Читать книгу His Best Acquisition: The Russian's Acquisition / A Deal Before the Altar / A Deal with Demakis - Dani Collins, Dani Collins - Страница 15
ОглавлениеALEKSY SHIFTED, ROLLING onto his back, snapping Clair out of her deep sleep.
Her naked back reacted to the loss of his heat like the cool, raw flesh under a bandage. She fought a foreign desire to turn and burrow into his warm strength.
Smoothing her hair from her eyes, she let her gaze find shapes in the barely discernible pattern of the wallpaper, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. She’d been so angry, so hurt at being misjudged, and positively crushed at his remark about being adoptable. Did he think she hadn’t spent her entire childhood waiting for new parents? For someone to want her?
He didn’t care about her struggles or pain—he’d more or less admitted it when she challenged him. He only wanted sex from her. That’s all this affair was, and it should have turned her off, should have kept her from making love in public at the very least, but his touch had erased all the hurts. She’d forgotten there was such a thing as loneliness.
And the sense of connection had inexplicably remained, even when he’d wryly apologized for being unprepared with a condom and dried her belly with his handkerchief. It should have been a horribly awkward moment, but she’d found herself giggling as if they shared a secret. His tender kiss had tasted like a promise as he solicitously straightened her disarranged clothing and shielded her from the eyes of the wait staff while they slipped out of the theater, flushed and pinned together.
The drive had been a blur. She’d stared out the window without seeing anything, mind reeling, belly still quaking, skin sensitized with longing. There’d been no misgivings, just a glow of joy like an ember inside her.
She hadn’t recognized the feeling as a state of sustained desire, but when he’d drawn her to him before their shoes and coats were off, she’d met his kiss with an enthusiasm that had made him groan. He’d scooped her into the cradle of his arms and carried her to this bed. She hadn’t given one thought to how long she’d stay here, only that she needed to be naked with him, all of her hurts and worries forgotten.
She very much feared she was losing herself, and that was bad.
Nevertheless, when his big body jerked behind her, her pulse leapt as if they were connected by invisible, electric wires. They’d spent a long time getting to know each other’s body. She’d even let him slide down her to arouse her so selflessly she’d almost died, but oh, the deliciousness of that near-death experience. When he’d risen to thrust into her, they’d locked themselves into a writhing knot of ecstasy. She’d been so exhausted and replete after their final, shuddering culmination that she’d fallen asleep without making a conscious decision to stay in his bed.
She should leave now that she’d woken, but she was reluctant, especially when he crooked his leg against hers and renewed desire tingled through her. Would he wake and love her again? Who knew she could be this insatiable?
He muttered something in Russian.
Drawn by curiosity, she rolled to face him and tried to read his features in the dark. His eyebrows were pulled together in a grim line, his jaw clenched. His long body was one taut muscle weighing down the mattress. More utterances pushed through grinding teeth.
A nightmare? Reaching out with instinctive compassion, she lightly touched the tensed muscles of his neck, thumb accidentally lining up with the ridge of his scar on his chin. “Aleksy.”
He clamped a swift hand around her wrist, the strength of his grip painful enough to make her cry his name again in a warning.
With a jolt he woke, but his grip stayed locked tight. “Clair.” He sounded…fraught, his tone demanding she answer.
“Yes, it’s me.” She tried to rotate her arm and ease his unbreakable hold. “Where were you?”
He drew a shaken breath, letting his fingers loosen, then just as quickly caught her arm again, closing around her fine bones, exploring lightly for damage. “Did I bruise you? I’ll get ice.” He released her and started to leave the bed.
“No, I’m fine.” She dropped a staying palm on his chest, startled to find it soaked with perspiration. “You’re sweating. Do you have nightmares often?”
“Never,” he replied shortly, dragging the corner of the sheet over himself, dislodging her touch as he dried himself.
Smarting from his brush-off, she curled her fist into the blankets and drew them up over her chest. “Maybe it was my being here. I was just leaving, so…” She trailed off.
He didn’t say anything.
She waited too long. Nausea clenched in her stomach as she realized he wasn’t going to protest and ask her to stay. Aghast at herself for making the mistake of fishing for signs she was needed—or at least not unwanted—she forced her stiff limbs to ease toward the edge of the bed. Funny how she had spent years conquering feelings of bereft abandonment, learning never to set herself up for it, yet the tsunami of worthlessness could sweep over her as fresh and coldly devastating as ever.
This was exactly why she avoided intimacy. He was too far inside her if he could bring her to the brink of anguished rejection this easily. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Years of practice allowed her to swallow the lump of unshed tears trying to lodge itself against the back of her throat. She wouldn’t cry, refused to. She found her way down the hall to the spare room and crawled into the icy bed with dry eyes, telling herself the ache clawing at her insides was for Aleksy.
What would haunt him so badly he’d have nightmares? She’d been distracted by his misjudgment of her and the foundation earlier, but he’d said Grigori had given him his first job after his father was killed. He had shut down and diverted her by asking about her own history, but she had a feeling the touchy subject of his scar was related. The way he’d just called her name as if he’d been frightened for her stayed with her, filling her with an urge to go back and ask him about it. Offer comfort.
Rolling onto her back, she flung an arm over her eyes and reminded herself not to give or ask too much. This relationship was temporary and if she got any more emotionally involved with Aleksy, she’d be too deeply attached when it ended. Look how she was reacting to being separated by just a wall. She didn’t want her heart broken when half a world stood between them.
Better to stay exactly where she would spend the rest of her life: alone.
* * *
Aleksy stared unseeingly at the frozen river, still deeply perturbed by his nightmare. He hadn’t had one since his mother was alive, yet the dream and the memory it contained had ambushed him with deadly accuracy.
Except this time, when he’d heard his name, Clair’s voice had called it and torment had nearly ripped open his chest.
Soft footsteps padded on the tiles behind him. Not the bustle of his housekeeper and he felt Clair’s presence like a tangible force anyway. Her sexuality radiated into him, synchronizing to his own. He wanted to touch her with the immediacy that swept through him every time he was near her.
He hesitated to turn, though, dreading what he might see. He had meant to be gone by now, but his driver was caught in one of Moscow’s world-famous traffic jams, so he was loitering in his own foyer, mind jammed with unwanted introspection. When he pivoted, he caught her hovering indecisively, showered and dressed, hair glittering like sunlight in icicles. She took in his suit and tie beneath his open overcoat, then the briefcase on the floor. Her eyes were underlined with bruised half circles. No sleep either? Or something else?
Apprehension made his voice unintentionally severe. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she answered. Her cloak of composure slid firmly into place, hiding anything she might have betrayed.
He felt his mouth twist in dismay, but really, it was for the best. He’d saturated himself in her last night, allowing his own well-built defenses to waver so he could draw her in as tightly as possible, but apparently letting down his guard had allowed his subconscious to come out of hiding. That was so disturbing he didn’t know what else to do but run.
“You’re going out?” she asked without emotion, making it impossible to tell if she was relieved or disappointed.
Her remoteness renewed the fear that had been creeping through him since the early hours. Had he said something revealing in his sleep? Was that why she’d left him for the bed down the hall?
“I’m needed at the office.” He scowled at the briefcase he’d filled like a criminal fleeing the country, as if putting off facing her would change anything. There was no changing what she thought of him, only the disclosure of what that might be. “I didn’t mean to disturb you last night.” He watched her closely, trying to discern what was going on.
“It’s fine.” Her lightness sounded forced. “I needed to go to my own bed anyway.”
He bit back a reflexive Why? Her insistence on sleeping apart from him annoyed him and he didn’t understand the reaction. He usually gave his women separate apartments and left them in the middle of the night, but even that first night when he’d been in a state of utter turmoil, there was something satisfying in knowing Clair was in his bed. He’d looked in on her more than once, baffled by the spell she’d cast over him, but pleased with her presence.
He was a possessive man with possessive urges, he supposed, trying to rationalize how out of sorts he was. But this exaggerated reaction made him more determined than ever to ensure that this arrangement stayed on clearly defined footings. She had a place in his life and it was a narrow one.
“Invitations will be pouring in after last night. I’ll call to let you know where we’re going and what time to be ready.” He collected his briefcase, willing his driver to ring. “I have accounts at all the boutiques on Tverskaya. Ivan will come back after he drops me and you can shop or Lazlo can arrange a private guide if you’d like to tour the city.”
Clair tried not to gape, but she was still trying to process her reaction to last night’s expulsion from his bed and all she could think was, So this is what a mistress does with her downtime.
Logically she understood that a strong man like Aleksy would hate that he’d revealed any sort of vulnerability, so she tried not to let his plan to abandon her cut too deeply. She’d spent hours last night coaching herself not to take any of what happened between them to heart. This wasn’t personal; it was convenience. Sex. Good sex.
She licked her lips, trying not to get off track, but memories still crept through, warming her with insidious desire. She suppressed them, considering the shopping and sightseeing offers. Getting out sounded good, but she didn’t need anything after the spree in Paris. She just wanted to clear her head and remember how to be herself.
“Don’t bother anyone. I’d rather see where my feet take me,” she decided.
His macho eyebrows came together like clashing titans. “You want to walk? Alone?”
The incredible sexism in the remark got her back up. “Do you think I’ll get lost? I’ll print a map before I leave.”
“It’s not safe,” he impressed on her with another stern frown.
Clair dismissed that with a wave. “I’ve lived alone in London for five years.”
“Moscow isn’t London, Clair. Kidnappings are on the rise—”
“Who’s going to kidnap me?” She splayed a hand on her chest, forcing a laugh, but the need to state the obvious gave a surprising pluck against her heartstrings. “I don’t have any family to threaten. Remember?”
“Do you think the paparazzi at the Bolshoi haven’t printed photos of the woman with me last night? Even without that you’re young, pretty, well dressed. You don’t speak the language. Opportunists are out there and you should never, ever underestimate what people will do for money. I don’t.” His scar stood out stark white against his flush of emotion.
Foreboding slithered through her. She knew then that his scar was not the result of a tragically placed ice patch and a broken windshield. Aleksy had been indelibly marked by violence. Internal brakes wanted to screech the whole world to a stop so she could somehow process that, but how? There was no erasing what had happened to him.
A poignant ache flooded her at the same time. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached out with all the familiarity that had developed between them last night. Cupping his jaw, she lifted herself on tiptoes, aware of him stiffening as she leaned into him. Her lips almost brushed the puckered line before he abruptly set her away, jerking his head back.
“What are you doing?”
His rebuff tore her in two. She winced, regretting the lapse in her reserve, but he had no idea how few people ever showed concern for her—and after whatever he’d been through…
“Thank you for trying to look out for me.” She forced the words out.
He tugged the lapels of his overcoat as if he were fitting armor back into place and closed a few buttons. Glancing at his watch, he took a step toward the door, speaking over his shoulder dismissively, “You’ll stay in, then? Or call Lazlo for an escort?”
Her silence made him pause. He turned another weighty frown in her direction.
Clair curled her toes in her slippers. It would be so easy to let her self-reliance crumble and allow this protective, strong-willed, incredibly attractive man to run her life. What about when they were through, though? She’d be back to taking care of herself. She had to hold on to her independence.
“I’m not your kidnap victim.” She tried to sound wry, but for some reason her lips trembled and her heart skipped a beat. “I’ll go out if I want to.”
“Despite the risk,” he snapped, temper sharpening his voice.
“It’s not that great a risk!” She folded her arms, stopping short of saying he was overreacting. Obviously his experience had taught him differently. Determined to hold her own, she reasoned, “When you want to do something, who do you ask? No one, right? Same here.”
His jaw tightened. He was used to everyone answering to him, that much was clear. The precisely machined, titanium wheels in his head seemed to whir at top speed as he sought a suitable rejoinder.
“I’m not trying to be obstinate,” she said, checking her flawless manicure.
“But you won’t give me your word.”
“It would be a lie.”
With a hiss of impatience, he set down the briefcase, its weight hitting the tiles with a hard thunk. His mobile sounded and he answered with a staccato burst of Russian before tossing the device on the hall table and shedding his overcoat, his stare holding hers with antagonistic force.
Clair swallowed and fell back a step. “What?”
“You won’t stay at home as I’ve asked, so now I have to take action, don’t I?” He began loosening the knot at his throat.
“What does that mean? You’re going to tie me up?” Genuine alarm made her retreat several feet in the face of his deliberate advance.
“It means I have to change and go with you.” He yanked his tie free and draped it over her shoulder as he passed, voice pithy and displeased, but he still made her grin as he said, “Save the tying up for after dark.”
* * *
Clair reminded herself she was not behaving like a spoiled socialite. She was a fully grown adult making her own decisions, and Aleksy could do the same. She wasn’t keeping him from his work. His pacing and brooding would not make her feel guilty.
She refused to set herself up for criticism either, so she took the precaution of checking the weather even though the sky was intensely blue and the sun glanced brilliantly off Moscow’s blanket of snow. The modiste in Paris had tut-tutted about Moscow’s temperatures, taking advantage of Aleksy’s open account to empty her winter fashion collection into Clair’s possession. After noting the windchill warning, Clair pulled on warm socks over the cuffs of her skinny jeans and layered a snug waffle print under a woolen turtleneck.
Her new faux fur boots were adorable as well as functional, their trim matching a smart leather jacket in the same buff tones. She topped it all with a corduroy baker boy hat and a pair of sunglasses worth more than her last pay packet. When she appeared, Aleksy said nothing, only shrugged into a thick ski jacket and laced up sturdy boots.
Clair paused inside the exit doors to check directions with the doorman. His English was excellent, but he stammered as he answered her questions, one eye on where Aleksy waited with detached patience. Clair took care to write down the street names phonetically so she could find her way back—exactly as she would have done if Aleksy weren’t coming with her.
“Planning to ditch me?” he asked as they left the building.
“Of course not.” Outside, the wind cut like a broadsword, making all her muscles contract and her breath stop in her lungs. She had to clench her teeth against them chattering. “Do you have a preference which way we go?”
“This is your walk.”
Clair looked around her, determined not to let his attitude send her slinking back up to the flat. Taking a moment to get her bearings, she started toward the river, not stopping until they were overlooking the frozen water from a bridge twenty minutes later.
As she marveled at the jagged ice squares forming a broken path in front of the Kremlin, Aleksy withdrew a lip balm from his coat pocket and handed it to her.
So she wasn’t completely prepared. Smoothing balm over her already drying lips, she thanked him and handed it back, getting a funny feeling in her center when she watched him use it too.
“You must be outside in winter often if you’re ready for the weather,” she said.
“It’s still in my pocket from the last time I went skiing.”
Oh. Of course. “Do you ski a lot?” Somehow she couldn’t connect that detail to a man who was built like an athlete but didn’t seem given to using his body outdoors when he could watch the financials from a treadmill.
“When I visit my resort, I do.”
“Oh.” Of course. “Is your ski hill here in Russia?”
“Canada. It’s a heli operation. A good investment,” he added.
“Of course,” she murmured, smiling privately. Heaven forbid Aleksy simply buy something because he liked it. No doubt he thought she was a good investment.
That thought pinched enough that she wanted to get away from it. She began walking and he paced her, his formidable presence drawing startled looks, but ones of recognition. The average Russian citizen seemed to know him better than she did.
“What other sorts of enterprises am I keeping you from today? The internet said you got your start in road and rail transport.”
He took a moment to absorb that she’d been cyber-stalking him, then answered, “Lumber first, then transport. Other types of manufacturing. Real estate of all kinds. A shipyard.” He scowled.
“That one isn’t such a good investment?” Clair guessed.
“No, it’s very sound.” His frown cleared to what looked like pride. “All of my ventures have excellent teams in charge.”
“Then why the dismay?” she asked.
Aleksy was frowning because he couldn’t think of one thing he was being “kept from” by this stylish blonde in her smart boots and cute hat. The way she was watching him so closely, trying to read his thoughts, was the exact reason he’d wanted to avoid her today. If her penetrating glances weren’t bad enough, she was provoking yet more self-examination and he didn’t like it.
“I’m thinking of what I would be doing in the office if I were there,” he lied.
Her fine-boned jaw tensed, accepting the minor set down without comment as she looked away and walked on in silence.
He’d wanted to seal her lips against further questions, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her. The truth was, he didn’t know what he’d be doing at the office. His strategy had always been to set the personnel in place so a business ran itself, paying him dividends and allowing him to expand to the next challenge. Each new enterprise had been a step toward overtaking Van Eych, but there were no more steps. He’d reached the finish line. Time to put the game away. The work he’d put into amassing his assets suddenly seemed as pointless as tapping a plastic piece around a cardboard path. Yes, the wealth he’d accumulated would always need direction to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life, but it hadn’t accomplished what it was meant to; he was still eaten by guilt.
And still confronting a gaping emptiness in his life that could never be filled.
A bright glint flicked in his periphery, dragging his attention over Clair’s head to a man with a camera. He wasn’t dressed for the weather and looked miserable. When Aleksy confronted him with a glare, he scurried off, not giving Aleksy the chance to turn Clair and say, See? He was staked outside the penthouse and followed us.
Disturbed, Aleksy followed the man with his eyes while he made a mental note to increase his personal security. The typical paparazzo didn’t care if his target saw him. That kind of surveillance spoke of someone sniffing out skeletons in closets. A suffocating feeling rose like a band to close around his chest.
Clair’s small hand suddenly gripped his down-stuffed sleeve, pouring buoyant lightness into the dark turmoil roiling inside him. Her wonder-struck expression made his heart lurch into a painful, stumbling gallop.
“When you said the streets were dangerous— Am I imagining things or is that a bear?” Clair tore her gaze from the astonishing sight down the block to catch Aleksy watching her with an expression of heartrending struggle on his face.
He turned his face quickly to look. By the time he looked back, the only emotion he expressed was sardonic humor. “Maslenitsa.”
Clair’s nerve endings were still vibrating as she searched for traces of what she had thought she’d seen in his eyes, but whatever had been there was gone. She ducked her head so she wouldn’t give away how dejected his shift in mood made her.
Get a grip, she ordered herself, and released his arm, repeating the word he’d used. “What is it?”
“A festival to welcome Spring. Like Mardi Gras. Except we have bears, fistfights and troika rides.”
“Judging by the first two, I imagine the third is bronco-busting a reindeer? And what makes you think spring has arrived?”
Aleksy chuckled, the rich sound so unexpected Clair had to swallow her heart back to where it belonged. He soon dispelled her misconception by securing them a ride in a sleigh pulled by three horses. Snuggling her into his side, he let the English-speaking driver tuck them under a blanket and educate her on the festival, which was pagan in origin, but also related to Lent. When Clair expressed too much interest in the bear wrestling contest, the old man turned in his seat. “Not for you, malyutka. Wrestling is for old men who only have vodka to keep them warm.” He winked at Aleksy.
The man ended by fetching Clair a plate of blini, round pancakes covered in caviar, mushrooms, butter and sour cream.
“I can’t eat all this. You’ll have to buy me a whole new wardrobe,” Clair protested after a few bites of the deliciously rich food. “Here. Please,” she prompted Aleksy.
“No.” He held up an adamant hand. “I can’t eat pancakes.”
“Too many as a child?” she teased, imagining him as a strapping boy gobbling everything in sight.
“Far too many,” he said grimly. “If you can’t eat it, give it to the dog.”
She followed his nod to where a German shepherd was licking a plate, the owner unconcerned. Clair let the dog wolf down what was left of her blini and disposed of the trash, her mind stuck on Aleksy’s remark.
They moved under an ornately carved archway built of ice to a park filled with ice sculptures. The angels, castles and mythical creatures were beginning to thaw, their sharpest edges blurred, but they were still starkly beautiful, transparent and glinting in the sun.
“The driver said the festival has only been revived recently. You weren’t eating pancakes just for Lent growing up, were you?” she mused aloud, stepping back and hiding behind her camera to keep the question less personal.
“No, we ate them for survival,” he said flatly, gaze focused somewhere beyond the stunning sculptures.
“You weren’t working for Grigori then?”
“I was hardly working at all. My mother wouldn’t let me quit school.”
Clair lowered her camera. “Somehow I can’t imagine you taking orders from anyone, even your own mother.”
“I would have given her anything,” he said with a gruff thread of torture weaving through his tone. “I couldn’t give her what she really wanted—my father’s life back. I worked ahead and was in my last semester when Grigori hired me. My mother still worked at first, and at least we ate something besides pancakes. I gave her that much, at least, before she withered away.”
His bitter self-recrimination caught her off guard, making her want to touch him again, but she was learning. He would talk a little, but only if they kept it to the facts.
“Cancer?” she guessed, unable to help being affected by his loss. He gave an abbreviated nod and she murmured, “That’s tragic.”
“It was suicide,” he bit out. “She knew something was wrong and didn’t seek treatment. I would have done anything—” His jaw bit into the word. “But she felt like a burden on me.” His hand opened, empty and draped with futility before he shoved it into his pocket. “And she wanted to be with my father.”
Clair caught a sharp breath, frozen with the need to offer him comfort, but very aware she couldn’t reveal too much empathy right now.
“She must have loved him very much,” she murmured, voice involuntarily husky.
“She was shattered by his death. Broken.” His gaze fixed on a sculpture that had fallen over and splintered into a million pieces, its original form impossible to discern. “I hated seeing her like that. Hated knowing I—” He cut himself off and shuddered, looking around as though he’d just come back into himself. “Are you finished here?”
Clair huddled in the constricting layer of her jacket, aching for Aleksy even as she silently willed him to finish what he’d started to say, sensing he needed to exorcise a particularly cruel demon. Yes, she needed to keep from becoming too connected to him, but she couldn’t ignore his terrible pain.
Carefully stowing her camera in her pocket, she put her hand on his arm. He stiffened against her touch, rejecting her attempt to get through to him.
“I’m sure you did what you could. Don’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t control,” she said.
“Who else is there to blame?” he countered roughly, utter desolation in the gaze that struck hers like a mallet before he yanked it away.
A name popped into her head and she spoke it impulsively. “Victor?”
“Chto?” The word came out in a puff of condensed breath as he swung his head to glare at her.
“Did Victor—” It sounded stupid as she thought it through, but she’d been keeping up with the headlines in London. Victor’s perfidies were being revealed with glee by the press. Victims were pouring out of the woodwork day by day. Aleksy’s hatred of the man was bone deep. His remark from last night, “after my father was killed,” still rang in her brain. Perhaps she was being melodramatic, but…?
“Did Victor have anything to do with how you lost your father?” she asked, tensing with dread as she tested this very dangerous ground.
A spasm of anguished emotions worked across his dark expression. There was grief and the reflexive hostility anyone showed when their deepest pain was exposed, but there were other things too. Frustration. Resolve. Remorse?
“It’s not a connection I can prove,” he said through lips that barely moved.
Her whole body felt plunged into an ice bath. To hear her vague suspicion met with such a condemning remark gave her goose bumps. He believed Victor had played a part in his father’s death. No wonder he held her in such contempt for accepting generosity from a man with no right to the wealth he’d used to dazzle and persuade her. She felt sick for letting the advantages Victor offered outweigh a proper examination of the type of man he was.
Clair barely recalled the walk back, lost in absorbing the gravity of the injury Victor had dealt to Aleksy’s family. No wonder Aleksy was such a hard, bitter man. The greater wonder was that he hadn’t swept her onto the street the way he’d threatened to.
“Are you all right?” he asked when they entered the suite.
She looked up from removing her shoes, startled to see they were in the apartment. “F-Fine.” Her lips were numb. “I think I need a warm bath.” She could barely face him. “Walking might have been a bad idea after all.”
His scarred cheek ticked in silent agreement.
Clair swallowed. “You can go into your office if you want. I won’t go out again. I promise.”
* * *
“You’re still here.”
Clair’s bemused voice startled him, in a good way. She looked better. Her face was clean of makeup, her cheeks glowing from the heat of her bath. She wore yoga pants and a thickly woven pullover that hugged her bottom and clung to her thighs. Gorgeous.
He swallowed.
She’d been so wan after their morning out that he’d been worried about her, which unnerved him; he didn’t normally feel more than superficial concern for anyone. She was turning him inside out.
“What do you have there?” he asked, trying to distract himself, rising with the intention of taking her load of laptop and files.
“I was going to work on the foundation in here, but if you’d rather I used the dining room—”
“No, here is fine.” He looked at the cover of the laptop balanced on the stack of file folders as he set everything on the desk. The label jumped out at him with the company logo and its scrolled initials: V.V.E.
“It…was something he gave me to work on, then said I should keep it.” She bit her lip, her upward glance culpable.
Aleksy tensed. The man was dead, but he just wouldn’t die.
“I’ll get rid of it,” Clair said flatly. “I just want the foundation files off it. Then I’ll throw it in the incinerator. Honestly, I feel so sick with myself!” She covered her cheeks with her hands, her blue eyes clouded with repentance. “I didn’t realize he contributed to your father’s death. You must be so disgusted with me for having anything to do with him. I am.”
Mental walls were clashing into place, trying to lock out what she was saying, but the words were spoken. He couldn’t ignore them. All he’d said earlier crept around him like coils of barbed wire, warning him any move would only tangle him up more painfully. He didn’t know why he’d let himself delve back into his mother’s grief or Victor’s role in his father’s death. He just wished he could forget them.
He suddenly stopped cold. What was he thinking? For twenty years those horrors had been uppermost in his life, driving him toward making Victor pay for them. To put any of it out of his mind was a betrayal of his parents’ memory—but somehow the passionate hatred that had kept him going was now evaporating.
While Clair was seeping in.
His heart gave a hard, uncomfortable lurch—she was starting to mean too much to him.
She inhaled deeply, rousing him from his thoughts. He realized she was interpreting his expression and grim silence as confirmation that he did hold her in contempt. He scowled. “We met because of him. That’s it,” he tried.
“How can you say that when it’s obvious you’re angry and hate me for having anything to do with him?”
He was angry. Something was rising in him that he didn’t even understand. Clair wasn’t stupid, weak or avaricious. Why, then, had she let herself become involved with such a man?
“All right, yes,” he ground out with enough fervor to make her start. “I want to know how, Clair. How could you let him near you? How could you not see him for what he was?” Unexpected, bile-green jealousy rose in him. “How could you—”
Not wait for me.
He jerked his head to the side, hands fisting defensively, terrified by what he’d almost said. His heart pounded and sweat broke on his brow and upper lip. He reminded himself that for all his possessive urges, he really had no right to her.
“In part, I was just very naive,” she said with quiet self-reproach.
“I know you’re naive,” he countered, incensed by the reminder. Everything in him was programmed to protect that vulnerability in her, even from—especially from—himself. After all, if he’d finished his story earlier, he’d have revealed that he was ultimately responsible for his father’s death. That his father had stepped into a fight Aleksy had started and that when Aleksy had finished it, he’d walked away with two lives on his conscience. Three if he counted his mother.
He kept looking for qualities in Clair that he disliked so he could feel less disgusted with himself for pressuring her into this arrangement, but she kept reinforcing that he was taking advantage of an innocent. Her next words proved it.
“It was the first time I’d been singled out as special. I was susceptible to that,” Clair admitted in a small voice, eyebrows pulling together with humiliation.
Aleksy seemed to freeze into an even stiller statue. Clair experienced that old feeling of wanting to fade into the wallpaper, hiding her flaws so no one would see why she didn’t deserve to be chosen and taken home. It was painful to stand tall and own her mistake. She clasped the edge of his desk, drawing strength from its solid weight.
“When I was growing up, the home had an arrangement with the school nearby. If we kept our noses clean, we could attend and have the same chance at scholarships and higher education as the rich kids. I gave it a shot, but I wasn’t a genius, just average. And I wasn’t rich. I always wore secondhand uniforms, never had trendy shoes, never got invited to parties. The kids weren’t trying to be mean. I just wasn’t one of them.”
Aleksy’s intense scrutiny nearly evaporated her voice. It was so hard to crack herself open and reveal this tainted, imperfect neediness inside her.
“When I got to London I wasn’t special there either. I worked three jobs to make rent, so I didn’t have time to date or party even if I’d wanted to. Then along came Victor. He treated me like I was the only one who could get things right. He needed me to be places for him and when I walked down the hall, people noticed me because they thought I was important.” The last part tasted bitter. She’d known she wasn’t important, but she’d liked that others had been deluded into thinking it. How pathetic.
Letting her hips rest on the edge of the desk, she gripped it with both hands, shoulders hunching as she spilled the rest. “He gave me things I’d never had, money for clothes. New clothes. He said he’d support the foundation.”
“I’m doing that. Do I make you feel special?” His harsh voice grated over her exposed, sensitive core.
It sounded like a trick question. “I realize I’m just another mistress to you. I don’t expect you to treat me as anything special,” she said.
