Her chin wobbled and her eyes filled with tears. She sniffed and wrote even more furiously on her pad. Tearing it off, she held it out to me.
I took it and read it.
Don’t leave me
I got down on my haunches. “It’s not that I want to leave you, but I didn’t get the—”
“Miss Winters,” a deep voice called from behind me.
The child jumped, then gave me one last imploring look before she ran away.
I straightened. I could feel my anger return as quickly as it had gone when the child approached me. I turned around.
Yuri Volkov’s tall, intimidating frame was filling the doorway to his office. There was no expression on his handsome face. “Will you come into my study, please?”
I didn’t want to go. I honestly didn’t, but I felt my feet move as if I was a puppet on a string. I had no control. As I reached the door to his dark-wood paneled study, he took a step back to allow me to enter.
I passed him by and felt something. Like a crackle of electricity. It went right through my body. Doing my best to remain calm and composed, I turned around and faced him. I felt he could see right through me, even though I knew better.
“May I see the notes my niece gave you?”
He both intimidated and enticed me. Silently, I held out the crumpled papers in my palm.
He took them without letting our skin touch and glanced at them. His other hand came up to stroke his chin.
I stared at him.
When he looked up, his sensuous lips quirked upwards. Yuri Volkov smiling was another matter altogether. He was beautiful in the way a growling panther was. “I’ve reconsidered. I might have been too hasty in dismissing your services.” His voice was so smooth and controlled no one would have believed that only minutes ago his tongue was in my mouth and I was mindlessly sucking on it.
“I’m afraid so have I,” I said, relishing the new and heady power I held in my hands.
A flicker of annoyance crossed his expression. Something he put away very swiftly. It was clear he didn’t have to deal with insubordination too often. As a matter of fact, he probably never had to deal with it.
“I’ll double your salary.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”
“Name your own price then.”
I wanted to remain impervious to all his offers, but my eyebrows shot upwards. “Are you serious?”
“Of course.”
I didn’t have to think about it. “No. You know it’s not the money,” I bit out.
“Then what would cause you to deny a child in need?”
“It’s you,” I said simply. “I couldn’t possibly work for a man like you.”
“Why not? You were perfectly willing a few minutes ago.”
“That was before you forced yourself on me.”
“I kissed you because you forced the issue. You wanted to know why I didn’t want to hire you so I showed you why,” he defended calmly.
“Well then, surely nothing has changed from a few minutes ago.”
“A lot has changed. I take my responsibility for my niece very seriously. Nothing is more important. Yulia’s needs have to be placed before mine at all times. Yes, I am sexually attracted to you, but I can get a woman from anywhere. She chose you, so her need to have you overrides mine.”
For some strange reason the statement of how he could get a woman from anywhere cut me.
“As you are already aware from the job description,” he continued, “my niece hasn’t spoken a word for six months. No one, not even her psychiatrist knows why she won’t talk. Neither has she made any attempt to befriend anyone. You’re the first person she appears to have connected with and show a need for, so I will move heaven and earth to see that she gets what she wants. I believe you might hold the key to her coming out of her shell and talking again.”
I could tell he was telling the truth and I believed him when he said he was putting her needs before his. I even felt a touch of admiration and yet…I stared at him.
I felt torn. On one hand, I wanted to stay. I could still see the fear in his niece’s eyes. It’d taken a lot for her to approach me and yet she had. It seemed important to her to make me stay. Why me I didn’t know. But I wanted to get to the mystery of why she had chosen me. I wanted to help too. It was what had drawn me to this job in the first place.
On the other hand, some instinct for self-preservation told me to get the hell out of here. This man could be very dangerous to my sanity. Within minutes of being in his presence he’d made me lose control and behave in a fashion, I had never before even imagined acting. I never dreamed I could be provoked to hurt another human being.
“You can be certain if you take the job you will have no unwanted advances from me,” he added, as if he could read my mind.
I bit my lip uncertainly.
“Please, Miss Winters,” he said softly, persuasively.
I could see how fiercely intense his desire for me to stay and help his niece was.
To hear this powerful man plead was something else. I realized he must really love his niece. “Do you promise that you will never again pull another stunt like that?”
“You have my word.”
I nodded slowly. “All right, Mr. Volkov. I’ll stay and see how it goes, but if you ever—”
“I gave you my word. If anything happens between us, it will be because you initiated it.”
“It will be a cold day in hell before that happens.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about. Will you be able to start tomorrow?”
“I guess so.”
“I will send a car around to pick you up.”
“No, don’t do that I’ll get here on my own.”
“As you wish. My secretary will take it from here and get you to sign the necessary paperwork.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you, Miss Winters.” He nodded formally, distantly, then went to open the door for me.
I was frozen to the spot.
“Until tomorrow, Miss Winters.” He looked at me with the politeness of a stranger. It was as if a door had closed and a part of me grieved. Before this agreement, he was a man and I was a woman, now he was my employer and I was his employee.
I walked away from him and I couldn’t shake the feeling I had lost something important. I told myself I was being silly. I should be happy. I got the job I wanted, but inside me there was an ache, a longing for something I, myself had thrown away too hastily.
Chapter 4
April
“He did what?” Charlotte, my roommate, popped her head out from the bathroom door, a green sheet mask on her face.
Charlotte and I were school friends who became teachers, didn’t really like it, and waded into the nanny business together. Between us, we’d changed a truckload of diapers, been peed on by countless infants, had innumerable encounters with smirking, badly behaved toddlers; and dealt with a few jealous wives and their overly-friendly husbands into the bargain.
In temperament though, we are chalk and cheese. I’m a calm, cautious, thoughtful redhead, and she’s a risk taking, energetic, fiery blonde. Her temper is legendary. Back at school, she used to terrify even the boys, but what they didn’t know was underneath it all, she had a heart of gold. She is the most loyal, kind, and supportive friend one could ever hope to have.
“You heard me,” I said, kicking off my sensible pumps and heading for the fridge.
“No I couldn’t have, because I thought I heard you say Yuri Volkov kissed you.”
I opened the fridge and turned to look at her. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Her mouth opened in astonishment, and the mask started to slip.
The sight registered as comical even on my tightly strung nerves. I had to laugh.
“Why exactly are you laughing?” she demanded.
I grabbed two bottles of beer. “That mask! You look creepy...and a bit insane!”
“Oh,” she acknowledged. Reali
gning the cutouts to fit over her eyes, nose and lips, she came over to the living room, took the beer I held out, and plopped unto the couch beside me. “Let me get this straight… you went for an interview to be his niece’s nanny and he kissed you!”
“Uh, huh.”
Charlotte toasted me with her bottle. “What do you mean by kissed? On the cheek like the French and Italians, on the forehead like fussy grandmothers, or…”
“On the mouth,” I finished.
“Whoa!”
I took a sip of cold beer and savored the sensation of it sliding down my parched throat.
“Okay, so tell me exactly what happened.” She grabbed a half-eaten container of Pringles off the coffee table and popped one into her mouth.
With my eyes to the ceiling, I began, “It was a hot summer’s day—”
She threw a Pringle at me. “Stop deflecting!”
I fished the fluffy chip off the couch and munched it absently. “To be honest, it’s all kind of blurry right now. One minute we were talking in his expensive study and the next he’d come around and—”
“Oh my God,” she spat. “What a bastard. You should report him to the police. That’s sexual harassment right there.”
“It wasn’t as bad as that, Charlotte.”
She waited for me to explain, but when I didn’t, she frowned. “What do you mean it wasn’t as bad as that? You don’t think it’s harassment when a complete stranger who is supposed to be interviewing you for a job to take care of his niece, jumps on you like that?”
“I’m not sure what I think exactly.”
At her dumbstruck gaze, a mad giggle escaped my lips. I was probably still in shock. Nothing I’d learned and known about myself in my twenty-six years had prepared me for the way my body reacted to Yuri Volkov. For heaven’s sake, I didn’t even like the man. Yes, he was physically beautiful, but he was too hard and cold. I liked my men warm and caring. This was my first experience with pure lust.
She put the tub of Pringles down and folded her arms across her chest. “I have ten more minutes before I have to take off this mask. You better make me understand what happened, or I’m doing everything I can to get him thrown in jail, and you perhaps…into a psychiatric ward.”
“What did I do?” I cried, trying not to laugh at how angry she was becoming on my behalf.
She glared at me. “You can laugh and pretend all you want, but your eyes give it away. You look haunted, young lady. I’m not playing this game. What did that monster do to you? Spit it out.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down. First of all, he’s not a monster. It wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me how it was before I explode.”
“Okay, I arrived at his house. Actually, calling it a house is like calling Kim Kardashian a housewife. It was a very grand, nouveau riche mansion. It even had a massive bodyguard called Brain—”
“Are you trying to be funny?” Charlotte interrupted, rising angrily from her seat.
Charlotte’s rage made me feel bad. She couldn’t help it. She flew into a temper if she thought anybody was trying to take advantage of me. In remorse, I pulled her back down. “Relax, will you? There really was a bodyguard called Brain, and I am getting to the important bits. It’s just that my brain is a bit fried so it helps to try and recall the details—”
“Why is your brain fried?”
“Yuri Volkov kissed me,” I reminded her flatly.
Her eyes narrowed to slits, a feat considering how enormous her eyes were. “I thought you weren’t feeling harassed about it.”
“It depends—”
“On what?” she flared up again, hands on hips.
“On your definition of harassed. Anyway, can I just get through my story without being constantly interrupted?” I glanced at my watch. “I believe I have seven minutes left.”
“Fine. Carry on.” She reached for her Pringles.
“Where was I?”
“A bodyguard called Brain. I assume he was as thick as two short planks,” she said sarcastically.
I grinned. “He did give the impression intellectual pursuits were not his thing.”
She smiled, relaxing a little. “Before you carry on, did you meet the child?”
I nodded and frowned, remembering Yulia’s silent, but desperate plea.
“Did you find out why she won’t speak?”
I shook my head. “No. Apparently, no one knows, not even her psychiatrist. She seems to communicate by writing on her notepad.”
For a second, my train of thought returned to the ivory marble room with its intricate Persian carpets, golden side tables, and gigantic vases of exotic flowers. In all my life, I’d never felt my heart beat so frantically as I strode through it. And then that moment when I went from shock, sexual arousal, horror, and confusion to looking into the deeply troubled eyes of a sad, little Princess. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her eyes said it all.
Charlotte took an agonized breath and nudged, “Earth to April…”
I lifted my gaze to hers. “Sorry. Her name is Yulia. It was the weirdest thing but she ran up to me after I left Mr. Volkov’s study and put her hand in mine. Then she wrote on her pad, Don’t go and gave it to me.”
Charlotte’s eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them. “Good heavens, that’s like something from a Disney movie. What did you freaking do?”
I took a sip of beer as I thought about the strange, surreal moment. “Nothing at first. I was too stunned. I didn’t think I could work for her uncle. Not after I slapped him.”
Charlotte clapped her hand on her mouth. “You slapped him. Okay, back up, back up. Let’s go back to the uncle and the kiss.”
Chapter 5
April
Charlotte gulped down her beer and watched me with unblinking attention while I told her about the shortest, strangest interview I’ve had with the most mysterious man I’d ever met.
“He sounds creepy,” she decided.
“Trust me, creepy is the last word anyone would use to describe him.”
“What word would you use?”
“I don’t know if I can describe him with one word. To start with, he was extremely difficult to read. Like trying to suss out the Mona Lisa or the Sphinx.” I shook my head. “No, that’s not quite right either. The whole episode was almost like a scene from The Interview With A Vampire. The whole time there was an underlying dark sexual tension.”
Charlotte leaned forward. “Really?”
“Well, for all the five minutes I was there anyway. Then he informed me the interview was over and his PA would contact me with me the result.” I crinkled my face. “Basically, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
“Why? He didn’t even give you a chance.”
“That’s exactly what I thought and it made me so angry at the arrogance with which he was dismissing me that I forced him to confirm I didn’t have the job.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened as she slipped a Pringle into her mouth. “Go you! Then what happened?”
“The next thing I knew he’d left his seat, come around to my side, and grabbed me. He has very strong arms, like steel bands.”
“I’m sure he has,” she murmured staring at me.
“Before I even knew what was happening I heard him say, ‘because of this.’ Then his mouth swooped down on mine. I was too shocked to do anything about it.”
As I spoke, I remembered the burn of his cold eyes, and the fiery sizzle of arousal in the air. I felt his sensuous mouth on mine, the hardness of body pressed against mine, and the vortex of desire that I fell into. Clearly, I recalled the glint of triumph in his eyes as my hand connected with his cheek. As if he’d wanted me to slap him. Which of course, was madness.
“You’re kidding?” Charlotte breathed.
“I’m not.”
“That’s so…out there, but hold that thought for a moment,” she said, jumping up. “I need another beer. I’ll be back.” Charlotte scooted into the kitchen and
returned with two beers, one of which she slapped into my hand. She dropped into her chair and pulled her feet under her. “Proceed,” she invited. “You were telling me how Yuri kissed you. This is the good part, so don’t hold back. I want all the details. As many as you can spare.”
I stared at her eager face and realized I couldn’t share that moment with her. She already thought he was a creep and my reaction as deserving a place in a psychiatric ward. How could I make her understand I had absolutely no control over my own actions? That a complete stranger could have had me right there on the floor of his study. I didn’t even have the excuse of being drunk. I felt myself blush with shame. “There is not much to tell. It was just wrong.”
Charlotte’s eyes turned penetrating. I never could hide anything from her. “Just wrong? That’s it. You didn’t feel anything? Every kiss does something. You can kiss a frog and still get something.”
“Well, he got slapped.”
“Hmmm…yes. You said. So that’s it then. You didn’t get the job.”
“No, I got the job.”
She looked incredulous. “He gave you the job after you slapped him?”
“Well, after I slapped him I left his office, but that was when I met his niece. She ran up to me and gave me the notes. Of course, he saw our exchange and called me back into his office. He said he had reconsidered and was going to give me the job because he wanted to put Yulia’s needs above his.”
“How magnanimous of him,” Charlotte replied sarcastically. “And you’re okay with this?” She seemed to be waiting with bated breath.
I sighed. “Yes.”
“Why? He sounds extremely misogynistic and manipulative.”
“I don’t know how to put this, but I’m actually quite concerned about a little girl who won’t talk. A little girl who thinks I, a complete stranger, might be the answer to her prayers. I’m also very curious to know why she chose me. Maybe I was simply a face she preferred to the other applicants, or there’s a mystery I can help to solve. In any case, she moved me.”
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