Page 66 of Hunt Me, Daddy

Still hunting.

Still mine.

I stood in the hallway with the coffee appointment set. Tomorrow morning, she would sit across from me. Close enough for me to see every tell. Close enough for her to see mine, if I let her.

I had asked her to coffee to move her off a dangerous trajectory, which was true. It was also no longer the point. The point was that Kit Calloway had said yes and for a man like me, yes was not a small thing.

CHAPTER 14

Kit

Ivan Morozov was already there when I arrived, which should have annoyed me.

It did annoy me, technically, but not in the way I wanted. I had shown up eight minutes early because I believed in controlling entry points and also because arriving exactly on time to coffee with a man like him felt like stepping into a room someone else had arranged. I expected to beat him there. Expected to choose the table, map the exits, order first, and decide how much of my attention he was allowed to have before he walked through the door. Instead, he sat at a table near the back wall with a view of the entrance, the side corridor, and the long row of windows facing the street. Not my first-choice table. My second. Which was also annoying.

He had a paper cup in front of him, a closed notebook beside it, and no phone visible. That last detail bothered me more than it should have. Men like him always had a phone somewhere. Amissing device was either respect, confidence, or a performance of both.

Ivan looked up as I entered like he knew I had arrived. My hand tightened once around the strap of my bag, and his gaze flicked to my fingers before returning to my face.

“Kit.”

For some reason, my body seemed to like being recognized by him.

The last time I’d been this close to him, I hadn’t been across a table at all—I’d had my back to a sink and his hand in my panties, and I’d come hard from nothing more than his thumb dancing over my clit. Now every ordinary thing he did was contaminated by it from the slight smile on his lips to the way my gaze dipped to his hand holding his coffee cup.

Do not bring it up, I told myself.Whatever you do, do not be the one who brings it up.

“Morozov,” I said.

His mouth moved in what looked like the tiniest smile.

“Ivan,” he corrected.

“You sure? Morozov has a little more menace. Better brand identity.”

“You think I need help with menace?”

“No. That’s why I’m calling it brand identity.”

He smiled and stood as I approached the table and I blinked before I could stop myself. I wasn’t used to that. Not in a patriarchal, chair-pulling, allow-me-to-perform-manners-at-you-until-you-feel-owned way. He didn’t make a production of it. He simply stood because I was arriving, as if the room had shifted and it would be rude not to acknowledge the change.

Do not make that mean something, I told myself. My brain did not respond, which meant it was busy making it mean something anyway.

I sat across from him, choosing the chair that gave me the best angle on the windows and the register line. He waited until I settled before sitting again.

Noted.

“What do you drink?” he asked.

“Coffee.”

“That narrows it down.”

“I’m efficient.”

“You’re evasive.”

“Only before caffeine.”