by Pippa Roscoe
Levering herself off the floor, she turned the handle on the door, only to find it immediately pressed inward by Dorcas’s wet grey nose nudging the wood aside. She buried her head into Ella’s hip and hand, her tail thrashing against the doorframe.
The small gesture of affection—the kind of physical comfort she hadn’t known she’d needed—brought tears to her eyes but she wiped them away, knowing that she would need all her armour for the conversation that was to come.
She rounded the corner of the small living space of the apartment and stopped under the weight of Roman’s intense gaze.
‘Were you going to tell me?’ he demanded.
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
She bit back a sigh, knowing that he had every right to ask such questions of her. ‘If you look in the drawer to the left of the stove, you’ll find a plane ticket to Russia booked for five days’ time.’
‘When did you find out?’ His clipped words lashed at her, and she took every single one with her head held high.
‘I guess about a month ago, but I wanted to make sure before I spoke to you.’
Roman looked towards the drawer she had indicated, but made no move to check the truth of her words. That he didn’t touched her. Soothed her a little, fanning the dull flame of hope in her chest.
He poured the water from the kettle into the cup of tea she’d had waiting before he’d knocked on her door, before she had been ready for him, and set it on the counter top between them as if unwilling, yet, to risk any physical contact between them.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked finally, his focus laser-sharp as she nodded.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
She sighed her yes more than said it.
He nodded once. ‘You will return to my side,’ he declared, inflaming the rage banked momentarily by their previous detente.
‘Why?’ she asked, genuinely curious.
‘Does everything have to have a damn explanation?’
‘Yes. In this case it does,’ she replied, choosing to ignore the angry outburst. ‘Because, really? There’s very little between us aside from resentment and lies. And that is not something that I will inflict on my child.’
‘So, you are keeping it?’
‘Of course!’ Ella’s outraged declaration thrummed through the air between them, beating at him accusingly. ‘You would ask me—?’
‘No!’ He couldn’t even let her finish that sentence. The words, the thought that she would think him capable of such a thing, truly shocked him.
‘Don’t act all outraged. The lengths to which you have gone to get what you want are well documented by this point, don’t you think?’
‘Is that why you waited this long to tell me?’ He had turned away despite his probing question, unable and unwilling to see the look on her face, to read the truth in her eyes.
‘No. I waited this long to make sure my baby was safe.’
He heaved out a weighted breath which was half relief and half frustration. ‘Our.’
‘Our what?’
‘Our baby, dammit.’
* * *
Roman cursed, already feeling a step behind, already feeling cut from his own child’s life by her simple declaration, and it scalded him from the inside out. A child, the presence, the reality of which he simply couldn’t wrap his head around. His hand flew to his hair, sweeping it back from his forehead, only just resisting the urge to grasp it in a fist and display his frustration for the quick gaze of his wife, consuming his reaction to this sudden news as if it were a test. One that he really feared he might fail.
He had never wanted children. Couldn’t even fathom how it had happened because he knew they had used protection each and every time. But he also knew that protection failed, plans failed, and that nothing in Ella would have willingly bound herself to a monster such as him. And now he had somehow tied an irrefutable bond between him, her and...their child. An innocent child brought into his world, a world formed only from anger, vengeance, hurt.
He was going to be a father.
‘What are you planning?’ he asked, focusing his confusion on her rather than himself and the thoughts their child had conjured.
She sighed, delaying her response by taking a sip of the tea she cradled carefully within her hands. Refusing to let her hide from him, he stared her down, taking in all the emotions passing across her face. Emotions that echoed within him.
‘I honestly don’t know. I have a barely-off-the-ground business, half-signed divorce papers, no home of my own and a baby on the way.’ As if by listing her current predicament had somehow brought it all to bear down upon her shoulders, she swayed a little where she stood and he cursed. He reached for her then, stopping a few inches from actually touching her and guided her towards the small sofa and chair set of the open-plan living area.
The moment she sat down Dorcas resumed her guard of his wife, placing her large head in Ella’s lap and staring between them, adoringly and accusingly, depending on the focus of her gaze. He didn’t have to see where Dorcas placed the blame. He felt it down to his toes.
‘You are pregnant and will return to me,’ he asserted, as if it were that simple. As if that would somehow make sense of everything that was swirling through his mind and heart.
‘What will you threaten me with this time?’ she asked, her words at odds with the almost numbness of her tone.
‘I’ve never once threatened you. And you can say that I coerced you into marriage, but I sure as hell did not coerce you into bed.’ The lack of emotion behind her words somehow ignited his own.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I would never say that.’ The pretty blush on any other woman could have been considered coquettish, but in Ella he knew it to be real. As real as the baby that they were to have. That she could still prevent him from having access to. And though Roman might never have wanted even the abstract idea of a child—now that Ella was carrying his heir, his flesh and blood joined with hers, it was as if something primal, something raw and ancient had gripped his heart and made him more sure of this one thing than he’d ever been in his life. That he needed his wife and child with him. So, he would do, say whatever it was that Ella needed him to say in order to secure that.
‘You lost your parents at a young age. And I do not for one moment dismiss the tragedy of that,’ he insisted vehemently. ‘But my...father chose to take money instead of staying with my mother. He left her pregnant and alone. Knowing this, knowing that he chose her father over her and her child, it devastated my mother.’
* * *
Through his words, Ella heard and felt the echoes of pain that such a thing would have, in fact had, inflicted on Roman as a child. A pain that still held such a grip he had distanced himself from the effect of his father’s actions.
‘And you?’
‘Any finer feelings on the matter I have long since dealt with.’
‘Please don’t. Please don’t fob me off. I need to understand, to know what raising our child together means to you,’ she begged.
He exhaled harshly through thin lips, as if desperately fighting his own self-preservation instincts against giving her what she wanted. She could tell that this was a vulnerability that he didn’t reveal to many, if at all. But, from the look in his eyes, she sensed that he understood her need to know.
‘I grew up as the illegitimate son of a single mother. And, yes, there are many, many others who grow up exactly the same way. But it was different for my mother. She lost too much, sacrificed too much for me...’ He trailed off, shaking his head. ‘She blamed herself,’ he continued through gritted teeth. ‘I blamed myself, until I was old enough to understand the selfishness of my father’s actions. Growing up, my mother did everything she could to make sure that I was loved enough. She worked three jobs to keep a roof over our heads, to keep food in the fridge, and it was just us aga
inst the world. So when she got ill...’
‘It was just you,’ Ella concluded for him. And in that moment she realised why Roman had been so good at helping her with her grandmother. Why he had known and seemed to understand what she needed even before she’d realised it for herself. ‘And you were thirteen?’ she asked, pulling other details from their time together in France, adding it to what she knew had happened after Roman had gone to see Vladimir, and her heart ached for him. Ached not only for his loss and the cruel actions of his grandfather, but for what it had caused him to become, how it had forged the path his life had taken.
‘I was eleven when my mother first became ill. Tatiana had always been small, which was why she’d been such a wonderful dancer. Small but powerful,’ he added with a sad smile Ella was sure was purely unconscious.
‘What kind of dancer?’ Ella asked the man lost to memories of his childhood.
‘Ballet. Before she met my father and Vladimir disowned her, Tatiana was the principal ballerina at the Utonchennyy Ballet Company.’
Ella’s shock must have shown on her face because Roman looked up and smiled, proud of his mother’s incredible achievement. A pride that was both contagious and shocking. Shocking because, for just a moment, she caught a glimpse of the fiancé who had courted her, who had—at the time—appeared proud of her.
‘But after Vladimir and her lover abandoned her she was alone, Ella. She had no one and no help. She worked herself to the bone and it didn’t seem to matter how much she did, or how much she tried to love me, she never felt it was enough.
‘So hear me now, Ella. My child will know me. They will bear my name and they will want for nothing in this world. They will never have to beg for anything, from either parent.’
That vehemence in his tone she understood. The need to protect she felt beat strongly within her own heart. Her own loss, melding with his, made her determined to find a way for them both through this. But she’d meant what she’d said when she’d proclaimed herself no longer naïve. And that forced the next words to her lips.
‘I have some conditions.’ He caught her gaze and gestured for her to proceed. ‘I need to know who you are. I married out of deceit—I will not continue that way. Neither will I blindly sign my life and my child’s life away to a man who has broken every single piece of trust I had. You cannot lie to me again.’
He nodded.
‘I mean it, Roman. I will not live like that.’
‘I understand.’
‘And I also need to know that you are done with your plans of revenge. Which means that I need to know that you’re not taking down the company.’ She wavered on the edge of a precipice, half hoping and half fearing that he would agree. But she needed him to understand. ‘That company might have been Vladimir’s, but it was just as much my father’s. It is a part of our child’s history.’
‘A history that you would own? How on earth do you plan to explain that to our child?’ he demanded, anger vibrating within his words. ‘That company was more important to Vladimir than his own daughter and even you. How can you want anything to do with it?’
* * *
Everything he’d ever done, every single achievement, every single motivation, goal and broken thing within him, had been about bringing the destruction of Vladimir’s company and now she wanted him to keep it? His heart rent in two, half denying her request and half ready to do whatever she wanted.
‘It is the only thing I have left of my father. A father I barely remember. And, like you, that is not something I want my child to experience. So I would very much like you to agree to my conditions. But know this—if, at the end of the next five months I don’t want to be in a relationship with you, then you will buy my shares from me, give me a divorce and let me go.’
‘Why would I buy your shares?’
‘Because if I don’t want to be married to you, then I don’t want any kind of relationship with you, professional or personal.’
‘And the child?’
‘You will grant me sole custody.’
He nearly laughed. A choking bitter laugh that caught in his throat and burned. Because, no matter what she thought, in this moment he had no intention of letting either her or their child go. And if she thought he’d let his plans for Vladimir’s company go, then she was sorely mistaken about the kind of man he was. Nothing would stop him from either goal, not her conditions, and certainly not her feeble attempt to coerce him into breaking the promise he’d made to his mother on her deathbed. The promise to dismantle every single piece of that damned company.
But Roman also knew that simply giving in to her demands would appear too easy—and although he had once thought his wife naïve and innocent, she was most definitely not stupid.
‘If you have conditions, then so do I. If I travel for work, then I want you with me.’
‘And if I travel for work? I have a fledging business that will require a lot of international travel.’
‘What is this business?’
‘Do you need to know?’
‘In so much as you seem to need to know about most of my reasoning.’
‘It’s the one I told you about before,’ she said, not having to explain what ‘before’ meant to either of them. Before they were married, before Ella had become pregnant. Before he had revealed his true self.
‘You’ve done it?’
‘Yes. Well...started to,’ and Roman couldn’t help but respond to the spark of pride and excitement in Ella’s eyes. He recognised it, had seen it in his mother’s eyes when she would sometimes dance for him, beneath the stars in the night sky. ‘Célia is at the offices now—they’re being set up as we speak,’ Ella pressed on, drawing him back from memories of the past. ‘So I will need to be in Paris.’
‘And I will need to be in Moscow,’ he growled, chafing against the demand in her tone.
He watched as Ella valiantly struggled with her own anger. The flame of it lit her eyes and flushed her cheeks and for a moment he was back in that bed three months before and gripped by the arousal that had plagued him ever since, in spite of the shocking revelation that had seemed to change his life in an instant. In spite of the mental decree he had placed on himself never to touch Ella in such a way again. Possessiveness cut him to the quick. Her body, cradling the life they had created, was somehow even more appealing to him, and he felt every inch the beast he knew himself to be. He wanted her with a fierceness that stunned him. The need to taste her on his tongue, to feel her beneath his hands and body was now almost painful.
‘If we can’t figure even this out, then what kind of hope do we have?’
Her words drew him out of the sensual haze he found himself in and he forced his mind to broach the practicalities of the situation.
‘Do you have any clients yet?’
‘We’re in the process of—’
‘That’s a no,’ he concluded, perhaps more harshly than necessary. ‘While I have not one, but two businesses based in Russia.’
‘I appreciate that but, of the two of us, who will be least exhausted by travelling between the two places? I can barely even make it to the shops.’
‘Should you even be working then?’
‘Do not even suggest that this pregnancy would undermine—’
‘Not what I meant, Ella,’ he cut in before her ire could reach its full strength. ‘Fine. I’ll relocate to France, but we can’t stay in your friend’s apartment. I will need to return to Russia to wrap up a few things, but I’ll be back with a list of properties we will visit.’
‘I am perfectly happy to start looking myself.’
He ignored her as he pressed on to the one thought he simply couldn’t rid himself of.
‘And my one last condition is that you will share my bed.’
‘Oh, please,’ she scoffed, but the sound was only half able to disguise the true response he
could see flaring in her eyes, in the way she hid from his gaze, in the way that her pulse kicked at the edges of her jawline.
‘Ella, you demanded that I not lie to you. And yet you would try to lie to me in this?’ he demanded. ‘I would perhaps forgive you your inexperience that night, and the fact you have no comparison, so let me tell you. What we shared that night was unique.’ Her gaze snapped up to his, as if she was shocked by his words. A shock that he felt every single time he thought of it, of being surrounded by her, of her body tightening around his, simply by their joining.
‘And if you are demanding that you know me, if you want to see the truth of me, then you must have it all.’
At least, he promised himself, until the insane attraction that blazed through him the night they’d conceived their child was spent, was rid from his system. But until then he intended to indulge every possible moment he could have of it.
* * *
His words shocked Ella. The vague ideas she’d had of them sharing a living space but being able to retreat to their own privacy of an evening disappearing in the haze of smoke created by his demand. Because she had wondered whether that night had been...normal—it had been impossibly wondrous to her but perhaps it might have been almost habitual to him. But his words, the sincerity ringing in his eyes, the intensity as he somehow managed to bring forth her own intoxicating attraction and desire for him, they soothed as much as they aroused, linking them both on a level field of need and want. One that she’d craved and battled since leaving his bed.
‘You agree?’ he demanded from her silence.
She nodded, unable to speak past the sensual web he’d woven around her with a few simple words and a heated glance. But, despite the arrow of desire hitting a mark deep within her chest, she agreed because she desperately wanted to make this work. Their child was innocent and she wanted more for it than what they had had, more than the constant repetition of a cycle of vengeance that had brought them here.