He had taken her heart—he might just as well have had the butler pack it amongst his shirts—and the fire died in her.
‘What do you want, Lavinia?’
‘Not this,’ Lavinia admitted, and she stared at the cheque and then handed it to him. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what.’
‘For not letting me…’ She screwed her eyes closed. ‘Please—just take it.’
He didn’t.
‘I don’t want to make money this way—and the stupid thing is you’re the only man I could have tried to… I’m so ashamed.’
‘You didn’t do anything.’
‘Not for that…’ When still he wouldn’t take the cheque she screwed it up in her hands. ‘I promised myself I’d do anything it took to get Rachael, but in the end…’
‘You don’t need that money,’ Zakahr said—which was great, coming from a billionaire.
She picked up her dress, and it was an almost impossible task to get out with dignity. But as she stepped into her shoes, rejected and broke, Lavinia was the one who could look him in the eye.
‘I thought I wanted you…’ She shook her head. ‘But I don’t. I want a family for Rachael—I want cousins and grandparents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles for her. I want everything for her that I never had, and everything you so readily could.’
She went to open the door. She knew she often said the wrong thing, but sometimes she couldn’t stop herself, and now it was building and fizzing and welling inside her, and she probably wouldn’t have said it if the damn door hadn’t stuck.
‘So you were abandoned?’ Lavinia finally wrenched the door open, turned around and stuck her chin out to him. ‘Boo-hoo—get over it.’
And, in high stilettos and a koa slip, she marched right out of his life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT WAS his longest night.
He drove first to the hospital, sitting outside, knowing it was too late to go in. Then he drove to Iosef’s home and watched the lights flick on and off—even heard the baby crying at midnight in the dark, silent street and saw the light flick on again. Then to Annika—a sister he had hardly spoken to. He sat outside the sprawling farm she shared with her husband Ross, listening to the horses and the peace and wishing it might come to his soul.
It could.
Well, according to Lavinia.
She’d taken thirty-six years of history, challenged a lifelong dream and told him he could do it.
‘You don’t need money.’
He’d leant on her doorbell till she answered, still in the koa slip, nursing a tub of ice cream and a glass of wine. Somehow, he could tell she had not been crying.
‘I had already arranged a lawyer for you. He will contact you.’
‘He rang before,’ Lavinia said, and taking that phone call had felt a whole lot different from taking money. ‘He seems to think I have a good chance.’
‘You have every chance,’ Zakahr said.
He walked into her house and it was the first time he had felt at home.
There were her stolen goods all over the sofa, and a make-up bag on the coffee table, and a woman who somehow reached him.
‘How am I supposed to forgive her? How can I stay…?’
‘You choose to.’ She smiled at him, but it was a tired one. ‘She was fifteen,’ Lavinia said, pouring him a glass of wine. She had listened to Nina’s grief for so long now she knew her story by heart. ‘She was scared and pregnant and they hid it from everyone. She was poor, his family would have been angry, and Ivan told her they could not keep you.’
She didn’t elaborate on that part—they both knew the consequences.
‘For years they were apart. Ivan had a fling with a cleaner—that was Levander’s mother—then he met your mother again. She was nineteen then, and soon pregnant with twins. His family still objected to the marriage—she was beneath him, they said. She tried very hard to show them she was better, and she did not see how they would accept her if they knew there had already been a child. You would have been four.’
She tried to picture him at four, but it didn’t make her smile.
‘There was a chance to flee Russia. She was heavily pregnant, and Levander’s mother came to the door, begging that they take him. Nina did not want Levander if she could not have her own son.’
He looked at Lavinia and her eyes were clear, her words very definite.
‘I’m sorry.’
And she was. It wasn’t her fault, it had nothing to do with her, but sorry she was as she told him his history.
‘How did you forgive your mother?’
‘I don’t know that I actually did—I just gave up trying to change her. Can you forgive Nina?’ Lavinia asked—because now she’d stopped being angry she knew it was a big ask.
‘She really helped you?’ Zakahr answered in question.
‘They all have.’ Lavinia nodded. ‘They’ve been like a family.’ She thought for a moment, because again she’d probably said the wrong thing. ‘Not a lovey-dovey family—we fight all the time…’
‘A real family, I guess.’
Zakahr closed his eyes. He would wear every scar on his back easier knowing that Nina had in some way been there for her.
‘I love you,’ he said. And he’d never thought he’d say it—and neither had Lavinia—and now to hear it, to know it, to feel it, for once she was lost for words. He could not gauge her silence, but if he had to make it clearer then he would. ‘I’m crazy about you. So crazy all I can think of is you. So crazy I would give up a lifetime’s revenge to have you.’
And then she climbed on his knee and kissed him—a bold kiss, a loving kiss, a Lavinia kiss, that started on his mouth and then moved across his cheeks and over his eyebrows. Her thin fingers roamed his hair. He knew this was a for ever he had never—not once—let himself glimpse. He could be himself. The past wasn’t something he ran from or something that ate him up with a need to avenge. The past could just be, and that meant he now had a future.
It was a kiss that was both passionate and loving—a kiss that was both urgent and patient. She felt the exhaustion as his past left him, and the hope as the future greeted him, and it was a different kiss too, for Lavinia.
She tasted his tongue, and the lips that were designed for her. She wasn’t unsure and she wasn’t shy and she knew with him she was revered.
She straddled him and kissed him as his hands caressed her body through the silk. He kissed her breasts through the fabric his father had created, and then his mouth moved lower still, and she felt him, warm through the fabric. He kissed her stomach and slid the fabric up over her hips. She knelt on him till it was her flesh his lips were touching, and he kissed her stomach deeply as her fingers pressed in his hair. It was a kiss that told her his babies would grow there.
She slid down his zipper and lowered herself onto him, and it was third time lucky for Lavinia, because this time she got to love him.
She got to kiss him as he came deep within her. She got to kiss him as her body learnt how readily available true passion was. Because it was fast and intense and incredibly beautiful—a lot like life.
‘Marry me,’ he said because he wanted her for ever. He kissed her again, and then asked her again. ‘Marry me.’
‘On one condition.’
She whispered it into his ear.
He’d have agreed to anything—just not that.
He closed his eyes, because it was impossible, but how could he ever say no to her? He was still within her, and he could never deny her. And then he opened them, and saw that Lavinia was absolutely and completely serious in her ‘one condition’.
Hesitantly he agreed. Tonight could only be for ever if he would do this for her. Then this love would be for keeps.
Everyone would just have to wait till the wedding to find out.
EPILOGUE
LAVINIA had no shame.
She was the bride-to-be from hell, and she didn’t care who knew it.
As a child she had fallen asleep dreaming of this day, had blocked out the noises from the bedroom next door with dreams of her prince, and quite simply it had to be perfect.
Perfect! she informed each Kolovsky in turn.
If they couldn’t move on or get along then she didn’t want them at her wedding—and that included Zakahr.
The brothers would wear matching Kolovsky silk ties, and so too would Ross, Annika’s husband. Annika and Nina were to wear shoes in the same silk.
‘It’s too much!’ Katina grumbled. ‘You need subtle—let us do what we do best.’
‘It’s my wedding!’ Lavinia insisted.
And it was.
The dress that had waited to be worn by a Kolovsky bride and had been shunned each time was taken out of the display cabinet and fitted for Lavinia, and it was absolutely the best dress in the world.
She could feel the jewels in the hem that had been sewn in by Ivan.
Opal earrings from Nina dangled at her ears.
And she wore her mother’s watch. It was the one thing Fleur had refused to pawn, a gift from her favourite client who, Lavinia had secretly dreamed, was maybe, just maybe, her father. Today she felt so sure and complete that Lavinia was quite certain he was.
‘Big breaths,’ said Hannah, the Salvation Army worker who had always been there for her while she grew up, and who would give her away on her biggest day.
‘Are they all there?’ Lavinia begged—because she wanted each and every one of the Kolovskys to share this.
She loved them all, every depraved, debauched, reformed one of them, and this day was not perfect without them all here.
‘Levander’s there,’ Hannah said, peering into the church. Levander was easily spotted, because Zakahr had chosen him as his best man—two Detsky Dom boys made good, thanks to love.
‘I’m here,’ Annika, who was bridesmaid, pointed out. ‘And I’ve seen Aleksi and Iosef go in.’
‘And they’re standing with Nina?’ Lavinia checked.
‘They are,’ Annika said. ‘You can stop worrying now.’
And she did. Standing at the doors of the church, it dawned on Lavinia that she could stop worrying now.
Zakahr had been right. Kevin had refused the DNA test Lavinia’s lawyer had suggested. Rachael was not even his. And now the little girl was getting used to her new family. Too shy to be a bridesmaid, today she was being held by a doting Nina, and that serious face more often these days broke into a smile.
‘You look wonderful,’ Annika said to Lavinia, and it felt strange for Annika. She should be jealous—after all, her mother was so close to Lavinia—but how could she be jealous of a woman who had healed such a fractured family? ‘You are wonderful,’ Annika said, which was terribly effusive for her. And what was more she gave Lavinia a kiss.
The walk up the aisle was up to that moment the best walk of her life. But Lavinia wanted to gallop—because she wanted to walk back down it with him.
Zakahr smiled when he saw her—a smile that came from his soul. Because, unlike his sister and brothers, he knew her truth. His secret virgin walked towards him, and never till then had Zakahr considered himself lucky. But resentment was a memory now. His soul was devoid of anything bitter, and every piece of his past was worth it for this moment—because without pain he would not have recognised such joy.
Yes, he knew her truth, and she knew his—knew every story behind every scar—and still, steadfastly, she loved him.
Which was why he would do anything for her.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said when she joined him.
‘I know!’ Lavinia beamed and kissed him. ‘So do you.’
There was a lot of talking, and a bit of singing—only Lavinia didn’t really hear it, because they were getting to the part that mattered the most, and her heart was hammering, and her hands were shaking.
He took them in his as he offered her his vows. And he held them and remembered what she’d whispered in his ear the night he’d asked her to marry him.
He could see his dazzling, happy wife, perhaps the strongest woman he knew, for the first time ever crying as Zakahr opened his mouth. Lavinia was crying because she knew how hard this was for him, but she knew, absolutely, that he could do it.
And he did.
‘I, Zakahr Riminic Kolovsky…’
She heard the gasp from the congregation, turned and saw Nina holding Rachael, crying and smiling, and all his brothers and his sister standing proud.
She could only love him more as she stumbled through her own vows.
It was the most wonderful party.
The press were baying at the door, a helicopter hovered overhead, but no one inside cared. There was love in the air, and plenty to go around, and Lavinia danced and chatted and ate, and insisted everyone danced some more.
No, Zakahr did not dance with Nina, but they shared a drink and admired Lavinia—the one solid link between them.
Forgiveness wasn’t a place Zakahr had arrived at yet, but he was making the journey. And if it was hard, still it brought rewards—there were enough Kolovskys to ensure he had far fewer trips to the airport!
‘I never want to take it off!’ She stood in the honeymoon suite and couldn’t bear to take off the dress, just twirled at the mirror as Zakahr lay on the bed and watched.
Then she turned sideways and ran her hands over her latest phantom pregnancy, pressed in the fabric in a search for changes.
Zakahr suppressed a smile—she wasn’t even late yet, though Lavinia insisted she felt bloated.
‘Can we have lots of babies?’
‘Lots,’ Zakahr said. ‘All boys!’ Because he’d have his work cut out keeping tabs on mini-Lavinias.
Lavinia smiled and thought of lots of little grey-eyed, dark-haired boys, and gave a smile for the little girls she’d make sure they had too. ‘I want a big family.’
‘We’ve suddenly got one!’ he said as she came over.
Lavinia held up her hair as Zakahr took care of a long row of buttons, his mouth tracing her spine. ‘They’re my family, except I feel like I’m marrying into yours, Mrs Kolovsky.’
‘Say it again.’ She was shameless.
‘Mrs Kolovsky,’ Zakahr duly said as he peeled the bodice down. ‘Mrs Lavinia Kolovsky.’
She made it easy to say—so easy to become the person he was born to be, the only man to change his name on his wedding day!
Then Zakahr stilled for a moment, realised she wasn’t imagining things as he saw the unfamiliar swell in her pale flat breasts, saw the changes in her body that would change their future.
‘What?’ She smiled up at him.
‘Everything,’ Zakahr said. ‘You’re everything to me.’
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0183-5
A BRIDE FOR KOLOVSKY
Previously published in the U.K. as THE DEVIL WEARS KOLOVSKY
First North American Publication 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Carol Marinelli
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