Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2016 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Maisey Yates - Страница 15
ОглавлениеUPSTAIRS, NIKOLAI HAD stirred when the doorbell had rung and had then flinched when the front door had slammed loudly on Max’s exit. When his cell phone began ringing beside the bed, he groaned in frustration and gave up the attempt to continue sleeping.
He checked his watch as he lifted his phone. He had had a couple of hours and that would have to do, he reasoned, springing out of bed and raking his fingers through his tousled black hair. Talking on the phone, he strode into the bathroom to splash his face and froze halfway there as his brain kicked in and he recognised the controlled distress in the voice he was listening to. His shoulders slumped as he voiced his sympathy at yet another piece of bad news and then he tossed his phone down in disgust. The bar manager had passed away shortly after Nikolai had left the hospital.
He had pulled on jeans and was wandering barefoot back into the bedroom when a flash of bright colour outside attracted his attention. The drapes hadn’t been pulled properly. A very distinctive car was parked on the other side of the road. It was a bright yellow Ferrari and Nikolai knew exactly who that car belonged to. For a split second he couldn’t credit the coincidence and then it dawned on him that Ella was in the house and he couldn’t relax until he had checked on her. He raced downstairs, saw the drawing-room door ajar, heard Ella’s muffled shriek of pain and kicked the door wide.
Suddenly the weight pinning Ella to the sofa was gone. She blinked in bewilderment and shock as Cyrus went flying back against the wall opposite where Nikolai had flung him after dragging him off her. She sat up just as Nikolai punched the older man hard in the stomach and shouted at him in Greek. Cyrus had attacked her, had torn at her jeans and she was bruised and sore and shaken and frightened. Only the fear that Nikolai might kill Cyrus made her intervene. She stumbled across the room and wrenched at Nikolai’s arm.
‘No...no, don’t hit him again. You’ve hurt him enough!’ she gasped as Cyrus, blood running down his face, which was already swelling from several hits, dragged himself up clumsily from the floor and stumbled frantically towards the door.
‘He hurt you!’ Nikolai vented between gritted white teeth as he strode after the fleeing older man.
Again, Ella grabbed his arm to hold him back and give Cyrus enough time to make it out through the front door. ‘If you kill him you’ll go to prison for it...is that what you want?’
A string of Greek curses erupted from Nikolai as Ella slammed the door protectively in his enemy’s wake. ‘I should’ve warned you about him.’
‘You told me not to be alone with him. I didn’t pay any heed,’ she mumbled guiltily.
‘He’s been accused of getting rough with women before,’ Nikolai divulged.
Blood dripped down onto the polished wooden floor and she grabbed his hand to examine his bruised and bleeding knuckles. ‘You need cleaning up,’ she said, angling him towards the stairs.
‘What happened before he attacked you?’
‘He asked me to marry him and when I told him I wasn’t interested he went off in a rage,’ she told him in a daze. ‘If Gramma hadn’t already hinted to me that she thought he had a more than personal interest in me, I would’ve been gobsmacked. As it was, I tried to be polite. It never once occurred to me that he could be thinking of me like that.’
So, Cyrus had proposed. He had intended marriage. It should’ve been a moment of triumph for Nikolai but it fell resoundingly flat. He had wounded his opponent but Ella had been wounded too. He was appalled that Cyrus had contrived to violently assault Ella and he felt incredibly guilty about that reality. After all, he knew exactly what Cyrus was like and he had virtually set Ella up as a target for the older man’s frustrated rage. She could’ve been raped just as his sister had been and the mere concept of Ella enduring such a violation made Nikolai feel sick with guilt and self-loathing. He was supposed to be in control of events, but somewhere along the line of his plotting he had become selfish and reckless and Ella had very nearly paid the ultimate price. How irresponsible was that?
Even worse, Ella was now valiantly trying to urge him up the stairs as if he were the injured party and in need of the support of her tiny frame. In another mood he would have laughed at the incongruity of her sympathy for him at that moment. But he was not in a laughing mood any more than he was in a triumphant one.
‘What did he do to you?’ Nikolai demanded, thrusting open the bedroom door.
‘He was trying to kiss me and I twisted my face away and he yanked at my hair. I swear he pulled a handful of it out by the roots,’ she whispered, massaging her sore scalp. ‘He flattened me on the sofa and started pulling at my clothes. I never thought of him as a big, strong man but he was much stronger than me. I don’t think I could’ve got him off me without your help... Thank you.’
‘No, don’t thank me,’ Nikolai said with distaste. ‘This is all my fault.’
‘I don’t see how,’ Ella pronounced, dabbing the blood from his hand and applying an antiseptic she had found in the cabinet. She was still trembling in shock from Cyrus’s assault and wondering in disbelief what had come over the older man. Had he simply lost his head in temper? Would he really have raped her? Fear and revulsion curdled low in her stomach. He had tried to rip off her jeans, she recalled with a shudder. There could be no mistake about the motivation of his attack.
‘His conduct is nothing to do with you,’ Ella continued a little unevenly as her breathing began to settle back to normal levels. ‘I was the one who kept up the friendship with Cyrus after Paul died. I used to talk about Paul with his uncle. I needed that outlet after the funeral.’
She fell silent, finally allowing herself to consider what Cyrus had told her about Paul. All the insecurities she had ever felt in her fiancé’s radius briefly returned to haunt her. Paul had been a real extrovert and very popular and when she had first known him she had very quickly fallen for him and longed for more than friendship. But nothing had come of her hopes until Paul had fallen ill. That was when she had become important to Paul and when he had first told her that he loved her. Her eyes prickling and burning, she crushed the memory, which now seemed soiled.
There was no point in revisiting the past and allowing Cyrus’s allegations to upset her. Paul was gone and her questions couldn’t be answered now. But was it possible that she had been blind to the reality of a man’s sexual lack of interest? Had she wasted four years of her life on a non-relationship? That was a very distressing thought.
‘We should’ve called the police on Cyrus,’ Nikolai breathed in a savage undertone. ‘Had him arrested for what he did to you—’
‘But thanks to you he didn’t really do anything. He certainly scared me out of my wits for a few minutes but I wouldn’t want to involve the police. He was incredibly generous to Paul while he was ill and, even though today he insisted that he only did all that for my benefit, I have to stay grateful for what he did do to help then,’ she framed shakily.
‘You’re crying...’ Nikolai registered belatedly as a solitary tear dropped on his hand.
Ella crammed a hand defensively against her wobbling mouth. ‘Sorry—’
‘No, let it out...you’ve had a very frightening experience,’ Nikolai pointed out, furious that he had let her stand there ministering to his minor injuries when she herself had been through so much more. Without hesitation he bent and swept her up into his arms. ‘You need to lie down for a while.’
‘Do you really think he would have r-ripped off my clothes and...?’
‘Yes, I do think that,’ Nikolai admitted as he rested her down gently on the disordered bed and sat down beside her. ‘Obviously he had wanted you for a very long time and your rejection would have hurt his ego. Make no mistake; Cyrus thinks he’s a hell of a good catch.’
‘To accept that all this time he’s been thinking of me like that and I hadn’t a clue...it’s horrible!’ Ella broke off with a sudden sob and Nikolai lifted her up into his arms, muttering what sounded like soothing things in Greek.
Ella let the tears fall against his shoulder, belatedly appreciating that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, that indeed all he was wearing was his jeans. He felt so hot against her cheek, like a muscular furnace, but she felt so incredibly safe and protected in his arms. ‘I’m sorry...so sorry about this.’
‘What are you sorry for? Cyrus assaulted you.’
‘He said that Paul had had a gay affair,’ she confided jaggedly, her heart beating like a hammer inside her. ‘And the awful thing is that it might be true and I’ll never really know why Paul—’
Comprehension entered Nikolai and he breathed in slow and deep. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
But it mattered to Ella, who had on several occasions felt humiliated by Paul’s physical restraint with her. Even Gramma had been surprised when Paul hadn’t asked Ella to move in with him. Had Paul ever wanted that kind of intimacy with her? His resistance had made her feel like less of a woman. The suspicion that that might have all been a front to hide his secret cut even deeper because she had believed that they were as close as two people could be without sex.
‘Cyrus would have said anything to sully your memories of his nephew,’ Nikolai opined. ‘He must’ve been very jealous of him.’
‘No, the worst thing is that I’m scared that Cyrus was telling the truth about Paul...a truth I was too stupid to see on my own!’ Ella gasped against a smooth, tanned shoulder, marvelling that she could be that close with Nikolai without him making any kind of move on her even though she knew how much he wanted her. That, she conceded dizzily, was yet one more striking difference between Cyrus and Nikolai. Nikolai wasn’t taking advantage, wouldn’t take advantage of her while she was upset. A vague sense of frustration and regret trickled through her in response to that recognition.
Nikolai usually ran a mile from crying women and he was at a loss with Ella. He didn’t hug but that was all right because she was the one doing the hugging. He didn’t know what to say, though, particularly when she referred to a gay affair. He was definitely out of his element there. Changing the subject struck him as the only possible option and he breathed in deep. ‘Desmond, the bar manager in the burns unit, died an hour after I left the hospital,’ he told her. ‘His son phoned to tell me.’
Ella froze and then jerked up her head to look at him. Her face was flushed and her little nose was red but her green eyes were wet and impossibly appealing, Nikolai registered helplessly. ‘I’m so sorry, Nikolai.’
‘He was a good guy,’ Nikolai volunteered. ‘I met him when I started working at the hotel. I was only eighteen. He trained me...’
‘What were you like at eighteen?’ she whispered, relieved to be sprung from her introspection.
It was yet another one of those occasions when Nikolai found a woman hard to comprehend. What did what he was like at eighteen have to do with anything? How was that relevant?
‘Cocky...horny,’ he murmured blankly, his mind elsewhere as he breathed in the scent of her hair. She smelt like strawberries. Was that her shampoo? He stroked long fingers down the back of her head, watching the bronze strands shimmer like silk in the light. He was hard as a rock below the jeans and that seriously bothered him because it was inappropriate after what Cyrus had done.
Ella tilted her head back and looked up into Nikolai’s lean dark face. She saw the raw hunger tightening his spectacular bone structure and the burn in his melted caramel eyes below the black velvet fringe of his lashes. ‘You have beautiful eyes,’ she told him truthfully, every fibre of her body suddenly prickling with physical awareness.
She had travelled from gay affairs to what he was like as a teenager to his eyes and that only reminded Nikolai why he rarely had conversations with women. He had sex with them and kept the talking to the absolute minimum. His strong jawline clenched. ‘I was telling you that Desmond had died...’
Ella felt the heat of shame suffuse her mortified face. ‘Yes.’
‘His family were with him at the end. He would’ve wanted that. He was very much a family man,’ he breathed gruffly.
And that catch in his dark deep drawl and the anguish he was struggling to contain in his stunning eyes simply fuelled Ella’s fascination with the male holding her. Nikolai Drakos was incredibly emotional. That great well of intense emotion was what he hid behind the cold front and he usually hid it well but just at that moment pretence was beyond him and she loved that too. He was being so open with her, so frank and natural. His attitude washed away the bad feelings Cyrus and his revelations had infused her with and she felt her own strength again.
‘Not that I know much about how normal families operate,’ Nikolai acknowledged thickly.
Her fingers slid over a bare tanned shoulder. His skin felt like satin and the physical heat he put out attracted her as potently as the sun on a cold day. She quivered, awesomely aware of the swelling fullness of her breasts and the prickling tightening of her nipples. She was in control, in full control of herself, yet when she looked at Nikolai it was hard to breathe or swallow because she was remembering what his mouth felt like on hers. And unlike Paul, Nikolai wanted her, she reminded herself with satisfaction. Beneath her thigh she could feel him primed and ready, something she had never felt with Paul. Paul hadn’t wanted her the way she’d wanted him but Nikolai did and couldn’t hide it. That knowledge clenched something deep down inside her and made her feel oddly giddy.
Her hand came up of its own volition and skated along the tempting fullness of his sensual lower lip. His eyes lit up like firecrackers when she met them boldly, wanting, craving, needing and for the very first time unashamed of her natural instincts.
‘Was that an invitation?’ Nikolai husked, a faint shudder racking his big, powerful frame because every atom of pent-up energy imprisoned inside him longed for release.
‘You need it gilt-edged and engraved?’ Ella teased, alight with her own daring, her own decision. He wanted her, she wanted him and it was normal and natural, she told herself firmly, even though somewhere deep down inside herself she was secretly shocked that she was the one taking the initiative.
‘Oh, no... I’m a much quicker study,’ Nikolai told her, sliding her down against the pillows and leaning down to trace her lush smiling mouth with his. In truth he wanted to flatten her to the bed and claim her body and soul like a Neanderthal. It took immense control to remember that she was innocent and deserving of the very best he could deliver.
The aggressive stroke of his tongue between her lips extracted a whimper of sound from the back of Ella’s throat. Her whole body pulsed with expectation. She wondered dimly when it had happened, when she had travelled from simply wanting him to the edge of an unbearable craving that she could no longer fight. And she didn’t care because there was no later or tomorrow or any kind of future in her thoughts, there was only this one special moment when she was finally making her choice and stepping out beyond the grief that had weighed her down for so long. His mouth crashed down on hers and she welcomed it, tipping her head back, parting her lips, all woman, all welcome. His passion enthralled her as much as the emotion he concealed as though it was something to be ashamed of.
‘I swear I could devour you,’ Nikolai swore against her swollen mouth.
He gazed down as her dreamy green eyes darkened to emerald, her bronze hair fanning round her head in a halo of vibrant colour. Cyrus had hurt and frightened her yet she still wanted Nikolai. It was a strangely humbling acknowledgement because he knew it meant that she trusted him. And yet he knew that he wasn’t worthy of her trust because he hadn’t told her what he had done. He crushed that train of thought to attend to the fact that she was still wearing far too many clothes.
Ella watched Nikolai yank off her jeans from the ankles and colour ran up over her chest as her serviceable black knickers were revealed. Nikolai tossed the jeans down and peeled her top off over her head, tumbling tresses falling back on her white shoulders above sweet little breasts cradled in lace cups. He could see her uncertainty, the nervous tension building as if she had no idea that his hands were shaking and that he was burning up for her, no idea at all that she was a rare and perfect beauty. He couldn’t take his eyes from her as he unclipped the bra and lifted his hands to explore the delicate little mounds he had bared.
‘Gorgeous...’ he said gruffly, the word torn from him because she looked as though one wrong word from him would send her into flight.
‘Seriously?’ she pressed, face hot with a heady combination of surprise, embarrassment and doubt.
‘Serious as a heart attack.’ A long tanned finger stroked a dainty swell crowned by a straining pink nipple and he bent his head to capture it with his mouth. ‘I like your breasts. I could even go as far as saying that I love your breasts,’ he framed, his warm breath fanning her skin as he blew on a straining pink bud.
‘But there’s nothing much there,’ she mumbled almost argumentatively because she had always felt that her lack of endowment in the bosom department was her biggest physical flaw. She was tiny and she was skinny and she didn’t have the curves so many men were said to prefer.
‘More than enough to satisfy me,’ Nikolai growled, long fingers curving to a ripe little mound, gently stroking the responsive flesh, smiling as her back arched, driving her breast into his palm. ‘You’re delicious.’
Some of her tension ebbed. He wanted her, she reminded herself with growing assurance, and being wanted like that, complimented like that, suddenly seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world. He was accepting her, flaws and all, and in the same way she would accept him, she promised herself. She wasn’t going in expecting perfection and eternal love.
The brush of his fingers against a prominent nipple made her hiss and her hips performed a little shimmy all on their own. Her body was warming up at its own pace, warmth gathering in her pelvis, tingles of reaction ensuring that she was fiercely aware of that part of her. He yanked off her knickers with scant ceremony, taking her by surprise. Her eyes flew wide, startled, apprehensive.
Nikolai smiled down at her. ‘It’s all right. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do...’
‘I want to do everything,’ she admitted shakily as he freed her from his weight and slid off the bed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Condoms,’ he explained, striding into the bathroom. ‘There may not be any because I’ve never used the house...no, there’s nothing here.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Ella muttered, shaking her head. ‘I have a contraceptive implant in my arm.’
He frowned. ‘But why do you have that?’
‘When Paul and I were together, I thought...well, that I’d need contraception.’ Ella struggled to think back to that period when everything had been shiny and new and untested between her and Paul. As far as she recalled the implant would keep her safe from pregnancy for four years, but try as she did she could not remember exactly when she had had the implant put in.
‘I’ve never had sex without a condom and I’ve been tested... I’m clean,’ Nikolai assured her.
Ella was already thinking about something else. ‘A moment ago you said you’d never used this house. Never?’
‘Never,’ he repeated. ‘It didn’t feel like mine. The day I got the keys I walked over every inch of it and thought what a waste it was that I was never allowed to meet the old guy. There are all these ancient photos of people and I don’t know who they are and I never will know now because there’s nobody left to identify them. Yet some of them must be relatives.’
‘That’s sad,’ she agreed.
He didn’t know why he was talking to her like that because he had been on his own a long time and he liked it that way...didn’t he? Once his sister was gone, he had not had a single living relative that he knew of. Of course, he hadn’t looked, he acknowledged for the first time, and he was well aware that his grandfather had had sisters because they had contacted him. He had simply decided that it would be pointless at this stage in his life to take the connection any further. And why the hell was he even thinking about such a thing? What did Ella do to his wits? Why was he confiding in her when she lay naked and beautiful on a bed in front of him? What kind of black magic was that? He was talking about private things that he never ever shared. Thee mou, it had to be those soft, sympathetic eyes of hers working a dangerous spell.
‘I’ve never needed family,’ he told her flatly.
Ella was wondering if it would be pathetic to slide below the duvet to hide her naked body and she was stiff as a post while she lay there wondering, colour creeping up across her nudity in a mottled flush of awful self-consciousness. It was daylight and the drapes weren’t fully closed and everything was on display and she felt incredibly uncomfortable.
‘Family’s everything to me,’ Ella admitted, finally giving up the fight and diving below the duvet with apology. ‘I can’t imagine life without them.’
‘The duvet won’t hide you from me for long,’ Nikolai warned, the command gilt-edged with the desire clearly burning in his eyes.
He unzipped and dropped his jeans and her eyes rounded at the sight of him because in his haste to check on her earlier he had forgone underwear below the denim. With a sudden laugh, Nikolai pounced and flipped the duvet back off her. ‘Was that look one of awe or horror?’ he demanded.
Ella’s faced burned red. ‘No comment...’
Nikolai kissed her breathless and then nipped a line down the slope of her neck that seemed to hit every pulse point she possessed. She gasped beneath his mouth, gasped again when his wickedly clever fingers found her clitoris and lingered with devastating intent. Startled, she jerked, she moaned, lashes fluttering in dazed dismay as he slid down the bed to part her thighs and pay attention to a part of her she much preferred to ignore.
‘No, Nik—’
‘Is that an embarrassed no? Or an absolutely not?’ Nikolai prompted.
Forbearance became the better part of valour and she closed her eyes, trying not to think about what he was planning to do but reluctant to prevent him when her only excuse was shyness. She wasn’t that shy, was she? And then he did something that sent a current of red-hot tingles racing through her entire body and her hips executed a sensual shimmy and her lips parted on a long, low whimper and whether she was shy or not got lost in the process. The prickling awareness in her pelvis coalesced into a heavy throb at the heart of her that made her all hot and needy. Suddenly she couldn’t worry any more about how she looked or what came next, suddenly she was just in the moment and the moment was so wildly, insanely exciting and primal that she was lost in it. The pulsing heat expanded, sucking in more and more of her and then rising until she couldn’t hold it in any more. She gave a helpless cry, her spine arched and her body flailed as an explosive climax gripped her.
‘You see, the absolutely not would have been a mistake, glikia mou,’ Nikolai pointed out as he drew level with her again, eyes like dark melting chocolate caressing her flushed face.
Dumbly she nodded, heart leaping as he claimed her mouth and his tongue tangled with hers in a frank expression of all-male hunger that made her blood thunder through her veins. He was rearranging her limbs, tipping her back into a new position and, before she could even gather all her nerves again, he was there at her entrance and pushing in. At first it felt so strange to her, his body joining with hers, and the sensation of pressure, of stretching, was surprisingly pleasurable, as if her body had been lying in wait for years to experience that exact sensation and was now pouncing on it with joyful acceptance.
And then Ella jerked as a stinging burn marked his invasion. It didn’t kill the pleasure but it did make her tense and draw in her breath in dismay.
‘Want me to stop?’ Nikolai husked, eyes pure, gleaming caramel seduction.
‘No...don’t you dare!’ Ella warned, impatient on the brink of what she had waited so long to experience.
He eased out of her and drove in again and the burn intensified and then vanished. She blinked, expecting pain because she had always expected pain, but the pain didn’t arrive. ‘It’s OK now,’ she whispered in surprise.
‘It’s got to be better than OK for you the first time,’ Nikolai told her.
‘No expectations here,’ she told him bravely and wrapped her arms round him because she recognised his patience, his care and concern and knew it could have been a much less pleasurable experience with someone else.
Her body sang with his every movement, madly stimulated by excitement. Within the space of a minute and a half she travelled from the aftershocks of satiated pleasure to heart-stopping, racing excitement. She angled up to receive him, hips rocking, body thrumming joyfully to the age-old beat of passion. It was good, it was better than good, it was truly amazing to slot helplessly into that fierce hypnotic climb to pleasure again. A kind of frenzy gripped her muscles and she shook, feeling ecstasy within her grasp and snatching at it. And it ran over and through her, a rolling white-hot wave of convulsive delight and fulfilment that left her drained and limp.
Ella was convinced that she would never move again, and then Nikolai moved when she didn’t want him to and she rolled over and rested her head on his chest instead, her arm wrapping round his narrow waist.
He dropped a kiss on her damp brow. ‘Thank you,’ he rasped breathlessly. ‘That was amazing.’
She wanted to thank him but she was tongue-tied, everything she had thought she knew about herself, everything she had ever believed, thrown into turmoil. And, quite literally, she couldn’t think straight and he felt like the only stable being in an unstable world. A deep sense of peace washed over her in waves of emotional and physical exhaustion.
Nikolai lay still and ever so slightly stiff. Ella was snuggling up to him. He had never snuggled before, was usually straight into the shower, clothes back on, goodbyes said within minutes. Well, isn’t this a new experience to be savoured? a sardonic voice sniped inside his head. She deserves more, that same little voice added. What sort of more? Nikolai lay there until the even sound of her breathing let him know that she had fallen asleep. Only then did he gently and carefully slide out of the bed.
More as in flowers? He almost smacked his head against the shower wall in frustration. He had never done flowers before. But then he had never had sex with a virgin before. He had never coerced a woman into his bed either while pretending that he was giving her a choice. That final blunt acknowledgement sliced through him as painfully as a knife in the gut. Nausea rising, he got out of the shower and dressed. He would call by his apartment to change into a suit on his way to see Desmond’s family and the police. And then what?
Nikolai looked at Ella sleeping in the bed, bronze hair in a mad tangle, a narrow white shoulder and a loosely unfurled tiny hand lying on top of the bedding. She looked so small, so defenceless and he had taken advantage of her. His heart sank. And then what? The question tolled in his conscience like a giant bell and he felt sick again. He had to deal, had no choice really: he had gone too far to turn back.
He sent her a text to explain where he was, which was a serious break from his usual habits. Never apologise, never explain was his usual mantra with women. He sent flowers for the first time in his life. He was almost desperate enough to throw in a cuddly toy as well. By the time he had commiserated with the dead bar manager’s family and spent several hours in the police station telling them that, no, he had no idea why anyone would risk the life of so many people by setting his hotel on fire, he was shattered. Of course, he had had to pass on the names of anyone he might deem to have a grudge against him and he had had to mention Cyrus’s name in that context. He had been frank with the police, but he had also had to admit that he had not uncovered any actual physical evidence of Cyrus breaking the law and that arson didn’t quite run true to form for the man whose sole focus had always been innocent women.
Nikolai returned to his apartment. It was silent and he stood in the low-lit lounge and marvelled at the undeniable truth that in his desire for revenge he had veered badly off course and injured innocents. How had that happened? What had happened to his sense of right and wrong? When had his once pure motivation become twisted? He poured himself a whiskey and sat down in his shirtsleeves, struggling to work out how Ella could ever have struck him as a pawn and as mere collateral damage to be written off.
How could he ever have been that arrogant? That selfish? That wrong? And failed to recognise it? At some stage he had developed a dangerous form of tunnel vision and, seeing only Cyrus in his sights, he had taken aim and fired. Ella was the fallout and, even worse, he might as well have painted a target on her back because Cyrus’s violent rage at the town house had been deliberately provoked by Nikolai. He had set her up for that scene and she had been hurt and he was painfully aware that she could have been hurt a lot more.
But how much more would the whole ugly truth hurt Ella? Ella, who was soft enough to sacrifice everything for her family? Ella, who had been unjustly damaged by his pursuit of revenge? He couldn’t tell her the truth because that would humiliate and hurt her, inflicting more harm. Another glass of whiskey went down Nikolai’s throat as he ran uneasily through all the wounding, shocking blows that Ella had already suffered. The father who had had a stroke, the fiancé who had died, the veterinary career that had had to be put on ice. She had kept on picking herself up and bravely soldiering on and then Nikolai had come along and suddenly everything had taken a turn very much for the worse. He had taken her from her home and her family and her life and then he had taken her to bed. Wrong heaped on wrong heaped on wrong. He raked a trembling hand through his black hair.
How could he possibly tell her that he had set her up and used her as a weapon? What woman’s self-esteem could overcome a truth like that? Particularly one who had already had a fiancé who might or might not have had a gay affair?
He owed her.
Somehow, he had to make it up to her. He would give her what he should have given her from the start. Trust, support, stability, respect. Could he fake love? He knew she’d want it, he just didn’t know if he could deliver what he’d never felt. He could try though, couldn’t he? How hard could it be to say, ‘I love you’?
His mobile phone pinged and he looked in consternation at the text she had sent. A black brow slowly lifted in wonderment. She was asking if he was still at the police station and there was a nosy bunny rabbit emoji attached to it.
Thee mou, he was planning to marry a woman who used emoticons...
