Threat: Follow up to Stranded but not Alone (Dragoslava Connection) by Cora Blu Read Free Book Online

dare you pull rank on me out here? Don’t you dare treat me like that Mikhail. Investigation or not, don’t act as if you really care what happens and expect everything to be yours to control because I had the misfortune to date you once. If I was wrong then I’m sorry, but get the pole out of your spine when you talk to me.”
    His lips compressed together. He had to let her rant. She was hurting. He squatted down in front of her and calmed his voice. “I’m pulling rank because the man in your life doesn’t know what else to do to fix this.”
    Her chin tipped high in the air. “I didn’t send the threat. I didn’t lock myself in that room the size of a cabinet, and I sure as hell didn’t come up here to be ordered around by you!”
    He had to step away. This wasn’t about the threat anymore. This was about them.
    Threading his hands behind his head, he walked a tight circle beside the railing along the river. This was his fault, and he’d fix it.
    “Forget about the office, the threat…everything. We bury this fight between us this week or I’ll…”
    “You’ll what…fire me? Send me back to America? Don’t think I haven’t thought about going back.”
    Rushing over to stand face-to-face before her, fuming with frustration the heat radiating off his skin melted the snow settling on her eyelashes. “Then why are you still here? I’ll tell you why, because you like it here, that’s why. And I’ll tell you something else, Ms. Cansler—you like it here with me!”
    Her breathing picked up, and he could’ve kicked himself. “Believe it or not…I do like you and quite a number of people here. Did you ever add that to your bottom line, Mikhail, that it may not just be about you? How I might genuinely like the people, I work with and don’t want to be thought of as the boss’s arm candy…be respected for my work. Because everybody knows you don’t respect me.”
    No, he hadn’t thought of that. He had too much on his mind, and the fact that someone broke into her home plus the kidnapping added to the edge he tittered on now. And snapping at her wasn’t helping them get closer. Mikhail leaned against the railing. “Beth…Your right. I’m sorry. And what I did…the week you were gone…It was a dumb ass thing to do. I screwed up. But you can’t hold that over me for the rest of my life.”
    A glint of a tear puddled on her lashes. “Don’t call me Beth, Khail,” she ordered, hurriedly closing a hand over her mouth to cover her nickname for him, but it was too late, he’d heard it. And it felt like salve on a third degree burn to be called that again. She was still his. His shoulders unhinged from his ears allowing his body to relax.
    “Beth…”
    “I’m not your Beth anymore.”
    The hell she wasn’t and he’d make her see that before the week was over. Staring off into the sky chewing her lip wasn’t making him go away either. Besides that was his lip to chew. The lip he loved sucking into his mouth when she walked him to the door as he left her condo on Friday nights after they’d watched some crazy show she was too scared to watch alone.
    “What are you so afraid of being with me?”
    Her beauty stole his anger when she finally spoke after taking in a long breath. “My lack of judgment as a woman when you’re around,” she admitted, leaving him with a virtual slap across the face as she backed away toward the river. Her boot tracks barely visible in the dense snow.
    Bethany’s confidence was a second layer of beauty that lit up her face, and he’d shaken it being an ass.
    He stepped forward.
    Bethany stepped back. “Maybe cheating is okay in your world, but not in mine.” She chastised him scrubbing a booted foot in the layers of snow, uncovering the dead grass under the wood railing, no longer giving him eye contact.
    In a blur, he crossed the space that separated them, trapping her between the wood railing and his hands flat on the surface to either side of her hips.