her deliberately, drawing out the silence. She had unusual eyes, green with golden flecks, and he recognized the eyes of a female leopard immediately. He also became aware of Shturm’s reaction to the woman. It was an easing of tension out of the big cat. The claws seemed to retract slowly and he simply went quiet, almost as if, like Sevastyan, he was observing the woman instead of reacting negatively toward her.
Shturm hated all humans and let his human counterpart know at every opportunity. It was rare for him to go quiet, and that alone kept Sevastyan from saying anything to dispel the rising tension between the woman and himself—not that he wanted to. She needed to take responsibility for his time away from Mitya. His job as his cousin’s bodyguard was important.
Looking down at her red-gold-tipped lashes that had swept down to veil the expression in her green eyes, a curious emotion gripped him, one he couldn’t recognize. She had a generous mouth, beautiful lips, very red, although there was a smudge of dirt near the corner on the left side he could barely keep from leaning down to wipe away with the pad of his thumb.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she started. Her tone was soft. Pleasing. There was no remorse, but her voice did tremble the least little bit.
He frowned, his eyes on that little smudge. He took a step toward her, caught her chin in a firm grip and angled her face toward the sun. “What the hell happened? Did someone hit you?”
There was barely controlled fury in him, although his voice sounded the way it always did—calm. He knew someone had struck her. Recently. Within the last half hour. That was the reason she was late. While he’d been pacing up and down in his front room, furious at her, some asshole had hit her. Struck a woman. When he turned her face toward the sun, he caught sight of a large lump on the side of her head, up high in the hairline. Hidden, but it was there. He forced himself to let go of her.
She glanced over her shoulder as if it was possible she was being pursued. She hesitated, as if she might not answer, or she might try to lie, but then she simply told him the truth. “Unfortunately, yes, I’m so sorry. I know we’re getting off to such a bad start, and it’s so unprofessional. Our company is really the best. We’ve just had bad timing with our scheduled meetings. I really tried to get here but . . .” She was babbling. The words stumbling over one another.
“Ms. Carver,” Sevastyan interrupted, his voice a whip. He was used to giving commands and having them obeyed. He’d been trained from the time he was a young boy and as he had taken over the duties of head of security for his cousin, his natural dominant character had come out more and more. “Tell me what happened.”
She stood blinking up at him. She was already more than a foot shorter than he was and with him standing a step above her, it only added to her diminutive stature. Once he realized what that smudge was and had seen that swelling on the side of her head, Sevastyan hadn’t brought her fully into the house, where she might feel vulnerable alone with him. Still, he intended to take advantage to get the information he needed to hunt down whoever had struck her.
Flambé shrugged in an attempt to be casual, but the movement hurt and she winced visibly. “There’s a man who is very angry with me for a lot of different reasons. I refused to take his calls and he’s been watching me. I called the police and reported him numerous times, but because he hasn’t actually done anything, well, until now, they said there wasn’t anything they could do.”
“He’s stalking you.”
She made a face. “I hate using that word because it sounds like something everyone uses now, but yes. He turns up everywhere I go. He stands across the street from places I go to eat with my friends. I made him angry. I should have just kept quiet, but I got so sick of him always pushing at me. I confronted him and told him to keep the hell away from me.”
Sevastyan detested that she thought she had to be the one to give in to her stalker’s demands in order for her to have peace. That was what