Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal

by Dani Collins

  “Well, there was an element of Why not you? But I seem to have answered that. You’ll be getting a one-star review for your afterplay.”

  His whole demeanor turned to granite. “You want me to believe the romantic who remained a virgin until twenty-four suddenly decided to seek a brief, pleasurable encounter with a man she met hours ago?”

  “I’m the one entitled to the outrage. You are the player and I can’t believe I let you play me.” She hopped to get herself into her jeans and closed the fly. When he didn’t reply, she shot a look over her shoulder. “Not going to dispute that accusation?”

  “Do you want me to take you to a pharmacy? Pay for the pill?”

  “Such a gentleman. No thanks.” If he offered her money right now, she would actually kill him. “There’s one near my hotel. I’m perfectly fine.” Not perfect at all.

  “I’ll call my driver to take you.”

  “Oh, don’t bother.” Swallowing back a lump, Rozalia hurried to finish dressing. This was why she had made that childish vow with Gizi, so she wouldn’t have this shuddering avalanche of regret tumbling onto her in the aftermath of what had seemed to be a truly lovely experience.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s dark.” He kept hold of the phone.

  “I’m sure your gatekeeper will be happy to call me a cab.” She felt so stupid!

  He dialed and she heard him talking, but she was already slamming her way out of his life.

  * * *

  Viktor woke early with a splitting headache and a distinct lack of appetite, but the ambition that typically propelled him out of bed was in full force, laced with disgust that he’d shunned his responsibilities last night.

  He showered again, even though he had showered directly after Rozalia left.

  He should have felt relieved by her departure. Instead, he had made a futile effort to wash away guilt and tremendous self-contempt for succumbing to his libido, along with a lingering discontent he couldn’t identify.

  Had he wanted her on sight? Yes. But he hadn’t played her. He didn’t prey on women. He liked to think of himself as a generous lover, in bed and out, and they had seemed physically compatible.

  So, was it possible she had simply been swept away, as he had?

  Since when was he “swept away”? He was a grown man, not a youth of seventeen, slave to a pretty smile and a glimpse of cleavage. He should have sent Rozalia away rather than bring her up here. He should have attended to the endless work he had been mentally juggling when he had walked out of his building and allowed himself to be distracted by...

  He didn’t want to think of her. Didn’t want to pick apart their evening yet again, trying to decide whether he had misjudged her. He would drown in another bottle and he’d had more than enough last night. After calling to the gate a second time and being assured she’d been dispatched safely to her hotel, he’d poured himself a drink and set about numbing this nameless thing that roiled inside him.

  It was still there, nipping at his heels as he dressed and went down to his office. Why had she given herself to him? Her virginity? Why, why, why?

  He decided to work a few hours here, where the quiet would give him time to recover from his hangover before he drove in to the office where he was always in demand, even on a weekend.

  The housekeeper spotted him on his way into his office.

  “Kávé?” she offered.

  He nodded, sending a bolt of dull pain hammering through his skull. He went directly to the drawer where he kept a supply of headache capsules and swallowed two dry, gaze moving sightlessly over the top of his desk while he began to prioritize his day.

  Which was when he recalled that he hadn’t put the earring away last night, before taking Rozalia upstairs.

  It wasn’t here on the desk where he’d left it. It wasn’t on the floor or anywhere here in his office.

  Why had she given herself to him?

  He had his answer.

  * * *

  Rozalia woke to an imperative knock on her hotel room door.

  She was dressed in yesterday’s clothes, having thrown herself onto the bed when she arrived back at her hotel last night. She had proceeded to bawl out a heart that shouldn’t feel so broken after such a trifling thing as falling into bed with a philanderer.

  “Ms. Toth. This is the police. Open the door.” The last was said more quietly, as though to someone else. It must have been the hotel manager because her door was opened before she’d even pulled herself off the bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Her mind leaped to her family. Why else would the police barge in on her this way except to deliver horrible news?

  Two uniformed police entered, a man and a woman. One directed the manager to wait outside. “Sit,” the male officer ordered her, nodding toward the chair. The female officer proceeded to go through her things.

  “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

  “Tell me about this earring that you were so interested in acquiring from Mr. Rohan,” the male officer commanded.

  * * *

  Rozalia kept pinching herself, hoping to wake from this nightmare, but it only grew worse as the hours wore on. She was brought to a police station, fingerprinted and questioned a second time, and charged with stealing the earring from Viktor’s home.

  It didn’t matter how many times she said that she had only collected her bag from the parlor on her way out. “Doesn’t he have surveillance cameras? You can see I don’t have it with my things.”

  They didn’t care that her words came out in perfect Hungarian. It was as if they didn’t hear them at all. They allowed her to stay in her rumpled T-shirt and jeans but took all the rest of her things.

  They let her make one phone call and by then she was nearly at breaking point. In her state of supreme anxiety and without her contact list, she could only remember the number for the shop—which was useless. It was late in New York. Past midnight. Her uncle would be home, asleep. Or maybe he’d gone to Florida? She couldn’t remember.

  She couldn’t call her parents. She had told Viktor they were impractical, which was an understatement. In an emergency, they reacted with emotion, not cool-headed logic. They would try to comfort her, but as for hiring her a lawyer, they wouldn’t know how to make an international call, let alone find her legal representation. And they simply didn’t have the sort of funds she would need for bail.

  She tried what she thought was Gisella’s number, getting a dark look from the officer supervising her. He acted as though he was doing her favor, allowing her a second attempt to reach someone. Cold fingers of helplessness kept stroking over her skin, pushing tears into the backs of her eyes.

  A man answered and a lump of despair filled her throat. “Oh, God. I dialed the wrong number. I’m so sorry.”

  “Wait. Are you looking for Gisella? I’ll get her.”

  Suddenly her cousin’s voice was on the phone and Rozi was so relieved, she fell apart. Afterward, she couldn’t recall anything she said. All that mattered was that Gisella had said, I’m coming.

  She handed off the phone to the officer so Gisella could get the details she needed and buried her face in her hands.

  * * *

  “What do you mean she was arrested?” Viktor barked. Things had been going from bad to worse for hours. At this news, his temper wasn’t just lost. It was abandoned with malice aforethought. “Where the hell is she?”

  And how long had she been in a cell? It had been eight hours since he had discovered the earring missing. Eight hours in which he asked his housekeeper to call the police, to ask them to question Rozalia. He said to search her room if necessary and ensure she didn’t leave the country until the earring was located.

  He didn’t ask them to arrest her.

  Officers had come here, as well. They had taken Viktor’s statement and dusted his desk for fingerprints. They had
questioned his employees, all of whom were day staff, not the butler and chef and gatekeeper from last night. Those employees had been called in over the course of the hours-long investigation, which was when Viktor had learned that Trudi had stopped by last night.

  “What the hell was she doing here?”

  “She was on the visitor log as an expected guest. I let her through,” the gatekeeper stammered, anxious to take Viktor to the gatehouse to prove it if necessary.

  All Viktor had really needed to hear was that his mother had been the one to put Trudi’s name on the list. He called Trudi, who started out very haughty, playing the injured party.

  “Your mother told me she had been called out of town,” Trudi said. “She thought you might like company for dinner. Apparently you’d already found some.” Her piqued tone rankled.

  Endre had tried to turn Trudi away, Viktor learned. Endre had told Trudi that Viktor was with a guest. On her insistence, Endre had gone upstairs and swore he left Trudi in the parlor only long enough to confirm that Viktor had retired for the night. Since he hadn’t been sure if Rozalia was still there, he hadn’t disturbed him.

  But the door between Viktor’s office and the parlor was unlocked. When Viktor questioned Trudi further, asking directly if she had seen the earring, there was a long pause.

  “We’re fingerprinting the area right now. If there’s something you’d like to tell me, now would be the time,” he growled, control hanging by a thread.

  “I glanced into your office to see if you were there,” she said offhandedly. “It seemed a rather valuable piece to leave lying about. I moved it into the drawer of the end table in the parlor.”

  Mischief. Childish malicious mischief.

  “I don’t care for games, Trudi. Or possessiveness, especially when it’s so misplaced. Do not hang around Budapest for me,” he said flatly and ended their call.

  Their “budding relationship” was dead on the vine.

  Now as he attempted to track down Rozalia, he was thinking Trudi had best not hang around this hemisphere. The manager of Rozalia’s hotel was stammering with deference as he informed Viktor that he’d searched the room a second time himself, trying to return his valuable property. The police had taken her into custody when she’d refused to tell them where she’d hidden it, or to whom she’d sold it.

  Viktor might actually kill Trudi for this.

  He left for the station, placing a terse call to his lawyer to meet him there.

  * * *

  Rozalia was exhausted, emotionally and physically, but she didn’t bother trying to sleep in the cell. She sat on the hard bench, muscles aching with tension, alert to every noise and shift of her cellmates while she tried to disguise her terror. She listened hard and held herself in a state of firm discipline. Gisella would come through for her. She just had to wait.

  Finally, a guard came to the door and spoke her name. A lawyer was here for her.

  It was such a harsh jolt against the invisible shell she had formed around herself, Rozalia shuddered. Her knees felt spongey as she stood, her head catching a rush of blood that made her sway and put out a hand to brace herself.

  The cold bar she grasped sent a chill of foreboding into her heart. This might be just a meeting, she reminded herself, trying not to get her hopes up. Given the way things were going, this might be her home for a long time.

  She was shown into a room that held three people in suits and one in uniform. One was a woman and Rozalia latched instinctively onto her. She projected empathy from behind an expression of tension.

  No way would she look at that suit, the one tailored to his broad shoulders. The ones she’d clung to last night as if he could give her everything in the world. Everything she craved.

  She swallowed a sour ache. That vile bastard was the reason she was here. If she dared allow herself a feeling right now, it would be pure hatred.

  The woman introduced herself as Sophie Balogh.

  “My cousin hired you?” Rozalia asked, voice husky from lack of use.

  “Technically I’ve been retained by Kaine Michaels. I will bill him through our related firm in America, but yes, I’m here at Gisella Drummond’s request.”

  Kaine Michaels? She didn’t want Gisella in his debt because of her!

  Some misguided instinct had her looking to him for one helpless second.

  Viktor’s gaze was waiting for her. His face was stiff and unreadable, but she could feel the fury radiating off him as he drilled through her confused gaze to catch fresh hooks into her heart.

  “I didn’t take it!” she blurted at him, even more anguished than she’d been last night when he’d accused her of wanting to trade herself for it.

  “It’s been located,” he said tightly. “In my home.”

  “Then why am I here?” she cried, hands going into the air with helplessness.

  Sophie inserted herself between them and touched Rozalia’s arm, steadying her, insisting on gaining her attention. “Mr. Rohan has already made arrangements for your release.”

  Rozalia pulled into herself, hugged her ribs and held the woman’s gaze.

  “I want you to arrange it,” she said through lips that felt numb, like she was drunk and the words in her head wouldn’t form on her mouth. “I don’t want to owe him. I’ll pay you when it comes time. Don’t involve Kaine Michaels.”

  “It’s all done,” Sophie said gently. “There are some documents to be filed and you may have to appear before a judge to fully expunge this incident, otherwise it could haunt you when you travel. I’m happy to take over that part of it, but either way, you are—” She sent a stern look toward the men. “More or less, free to go.”

  “What do you mean, ‘more or less’?” Rozalia asked with panic.

  Viktor still wore that intimidating look, as if he wanted to tear someone limb from limb.

  “The hotel manager has seized this moment for his twenty minutes of fame,” Viktor bit out. “Reporters have staked out your hotel. I’ve offered to take you—”

  “I’d rather go back to a cell.”

  “Ms. Toth—” Both lawyers started to protest, but Viktor silenced the room by opening the door.

  Calling her bluff? Rozalia almost burst into fresh tears at his coldhearted cruelty.

  “Come,” Viktor said with a sweep of his hand, voice grave. “I got you into this. Allow me to get you out.”

  Not sending her back to her cell, then.

  “How?”

  “I have a home in the mountains where no one will bother you.”

  Biting her lip, refusing to let it tremble, she walked ahead of him, turning in the direction of the exit. Toward fresh air and freedom.

  They had to stop at the intake counter where her things were given back to her. She shakily went through her purse, ensuring her wallet and phone were there. Her phone was down to 20 percent and had about a hundred notifications on it, mostly from her mother. She was offered a pen to sign for everything and she started to scroll her signature, but—

  “Where’s my ring? They put it in an envelope.” She started to scramble through her purse again, working through the hidden pockets. “I gave them my ring. They made me take it off and said I would get it back! Where is my ring?”

  The man behind the counter shrugged stupidly and Viktor had the gall to touch her shoulders and say, “I’m sure it’s here. Stay calm.”

  Calm? Calm?

  She slapped him away and fisted her hands on the counter. “I was falsely arrested for stealing. I’m not going to become a victim to it. Find. My. Ring.”

  “Mind yourself,” the officer behind the counter warned her.

  Viktor tried to get in front of her while his own lawyer quickly stepped in front of both of them, urging everyone to keep their tempers.

  A moment later, an envelope with her name on it was located and h
er ring tumbled from the corner where it had been caught.

  Rozalia was shaking so hard she could hardly thread it onto her finger. Viktor tried to help but she batted him away again. She had her ring, her phone, and shouldered her purse. She was leaving.

  * * *

  Her eyes were sunken and bruised, her hair limp, her clothes rumpled and her mouth pouted with exhaustion. Her whole demeanor was one of furious anguish, but she had kept a cool head right up until the ring incident.

  Do you not have any special fondness for some place or thing?

  No. He hadn’t cared about losing the actual earring when he discovered it missing. Not really. Thievery was infuriating in any form and the value of the earring was enough to grate, but he wasn’t attached emotionally to the gold and stones.

  The sense of betrayal had gone deep under his thick skin, though, along with the ignominy of allowing himself to be conned. He’d been infuriated with himself and Rozalia right up until discovering Trudi had been the real culprit.

  Trudi’s actions fit all his expectations of women, feeding his cynicism, but Rozalia’s undisguised distress now rubbed a fresh and raw hole behind his breastbone.

  She hadn’t known he would never let her rot in jail. She must have been terrified.

  “The earring was gone when I went downstairs,” he said the minute they were enclosed in the back of his car. “I questioned my staff and asked the police to pay you a visit. Arresting you was overeagerness on their part. That wasn’t my intention or request.”

  “No? I was sure it was more of your charming afterplay.” Her voice was knife sharp and hard as steel. She took out her phone and made it clear she wished him under the wheels of his own car as it pulled away from the curb.

  He took odd consolation from her deeply reviling remark. She might look worse for wear, but the woman inside was far from broken. He admired that spirit. Celebrated it.

  “I’m leaving for the airport right now,” he heard a woman say as Rozalia’s first call was answered.

  Glancing at the image, which he could only see at an angle, he imagined this was the cousin she had talked about so frequently. To say Gisella looked familiar to him would be an overstatement, but there was something in her even, feminine voice that sounded not unlike his mother’s. There was also a resemblance in her high cheekbones and patrician brow.