Vengeance Aside (Wanted Men 0.5)(31)

That was when they lifted off. She grabbed Lukas’s leg and glanced across to see a grin on Yasha’s profile. Guy looked like he could be a movie star with his thick neck and square jaw. His hair was just long enough to flop boyishly over his forehead. She couldn’t see the other two goons, but she was sure they were also laughing at her. And didn’t that make her feel good.

She slowly brought her narrowing gaze back to Lukas. “Let’s just hope you don’t have the same issue later that you had an hour ago. Otherwise, we’re going to have one long, boring night.” She stuck out her tongue and would have given him her back while ignoring the deep laughter that filled her ears from four different mics had she not looked beyond her grinning mobster to see the area they’d just left.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. From up here, she could see everything surrounding the mansion she’d only seen but a portion of. There were lights everywhere. Was that a hangar? Were those stables? And was that a horse track way over there?

Lukas squeezing her wrist brought her attention back into the helicopter. “I think you’ve cut through the material.” He unstuck her nails from his thigh and brought her hand up to look at it in the dim lighting. “Does Farah insist on these for work?”

Dale had coffin-shaped acrylics that she usually kept painted black but for her ring fingers, which she did with a silver glitter. “No. I like them. They make my fingers not so Shrek-like.” Her fingers were actually long and thin, but she felt self-conscious with him staring at her hand. She looked outside again, but all she could see now were tiny headlights from the cars on a miniature freeway.

“Your fingers are as beautiful as the rest of you.”

“FYI: compliments make me want to crawl into a hole, so feel free to keep them to a minimum for the duration of our acquaintance.”

He pinched the tip of her ring finger. “You have a smart mouth, Ms. Vaner.”

She studied him for an extended minute, trying to see around the absurd contentment that continued to ooze from him. He stared back at her, allowing it. “Can I ask you something you might not want to answer with your posse listening?”

“My boys are used to hearing things they have no interest in when it comes to me, so, feel free.”

Oh? Like what? Him having sex with his girlfriends? Him arguing with the bitches? The sudden urge to scratch his eyes out for having had those females in his life came from out of nowhere, and it was so fierce and ugly it took her breath away.

“Uh,” she cleared her throat and tried to get back on track. “For a guy in the middle of some bad mojo with people shooting at you and all, and your dad gravely injured and in the hospital, you seem to be doing okay.”

He brought her knuckles to his lips and placed a kiss on them. “Thank you for that. You should have been with me last night.” Shadows moved through his eyes. Dark, writhing ones that sent an icy finger trailing down her spine.

Because he’d just insinuated she was the one responsible for easing him, she dropped the subject and faced forward.

“Was that not what you wanted to hear, yagodka?”

“No. It wasn’t,” she said flatly. “Is there anything I should know before this meeting? Do I call him something specific, like Your Majesty or Your Grace?”

“No. His name is Kostya, and that is what he will ask you to call him. As long as you remember we’ve supposedly known each other for some time, and you continue to be your smart-ass self, we’ll have no problems.”

She threw him a withering glare but had to look away because his playful smirk started to mess with her reproductive system. Her ovaries were having a goddamn party, and she could have sworn she felt her eggs punching and kicking to try to be first in line.

Ugh!

***

As Lukas approached his father’s hospital suite, the difference he felt this time around was so marked it should have been unsettling. The change had come on so quickly he was sure anyone else would have felt insecure about it.

Dale’s cold hand found his as they walked into the waiting area. He didn’t. He clasped her fragile bones in an effort to warm her. There was no room for insecurity here. No need for it either. What he would continue to rely on was patience.

He nodded to Yuri and a male nurse as they entered a room that didn’t feel as claustrophobic as it had earlier. His gaze anxiously sought out his father…

The back of the bed had been lifted, but the Pakhan’s eyes were closed.

Fuck.

Lukas deflated like a kid whose birthday party had been canceled at the last second.

“He’s not sedated,” Yuri said, coming over. “If you give him a nudge, he’ll wake.”

Lukas’s spirits revived.

“This would be Dale?” The masculine appreciation that flashed in the back of the surgeon’s eyes was forgiven because they owed Yuri a debt they’d never be able to repay.

Lukas let go of Dale’s hand and slid his arm around her waist. He’d have moved her to stand at his back if it wouldn’t have made him appear strange. “Dale, this is my father’s surgeon. Yuri, Dale Vaner, my fiancé.”

He wasn’t sure whose eyes went wider, Yuri’s or Dale’s, and he didn’t care to find out because a sound had come from the bed. He looked over Yuri’s shoulder to meet his father’s elated stare.