the news

Vasily:Wow, a detective. Fine, I can get you at five. No earlier.

Gigi:Good see you then

I’m smiling as I walk into my first afternoon meeting, but my smile doesn’t last long when I see Katharine’s face.

“What’s up, boss?” I ask.

“You told me about that girl,” she says without preamble. “The name sounded vaguely familiar so, just to satisfy my own curiosity, I did some light digging.”

“That girl?” I ask, trying to get myself up to speed.

“The dancer. Gigi Sokolov. The one you saw getting abducted.”

My eyes go wide. I thought Katharine would have forgotten about that incident by now. She has to manage a lot of information.

“Oh,” I say. “What did you find?”

“Her real name is Galina Gusev,” she says. “She is the daughter of a Russian crime boss named Sasha Gusev. And Vasily, he is under investigation for at least a dozen deaths in the U.S. alone. He is a bad man, and I tell you this because you said this young woman lives in your building. Dude, there are agents watching that building night and day. You really need to be careful. You might even need to move out, for safety’s sake.”

My stomach drops at receiving this information. I have to work hard to keep my face neutral, just the intake of information. No emotion.

Thankfully, she moves on quickly after passing along her warning. I go through the rest of the workday in a bit of a haze, struggling to stay engaged in my work. Around four-thirty, I slip out of the office and down to my car.

I should cancel. I should text and say that I am stuck at work. I should stop this where it is and politely say goodbye.

But I do not. I pull into the alleyway behind the Ballet and moments later, Gigi is in my car.

She smells like soap and spring flowers. Her long, brown hair is wild around her shoulders. She wears a pair of wide-leg jeans and a crop top, looking for everything like some college co-ed rather than a professional dancer.

I pull through, out onto the street. “Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere,” she says.

I drive us to the tourist area of DC, and we walk among the eighth-grade field trip crowds. It is very busy, but I think that is good. It will be harder to watch us closely in a crowd like this.

We find a row of food trucks and order street tacos, which we eat while we admire the cherry blossoms, which are quite a spectacular sight each spring. We visit monuments, walking for what seems like miles to see sights neither of us have bothered to visit yet. When she reaches out to hold my hand, I almost shy away, but for the zing of chemistry touching her makes me feel.

It feels good to have her near me, in spite of my worry regarding the information Katharine shared earlier. It feels good in spite of the odd pair we must make – older me in a button down and dress pants from work, and younger her in her trendy, casual outfit. It feels good even though I worry about who might be watching.

When it starts to rain, I pull her close and we run gingerly toward the car, both drenched by the time we slip inside my black Tesla.

“It’s almost nine,” I say, pushing my hair back from my face. “Should I get you back?”

Gigi twists her hair into a braid, her eyes bright, her face an open expression of happiness.

“No,” she breathes. “This was the best day, Vasily. I felt so...free. I definitely do not want to go home.”

“But your people. Won’t they be looking for you?”

“They will, and I don’t care. I just want to be with you, for a little bit longer. Is there somewhere quiet we could drive? Where we could open the windows and see the stars?”

It is a romantic notion, one that seems idealistic – the musings of a princess locked high in a tower. It is raining lightly, still, so I have doubts about being able to see anything tonight. I understand her desire, a bit, because living in the city does dim our view of nature somewhat. The pragmatic side of me says to take her home, to not make things worse, whatever worse means for her or for me. But I look over at her, still smiling after having a few hours to walk around enjoying things most people take for granted, and I keep driving.

We drive until the suburban sprawl thins, farmland appearing, and it is only when we find a nearly deserted road that I find a place to stop the car. We pull over at a gravel spot that seems only to exist for pulling off or turning around, all around us farmland in various stages of tilling and planting. Overhead, a bright moon breaks through batches of clouds as a slight drizzle persists. There are few stars to be seen, but the moon itself is dazzling enough to catch her attention and she stares up at it through the window as if mesmerized.

“I don’t take enough time to look up at the sky,” she says.

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