Читать книгу One Kiss in... Moscow: Kholodov's Last Mistress / The Man She Shouldn't Crave / Strangers When We Meet - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 11

One year later

SERGEI stared moodily out at the Manhattan skyline as several businessmen around the conference table rustled their papers.

‘Mr Kholodov …?’

Reluctantly he turned back to the table of executives, who were all eyeing him with different degrees of wary unease. He was acquiring their company, and this meeting was no more than a formality, the signing of a few papers. Clearly he was taking too long. He beckoned to the man nearest to him.

‘I’m ready to sign.’

Sergei scrawled his signatures on half a dozen forms, his mind still on the city skyline.

Hadley Springs … about four hours north of New York City.

Even now, a year later, he hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t forgotten a single thing about that evening. About Hannah Pearl.

He pushed the papers away, barely listening to the babble of voices as they went over the transferring of assets. What was one more company when he already had a dozen? Too restless to sit any longer, he rose from the table and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over midtown, Central Park a green haze in the distance.

‘Keep talking,’ he said tersely, his back to the table. ‘I’m listening.’ He wasn’t.

Was she the same? he wondered. As naive and optimistic and unspoiled as she’d been that night?

You’re a better man than you think you are.

Or maybe life had finally taught her something, helped her to grow a necessarily calloused and cynical hide. Maybe he had. The thought gave him a little pang of loss, as absurd an emotion as that was. Everyone needed to toughen up. How else did you survive?

‘Mr Kholodov …’

Did she still have her shop? It had seemed a lonely life, toiling away in a little shop she didn’t seem to really like all by herself. She didn’t even like knitting. Yet she’d kept at it, out of loyalty to her parents, and maybe a misplaced optimism that she could make it work. He knew enough about business to have assessed in a second that struggling little shops in the middle of nowhere didn’t last long.

Had she moved, then? Found a life for herself somewhere else? Who knew, maybe she’d gone back to school. Maybe she was married.

I wouldn’t even know where to go.

Amazing, Sergei thought distantly, how much he remembered. How much he still thought about her, even when he tried not to. Amazing how one night had made such a difference.

Several months after Hannah had left—Grigori had made sure she had her documents and a first-class plane ticket—Sergei had done something he’d never, ever considered doing before.

He’d contacted a private investigator, and issued instructions for the man to make initial inquiries about Alyona. About finally finding her. He hadn’t seen her in over twenty years … since she was four years old, and he fourteen, both of them already weary of life.

Now the investigator was still trying to follow up various leads. The records at the orphanage had been spotty and sometimes plain wrong. And twice Sergei had told him to stop, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Then he’d thought of Hannah, of her guileless smile.

Tell me one really good thing that’s happened to you. Or, better yet, one really good person …

Someone who made a difference.

And he’d ordered the man to start his inquiries again. Maybe he did, after all these years, want to believe. Believe as Hannah did, in something—someone—good.

You have to be the most refreshingly—and annoyingly—optimistic person I’ve ever met.

It was annoying, Sergei reflected, that he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head. Even now it made him angry.

‘Mr Kholodov …’

Finally Sergei turned from the window, focused on the dozen executives waiting for him. He hadn’t been listening at all.

‘Fine,’ he said brusquely, and they all nodded in relief. He had no idea what he’d just agreed to, but it hardly mattered. He’d signed the papers.

He turned back to the window. Hadley Springs was just four hours away. It would only be a matter of minutes on the internet to determine if she still lived there, and what her address was. And if she did … he could hire a car and be there this afternoon.

The thought shocked him, even though it felt right. Amazingly right. He could see her again, finally satisfy his curiosity—and more than that. The attraction that had exploded between them was real, and if it was finally satisfied he could get her out of his head. Forget her completely.

Wasn’t that what he wanted?

Or did he just want to see her again, and never mind the reason?

It didn’t matter. He’d always been a man of action, and now he knew his course. He turned back to the men assembled at the table, waiting on his word.

‘I believe we’re finished here, gentlemen.’

The bell on the front door to Knit & Pearl jingled merrily and Hannah looked up from her rather grim perusal of the account books. ‘Hi, Lisa.’

The older woman smiled in return and placed a carrier bag of hand-knit sweaters on the counter. ‘How’s it looking?’ she said with a nod to the books.

Hannah grimaced. ‘Not good.’ Lisa nodded in sympathy and, smiling, Hannah closed the book and nodded towards the bag. ‘You brought some more sweaters?’

‘And some hat and mitten sets. I know it’s nearly spring, but it’s still chilly and some people like to do their Christmas shopping early.’

‘Great.’ Hannah rose to look through the merchandise. Lisa Leyland had become a great friend over the last year. She’d sailed into the empty shop one chilly spring morning, several weeks after Hannah had returned from Moscow and had been feeling particularly low. After her husband had been made redundant, Lisa had needed some creative sources of income, and she’d suggested to Hannah that she sell her hand-knit sweaters through the shop and take a fifty-per-cent cut; they were some of the most popular items that Hannah had ever sold. A few months after that Lisa offered to run knitting classes in the evenings, which had brought in a little more business.

Still, none of it was enough to keep the shop afloat, a conclusion Hannah had been drawing steadily over the last few months. No wonder her parents had racked up such huge bills, she’d realised dismally. The shop had never been a going concern, and her little improvements—the ones she could afford—weren’t making much of a difference.

She refolded the last of the sweaters and put them to one side for pricing. ‘These are beautiful, Lisa.’

Lisa nodded her thanks before gesturing once again to the account books lying on the counter. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked quietly.

Hannah sighed and rubbed her forehead. She felt the beginnings of a headache and an incredible weariness in every joint and muscle. She’d been trying to make this shop work for so long—certainly the last year, and sometimes it felt like her whole life. And she wasn’t sure she could do it any more. She knew she didn’t want to.

‘Keep going as long as I can, I suppose,’ she said to Lisa. ‘I don’t know what else I can do.’

‘You could sell it.’

Hannah stilled. This wasn’t the first time they’d talked about this issue, but it was the first time Lisa had said it so directly. Sell the shop. Give up on everything her parents had done, had believed in … or at least she’d thought they believed in.

Since returning from Russia, she’d sometimes wondered. The things Sergei Kholodov had made her question, the discovery of their deceit she’d made upon her return … they’d changed her. Perhaps for ever.

‘I’m not ready to sell it,’ she told Lisa. ‘I’m not even sure there’s a buyer.’

‘You don’t know until you try.’

Hannah shook her head. She wasn’t ready to think like that. This shop—just as she’d once told Sergei—had been everything to her parents, and it was all she had left of them now. Letting it go made her feel both sad and scared—and guilty, because part of her desperately wanted to do it.

I don’t even know where I would go.

Funny, and strange, that it had all started with Sergei. Even now she tried not to think of him, but she just couldn’t help herself. He slipped into her thoughts, under her defences. With a few pointed observations—and a devastating kiss—he’d set her doubts in motion. They’d toppled her certainties like dominoes, one after the other, creating an inevitable and depressing chain reaction until her whole world felt flattened and empty.

Now she wasn’t certain of anything any more. She wasn’t annoyingly optimistic either. Not that he would care. Not that he’d ever given her a thought this last year.

I don’t do virgins … especially not ones who barely know how to kiss.

Even now the memory made Hannah cringe. What had she been thinking, telling him she didn’t believe him? Insisting he wanted her? The memory could still make her flush with humiliation. She’d had a lot of certainties ripped away from her, starting with the most basic: that Sergei had been interested in her at all.

Forcing her mind away from the memories, she turned to Lisa with as cheerful a smile as she could muster. ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t be telling me to sell! This is your livelihood too, you know.’

Lisa smiled wryly. ‘I’m hardly making millions selling a few sweaters, Hannah. And I want to see you happy.’

‘I am happy.’ The response was automatic, instinctive, and also a lie. She wasn’t happy. Not the way she’d once been, or at least thought she’d been. Annoyingly optimistic. She wondered if she even knew how to be that kind of happy again, if such a thing were possible.

Or maybe she’d just grown up.

‘I should go,’ Lisa said as she buttoned up her coat once more. ‘Dave has a job interview this afternoon and I want to be home when he gets back.’

‘I hope it went well.’ Lisa’s husband had been on several job interviews, and none of them had panned out yet. They’d been surviving on Lisa’s income and what temporary work Dave could get.

‘Hope springs eternal,’ Lisa said with a smile. She laid a comforting hand on Hannah’s shoulder. ‘Take care of yourself, sweetie. And think about it.’

Hannah just nodded, her gaze sliding away from Lisa because she knew her friend saw too much. She didn’t want to make promises she couldn’t keep, wasn’t ready even to think about. She couldn’t sell the shop. Even the thought still felt like a betrayal.

You are thinking about selling this shop. You need to have your own dream.

Hannah let out a groan of frustration, annoyed at herself for still thinking about Sergei Kholodov. Still remembering just about every word he’d said. It had been over a year since the night they’d had dinner, since they’d kissed. A kiss she couldn’t forget, a kiss that lived on in her dreams and left her restless, awakened by aching and unfulfilled desire.

She shoved the account books into a drawer, determined to think about it later. But when? The question was a near-constant refrain. For the last year she’d been focused on keeping the shop afloat, trying what new initiatives and merchandise she could afford, but nothing was enough. The mortgage on the shop and house were paid, and she made enough to live a frugal, meagre existence, but that was all the income from the shop provided. One bad season, an unforeseen repair or accident … bankruptcy and destitution hovered just a breath away.

The string of bells on the door jingled again, and Hannah turned with a ready if rather weary smile for a customer. She felt the smile freeze on her face as she took in the dark-suited figure standing so incongruously in the doorway of the cosy craft shop. It was Sergei.

She was the same. Exactly the same. Sergei felt a fierce rush of something close to joy—mingled with relief—at the sight of Hannah standing there, her hair tousled about her face, the sunlight catching its glinting strands, her eyes as wide and violet as he remembered. Smiling. Always smiling. Perhaps she was actually glad to see him.

After Grigori had done some digging and confirmed that Hannah still lived in Hadley Springs, still had her little shop, Sergei had hired a car and driven all afternoon to get here. He’d cruised down the one main street, noticing the dilapidated diner, the for-rent signs in blank-faced shop windows. The only stores doing a decent business were a discount warehouse and a garage that sold tractor parts. And Hannah’s shop. No wonder it was struggling. Housed in an old weathered barn on the edge of the tiny town, the paint was flaking, the sign barely discernible. Inside it was a little better, with cubbyholes filled with bright wool and stacks of sweaters, but Hadley Springs was hardly a tourist spot. It was small and shabby and depressing and even though he was glad—too glad—to see her, Sergei was half amazed that Hannah was still here.

‘Hello, Hannah.’

Sergei watched the smile slide off her face and he felt a jolt because he recognised the blankness that replaced it, that careful ironing out of expression. He did it himself all the time, had ever since he’d been a child and realised that tears and laughter both earned punishment. Better to be silent. Better not to reveal a single thing.

Yet he hadn’t expected it from Hannah.

‘What are you—?’ She paused, moistened her lips—just as rose-pink as he remembered—and started again. ‘What are you doing here?’

He smiled faintly. ‘Well, I didn’t come to see the sights, I can assure you.’ She still looked blank so he clarified, ‘I came to see you.’

‘To see me,’ Hannah repeated. At first Sergei thought Hannah sounded incredulous, which he could understand, but then she let out a hollow laugh and with another jolt of shock he realised she sounded like him. She sounded cynical.

Perhaps she had changed after all.

Hannah stared at Sergei in disbelief, half expecting him to disappear, like a mirage or an impostor. Maybe a ghost. He couldn’t be real. He couldn’t be here, having come all the way from Russia just to see her?

It was impossible. Ridiculous. Real. He was here, and he was still staring at her, smiling faintly, waiting.

For what?

Her mind spun, unable to fathom why. The memory of the derisive, dismissive smile he’d given her as he’d put his arm around that woman—Varya—was still frozen in her brain. In her heart. He’d tired of her, just as he’d said. He’d wanted her gone. So why on earth had he come and found her?

She lifted her chin, regarding him coolly. ‘What do you want?’

‘I told you, to see you.’

‘Why?’

He paused, his head cocked, his gaze sweeping slowly over her. Something flickered across his face, a dark emotion Hannah couldn’t identify, and then his face cleared. Blanked. ‘I wanted to see if you were the same.’

‘The same?’ Hannah repeated sharply. ‘What do you mean? I’m a year older, in any case.’ She turned away from him to fold yet again the sweaters Lisa had dropped off. Her hands trembled.

‘And a year wiser, perhaps.’

She let out a sharp bark of a laugh. ‘If you mean am I still annoyingly optimistic, then no, I’m not.’

His breath came out in a soft sigh. Hannah didn’t turn around. ‘Refreshingly optimistic, I also said.’

‘It hardly matters.’ She pressed her hands down hard on the soft pile of sweaters in a desperate bid to stop their trembling. Why did he affect her so much? Still? They’d had one evening together. One kiss. She should barely remember his name.

Sergei who?

The thought was laughable. When he’d come into the shop, despite the shock that had raced through her, another part of her had felt as if she’d been waiting for him to come. Had remembered exactly the piercing blue of his eyes, the hard line of his jaw. The feel of his lips.

‘So.’ She turned around, her hands laced together, fingers wrapped around knuckles as hard as she could. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Not in the least.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I have no idea why you’re here, Sergei.’

He gave her a rueful smile, a smile that was soft and strangely gentle, and so at odds with the man she remembered, the man she had convinced herself in the last year was only cold. Calculating. Cruel. ‘I don’t know, either.’

‘Well, then.’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Maybe you should just go.’

‘Go? I just drove four hours to get here, Hannah. I’m not leaving quite that quickly. And,’ he added, his voice dropping to a husky murmur she remembered far too well, ‘I don’t think you want me to.’

‘You don’t know anything about me.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ The words were a lazy challenge.

‘I’m quite sure. A lot has happened to me in the last year, Sergei. I might have seemed rather simple and naive when we had dinner in Moscow, but I’m very different now, and I really can’t imagine why you’re here or what you want.’

‘Why are you so angry?’

‘Why?’ She stared at him. ‘You really need to ask? After—after the way you treated me? Made me feel?’

‘It was a year ago, Hannah.’

‘And when you waltz back into my life it brings it all back.’

‘You see,’ Sergei said, stepping closer, close enough for her to breathe in the tangy scent of his aftershave, ‘I have this theory.’

She planted her fists on her hips and gave him as scathing a look as she could muster. ‘Oh, really?’

‘Really. And it goes like this.’

‘I don’t recall asking to hear your theory.’

He smiled faintly, and she felt that singeing bolt of awareness. Still. Her response to him had been—and clearly still was—impossible to ignore or deny. ‘Humour me,’ he said softly, and too weary—as well as a tiny bit curious—to argue, Hannah just shrugged. ‘It goes like this,’ he repeated, taking a step closer to her. Hannah forced herself not to move. ‘You’re angry because you’re still affected. If you’d forgotten me, as you surely should have done, you wouldn’t be looking at me now as if you’d like to carve my heart out with a teaspoon.’

Her lips twitched in something close to a smile despite her determination to stay angry and in control. ‘I would, rather,’ she said. Her heart had started thudding in response to his words … and the truth they held.

He smiled, that mobile mouth she remembered so well curving in sensual triumph. ‘So you are affected.’

‘Only according to your outrageous theory.’

‘Oh, it’s not just my theory,’ Sergei told her softly. He’d stepped even closer now, only a hand-span away, so not only could she breathe in the scent of him but she could feel his heat. Remember his touch. ‘I have evidence,’ he continued in no more than a whisper, and with one finger he touched the pulse that fluttered wildly in her throat. And if that wasn’t evidence enough, her indrawn breath, a gasp of shock—or was it pleasure?—damned her all the more.

Colour flamed in her face and she wished she had the strength to say something cutting, or at least step away. The trouble was, it felt too good to be standing so near him. And the single touch of his finger on her skin sent her body spinning into sensual remembrance.

‘The thing is,’ Sergei continued, his finger lightly stroking the column of her throat, ‘I’m affected as well.’

Hannah shook her head, a matter of instinct. ‘No, you aren’t. You weren’t. I don’t know why you came here, Sergei, but—’ She dragged in a desperate breath and finally stepped away. ‘Surely you’ve satisfied your curiosity by now.’

He let his hand fall, his gaze resting on her thoughtfully. ‘Not even close.’

‘What do you want, then?’ she demanded, and heard the ragged note in her voice. She couldn’t hide anything.

‘To have dinner with you.’

‘Dinner?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘A meal? Food? Wine?’

And memories of another meal. Another night. Hannah knew she should shake her head, but somehow she couldn’t. She could only stare. Sergei smiled. ‘There must be a half-decent restaurant in this area.’

‘Half-decent, maybe,’ Hannah allowed, and his smile widened.

‘Show me?’

He made it a question, and, despite her absolute intention to say a sane and self-respecting no, Hannah opened her mouth and said something else instead. Something she could not keep herself from saying—and feeling—even as her mind hammered out a desperate protest. ‘All right.’