Читать книгу The Millionaire Affair - Sophie Weston - Страница 8

‘SO FIRE me!’

Lisa Romaine tilted her pointed chin to a challenging angle. She leaned insolently against the wall, looked her boss straight in the eye and waited.

Behind his desk, Sam Voss shifted irritably. ‘Can’t I give my Head of Bond Trading a hint?’

‘Hint!’

He tried a winning smile. ‘Now, Lisa, don’t overreact. Why don’t you sit down and we can talk?’

Predictably, she did not move. Her green eyes narrowed to slits.

‘Not about my private life,’ she said dangerously.

‘When you work for Napier Kraus, merchant bank to the new industrialists, you don’t have a private life.’

Lisa looked ironic. ‘You might not,’ she said. ‘I do.’

Sam shook his head. ‘I thought you wanted to get on.’

‘Sure,’ said Lisa evenly. ‘That’s why I work hard and deliver the goods. I’m not going to turn myself inside out trying to be a clone of the managing director.’

‘That’s enough.’ Sam’s voice hardened. ‘You’re on the management team now. If you want to stay there, act like it.’

‘At work, of course. But I’m not going to change my whole lifestyle. And turn my back on my friends.’

‘Look, kid—’

‘I’m twenty-two,’ flashed Lisa, suddenly losing her cool. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘Then stop digging your heels in. You’re a clever girl and you deserve your chance. Don’t blow it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean the Personnel Committee aren’t sure about you,’ he told her brutally.

‘Why? With my score—’

‘Oh, they like your results,’ he allowed. ‘You’re up there on the shortlist for Trader of the Year. Of course they like your results. They’re just not sure about a woman bossing a lot of punchy guys.’

Lisa gave a scornful shrug, not answering.

‘And, frankly, they’re not sure about your image either,’ said Sam, goaded.

‘What’s wrong with my image?’

He waved a hand. ‘You’re a good-looking kid. Sorry—woman. Get yourself a decent haircut and couple of designer suits and you could be in there mixing it with the MBA dollies. God knows, you’re bright enough. So why go out of your way to look like a punk?’

Lisa looked down her nose. Sam lost no chance to put her down, but on the issue of her appearance she was quite confident. The glass wall behind his desk reflected an image back at her which no one but Sam had any problems with: natural blonde hair, gamine features, long legs in spite of her moderate height and a figure to die for. It had taken all her considerable personality to stop her new staff from wolf-whistling at her every time she left her desk. ‘I don’t look like a punk,’ she said calmly.

Sam was alone in Napier Kraus in his lack of appreciation of Lisa’s black-clad legs. Even the Financial Controller had been known to give them a passing beam. Now Sam glared at her short skirt.

‘One day soon you’re going to find yourself hosting one of our corporate entertainments. How are the clients going to feel being taken to the races by a woman with earrings like a modern art gallery?’

Lisa put her hand to one of the offending ornaments.

‘You’re not serious!’

‘The top brass already know you live in a place that’s one up from a student squat. The chauffeurs talk, you know.’

Lisa was outraged. Her eyes were usually a green flecked with the gold of a woodland summer. Now they were green ice. ‘You’re a snob.’

‘No. I just know the score.’ He was torn between affection and exasperation. ‘Face it, Lisa. We’ve got a parent company with some very definite ideas about how it wants its management to live. You don’t qualify on any count.’

Lisa folded her arms across her chest and glared. ‘And to qualify I’ve got to pretend to be something I’m not?’

‘Up to you,’ said Sam, losing patience. ‘Now get out of here and make us some money.’

It was the end of a bad week. With Far Eastern markets in freefall, Lisa had had to be at her desk earlier than ever, staying well after New York had closed for transatlantic strategy discussions, and she hadn’t got home until after ten.

As a result, she’d missed her turn to clean the shared kitchen. But what had really offended her housemates was her failure to make it to Anna’s twenty-first on Wednesday evening.

‘Too grand to remember something like a birthday party now,’ Alec Palmer had sneered.

Of all the people she shared the house with, Alec was the one who knew most about her job. He had even worked at Napier Kraus briefly himself. When he’d first moved into the house they had got on well. But since her promotion he had sniped constantly.

In a way, she could understand it. He was older and, unlike Lisa, who had left school at sixteen, he had a university degree. It was natural that he would feel competitive. But there was an edge of spite in his remarks these days that Lisa found hard to bear.

Maybe I should do what Sam wants and move out, thought Lisa. She hated the idea of giving in to what she thought of as snobbery. But if Alec was going to pick at her all the time, she would be better off living somewhere else.

So her heart sank when she went into the kitchen that night and found Alec was the only one home. He was standing at the stove, stirring onions into a Bolognese sauce.

‘The others have gone clubbing,’ he said, his back to her. ‘They said they were going to try to get into the Equinox Club. You could always catch them up.’

Lisa tossed her briefcase onto a kitchen chair.

‘Frankly, I can do with a quiet night. It’s been a pig of a week.’

‘The burdens of responsibility,’ said Alec, with an edge to his voice.

Lisa tensed. But he waved his spatula at the pan of boiling pasta.

‘Want some spaghetti?’

Lisa seized the olive branch gratefully. ‘That would be great. Just let me change.’

She went and had a quick shower, then pulled on jeans and a sloppy shirt and went back to the kitchen.

Alec had set the table and opened a bottle of red wine. Lisa sank onto a pine chair. She took the glass he offered her and raised it to him in a silent toast.

‘This is a real treat. Thanks, Alec.’

‘Pleasure.’

He dished up and put the plate in front of her. She grated some parmesan onto the meat sauce and began to eat hungrily.

At first it was easy. They talked about the food, plans for the weekend, families. Even work, carefully. But then Lisa asked idly, ‘Is Equinox part of the on-going birthday celebrations?’ and Alec blew up.

‘You’ve got no right to sneer.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘A six-figure salary doesn’t make you better than the rest of us.’

Lisa sighed. As far as her housemates were concerned she was an East End kid made good: irrepressible, hardworking, quick on the draw. None of them knew the hours of work it had cost her, or the loneliness. And not one of them even suspected the private burden of the responsibilities she carried.

‘I’m too tired for this, Alec.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Too tired,’ he mimicked savagely. ‘A big job is all-consuming, isn’t it? I suppose I should be grateful that you had the time to eat my food tonight.’

Lisa winced. But she said indignantly, ‘Garbage.’

He stood up and came round the table, looking down at her broodingly. ‘When did you last have time for me?’

‘Alec—’

He seemed not to hear. He searched her face.

‘You don’t even see it, do you?’

His own face twisted. For a horrible moment, Lisa thought he was going to cry. She winced away from his too revealing expression, but it was too late. He had seen her distaste. He grabbed her up from her chair.

‘Look at me, Lisa.’ Suddenly he was a stranger, panting and desperate. ‘Please. Please. I love you. No one loves you like I do.’

Lisa was appalled. It came out of the blue. The house had an agreement: no relationships between tenants. She had thought of Alec as a friend, and, lately, as a self-selected competitor she would have to treat carefully. It had never occurred to her that he was in love with her. She had no idea what to do.

‘Don’t say that,’ she begged.

But he wasn’t listening. He held onto her like a lifeline.

It pressed all the wrong buttons for Lisa. She had been vulnerable and in love herself. The sight of Alec’s vulnerability twisted her heart. I can’t bear it, she thought.

‘Let me go.’

She struggled to free herself. He didn’t seem to notice.

‘You think you’re so strong,’ he muttered into her hair. ‘But you need love. Everyone needs love. I can give you love.’

And, to Lisa’s inexpressible horror, he slid down on one knee and pressed his face into her stomach.

‘Alec, please don’t do this.’ It was a cry of real pain.

She pushed at his shoulders. But his grip was like a vice. Lisa looked round, helpless, hurting, and acutely embarrassed. He seemed unaware of his own strength. Or the fact that she was trying to get away.

Lisa stood very still and held her breath. Keep calm, she told herself. She had deflected plenty of over-enthusiastic guys in her time. This was just another one, for all his anguish. She just had to keep calm and stay discouraging but kind. He would stop in a minute. And then they could be friends again.

Who was she kidding? They could never be friends again. Not when he had let her see his feelings naked like this. Lisa leaned away from him, wincing.

Alec didn’t notice that she was discouraging him. Intent on his own feelings, he was oblivious of hers. He began to tug at the fabric of her shirt. Whether to get it off or to pull her down onto the floor, was not clear. He kept muttering, like a mantra, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you…’

Lisa’s heart leaped in primitive disgust. She tore herself away.

‘Love,’ she spat.

That was when Alec looked up at her at last. There was a gleam of anger in his eyes, along with the tears. He came lithely to his feet and took hold of her. His lips were clumsy, suffocating, desperate.

Lisa closed her eyes. She was torn between pity and simple horror. She tried to push him away but he was too intent to pay any attention to her resistance. She wasn’t even sure he noticed. It was faintly ludicrous, this pretend battle with a man she had thought of as a friend for more than three years. She jerked out of his hold.

‘But I love you,’ he repeated insistently, as indignant as if she had shot him.

He had stirred up old memories he had no idea of, and, between them, Alec and the memories had shaken Lisa to her core. They left her too upset to remember to be kind.

‘Love. Huh! Don’t insult my intelligence,’ she said, retreating behind the table. ‘You want to get into my bed and you think saying you love me will do it. Well, I’ve got news for you. That doesn’t work with me. Not any more.’

‘Lisa—’ He was full of despair. And the beginnings of anger. He advanced on her with unmistakable purpose.

Lisa stopped even trying to spare his feelings. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she cried.

She ran.

The next morning she got out of the house before anyone else was up. She toyed with the idea of going to her mother’s. And rapidly discarded it. Joanne would say that she had enough problems dealing with Kit. Lisa was supposed to be the strong one, the one who found her own solutions.

In the end she went to the dance studio in Ladbroke Grove. There was an early class in jazz dance. Lisa flung herself into it.

With such effect, indeed, that as they left the studio at the end one of the other dancers said to her, ‘And who were you trying to kill?’

‘What?’ Lisa looked round. ‘Oh, hi, Tatiana. I didn’t know you did jazz dance.’

Tatiana Lepatkina must be over seventy years old, but she still taught a ballet class at the centre. She and Lisa had bumped into each other first at an enthusiastic salsa session over a year ago. Now they strolled along to the changing room together.

‘Dance!’ sniffed Tatiana. ‘What you were doing wasn’t dance. That was pure combat training.’

For the first time since Alec’s pounce, Lisa laughed.

Tatiana grinned. She was small and astringent. She was also something of a guru to the younger studio members, though no one actually knew how old she was. She had muscles like an athlete’s and wore full dramatic make-up at all times. Even after she had showered it remained untouched.

Now they both stripped off and went into shower cubicles.

‘I wouldn’t have wanted to come within catching distance of your elbows. Or your feet, for that matter.’

She went silent for several minutes under the whooshing of water. When she emerged, wrapped in a huge white towel, Lisa was already dressed and combing her damp hair in the mirror. Tatiana put her head on one side, eyes bright with inquisitiveness.

‘You are so lucky, with hair like that. Pure gold and natural too.’ She added without a break, ‘Who were you kicking this morning?’

Lisa raised an eyebrow at her reflection. ‘Was it that obvious?’

Tatiana nodded. ‘A man, I suppose?’

‘Or two,’ said Lisa, only half joking.

‘Sounds complicated,’ said Tatiana, pleased. ‘Let’s have something decaffeinated and you can tell me all about it.’

Rather to her surprise, Lisa found herself doing exactly that. When she had finished, Tatiana looked at her in silence for a moment, narrow-eyed.

‘And you’re sure you gave this man no encouragement?’

‘Alec?’ Lisa sighed. ‘I’ve never thought so. We all had this agreement right from the start—no inter-house affairs. Everyone stuck to it.’

There was an ironic pause. After a moment Lisa flung up her hands in a token of surrender.

‘OK. OK. I thought everyone had stuck to it.’

‘You can’t make rules about feelings,’ Tatiana said largely. ‘Never works.’

Lisa looked mulish.

‘Believe me,’ Tatiana insisted. ‘When I was still dancing, we used to be on tour for months at a time. You always start off saying no attachments. But human nature wins every time.’

Lisa said something very rude about human nature.

‘No point in fighting it, though,’ Tatiana pointed out practically. ‘So—what are you going to do?’

Lisa sighed. ‘Look for somewhere else to live. Alec will never forgive me, and I—well, frankly I’m not too proud of the way I handled it. I got in a panic, I suppose. All that passion.’ And she pulled a face.

Tatiana, who was rather in favour of passion, was intrigued. ‘Attracted in spite of yourself?’

Lisa was startled. ‘Not a chance. Men are such idiots.’

‘Oh.’

‘I had my drama when I was eighteen,’ said Lisa grandly. ‘I got over it and grew up. Why can’t they?’

Entertained, Tatiana murmured something about human nature again. Lisa frowned.

‘Well, it’s a terrible bore. Now I’ll have to go house-hunting and I haven’t got the time. What’s more, my boss will start nagging me about getting what he calls a suitable address, and I almost certainly won’t have the money for that without mortgaging my underwear. And anyway, I just hate doing what my boss tells me.’

‘Ah.’

Tatiana was not only a teacher of ballet, she was a choreographer. Listening to Lisa, she had begun to perceive the story of a ballet. Now here was the dramatic pas de deux: the powerful man, the woman who fights him because she cannot admit the attraction between them.

‘What’s wrong with your boss?’ she said carefully.

Lisa was savage suddenly. ‘He doesn’t like it that a woman has the best trading results in the room. He couldn’t get out of promoting me, but he compensated by—’ Just the thought of Sam’s lecture made her choke with rage.

Tatiana made a few editorial amendments to her scenario.

‘Did he suggest you say thank you in the traditional way?’

‘What?’ Lisa looked blank for a moment. Then she understood. ‘Oh, no. He wouldn’t dare make a pass at me.’

Looking at her pugnacious chin, Tatiana could believe it.

‘So what did he do, then?’

‘He gave me a lecture on my style. Style! I made half the portfolio’s profits last quarter and he complains about my style!’

Tatiana was disappointed. She liked more passion in her drama. ‘What is wrong with your style?’

Lisa listed the points on her fingers. ‘Wrong address. Wrong clothes. Wrong friends.’

Tatiana began to see that this was a satisfactory drama after all.

‘He thinks you are not good enough for him,’ she deduced. She was indignant.

‘In bucketfuls,’ agreed Lisa. A shadow crossed her face. ‘And he’s not the first,’ she added, almost to herself.

Tatiana didn’t notice. She was thinking. ‘Do you want to rent or buy?’

‘Well, I’m renting at the moment—’

‘Because you could always have the garden flat in my house. As long as you aren’t determined to buy.’

‘—but I don’t want to have to go through—’ Lisa realised what Tatiana had said. ‘What?’

Tatiana repeated it obligingly.

Lisa shook her head, stunned. ‘I didn’t know—I mean I didn’t realise—I wasn’t fishing…’ she said, acutely embarrassed.

Tatiana was amused. ‘I know you weren’t. Why should you? You don’t know where I live, or that I have a flat to let.’

‘No,’ agreed Lisa, still slightly dazed.

‘Well, I have. Just round the corner from here.’ She paused impressively. ‘Stanley Crescent.’

‘Oh,’ said Lisa.

Tatiana waited expectantly. It was clear that something more was required. Lisa had no idea what. She felt helpless.

Seeing her confusion, Tatiana smiled. ‘It’s a very good address.’

‘Is it? I mean—I’m sure it is.’ Lisa was floundering. She said desperately, ‘I just don’t know much about this part of London.’

‘Secret gardens,’ said Tatiana in thrilling tones.

‘Sorry?’

‘When you walk through Notting Hill all you see are these great white terraces on both sides of the street, right?’

‘Right,’ said Lisa, puzzled.

‘Well, what you don’t know is that behind several terraces there are huge communal gardens. Big as a park, some of them. Mature trees, rose gardens, the lot. It’s like having a share of a house in the country.’

She waved her hands expressively. Quite suddenly, Lisa could see green vistas, trees in spring leaf, birds building nests, space. She gave a sigh of unconscious longing.

‘Like gardens, do you?’ said Tatiana, pleased.

‘Never had one. Don’t know,’ said Lisa.

But her dreaming eyes told a different story. Tatiana took a decision.

‘Move in on Monday.’

Lisa did.

It was a blustery day that blew the cherry blossom off the trees in a snowstorm of petals. Fortunately she didn’t have much to move. She installed her boxes in the sitting room of Tatiana’s garden flat, paid the movers and took a cab to work. She was at her desk by eleven.

She was greeted by a teasing cheer.

‘Hey, hey, half a day’s work today?’ said Rob, her second in command.

‘I moved house,’ Lisa answered briefly. She settled behind her desk and tapped in her access code.

Rob’s eyebrows climbed. Lisa had told him, raging, about her lecture from Sam on Friday afternoon.

‘You don’t hang about, do you?’

She was scrolling through the position pages on the screen but she looked up at that. Her wicked grin flashed.

‘No sooner the word than the deed, me.’

‘Sam will be impressed.’

Lisa chuckled naughtily. ‘I know. But I can’t help that.’

‘I bet he checks up,’ Rob mused. ‘Just to make sure you’ve got a proper up-market place this time.’

Her laughter died. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

‘Want to bet?’

‘If he does,’ said Lisa with grim satisfaction, ‘he’s in for a surprise.’

For Lisa, too, the move turned out to have its surprises. For one thing she had the greatest difficulty in getting Tatiana to name a figure for the rent. Her new landlady had escorted her enthusiastically through the house—stuffed with an eclectic collection of furniture, ferns and objets d’art—the garden—as green and private as Lisa had imagined—and the local shops—everything from a late-night grocer’s to a bookshop which sold nothing except books about food and even smelled like a good kitchen. There was no doubt that Tatiana was delighted to welcome her. But she clearly thought anything to do with money was low and wouldn’t be pinned down on it.

‘Look,’ said Lisa, turning up at Tatiana’s door one evening with a bottle of expensive Rioja, some information from the local estate agent and an expression of determination, ‘this can’t go on. You need a contract and so do I.’

She threw down a printed document onto a walnut sofa table which gleamed softly under an art deco lamp.

‘That’s a standard form. I’ve signed it but run it past your solicitor before you sign.’ Something in Tatiana’s expression gave her pause. ‘You have got a solicitor?’

‘The family has,’ said Tatiana, without enthusiasm.

‘Fine. Call him tomorrow. The one thing that I haven’t put in is the amount of rent. Now, the agent gave me a range for one-bedroomed flats in this area.’ A handful of leaflets joined the contract. ‘Pick one.’

Tatiana wrinkled her nose disdainfully. ‘When I was your age, girls did not admit that they knew money existed. It was men’s business.’

Lisa was not deflected from her purpose, but she grinned.

‘Don’t wriggle. I’m not leaving until I’ve given you a cheque.’

Tatiana picked up one of the estate agent’s pages and looked at it with distaste. ‘That’s far too much. Anyway, that one’s got a separate entrance.’

Lisa had come prepared. ‘All right. There are monthly rentals for nine flats there. I’ve worked out the average.’ She magicked a slip of paper out of her jeans pocket.

Tatiana took it gingerly. Lisa laughed. She had seen her look at a snail on the garden path with much the same shrinking distaste.

‘Talk to your solicitor, or I’m moving out. And that would be a pity. This is a lovely place.’

The May evening was dark. From Tatiana’s first-floor window the shadowed sweep of trees and lawns looked like a magic landscape. Lisa sank into a 1920s chaise longue under the window and sighed with pleasure.

‘Wonderful,’ she said exuberantly. ‘I’ve never known anywhere like it.

Tatiana’s eyes were warm. ‘I’m glad.’ She opened the wine and poured them each a glass. ‘My family bought the house for me years ago. They thought if I could not, after all, make my living dancing, then at least I could rent out rooms.’

Lisa accepted the glass of ruby wine. ‘And did you?’

‘I’ve done both. Dancing is a hard life. Especially when you begin to age. These days I direct, but it was tough in my forties.’ Tatiana frowned. ‘My family still do an annual check-up, though.’

Lisa sipped wine, amused. ‘Who’s brave enough to do that?’

Tatiana sniffed. ‘Well, this year it will probably be my nephew, Nikolai. Couldn’t be more unsuitable. The last time I saw him he was wearing a beard and khaki camouflage gear. Still,’ she added grudgingly, ‘that was on television.’

‘What a glamorous family.’

‘Nikolai isn’t glamorous,’ corrected Tatiana. She had standards in the matter of glamour. ‘He’s an explorer. Writes books on the behaviour of primates.’

Lisa’s eyes danced. ‘A bit of a wild man, then?’

‘Good heavens, no,’ said his fond aunt. ‘Not a wild bone in his body. He’s always completely in control of himself.’

‘But?’ prompted Lisa, hearing the reservation in her voice.

‘He wants to control everyone else as well,’ announced Tatiana. ‘And then thinks you should be delighted that he has bothered to give you so much of his attention. Men.’

Lisa had no men in her family, but she had been battling her way through a man’s world ever since she first went to work for Napier Kraus. She could only sympathise.

‘Still,’ said Tatiana brightening, ‘he came over just before Christmas, so I should have another six months before he starts trying to interfere again.’

She was wrong.

Nikolai Ivanov was as reluctant to involve himself in his great-aunt’s affairs as she was to let him.

‘Oh, not London again,’ he told his grandfather.

They were walking up from the stables to the back of the château, gleaming like gold in the spring sunshine. The gentle slopes of the Tarn valley scrolled away like a medieval painting towards the river. The vine-clad landscape hadn’t changed since his ancestor had commissioned a picture of his home in the eighteenth century. It still hung in the gallery.

‘I hate London.’ Nikolai looked at the unchanging prospect and said with feeling, ‘Who’d be in a dirty, noisy city when they could be here?’

His grandfather smiled. ‘I thought London was where everyone wanted to be these days,’ he said mischievously. ‘I suspect Véronique Repiquet would have preferred to have her wedding there. She told me London was cool.’

Nikolai raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Véronique would! I, however, am thirty-six years old. I don’t chase fads any more.’

‘You seem to manage to have a pretty good time when you get there, however,’ Pauli said drily.

Nikolai did not pretend to misunderstand him. ‘Oops,’ he said, wincing.

More than one celebrity-watch magazine had published photographs of Nikolai at last year’s fashionable Christmas parties in London. He had been with a different woman in each picture, as his grandmother had pointed out acidly to her husband at the time. Pauli had just said it was nice to see that Nicki was getting over his brother’s death and enjoying himself again.

He had tactfully not told his wife about the picture which had fallen out of one of Nikolai’s Christmas cards last year. It had shown what looked like a student party in a cellar. The Countess would have been horrified by the sight of her grandson jamming at the piano, having discarded most of his clothes. Pauli, however, was more realistic, and even, as Nikolai knew, faintly envious.

‘There must be friends you would like to look up,’ Pauli pointed out now innocently. There had been a number of lively-looking girls in that picture.

Nikolai was dry. ‘Which particular friend did you have in mind?’

But his grandfather shook his head. ‘Matchmaking is your grandmother’s department, not mine,’ he said decisively. ‘All I want is to make sure that Tatiana isn’t being—er—unwise.’

‘My great-aunt Tatiana,’ said Nikolai, who had spent several strenuous hours with her and her accountant in December, and was not anxious to repeat the experience, ‘is a self-willed old woman. She has been barking for years. I should think it is a cast-iron certainty that she is being unwise.’

Pauli did not bother to deny it. ‘But you’re fond of her,’ he pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t want anyone to take advantage of her.’

Their eyes met in total mutual comprehension. Nikolai curbed his frustration.

‘You should have been in public relations,’ he said at last bitterly. ‘Or politics. All right, Pauli. I’ll go to London and check on Tatiana. What’s the story?’

Lisa did not see much of Tatiana over the next few weeks. She was busy all day; and in the evenings, proving to herself as much as her old friends that she had not left them behind with her move, she went out clubbing.

Which was why, when the doorbell rang at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, Lisa was still in bed.

‘No,’ she groaned. She pulled the pillow over her head, blocking both ears. ‘Go away.’

But it rang again, insistently. Lisa gave up. Blearily she swung her legs out of bed and felt for a robe. Failing to find one, she pulled last night’s coat round her instead.

As the bell rang for the third time she trod heavily up the stairs, muttering.

‘What is it? Don’t you know it’s Sunday?’ she growled as she flung the door open.

Nikolai Ivanov blinked. There was not much that shook him. He had a cool and generally well-justified confidence that there was nothing he had not seen before. But Lisa was a new phenomenon, even to a man of his experience.

He took an involuntary step backwards, his eyes widening in stunned silence. He would have said that he had seen all the weirder life forms, but he had never before encountered Lisa Romaine after a heavy night’s clubbing. Getting back at five in the morning she had, quite literally, taken off her clothes and tumbled into bed. As a result her hair was still full of last night’s rainbow colours, though some of the spikes had been flattened in sleep. She was also sporting panda shadows round her eyes from unstable mascara. To say nothing of her pugnacious expression.

Nikolai stared in appalled fascination. And found he could think of nothing to say.

‘Well?’ demanded Lisa.

The man on the doorstop was so tall it hurt her neck to look up at him. Squinting into the morning sun, Lisa made out high, haughty cheekbones and deep brown eyes under lazy lids. It was an arrogant face. And spectacularly handsome.

‘What do you want?’ she said, thoroughly put out.

Lisa did not like handsome men. She had learned the hard way that they tended to be more in love with themselves than any woman who happened to cross their path. It had soured her.

The handsome stranger scrutinised her for several unnerving seconds. It did nothing to mollify her.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

Lisa gave him an evil look.

‘I’m the householder. I was fast asleep.’

He looked taken aback. Then, as if in spite of himself, he looked her up and down in one comprehensive survey. His mouth twitched.

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ he murmured.

Lisa did not like being laughed at. She ran her hand through the residual spikes and glared.

‘Either tell me what you want or go away.’

‘Well, I did want to see the householder,’ Nikolai admitted.

He should, of course, have demanded Tatiana immediately. But now the shock had worn off he found he was intrigued by this apparition. In her bare feet she came no higher than his chest. Yet she seemed quite unconscious of being at any sort of disadvantage. She might be half asleep, but she was still definitely punching her weight, he thought. He admired that.

Lisa folded her arms with exaggerated patience. It was a mistake because it made her coat gape. That revealed, if Nikolai had not already guessed it, that she was wearing nothing underneath.

He did not pretend that he hadn’t noticed. His eyes widened and he stared openly. And if he did not actually laugh aloud, he did not try to disguise his amusement.

What he did disguise—at least Nikolai hoped so—was his sudden rush of pleasure at the sight. It was unexpected, unwelcome and deeply primitive. That intrigued him, too. He was in no rush to demand Tatiana until he had explored this feeling further.

Lisa seemed oblivious. ‘You want to see me? You’re seeing me,’ she pointed out. ‘So—?’

Nikolai let his eyes drift down. ‘I am indeed,’ he agreed, in suave appreciation.

Lisa was used to being teased. You did not survive in the dealing room if you let it bother you. Normally she ignored it. Now, after a quick look down, she clutched the coat together more securely over her breasts.

‘What do you want?’ she yelled, losing patience.

‘I want to see the lady who owns this place,’ he said more sharply.

Now that he’d had time to reflect on more than that distracting cleavage, Nikolai’s amusement was abating abruptly. Where was Tatiana? Why did this gamine not mention her? Could it be that Pauli was right and his aunt had gone mad and signed over her home to some unknown waif off the street? Nikolai had been certain his grandfather was panicking unnecessarily. Now, for the first time, he wasn’t sure.

Lisa saw the suspicion darken his eyes. It made him look like a tiger, watchful and dangerous. It contrasted oddly with his beautifully cut City suit. Somehow it just made him seem all the more powerful. And who the hell wore suits on a Sunday, anyway?

Then she remembered: Rob had warned her that Sam would make sure the bank checked up on the suitability of her new address. Surely he had just been winding her up? Surely it couldn’t be true? But, with his suit and tie on a Sunday morning, what else did this man resemble but a banker at work? In fact, now she looked, she saw he even had a briefcase.

She said defiantly, ‘I live here. Lisa Romaine, as it no doubt says in your dossier. Do you want a signature, or will you now go away and leave me in peace?’

The tiger’s eyes narrowed to slits.

‘And what has happened to Madame Lepatkina?’

Whatever Lisa had expected it was not that. In the act of closing the door, she hesitated.

‘Tatiana?’ she said, bewildered. How did her employers know about Tatiana?

‘Well, at least you admit she exists,’ the man said grimly.

He shouldered his way past her into the hall and shut the door behind him. In the narrow hall he seemed even taller. She wished she were wearing heels. Or shoes. Or anything. She huddled the coat round her.

Nikolai saw her sudden uncertainty and pressed home his advantage.

‘Now, let’s start again. Where is Tatiana?’

Lisa shrugged. Then remembered and grabbed the coat tight again.

‘I haven’t a clue. Why didn’t you try knocking?’

He was disconcerted. ‘There is only one bell,’ he said, after a tiny pause.

‘I know,’ she said nastily. ‘Mine. If you want to talk to Tatiana you use the knocker. Big black thing? Gargoyle’s face? You can’t miss it.’

She made to open the door on him again, but one look at him barring the way changed her mind. In spite of the suit he gave the impression of being solidly muscled. She frowned, swung round and thumped on Tatiana’s door. There was no answer.

Lisa looked at her big Mickey Mouse watch. ‘I suppose she might have gone shopping,’ she said uncertainly.

‘On a Sunday?’

She looked at him with dislike. ‘This is cosmopolitan Notting Hill. You can shop any day you like.’

‘And any time you like as well,’ he pointed out. ‘So why would Tatiana go shopping at the exact hour she knew I was coming to see her?’

Lisa seized the opportunity to look him up and down, in just the same way as he had done.

‘You might just have answered your own question,’ she drawled with deliberate insolence.

He was clearly disconcerted. Not used to people being less than delighted to see him. Lisa thought sourly. The thought rang a faint bell in her head.

She didn’t have time to pursue it. The man was knocking at the door to Tatiana’s part of the house. There was no answer. He looked back at Lisa, all the way down that haughty nose.

‘Do you have a key to Tatiana’s place?’

‘No,’ said Lisa.

His mouth tightened. He looked very determined. The inner bell rang louder.

She said grudgingly, ‘I could go up through the garden and see if she’s there.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s an idea. All right.’

“‘Thank you very much, Miss Romaine”,’ Lisa muttered.

He did not appear to hear.

Lisa thumped her way bad-temperedly down the stairs. She was sure nothing had happened to Tatiana. She had met her in the hall last night, off to attend a ballet recital, looking stupendously glamorous and about half her age. She had probably just gone out to avoid this pestilential stranger. What was more, Lisa didn’t blame her.

She turned round to shout as much up to him, and found he was close on her heels.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, swaying backwards in shock.

He caught the lapels of her coat and steadied her.

And that was another shock. The backs of his fingers brushed against the softness of her upper breasts. It was only a touch, but it felt as if he had branded her. Lisa heard her own intake of breath. In the narrow space of the staircase it sounded as loud as a warning siren.

‘Whoa,’ she said, shaken.

Nikolai was shaken too. But his control was better than hers. And his recovery time was not affected by a series of late nights.

‘Are you all right?’ he said, his expression enigmatic.

‘You startled me,’ she muttered. ‘I didn’t expect you to come with me.’

‘I could hardly leave you to climb into Tatiana’s on your own.’

‘Climb in?’ said Lisa, startled.

‘If necessary.’

She glared at him for a frustrated moment. Then shrugged and led the way downstairs.

Her small kitchen diner stretched the width of the house. Tall French windows gave on to the garden. Lisa waved a hand at them.

‘Help yourself. Security key’s on the table. I’ll get some clothes on.’

He acknowledged that with the merest flicker of the opaque brown eyes. But Lisa could sense his amusement as if he had laughed out loud. Suddenly she realised what it must be like to blush. She whisked into her bedroom and closed the door between them with a decisive bang.

She returned in three minutes, in grubby jeans and a cropped shirt. She had stuffed her feet into deck shoes and tied a scarf round her hair, but she hadn’t done anything about the ravages of last night’s make-up. To tell the truth, Lisa had forgotten it. But to the man awaiting her it looked like a deliberate statement that she didn’t care how he saw her.

Once again he felt that unexpected, unwanted kick of interest. Crazy, he told himself.

‘Well?’ said Lisa.

He had opened her French windows. An ironwork spiral staircase went up from the garden to Tatiana’s balcony. There was a tray of seedlings and a watering can on the stair. He indicated them with a gesture.

‘Well, if she’s in the garden, of course she didn’t hear us,’ said Lisa, disgusted. She thought about what she had just said. She didn’t like the way she had coupled them together like that. ‘You,’ she corrected herself. ‘Of course she didn’t hear you.’ She raised her voice to the volume that could cut through the buzz of a hundred-man dealing room. ‘Tatiana! Where are you?’

Nikolai winced. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to go and look? It is Sunday morning, after all. Some people are probably still sleeping. Or—’

Or in bed making love. He did not say it. But Lisa’s eyes flew to his in shocked and instant comprehension.

And this time she did blush. She couldn’t help it. Disbelieving, she pressed her hands to her face and felt the heat there. She could never remember blushing in her life before.

And the man laughed. He looked her up and down with those cat’s eyes, suddenly lazily appreciative, and he laughed.

‘Oh, find her yourself,’ snarled Lisa.

She whipped back into her flat and banged the door.