Clenching his fists, he smiled back, and then looked down at me. “Taras needs to talk to you, but he says it’s only if you have a free moment.”
The boys weren’t due to be fed for another two hours, and a glance showed they were fast asleep on the mat now.
“I’ll watch the boys and call you if they wake up and need your boobies, don’t worry.” Lena crawled closer to where they were lying, dragging her laptop with her. “We’ll be just fine.”
“I’ll stay with them.” The announcement from Hunter was what made me undecided, until Lena rolled her eyes.
“Fine, whatever, they’re your nephews, too. Off you go, Nell.”
As I walked past him, I gave my brother the same look I always gave him when he was near her—the one that warned him not to upset her. Yes, I had loyalty to him and loved him, but I had the same for my best friend, and she wasn’t the one who’d done what he had to her.
I used the short walk to Taras’ study to think over where I was at mentally with him. I wasn’t over what’d happened, and I doubted anyone would ever get past it entirely, but watching him with the boys and how he was with me, I had no doubts that we were his focus. Hell, he’d done what he did not just for his family, but for mine, too.
The problem was, I didn’t know if he’d ever do something that would throw us to the side again. I didn’t see how he could, but I hadn’t seen it the first time.
I’d discussed it with Lena without telling her the stuff I wasn’t allowed to say to her, and she understood how I was feeling.
Had the pain it would cause me ever come into consideration during it?
He’d never asked me what I felt about it or warned me. He’d just cut me out and gone ahead with it.
Would he ever have come back if I hadn’t had the boys?
Those were two things I still needed to know.
So, when I knocked on his door and heard him call out to come in, I wasn’t feeling quite so sure of myself.
Something he picked up on immediately. “What’s wrong, malysh? Has something happened to the—”
He was just getting up from his chair when I held my hand up to stop him. “No, it’s nothing like that. I was just thinking, that’s all.”
His eyes didn’t miss a thing as he watched me take a seat opposite him. Then, he did something that took me by surprise. Pressing his palms together and resting his jaw on his steepled fingers, he stared at the chair I was sitting on.
“I think we should move that chair around to this side of the desk. You’re equal to me on all things, and I dislike the thought my desk separates us from that.”
Getting up, he walked around the desk and picked it up with me still in it, then carried me over until I was at a spot next to where his chair was. “There, that’s much better. I’ll make sure I get one like mine that I can put in the corner until you’re in here with me.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly, trying to get to grips with what’d just happened. “It’s just a desk?”
Sitting back down, he swiveled his chair, so he was facing me. “It was an obstacle, baby, a divide between us. When my men come in here, they know I’m the boss, and it’s a position of power to sit behind it. When you’re in here, there’s none of that, and it’s about time the world realized the position you hold in my life.”
I couldn’t have stopped the words coming out of my mouth if I’d tried. “So, if that’s true, why didn’t you tell me before you got married—”
“It was a fake marriage.”
Ignoring the correction, I continued, “—or even ask me for my opinion on it? And would you even have done what you’ve done if I hadn’t had the boys?”
“I see I haven’t answered those for you yet,” he noted, tapping his finger on top of the pile of paperwork on the desk. “I tried to when I filled you in on it, but I probably should have kept checking to see if anything was still outstanding.”
“You might have,” I acknowledged. “But those two issues aren’t easy to answer when you have a lot of information being thrown at you.”
His eyes narrowed as he thought about it, and then he nodded. “I agree, and I’d likely be the same in your shoes.”
Then, moving his chair forward so our knees were touching, he made sure I knew there was nothing outside of our conversation to distract him. “This might be a strange approach to take, but I’d like you to imagine something for me.”