Untied: A Mastermind Novel

by Lydia Michaels

  “I don’t think you could, if this is really who you are.”

  “Nadia…” He swallowed, overwhelming pressure mounting. All of his life he dreamed of being a hero only to be brutally reminded that he was simply ordinary. “Just … be patient with me. No games. But … at one point I’ll need a learning curve, okay?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know what a learning curve is, but okay.”

  “It means you remember this is new to me and I have no experience.”

  “For a man with no experience, you seem to be a natural at finding your way into my heart, mister. When I’m scared, my mind goes to you and I feel safe again. You’re there when I need help. Dependable. Your endless kindness is such a refreshing surprise to me. I’ve never met anyone who made me feel that way before.”

  His expression blanked. Maybe she was too exhausted or too emotionally wrung. “Nadia, my kindness has limits and I’m not such a nice guy.”

  She laughed, her eyes closing in a long blink. When her lashes lifted she looked up at him through dark slits. “You promised not to lie.”

  “I’m not lying.” He was dead serious. “I’m impatient, short-tempered, and intolerant of other people’s bullshit. It’s why it’s easy for me to be alone.”

  Her eyes closed and she shook her head, a smile pressed loosely to her full lips. “Hmm… Maybe you don’t know everything after all. I see a different man.”

  Her voice tapered into nothingness but not before her words burrowed deep in his soul, tending to some repressed, broken part of him he hardly thought about. In a way, she made him feel safe as well. And hopeful and surprised. But she also made him long for things that came with no guarantee.

  He nuzzled his nose to her cheek and breathed her in, pressing a soft kiss to her skin. “Get some sleep, sweetheart.”

  He caught room service before they could knock and ate quietly in the dark, watching her sleep. His mind bounced between worries. She might see the real him and everything they shared would suddenly vanish. Or he could exhaust himself trying to be the good man she believed he was. Just the thought of meeting her expectations seemed daunting. His main shortcoming had always been social ease, but she didn’t see that. She saw him as a man—the sort of man he’d always wanted to be. Did she see him as a hero?

  Could he be that for her? Damn. He wanted to. He wanted to be the man she looked to, the one that solved all her problems and always made her feel safe. Most of all he never wanted to let her down.

  He was falling in love with her—maybe he was already there. He wanted her to love him back, but he wanted to earn her love.

  After moving the tray outside and slipping Nadia’s dinner into the mini-fridge, he crawled into bed beside her. Lying on his back, he stared at the ceiling. He was going to win her over. He was going to be everything she expected and more. He was going to rise to the man she deserved—he just had to figure out how.

  When Elliot awoke, the sky was still black. Nadia slept soundly beside him. He frowned into the shadows, a troubling thought on his mind.

  Slipping out of bed, he grabbed his laptop and moved to the chair.

  Once he found the site he was looking for, he typed in the address to Nadia’s house and plugged in his credit card information, purchasing access to a fully inclusive report. The property was listed under Ada Szoke, her grandmother. He jotted down the name to get the spelling accurate.

  Within thirty minutes he had everything he needed, the land and tax evaluations, all previous sale information, and the most recent appraisal of the property. While on the site, he also did a search on the neighboring property, that of a Mr. Roland Hegedus. The man had remortgaged three times and was looking at thirty more years of payments with practically zero equity.

  While that man barged into her family’s lives parading about like the gaudiest form of wealth, he had nothing to show for it. His funds were liquid and his property belonged to the bank more than her grandmother’s, yet he had them convinced he could somehow bail them out of financial crisis.

  Sitting back, Elliot laughed quietly to himself. “You son of a bitch.”

  Closing his laptop, he checked his watch. They had roughly nine hours until they were on a plane back to the States.

  Calculating the time difference, he grimaced. He shot a text to all three of the guys, hoping at least one of them would get it before morning.

  Tossing the phone aside, he gently nudged Nadia. She opened her eyes and smiled. “Hey, you.”

  “Hey.”

  She rolled onto her back and frowned, noting the sun had yet to rise. “What time is it?”

  “It’s early still. I need to talk to you.”

  She rubbed her face. “Is something wrong?”

  Taking her hands, he chafed them gently. There was a good chance his nosing around could upset her.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Nadia, is your grandmother’s name Ada?”

  She frowned, her eyes suddenly guarded. “Yes. Why?”

  Relieved, he relaxed a bit. “She owns the house. Did you know that?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The information’s accessible online.” No need to mention he paid for that access. “My point is, if she sold the property to you at a much lower cost, the taxes would be taken out of escrow and the payments could be stretched over time.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Elliot. I don’t want to buy that house, nor do I have that sort of money.”

  “I’m talking about a loan. Let’s say the house is valued at a hundred thousand dollars, but she sells it to you for only twenty. You stretch that out over thirty years with a very low interest rate and you’re only paying a little over a hundred dollars a month with taxes figured in. Your mother could definitely afford that and still live a decent life.”

  “Elliot, I don’t have twenty-thousand dollars. And I don’t want that house.”

  “Why? You don’t need to have the money up front. You just need to get approved for a loan. Your mother would be maintaining it.”

  “That will never work. I once tried to buy a car and they laughed at my credit score. I’m not worth anything.”

  He scowled. “First of all, yes, you are. Second, if you’ve never had a loan and don’t have any substantial debt, you don’t have bad credit, you just don’t have any period. You have to build it. I can help you do that.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll cosign for the loan.”

  She shook her head and slid out of bed. “No.”

  “Why?”

  Pacing, she flung out her hands. “Ne keverjük a szerelem és a pénz. Nem akarom, hogy tartozom neked semmivel, és—”

  “English, Nadia.”

  She paused and shook her head. “I do not want to owe you anything. What if I mess up and it hurts you?”

  Over twenty-thousand dollars? She honestly had no concept of his wealth, which was endearing.

  “You won’t. As cosigner, I’d keep abreast of all transactions, penalties, and fees. If there was an issue with making a payment, I’d intercept before the banks could.”

  “Then you’d be paying for my family’s home. No.”

  “I wouldn’t be paying. I’d be a safety net.” A legitimate one that wouldn’t lord it over her or her family.

  “And what happens when we can’t make ends meet? My mother isn’t reliable. She has to work, but if she thought she could get away with no job, believe me, she would. She doesn’t have the same work ethic as the rest of my family. You don’t want to do business with her and neither do I. Don’t get involved.”

  He frowned. “But you’d let Roland bail your family out?”

  “That’s them, not me. My father trusted him, so they automatically think he’s a good person. My grandmother’s old, Elliot. She doesn’t know him the way I do. And my mother … she is lazy. She will always take the easiest shortcut.”

  “Don’t they care how he treats you? You can’t negotiate with bullies. They’r
e never satisfied.”

  “He doesn’t bully them. Just me, and we’re going home tonight. He can’t get to me in America.”

  “But he keeps you from visiting.”

  “Money keeps me from visiting.”

  And yet she continued to send them money. “They shouldn’t bargain with him, especially when you’re sending them money on occasion. This is your home, too, Nadia. If your family knew how he actually treated you, they’d probably feel differently.”

  “You’re wrong. It doesn’t matter why he helps, only that he does. When my grandmother couldn’t pay the taxes he saved them from being put on the street. I couldn’t help them, Elliot. I can send things here and there, but not to the degree Roland can help. He gains nothing in return and never will, but they keep a roof over their heads. He can threaten me all he wants—”

  “Threaten you?” He was on his feet, uneasiness taking hold of him. “He threatened you? When?”

  She waved a hand. “He does it all the time.”

  “How did he threaten you?”

  Rolling her eyes, she explained, “He says if I don’t move home and be his wife, he’ll buy the house out from under my family the next time the banks come calling. Then they’d have to pay rent to live there or get evicted—unless we are family.”

  “Family as in in-laws?”

  “Yes, but he’s crazy, Elliot. So long as I let him believe what he wants to believe, he won’t do anything to hurt us.”

  Something shifted in her eyes, betraying her bravado. That man scared her to some degree and he didn’t like it.

  “Nadia, when I was a kid I excelled in school. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but it didn’t take friends to notice I was a hell of a lot smarter than the rest of my classmates. Some people asked for help and I helped them, but those who demanded it, threatened me, they never cared about what happened to me. The minute I didn’t do exactly what they wanted they made my life hell. Bullies are bullies. There are no nice ones. There are just bad ones. You have to stand up to them or they never go away.”

  “I do stand up to him.” She waved her fingers. “You’ll notice there’s no ring on my finger. I’m not his wife and he’s not the boss of me. I’d never give into someone like that.”

  But she still had to put up with him. He still made her uncomfortable in her own home. “I don’t like the way he treats you.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “He can’t hurt me when I’m in another country. You’re all wound up and talking nonsense.”

  “It isn’t nonsense,” he snapped, frustrated she trusted that man to guard her family’s interests when he was offering a better solution. “Why won’t you let me help you? This will get that asshole off your back. He won’t barge in or feel entitled anymore. You’d never have to go to him again.”

  “I don’t want you to be that to me. Why can’t you just be my boyfriend?”

  “I don’t want to be your boyfriend when another man thinks he’s entitled to call you his future wife!”

  She blinked at him. “Don’t shout at me.”

  Surprised by his outburst, he took a step back. “I’m sorry. I…” He’d assumed after everything she’d said last night it would be simple to save her from this situation now that he had a solution. He never expected her opposition. “I don’t understand why you would choose to remain in an unhealthy situation with this other man when I’m offering you an out.”

  “It’s not an out, Elliot. There is no out. I’m broke and when I’m not broke, I’m poor. All you’re doing is transferring the sense of indebtedness from one man to another. I don’t want that sort of relationship with you.”

  He dropped into the chair and thought for a minute. “What if I promised not to interfere? If you lose the house because you can’t make the payments, it’ll be your choice. I’m just setting the mortgage up to give you more control over the situation.”

  Her dark eyes held skepticism. “That’s all?”

  He’d do his best to keep his word and make sure her family kept the house no matter how many financial burdens fell on them, but he’d have to respect her wishes. The woman had a lot of pride and that only added to her appeal. “That’s all. Take the deal, Nadia. It’s a good business decision.”

  Shutting her eyes, she blew out a breath. “I can’t do anything without talking to my nagymama. And she won’t like a stranger poking around in her finances. She’s very private.”

  “So am I. I know this is a lot, but if you trust anything about me, trust that I’m good with money and not out to harm you or your family.”

  “Fine. But for the record, I’d much rather wake up to sex than this sort of stress.”

  “Who says we can’t have both?”

  She stilled and glanced over her shoulder. “You’ll have to catch me.”

  She squealed as he sprung from the chair and tackled her to the bed. His lips found hers, and when he broke the kiss, she laughed.

  “Caught you,” he whispered.

  “Maybe I let you catch me.” She nipped at his mouth and lifted her hips.

  “Well, I’m not letting you go.”

  “Is that a promise?” She kissed him. “Once my nagymama lays into you, you might change your mind. You’re going to see where I get my stubbornness from.”

  He pulled her arms from his shoulders and pressed them into the pillows above her head. “Then I better make this count.”

  She stretched beneath him, her hard nipples poking against the material of her clothes. “Oh, I think you better.”

  He growled and pinned her to the bed, kissing her with promise and not stopping until he followed through on his word.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side.”

  ~Yoda

  Nadia pinched the bridge of her nose as her mother continued to shout. Luckily, Elliot’s Hungarian was terrible so he likely wasn’t taking too much offense to her mother’s cutting words.

  “You bring this stranger into our home and disclose our personal business!” her mother accused. “This is none of his concern! He is not family! At least Roland has a stake in saving our home.”

  “What stake? Momma, all he wants is to blackmail me into his bed.”

  “He wants marriage, Nadia. Stability! Which is all your father asked of you years ago. You are too bullheaded, running off on American adventures when your family needs you here!”

  “I’m making a living—”

  “What living? You are jumping from one man’s bed to another and always crying you have no money. At least as Roland’s wife, you’d have your dignity.”

  Elliot cleared his throat, his English disrupting their argument. “If I might say something…”

  Her mother rolled her eyes, continuing to speak over him in Hungarian. “This man! What more does he have to say?”

  Nadia turned to Elliot, having heard enough from her mother. “Go ahead.”

  He opened his mouth and paused, glancing at her. “Will you translate?”

  She nodded.

  “If you transferred the house to Nadia, you wouldn’t be in debt to a man who wants to do something that would make your daughter very unhappy. The ownership would be divided between the three of you. That would ensure you never missed a payment and your taxes would be figured into your monthly payments, instead of required once a year in a large lump sum. It would be more manageable for all of you and it would be yours. No need to ask for help from Roland anymore.”

  Her mother gave her a pointed look and she quickly translated. Before she even finished, she was shaking her head.

  “No. We are fine the way we are.”

  Dropping her face into her hands, Nadia groaned. “I told you this wouldn’t work.”

  Her nagymama, who had been sitting silently for the past hour, placed a hand on Nadia’s arm and whispered in Hungarian, “Do you trust this man, Nadia?”

  “Igen,” she answered immediately. At the moment, she trusted him more than anyon
e.

  “Then I trust him, too,” her grandmother said in Hungarian.

  When her mother tried to interrupt her grandmother silenced her with a halting finger.

  “You had your time to talk. This is my home and I haven’t been able to afford it for a long time. If Nadia wants to buy it from me, and she can figure out how, then I will sell it to her.”

  “But Roland—”

  “Look at your daughter. She does not want to marry Roland. She is young and beautiful and he is not what she wants. I think it’s time you let go of your husband’s dying wishes and accept what is.”

  Her mother stood, mouth tight and eyes full of anger. “He was a good man and deserves a good daughter who would honor his dying requests.” Her glare cut to Nadia. “What a disappointment you’ve become. This is a mistake. What happens when this man leaves you like all the rest and wants his money back?”

  Nadia winced, her mother’s words stabbing deep into her insecurities. “It’s not his money. He’s only cosigning the paperwork. You would be paying the mortgage.”

  “No man does something for nothing, Nadia. When will you learn that? Besides, this is your plan, but the burden will be on my shoulders.”

  Gritting her teeth, she swallowed her response. This was exactly why she moved to the States.

  Her grandmother’s fist came down on the table, rattling the silverware. “And you have lived here your entire life. You raised your family in this house, and since Nadia’s father passed, I’ve paid for everything. Do you think Roland will always be there to pay what we can’t afford? Nadia does not want to be his bride. If she did, we would have had a wedding by now. Enough.”

  Her mother glared at her for a moment and then stormed out of the kitchen.

  “What’s happening?” Elliot whispered.

  Nadia took her grandmother’s hands in hers. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  She shrugged. “I’m old, Nadia. The house will eventually be yours anyway—if we manage to keep it that long. I can’t take any of these things with me when I go. None of it is worth fighting over.”

  “I’d understand if you wanted to keep things as they are.”