The Russian Billionaire: A Romantic Suspense Novel Georgia Carre (ink ebook reader .txt) 📖

What else can I do? I’ll make the exchange today, then I’ll keep him occupied all night and tomorrow I will arrange for the painting to be moved, before any damage can be done. Even so, I feel horribly guilty.

“What’s the matter, Raine?” His voice is soft, but insistent.

“I’m just a little nervous, I guess. Everything we did before felt like a dream. This feels real.”

He walks to me and pulls me towards him, molding my body to his. “No, it still feels like a dream,” he whispers.

I nearly cry. I feel terrible. I’m going to betray him. “Oh, Konstantin,” I gasp.

Then he kisses me. God, he tastes so good. The glass of champagne in my hand falls to the ground and shatters, but I don’t hear it. Neither of us stops. I kiss him back with a desperation that is shocking. Almost as if I want to be sucked into him and disappear. Become part of him so I don’t need to betray him. He moves his mouth away and begins to kiss my neck. I moan softly.

“Fuck, you’re like a drug,” he mutters. Then he scoops me into his arms and carries me to his bedroom.

It is a relief. It is a relief to stop thinking. To stop feeling like I sold out the only man who’s shown me nothing but kindness for thirty pieces of silver.

Raine

I sit on a stool in his shirt and watch as he stirs the pot of Bolognese sauce Mary prepared earlier in a kitchen that is equipped for serious cooking. It has a Sub-Zero fridge, a vented Wolf 48-inch dual fuel stove, two dishwashers, warming drawers, a pot filler and a butler’s pantry.

“I never thought of you as a Bolognese person,” I tease.

“What are you talking about? It may not be Russian cuisine but nonetheless I love Bolognese. Don’t forget I was poor longer than I’ve been rich. I used to live in a tiny room and all I had was an electric hot plate. Spaghetti Bolognese was a treat. Every Saturday was Bolognese night.”

“I can’t imagine you as a nerd or poor.”

He sticks some spaghetti into the boiling water. “You don’t have to imagine it. I have pictures.”

“Let’s have a look then.”

“I have to dig them out from the spare room upstairs.”

“Oh please. Can I see them now?”

His eyebrows rise. “Now?”

“Yes, I’d absolutely love to see them. The spaghetti needs at least ten minutes. Come on.”

“All right,” he says, as he moves away from the stove.

As soon as I hear him reach the top of the stairs I fly in my bare feet to the terrace and grab my purse. My heart is racing so hard in my chest I can hear my blood rushing in my ears. I run to his office. Please, please, don’t let the door be locked, I pray silently.

The door isn’t.

I see the painting instantly. My hands are shaking, but switching it over is easy. As quickly as I came in, I leave and run back out to the terrace. I put my purse back on the table and run back to the kitchen where I take my place at the kitchen island once more. I flick my hair and adjust my shirt and try to control my quick breathing.

I’m almost in a state of disbelief.

The switch is done!

I can hardly believe that I’ve actually done it.

I hear a sound and I turn. Konstantin comes in carrying an iPad. He puts it in front of me and goes to the stove. I look down at the screen and for a moment I don’t see anything. Everything just looks like pixels. I blink a few times and my vision clears. I stare down at the young man in the pictures.

“Believe me now?” he asks.

I look up at him. My god, I’ve just betrayed him, but I’m falling in love with him. I force a smile and keep my voice light. “You obviously have no idea what a nerd looks like. Think Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or that Jeff Bezos before he got all pumped out on steroids.”

He grins. “I was thinking of them.”

“Then you’re blind,” I shoot back.

“He drains the pasta, pulls the plates from the warmer, and expertly coils the spaghetti onto the plates. Then he spoons the sauce on top, and brings the steaming plates over to me. The food is good, but I find it hard to swallow anything. When the meal is over he asks if I want some tiramisu, but I tell him I am too full to eat another thing. I make up a story about how I overate during lunch.

“Hey, how about giving me a tour of the place?”

“Sure.”

His penthouse is absolutely beautiful, there is no other way to describe it. I start to doubt my plan of wanting to redecorate his apartment. When we get to his office door, he pushes it open and says, “And this is my office where I spend a huge amount of time.”

I stand at the entrance and I actually feel goosebumps to know that those people are probably hearing everything we are saying.

“What’s next?” I croak.

He closes the door and we move on to the room where he sits to code. There is nothing in that room, just white walls, a plain black table and a leather swivel chair.

I turn to him. “That’s it?”

He nods. “That’s it. When I am coding, I want no distractions at all. This room is sound proofed too. Even the smallest distraction could mean days or hours of work being undone. Here is where I sit in complete silence and travel backwards in my mind over the hundreds of complicated sequences of codes I’ve written and try to weed out and correct any tiny mistakes I might have made.”

When we finish the tour we end up in the great big room. I curl up on the couch.

“Want some coffee?” he asks staring at my legs

I pull my legs onto the sofa. “Um… no. Come sit with