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  Someone jostled his leg. Ivan glanced up, surprised. He found himself staring at a very shapely derriere. A young woman was bent over, trying to balance a carrier full of coffee cups and a bakery bag. She appeared to have dumped a hand full of napkins onto the floor and was trying to retrieve them.

  “Excuse me, can I help you?” Ivan asked, trying not to laugh. He didn’t want to offend the poor girl.

  She stood abruptly and turned around. “Oh my gosh, did I just run you over? I’m so sorry! I have such a hard time paying attention to what I’m doing. Generally my mind is a million miles away. Sorry!”

  Ivan tried to speak, but his words seemed to have deserted him completely. He had never been so forcefully attracted to a woman before in his life. Part of it was that she was uncommonly pretty. Her hair was pale as corn silk and thick. The long mass hung down her back and nearly brushed her waist. She had pulled it away from her face and secured it with some sort of clip, which made her azure eyes stand out all the more. She was slim with a softly rounded backside and muscular legs. Her tiny shorts gave him a fantastic view of her thighs, and her snug T-shirt showed off a set of high, pert breasts.

  Wait. Was she talking? Was he supposed to be answering? Ivan realized he’d been sitting there like an imbecile without speaking for what had to be forever.

  “My name is Katrina, by the way.” She smiled, and Ivan was struck by the intelligence in her blue eyes.

  He cleared his throat, trying to find his intellect. “I’m Ivan. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here. Have you just moved? Or are you a tourist?”

  “Actually, I’ve just been away at school for a very long time.” Her smile was wistful. “So I suppose I’m a little like a tourist in that everything seems so very new! It’s amazing how much a place can change over the years.”

  She set her tray of coffees on his table. Ivan watched her very methodically check the stability of each cup. He wondered what her last name was and whether or not he knew her family. Then a horrible thought occurred to him. What if he had sent Maksim to shake her family down for money owed to the Petrovs? That would definitely fall under the heading of not good.

  “So Ivan.” Katrina’s smile was warm and more than a little welcoming. “Are you a tourist? I certainly don’t remember you from before.”

  “Not a tourist,” he told her. “I’ve been away at school as well. And I suppose you might say I’ve come home to take over the family business. My father passed away last year.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She reached out and brushed his forearm with her fingertips. “I cannot imagine losing my papa. That must be so hard.”

  The place where she touched him burned at the contact. It was all he could do to remain still. “I’m lucky in that I have my brother to share the burden with.”

  “That is lucky,” she agreed.

  “Speak of the devil.” Ivan spotted Maksim entering Mamacita’s. “There’s my brother now.”

  Katrina turned, her blue eyes widening to the size of saucers at the sight of Maksim. “Wait. That’s your brother?”

  “Yes.” Ivan frowned. Maksim could sometimes appear scary, but he was really a giant teddy bear. “He only looks frightening. Promise.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve seen him in action, and I have to say that frightening is an understatement.” She pursed her lips, her expression one of regret. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get back to my sister and my father.”

  “Of course,” Ivan murmured, watching her go.

  Maksim took a seat at Ivan’s table. He stared at Katrina with mild interest. “What were you doing with her?”

  “You know her?”

  “Not really, but you just had me shake down her father for more cash,” Maksim told him lazily.

  “Shit.” Ivan felt his mood hit an all-time low. “That fucking figures.”

  Chapter Two

  “Ugh! How can those two even be related?” Katrina moaned.

  She walked energetically back to her father’s flower shop, determined to get some answers. Question number one: who was the totally hot guy with the absolute dickhead for a brother? Question number two: why was dickhead brother in her father’s shop pitching some kind of male hissy fit? Had her father somehow messed up the order from Ivan’s father’s funeral?

  Katrina frowned. Ivan had told her that his father had passed away last year. Surely they weren’t arguing about flowers from a funeral that had taken place a year ago. Maybe it was something her father’s shop had done for the gravesite? Hopefully the problem had gotten straightened out today. Katrina wanted badly to believe that.

  She gave a little sigh. Ivan wasn’t just good looking; he was downright yummy. With those huge brown eyes and crazy long lashes, he looked like more of a dreamer and a thinker than a fighter. Maybe he was a professor. He sort of had the look with that dark hair falling over his forehead and a perpetually thoughtful expression on his handsome face.

  Of course, he wasn’t really built like a professor. The guy had a body made to be on a billboard. She almost wished they’d been at the beach so she could have seen him take off his shirt. She was willing to bet that he had a set of abdominal muscles that would look damn good all oiled up with suntan lotion. Yep. A pair of sunglasses and maybe a book would complete his whole image perfectly.

  Katrina was still fantasizing about Ivan the possible professor when she used her backside to push open the door to her father’s shop. The bell jingled as she entered. She held the tray of coffees aloft. At least she’d remembered Nika’s blueberry muffin. Katrina was always forgetting mundane details like that. It was a consequence of always having her nose in a book and her head in the clouds imagining some esoteric solution to the world’s problems.

  “There you are,” her father said with a smile. “I was wondering if you’d decided to take a trek to the coffee shop across town.”

  “No.” Katrina carefully gauged her father’s mood. He seemed jumpy, as if he were having a difficult time holding himself together. “Although I did meet someone new at Mamacita’s.”

  “Is that right?” Her father was frantically piling rich brown soil into a pot. “Who did you meet?”

  “His name is Ivan.” Katrina set the coffee tray on her father’s worktable and began carefully removing the cups from their little slots. “And I think he knows the man who was in here when I left.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. In fact, I know he does.” She handed her father his latte. “I guess Maksim is his brother.” Katrina frowned. She really wanted to know what business Maksim had with her father, and there was only one way to find out. “Papa, why was that Maksim man here? And why did he look so angry? Did we mess up his flower order? I know their father passed away last year. Were they unsatisfied with a gravesite piece? I don’t understand why he would come in here and act that way.”

  “What way?” her father asked sharply.

  “I saw him, Papa.” She bit her lower lip, wondering how much she should tell. “When I went out, I looked behind me and saw Maksim in here pointing at you and speaking very loudly. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he sounded angry.”

  “Katrina, you should not pry into business that is not yours,” her father said stiffly.

  “Papa, I’m a part of this family. What happens in the shop is my business. Especially if we have some customer who is coming in here bullying you because he’s angry that his order got messed up.” Katrina’s temper was starting to build. She was a slow burn sort of person. But when she got riled, she could have a self-righteous tantrum better than anyone else she knew.

  “You might be a part of this family, Katrina, but you have been gone far too long to know anything about what’s going on.” Papa set his jaw as though he did not intend to budge on this opinion. “Quite frankly, I want you to focus on your studies while you are here and stay out of the shop business.”

  “What?” She couldn’t believe she was being excluded like this!

  Her fathe
r narrowed his gaze. “And furthermore, you will stay away from Ivan and Maksim Petrov. Do you understand? I do not want you to speak to either of them ever again. And that is final!”

  “But, Papa, Ivan is nice.” Katrina thought about her vision of him as a slightly disheveled professor. “I think the two of us could get along well. Maybe we could even find a way to get Maksim to calm down and stop bugging you.”

  Her father gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Go back to your books and your computer, foolish child. And stay away from the Petrovs.”

  Katrina might have argued some more, but her father left her for the walk-in cooler and let the door slam behind him as though he were absolutely through discussing any of this with her.

  ***

  “The man owes us tens of thousands of dollars, Ivan,” Maksim said with a snort. “I hardly think he would welcome the idea of you dating his daughter.”

  Ivan hated to admit it, but Maksim was absolutely right. There was no way Denis Sokolov would welcome any advances by Ivan toward his daughter. It was a shame really, because Katrina Sokolov was the most interesting female Ivan had ever come across.

  “This is just one more reason why I detest our father’s methods,” Ivan told his brother darkly. “It leaves such a mess.”

  Maksim helped himself to the vodka sitting on the sideboard in Ivan’s study. The penthouse overlooking the Straits of Florida was one of Ivan’s favorite properties. Generally speaking, he tried not to stay in one place for too long. All of his homes, safe houses, and businesses were hidden beneath the facade of a dozen or more dummy corporations. In addition, he had more than a few shipping interests and half a dozen chop shops that also did some legitimate auto mechanic business. Recently, the notion of going legal was beginning to appeal to him. Ivan was tired of running and hiding.

  “Yes, but our dearly departed father’s methods left us all of this.” Maksim waved his hand around the room to indicate the opulent surroundings. “He knew that weakness spelled disaster and spent his life proving he was not weak.”

  “Not emotionally, but don’t you find it ironic that it was his heart that eventually gave out?” Ivan gave a bitter chuckle and moved toward the bank of windows overlooking the water. In the hazy twilight, he couldn’t make out the details of the waves coming in and out on the beach.

  Maksim snorted. “Everyone dies of a heart attack eventually. No matter what kills you, your heart stops and they call it cardiac arrest. Boom. You’re dead.”

  “Wow. Great outlook, little brother.” Ivan shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if Maksim was doomed to be alone and lonely in this life.

  “Back to your romantic foibles,” Maksim urged. “When I say that Denis owes us tens of thousands of dollars, I’m not kidding.”

  “I know. I’ve seen the books.”

  “He stopped paying protection money years ago.”

  “Did anyone ever go out and ask him what the problem was?” Ivan wondered. “That was where I thought Nicolai always dropped the ball. What’s wrong with asking why they aren’t paying?”

  “Um, I’m going to go with the whole makes us look like weaklings thing again,” Maksim retorted. He cleared his throat and affected a super feminine tone of voice. “Um excuse me, dear business owner, so…like I was wondering if you’re having just a smidge of financial trouble because you’re totally not paying us the amount of money we told you that you had to pay even though you really didn’t want to…”

  Ivan couldn’t suppress his laughter. People never believed him when he told them that Maksim had a terrific sense of humor. His brother always acted the part of heartless badass because that was the role assigned to him by their father. Truthfully, Maksim was about as softhearted as anyone could be, and he found humor in everything.

  “Okay, so maybe not like that.” Ivan pursed his lips thoughtfully, trying to put his thoughts together. “I’m talking more about what the original relationship was supposed to be between a mafiya organization and the people they agreed to protect. The idea was symbiotic. It kept down crime and also helped increase revenues because people felt safe enough to shop locally. The people who paid protection money weren’t supposed to feel like they were being extorted. And truthfully, if they couldn’t afford to pay, the first question for the mafiya should have been to wonder why the customer hadn’t had enough business. Who was stealing it? Why were the locals patronizing other businesses?”

  “Always the idealist,” Maksim murmured. “Our father ruled by fear.”

  “Yeah, but do you really want to follow in those footsteps?” Ivan asked quietly.

  Maksim’s expression turned grim. “I don’t think I can, Ivan. I’m tired of strong arming people for money I’m not sure I even believe they owe.”

  “Yet we can’t just run around forgiving everyone’s debts either,” Ivan moaned.

  Maksim grunted. “No, because we would look like a couple of pussies.”

  “So maybe we start with this Sokolov guy,” Ivan mused. “Let’s give it a week and then go in and try to find out why he’s not paying. Maybe ask a few questions this time instead of just threatening to break his knee caps, or whatever it is that you do.”

  “You know, I get a little tired of being your hired thug,” Maksim groused. “I swear you don’t even have a clue what goes on.”

  “I’m trying to stay outside the rage fest so I can maybe take things in a new direction.” Ivan had to admit that Maksim had every right to feel angry about the way things had worked out. Ivan got to be the benevolent ruler, and Maksim was the evil villain.

  “And what if this Sokolov just flat out refuses to play ball?” Maksim wanted to know. “He’s definitely a stubborn old man. He could easily just decide to blow us off and keep his money, his information, and his daughters.”

  “Then I guess we cross that bridge when someone pushes us off of it,” Ivan said with more optimism than he felt. Life could be so incredibly messy at times.

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