by Pippa Roscoe
‘As much as you might hate to hear it, Vladimir did look after me, but mostly he was focused on material needs. And then with my grandmother... Summers with her were magical. Truly. But she was an older woman—she had raised her child and had buried her. She loved me completely, but she wasn’t exactly a suitable companion for a child. I spent more time in the woods alone, looking for fairies, hiding in the bushes, running after birds and the rabbits. I was...’ Ella twisted her hands before her, unaccountably ashamed of admitting her loneliness as if it were a mark against her perfect grandmother. ‘I was isolated. There were no children to play with, all of them already with school friends or away for their own summer holidays.’
And somewhere in those months, those long stretching summer days, she had formed an idea of her future. One that she now both had and didn’t have. She turned back to Roman, who was watching her, his usually bright eyes a deeper stormy blue.
‘When I met my fiancé in the woods he offered me everything I had always wanted. Companionship, someone to confide in, someone with whom I could have the very thing I’d always wanted, ever since it had been ripped away from me at the age of five. A home, a family.
‘You, Roman. You offered me my fantasy and this? This is too close and yet so far from what I wanted.’
‘Fantasies aren’t real.’
‘Like your fantasy of revenge?’ she couldn’t help but taunt. ‘It’s not the house, Roman. It’s the fact that after all these years, all the things I wanted...it’s so nearly there, but I can’t help but feel that I’m going to be just as lonely as I once was in the woods. Just as lonely in this perfect house.’
She dared to cast a look at him then, hoping beyond hope that he’d reassure her, that he’d have words and compassion to make all her fears disappear. His whole body stilled—as if he were made of marble, as if he too realised how important his answer would be, what she was really asking him, the truth behind her words, the question.
‘Ella,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I don’t want to make promises I cannot keep.’ She huffed out a cynical breath, and he pushed on. ‘There have clearly been enough of those between us. But you are pregnant with my child. You are my wife. You are not in this alone, not if you don’t choose to be. When I am not in this house I will be at the other end of the phone any time, any time you need me. I’ll fly back in a heartbeat if you desire it. And if you feel that my business in Russia takes me too much away from you then we will visit that if and when you choose. But Ella, that is not what is really upsetting you,’ he stated with determined simplicity, the glints of gold in his eyes firing against the blue. As if he were made of the stuff. As if he had steeled himself for an answer he already knew.
She cursed and stalked from the room, paying no heed to the lithe graceful strides that caught up to her in a heartbeat, her exit halted by the hand at her wrist, spinning her back round to almost crash against the hard chest looming over her.
‘No. It’s not,’ she said, finally owning up to the truth of what she really feared in that moment. ‘It’s you,’ she said, punctuating the statement with a strike against his powerful chest. ‘I don’t trust you. You took away the only solid, stable things I had in my life. You took away a loving guardian and replaced him with a Machiavellian monster, uncaring, unfeeling and manipulative. You took away the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, a man I had fallen in love with, a man I shared my hopes and dreams for a future with. How on earth am I supposed to believe that you won’t take this away from me now? How am I supposed to trust you?’
Roman wanted to argue with his wife’s words, deny them as lies, but couldn’t. She had been badly used by both Vladimir and himself. And while he’d tried to explain it to himself as just, as necessary for his pursuit of revenge, with the damage from his actions clear to see before him, he could no longer fight the awful truth of what he had done. That all the power and incredible self-possession he had seen the night they had conceived their child had been a thin layer of newly formed defence against the deeper devastation he had wrought on this extraordinary woman. He cursed himself to hell and back, lashing himself mentally with a thousand different painful thoughts. But this wasn’t about him, not here and now. It was about Ella. And what she needed.
‘I wanted to show you, with this house, that you can have whatever you want most in the world.’
‘But that is the problem. You know what it is that I want because you got the truth out of me when we were engaged...and I did not do the same. You know me, but I don’t know you. All I know is that you have taken decisions that I would want to have made myself away from me. You have...’
‘Taken away your freedom.’
She nodded sadly as she bit into the lower lip he wanted for himself and then castigated himself once again for his inappropriate wayward thoughts.
‘I am not used to having others to think of,’ he admitted roughly. ‘So much of my life has been lived under my own direction, my own decisions. But that will change. I do understand why you feel this way. And I know that I am the cause of it. But, if you let me, I will prove that you can trust me. I will not take those decisions away from you again. I promise you that.’ He held her gaze with his, determined to allow her to see the truth, the honesty of his words, hoping beyond all hope that he could honour that promise.
‘And you are right. I did see the truth of you before. Not just the innocence and naivety I once taunted you with, but the strength of a woman who cared deeply about her grandmother. So much so that she would put her own dreams on hold. A woman determined not to rely on the money provided by her guardian and father, who would not fritter it away on silly ephemeral comforts but create a business that would provide much needed support for charities throughout the globe. And even after events that would have cowed a great many other people, a woman who found her own strength and determination to ask for what she wanted, to demand what she was due. And that woman was incredible to me. Empowered and enthralling enough to make me beg her to take what she wanted from me and leave me wanting more. A woman who will make the most wonderful mother, caring, honest and with an integrity that leaves me ashamed,’ he admitted.
‘But you have to decide whether you can trust me. Because, if you don’t, then you will never stop second-guessing me and it will drive you mad,’ he concluded. Just like it had driven Roman almost mad in those first few months after his mother’s death—wondering, questioning whether he could have done something—anything more to save her. He could not, and would not, allow Ella to live under such a damaging weight.
He produced the keys to the house from his pocket. ‘This is the only set of keys to this house. The deeds are in your name and no one else’s. It is yours. Completely. You can do with it what you will. Sell it, rent it, keep it.’ He pressed the keys into her hands. ‘I’ll wait outside until you’re ready to leave.’
Ella felt the loss of him from the house as something physical. The hurt, angry part of her cried that she would never be able to trust him. But the softer yearning part of her looked about a house almost made from her dreams and hoped. Roman was right. She had to stop. She had to draw a line under the past if they had any hope of the future.
As Roman had painted the picture of her as he had seen her, Ella had wavered, wanting to be all that he described. Hoping that he was speaking the truth and feeling something unfurl within her, reaching to be that person. Instead of using her fears against her, he had listened to them, comforted them and her. She looked around the room, seeing with hope what her future could be. And for the first time in a long time she felt strong enough to reach for it.
But within that strength was a deep knowledge, a belief. She might be able to trust her husband with this, but she would never trust him with her heart. Could never. Because that hurt would be too much to bear.
As she left the house she saw Roman sitting on the steps leading down to the driveway, Dorcas lifting h
er head from her master’s touch in happy expectation. The tableau was oddly moving. Her dog, her husband, her home.
‘So what else does our lovely new estate have to offer?’ she asked him, the ache in her chest easing just a little as she saw the answering smile in his gaze.
CHAPTER EIGHT
And now every bite, every snarl, every gnashing of his teeth was about to be heaped on the wolf tenfold. For the one thing he had not learned yet was that you can never escape the actions of the past.
The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood
—Roz Fayrer
ELLA FINISHED THE phone call to Célia with a smile on her face, having gone over the details ahead of the meeting with Ivan Mozorov. In the last few weeks they’d found more interested parties and Ella could now sense the way their business would begin to take off. Célia had sent photos of the office in Paris that was a few days away from being not only fully functioning but very beautiful.
She and Roman had settled into a routine of sorts. Roman would spend the middle three days of the week in Russia, Monday and Friday commuting, and would stay in France with her at the weekend. And, despite what he’d said about sharing his bed, he hadn’t enforced the decree, which had—at first—made Ella feel a sense of relief. But as the days wore on...she became dissatisfied. She rolled her shoulders at the thought of it, as if shaking off some inner sense of frustration. She couldn’t help the feeling that she was waiting for the other shoe to drop, only it felt less like a shoe and more like the sword of Damocles.
Her body, thankfully having moved past the morning sickness stage, had begun to blossom. She’d never thought she’d enjoy pregnancy but at the moment she was relishing the new freedom in her body. Their child was now about the size of a pea pod, the doctor had explained, which had caused her to refer to her baby as Sweetpea. And each day she marvelled at the subtle changes happening, the new gentle curves of her body. A body that Roman seemed intent on ignoring for the most part.
It was as if now that Roman had given her the space to relax, to ease into the situation and the house, she couldn’t escape him, her thoughts of him and the ecstasy of what they had shared that night. It made her feel...wanton, and slightly obsessed. She had begun to dress each day with Roman in mind, trying to tempt him into something he suddenly seemed to think was inappropriate.
When she wasn’t lusting after her husband she was delighting in the house he had found for them. It was close enough to visit her grandmother and a short flight to Paris for when the offices were up and running. And although she had visited her grandmother several times, Ella found herself not quite wanting to leave the beautiful home.
There was simply too much to see and discover about this place. After breakfast in the morning she and Dorcas would roam the sprawling acreage down to the freshwater spring that wound across the border of their lands and she couldn’t have stopped Dorcas diving into it for a moment because the pure joy in the dog’s eyes made her laugh, and soothed some of the past hurts.
But her favourite part of the estate was the stone gazebo with the copper domed roof. Every day she reached for the almost grey pillars, placing her hands against the cool stone, wondering who might have done so in the years before. She enjoyed imagining the different women who might have stood there looking out over the same view, generation after generation, feeling a strange kinship with them.
She wondered what they might think of her choices in the house, the few small personal touches she had brought to the already incredible spaces. She had claimed an office from one of the bedrooms, which Roman had insisted on filling with state-of-the-art technology, eager to provide whatever material need she could think of. But it had left the stark difference between the material and the emotional even clearer to Ella. For while on paper everything Roman did was perfect, was the epitome of the doting husband, it didn’t quite feel like him.
Ella left her office and made her way to the bedroom she had been using. Because that was how she found herself thinking of it. A room that she was using until she finally took up residence with her husband in his room. She opened the wardrobe, scanning her eyes over the new dresses she had bought, picking out the one that she had chosen for tonight’s meeting with Ivan Mozorov in Paris. And her eye caught on the red cloak her fiancé had bought just over a year ago.
And while Ella had been too fearful of shaking the still fragile foundations of what they were building together, could not quite bring herself to question it, to question him, she couldn’t help but wonder whether this might be the jolt they needed. The memory, reminder of what they had been, and hope for what they could be.
As the small private jet banked to the left to come in to land at the small private airfield just outside of Toulouse, Roman rubbed a hand over his face, trying to erase the exhaustion he was sure was now visible. It had to be, because he felt it in every single inch of his body.
Maintaining two fully functioning businesses was surprisingly difficult as, despite the efficient team he had brought into Kolikov Holdings to do a full audit, his grandfather’s business had accrued a little more than its sterling reputation over the years. It had accrued debts. And the steel fortress around his heart tightened at the thought that the old bastard really had had the last laugh.
Roman wanted nothing more than to tear it to shreds, but the promise he’d made to Ella... It had him warring with an instinct that had been honed over nearly eighteen years, and a desire to be better, to do better, to give her what it was she wanted. And if that came at the cost of what he wanted? That was why he’d had two proposals drawn up by his team. One for liquidation and one for a complete overhaul.
But, he ruefully admitted to himself, it wasn’t just that. His exhaustion stemmed mostly from the fact that he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for even one night in the estate he shared with Ella. Knowing that she was along the hall, knowing that he hadn’t enforced the sleeping arrangements he’d crassly thrown at her in a fit of pique, was undoing him.
And when he wasn’t thinking about the ecstasy that only his wife had brought him he was wondering what kind of father he would be. His own father had abandoned him, Vladimir had been a cruel, manipulative piece of work and the foster homes afterwards not much better. Until now, he’d embraced a solitary path, a ruthless pursuit of single-minded vengeance. What if he betrayed his child? What if he betrayed Ella? All these thoughts were sneaking in under the defences of a certainty that usually protected his conscience. The certainty that he was doing the right thing. Though he knew that generating two plans for two different futures was not ‘doing the right thing’. Not for Ella, anyway.
Slamming the door on the car that had brought him home, he closed the door on the fears he refused to expose to his wife. Dorcas was standing guard at the door, wagging her tail furiously but clearly knowing better than to pounce on him. Unaccountably, something in his chest eased to see the animal so happy at his arrival.
As he entered the hallway he ground to a halt at the sight of his wife, at the large mirror by the side table, putting in her earrings. It was such a simple gesture, so simply domestic, that it took him a moment to realise that she was dressed in a stunning creation that shone beneath the lights in the hall.
The bodice that encased her chest was made up of thousands of folds of pale pink chiffon, all meeting to twist in the centre of her breasts, drawing his hungry gaze to the perfection they hid. The cap sleeves, dotted with crystals, perched on her shoulders as if almost about to fall, illuminating the length of her collarbone and the beautiful curve of her neck. The material gathered beneath a band at her waist, and plunged to the floor in swathes of silk.
The beauty of his wife undid him completely, robbing him of speech or thought—at least any thought other than mine.
She turned to him then, head still bent, fiddling with an earring, and frowned. A look of hurt passed across her features, which she vainly tried to hide. Tu
rning back to the mirror, she said, ‘You have forgotten.’
Honestly, Roman would have replied that he’d forgotten his own name until he caught sight of the invitation on the table and something cold and hard gripped his gut.
‘The ballet,’ he said, his tone completely devoid of emotion.
‘The meeting with Ivan Mozorov,’ she clarified. ‘Apparently he enjoys mixing pleasure with business, and has generously graced me with the period of the interval to make my pitch.’ She turned back to him, having won the battle over her earring. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, shaking her head in a way that clearly indicated it was anything but, ‘you can stay—’
‘I just need ten minutes,’ Roman said, stalking past his wife and towards his room and the shower, desperate to wash off the cold sweat that had gathered at the nape of his neck.
Not for a minute did he think Ella had realised what she had done, what that would do to him. And, for the first time he could remember, that hurt.
His muscles ached as he climbed the staircase towards the bedroom. He pulled off his jacket and threw it on the bed, he struggled with the cufflinks at his wrists and toed off his shoes. All these things were done automatically and blindly. Because, in his mind’s eye, he saw his mother staring at the small black and white television set in the small room they shared as she watched her old ballet company perform for the Russian president. He saw her round, wide unblinking eyes fill with a sheen of tears still yet to be shed. Even as a child, he’d heard her unspoken thoughts.
That could have been me. That should have been me.