Chapter 3

Indoors, the man looked even larger than he had on the street. Everything about him was imposing: shoulders broad enough to suggest an athlete, long legs, large hands, and equally large feet.

For once, Yuri had no words. His question for Alexei vanished as disbelief parted his lips.

The visitor smiled at Yuri’s expression like an excited boy. Hooking one finger beneath his mask, he drew it down and revealed his face at last. His physique announced him unmistakably as an Alpha, but his features created an entirely different impression.

Pretty, beautiful, elegant: none of the words quite captured him.

“Hello, handsome.”

The man tugged off his white beanie. Reddish-blond hair spilled free like silk, and his full pink mouth curved into a smirk of open amusement.

SWOOSH

A sharp, disbelieving laugh lodged in Yuri’s throat. He narrowed his eyes at the uninvited guest, suspicion flickering across his face. How had a man he had encountered on the street only hours earlier materialized inside his home?

Yet beneath Yuri’s irritation, something about the stranger’s smile carried a disarming warmth that seemed wholly genuine.

Against his better judgment, Yuri stared. The vivid eyes he had noticed on the street suited the rest of the man’s face with almost unnerving perfection. It was a face that belonged in a gallery, each line as precise as sculpture. Yuri had read of gazes being drawn against the will of the person looking, but this was the first time he understood what the phrase meant.

The reddish-blond beauty smiled until his eyes curved into crescents. Slightly damp bangs framed flawless pale skin warmed with pink. His full mouth and high, straight nose lent him an almost unreal delicacy, yet that beauty rested above a sharp masculine jaw, a thick neck, and a broad, solid chest.

“Oh?” The stranger tilted his head. “You’re much gentler than you were earlier. I suppose you like my face.”

Interpreting Yuri’s silence however he pleased, the man abruptly closed the distance between them.

The movement broke Yuri’s daze. He shot out a hand to subdue the intruder, but this time the stranger anticipated him. He caught Yuri’s arm and pulled him closer instead.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

“I do find it charming that your hands move first…” Looking down at Yuri from only inches away, the man grinned, his red mouth curving in shameless invitation. “But I’d rather not be made to look ugly in front of a beauty twice.”

Perhaps his first approach had been thoughtless, but the strength holding Yuri now could not be dismissed. Despite the careless openings in his guard, the man clearly knew how to use his body.

Warning bells rang through Yuri’s mind. The client’s identity had startled him into a moment’s inattention, but now only one sensible choice remained.

“Alyosha, we should refuse the job.”

This man was trouble.

The odds that Yuri had encountered him on the street shortly before he appeared at the house were too small to ignore. Yuri could not determine the stranger’s scheme, or whether the earlier encounter had been staged to test his reflexes, but the entire commission felt wrong.

Alexei had watched the exchange in silence. Now he tilted his head, all playfulness gone. A cold edge sharpened his blue eyes as he approached them and raised one brow.

“Why?”

His oldest friend had always respected Yuri’s judgment. If Yuri truly wanted no part of this, Alexei would not force him.

More importantly, Alexei was not the kind of man who accepted a request from someone so suspicious. Something was wrong. Alexei did not conduct careless background checks. They had grown up in a place where a single lapse could cost a life, and both knew that one mistake might lead to consequences no one could reverse.

Yuri could not understand why Alexei would make such a mistake now.

After a moment, he angled himself more squarely in front of his friend.

“I met him before he came here. His approach was too suspicious to dismiss as coincidence.” Yuri’s gaze remained fixed on the stranger. “Even if it truly was chance, I don’t know whether a man who had to borrow twenty dollars from a stranger can afford our fee.”

The longer Yuri considered their encounter, the more guarded he became. If the man had deliberately exposed openings and babbled nonsense to appear harmless, then he was anything but ordinary. Of all the people in the world, those Yuri could not read were the hardest to handle.

The stranger listened to the end, still smiling as he studied Yuri’s reaction. Then he burst into bright, musical laughter.

Yuri could not imagine what amused him.

“Handsome, do you honestly not know who I am?”

Yuri ignored him and addressed Alexei. “If this isn’t strictly necessary, refuse the request. I’ll show him out.”

The best way to deal with suspicious people was not to deal with them at all. The exposure of his residence troubled him, but selling the house and moving would be simple enough. He felt no real attachment to the place.

Alexei exchanged a glance with the stranger, then asked with unusual care, “Yuri, you really don’t know who he is?”

The question implied that Yuri ought to recognize him.

Yuri frowned. “No.”

Do I need to?

His expression must have conveyed the thought because the man laughed again.

“Wow, you truly didn’t recognize me?” His smile widened. “That’s refreshing in its own way.”

Yuri refused to acknowledge him. As he continued speaking to Alexei without so much as glancing in the stranger’s direction, the man’s brows slanted with disappointment.

He leaned toward Yuri and whined, “Hey, handsome. Look at me too. Who ignores a client like this?”

“We’re not accepting your request, so you’re not a client. Leave.”

Having made his decision, Yuri assessed where to strike to break the man’s hold. Catching Yuri’s arm had been impressive, but unless the stranger could subdue him completely, closing the distance only created an opening for a counterattack.

Perhaps sensing Yuri’s intention, Alexei caught his other arm. Alexei was an Alpha, but his pheromones had always grounded Yuri with an ease that felt almost familial.

When Yuri glanced over, his friend shook his head.

“First, Yuri, calm down. Heather sent him.”

At the name, Yuri closed his mouth.

Heather was a mutual acquaintance and one of the few decent people they had met in Vancouver. A journalist, she had helped them navigate the disgraceful affair involving Yuri’s father, and they had helped her in return. Yuri had not expected anyone to arrive through her recommendation, least of all a man who seemed incapable of seriousness.

“Why?”

“I was going to explain that one step at a time.”

Yuri considered the answer. Even after hearing Heather’s name, he felt little inclination to relent. Their first meeting had been too strange, and the man’s habit of attaching handsome to every other sentence had scraped Yuri’s patience raw.

After a pause, Yuri looked at Alexei. “Does this require me as well? Enough to expose this place?”

“I really am sorry about that. I would’ve taken him to my office if I could, but he attracts too much attention. Meeting downtown would’ve been difficult.”

Something in Alexei’s tone suggested that many people knew the stranger. It was not an explanation Yuri could dismiss outright, so he gave a slow nod.

His face is striking enough. A model? An actor?

Whatever the answer, it made Yuri dislike him more. The more a person stood out, the more complications followed.

Yuri folded his arms as much as the two men’s grips allowed, letting the reluctance in his posture speak for him. Had anyone but Alexei pushed this far, he would already have thrown the stranger out. Since it was Alexei, however, Yuri decided to hear the story before passing final judgment.

“Is this too difficult for you to handle alone?”

“Looks that way.”

“If the case is that serious, the fee should be substantial.” A faint edge of sarcasm entered Yuri’s otherwise flat voice. “But as I said, he was begging a stranger because he didn’t have twenty dollars.”

Alexei’s mouth twitched with interest. “It sounds as though your first meeting was rather intense. I’ve never seen you make your dislike of someone this obvious.”

At once, the stranger released a pleased little sigh. Still hovering beside Yuri, he shook the arm he held as though begging for attention.

“You already feel something that intense for me?”

The man possessed a remarkable talent for saying things Yuri could not begin to understand.

Yuri frowned at Alexei. “What’s stranger is that you don’t dislike him.”

“He does talk a great deal,” Alexei agreed, though he appeared far less repulsed. “Still, Yuri, don’t worry. He has more than enough money to pay us. Whatever else he does, he won’t cause trouble over the fee.”

If anything, Alexei seemed to welcome him.

“On what grounds?”

“Because, you see…” Alexei’s grin broadened, his teeth flashing as he looked between Yuri and the stranger. “That man is Cherriot Goodnight.”

Yuri had been about to ask why Alexei looked so pleased. The moment he heard the name, he froze.

It was far too familiar.

The stranger, who had been watching him all along, stepped closer and bent until their eyes were level. Yuri, who had been coldly ignoring him, flinched before he could stop himself.

“That’s right,” the man said. “That’s me.”

Cherriot Goodnight.

He was the hockey player whose name appeared in the news at least once a week. Every Canadian who followed the sport, and most Americans who did, would know him. Even people with no interest in hockey might recognize the name, if only because he was famous for his beauty.

That Cherriot Goodnight was standing in Yuri’s living room.

“Judging by that heated look in your eyes, you do know my name, handsome.” Cherriot beamed. “That makes me happy. I’ve never particularly enjoyed being famous, but this is the first time it’s felt worthwhile.”

Yuri let the nonsense wash past him.

Relief and resentment rose in equal measure. Someone this famous was at least less dangerous than Yuri had imagined, but Heather and Alexei had still brought an insufferable client into his home.

Yuri despised people like this: people who spoke too smoothly, approached without hesitation, and stepped across boundaries he had established for a reason. No temperament could have been less compatible with his own.

“Yuri is handsome, so I’ll give you special permission to call me Cherry.” Cherriot’s grin turned conspiratorial. “It’s a nickname only people I like are allowed to use.”

Ah. I’m going to lose my mind.

As Cherriot smiled, something powerful stirred in Yuri, though he could not decide whether it was confusion or aversion. Truly knowing someone took time, but certain things revealed themselves at once.

Cherriot was a man Yuri could never get along with.

People who scattered compliments and offered private nicknames to complete strangers were exactly the kind Yuri avoided. Feelings acquired so easily surely vanished just as quickly. He hated that weightlessness.

“Enough.”

Yuri stopped Cherriot before he could drift closer with that brilliant smile.

Cherriot’s eyes, curved as though he knew perfectly well how pretty he was, widened in confusion. His brows drooped with the innocence of a much younger man.

“Pardon?”

“Stop the nonsense. Your fame is not a reason for us to accept your request. I…”

I have no reason to accept this commission at all.

Yuri swallowed the rest. He wanted to throw the exhausting man out immediately, but Alexei’s steady blue gaze forced him to restrain himself. Instead, he gave Cherriot a sincere warning.

“If you say one more word about nicknames, how handsome I am, or any other bullshit like that, I’m out.” His gaze shifted to Alexei. “Alyosha, that applies to you as well. You clearly brought him because you need my particular skills, but… I can barely tolerate him.”