He hung up, shrouding the room in thick silence. I rubbed my hands on my bare thighs and searched for my voice, as it seemed to lose itself in his presence.
“You didn’t happen to find my coat, did you?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, rocking back in his chair like a newspaper editor lording over his domain. “You’re lucky we found your bag before it was stolen.”
That was a no.
I chewed my lip. “My phone was in the pocket.”
“Was it?” was all he said, not offering to let me use his.
I didn’t feel like being more of a nuisance, and I also wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of sharing what happened last night with Ivan, so I pushed the need aside. I’d buy a disposable phone and let him know I was okay later.
Ronan stared at me.
Toss.
Squeeze.
The man was always doing something with his hands, and it was distracting. I swallowed when silence filled the room once again. He seemed perfectly content to just sit in it, but it tunneled under my skin and made me itch to fill it.
I cleared my throat. “This place . . . it’s nice. Very warm and . . . inviting.”
It was far from inviting for a girl like me, and we both knew it.
His slow smile could devastate cities. “What about it makes you feel so comfortable? I shall have to rectify it as soon as possible.” He watched with some form of dark interest as another stupid flush rose to my cheeks. If there was a God, he would have surely taken pity on me and opened a hole in the floor to let me fall through. I felt like Duckie in Pretty in Pink, and we all know how that ended up.
“The music. My papa listens to the same music.”
“What a coincidence,” Ronan drawled. His voice was indifferent, but also laced with something that evoked a shiver beneath my skin.
“Maybe you’ve heard of him?” It was a long shot, but with nothing else to go on, I might as well try to find another breadcrumb. “Alexei Mikhailov?”
Squeeze.
“Can’t say I have.”
Disappointment filled me.
“What does your papa do?”
“He’s an investor.”
That was all I knew. Papa never talked about work around me.
“Huh.” After a moment of studying me, Ronan said, “And what brings an American cheerleader to Moscow, alone?”
I glanced at my bag with “CHEER” across the front. “I was a cheerleader in high school, not anymore.”
“So a solid year ago then?”
“Of course not,” I said, like he was completely off the mark. “A year and a half.”
He sm
iled. “Ah, my mistake.”
After a beat of silence, I told him, “Moscow’s secrets.” The quiet words filled the room. “I came for its secrets.”