Midnight Alpha by Carole Mortimer Page A

from his trousers pocket to look down at the caller ID. “I have to take this,” he bit out grimly before walking over to stand by the window.
    Gaia’s heart immediately leapt up into her throat. “Should you be standing there? I mean—couldn’t someone shoot you through the window?” She could hardly believe she was having this conversation.
    “Bulletproof glass,” Gregori dismissed distractedly as he turned away to take the call.
    Of course it was. Didn’t everyone have their windows made out of bulletproof glass? Perfectly normal. Nothing to see here.
    Nothing to see here?
    There was plenty to see!
    She was convinced her sister had been murdered, even if no one else believed her. She was now caught up in a war between rival families. She had been shot at. She was now staying alone in Gregori Markovic’s home with him.
    Except for his housekeeper and driver, and Nikolai’s men outside guarding the house and grounds.
    It was like a bad movie. One where they had the big shoot out at the end and all the bad guys died.
    Was Gregori a good guy or a bad guy, she wondered?
    What the hell did it matter if he died at the end?
    Gaia gave a shudder at the thought of that happening. Because she was falling for him? Because a part of her had reveled in his loss of control earlier? In seeing that cold and controlled man with his face buried between her thighs, his voice guttural as he told her he was going to fuck her up against the door?
    God, yes, she had reveled in it. Had felt nothing but excitement at hearing those words come out of Gregori Markovic’s mouth. So excited she had come and kept on coming as that mouth pleasured her.
    The shooting tonight had shown her she was out of her depth. Way, way out of her depth. Whatever she had hoped to achieve by working at Utopia, it certainly hadn’t been to get shot at. Or to fall for the coldly remote Gregori.
    The same man who had now ended his call and turned to look at her with dark and guarded eyes.

Chapter 8
    The seconds seemed to tick by oh-so-slowly as Gregori didn’t speak but simply continued to look at her with those piercing—and potentially accusing—fathomless dark eyes. Gaia’s heart was beating so loudly in her chest she felt sure he could hear it too.
    Who had the call been from? Nikolai? Had he been to her apartment and seen those photographs of herself and Angela, maybe recognized her sister as being someone who had once worked at Utopia?
    So what if he had?
    The police had ruled the death a suicide, and unless Nikolai knew differently there was nothing else to tell. Certainly no one had ever asked Gaia if she knew anyone else who worked or had worked at Utopia.
    The only reason her knowing Angela could be of any interest to Nikolai or Gregori was if one of them knew more about her death than they were willing to share.
    She really, really didn’t want Gregori to be involved in Angela’s death. Not now. Not when the two of them had been so intimate. It would be—it would be so wrong, sickening, if Gregori was involved and she had made love with him.
    Her mouth had gone so dry the past few minutes she wasn’t sure she would be able to speak. Except someone had to, the tension in the bedroom now so thick it was almost possible to reach out and touch it.
    She eased some of the tension from her shoulders. “Bad news?”
    “Why would you think that?” he queried with deceptive mildness.
    And Gaia knew it was deceptive by the cold glitter of his eyes as he continued to look at her, and by the fact that he had answered her question with a question.
    She shrugged. “In my experience, telephone calls at two-thirty in the morning usually aren’t good news.”
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “Maybe that’s because you live in a different world than me,” he dismissed hardly. “Two-thirty in the morning is part of my working day.”
    He really wasn’t going to give her anything to go on here, was he, Gaia realized. Except the fact that he had once again