“You’re welcome to try and make me after the bailiffs have moved in and taken everything I own,” the other man snarled as he released Lindsay by pushing her forward towards her desk.
That push was all the opening Mikhail needed to be able to step between Barbour and Lindsay.
After that it was all over in a matter of seconds as he efficiently disarmed the older man by grasping hold of his wrist and twisting his arm behind his back, the knife falling out of his suddenly lax fingers.
“You’re breaking my fucking arm—”
“Be grateful it isn’t your neck, you stupid bastard,” Mikhail rasped harshly. “Give me the key to the handcuffs,” he demanded as he saw how Lindsay was struggling against those metal cuffs about her wrists.
“I have debts, so many debts, and I needed the money from the sellout to Lysenko Industries to pay them,” the other man began to whine. “You had no right to take that from me. Or Lindsay—”
“She was never yours to take, Barbour,” Mikhail bit out between gritted teeth. “Now give me the fucking key to the handcuffs before I decide that breaking your neck really is an excellent idea—” He broke off as the door suddenly burst open.
“If you would like to step away, sir, I believe we can safely take it from here,” a voice announced dryly as the room quickly filled with uniformed police officers.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’M OKAY. REALLY. I’m fine,” Lindsay tried to reassure all the people who had crowded into her office after David Barbour had been taken away—ironically in a pair of handcuffs—by the police.
Mikhail stood protectively at Lindsay’s side after insisting that she wasn’t going anywhere for the moment—it had been agreed that the two of them would go to the police station together later on today to make their statements.
Lindsay still couldn’t believe what had happened earlier. It was surreal.
David Barbour, of all people.
She knew he had been furiously angry the past few days when it looked as if his deal with Mikhail had fallen through, but she hadn’t even guessed he harbored an obsession for her. He must be at least thirty years older than her, for one thing, which wasn’t a particular barrier, but he had never so much as invited her out for a coffee before he started making the anonymous gifts of the black roses outside her apartment.
She gave a shudder at the memory of how scared she had been earlier before Mikhail arrived, and the things David Barbour had threatened to do to her for what he considered her betrayal of him with Mikhail.
“Okay, that’s enough, everyone.” Mikhail stepped forward and in front of her. “I’m taking Lindsay home now, Peter,” he added for the benefit of the senior partner. “She’s badly shaken and needs some peace and quiet to recover.”
Lindsay sincerely hoped that ‘peace and quiet’ was going to take place in Mikhail’s bed, after he had made love to her, because right now that was what she needed more than anything else.
She placed her hand on the rigidness of his back just in front of her, hoping to silently convey some of that need.
He turned his head slightly, eyes glittering between narrowed lids telling her he had received her message loud and clear.
Or maybe he just had the same need she did to reaffirm they’d both survived David Barbour’s deranged behavior.
* * *
“I STILL CAN’T believe… I had absolutely no idea David Barbour felt that way about me.” Lindsay gave a shudder several hours later as she lay in the comfort of Mikhail’s arms and in the warmth of his bed, the two of them having just made wild and delicious love together.
His arms tightened about her. “I knew there was something off about him from the beginning, I just had no idea what it was,” he soothed. “My assistant learned this morning that he’s a gambler, owes thousands of pounds to the wrong people,” he added grimly. “Which explains his desperation when I backed out of the deal.”
“I was totally thrown this morning when he pulled out those handcuffs and the knife.” She swallowed down the remembered fear. “He somehow has the idea I belong to him. He said—he said he was going to kill you for taking me away from him, and then he was going to—”
“Don’t think about it anymore, love,” Mikhail murmured into her loosened hair. “It was his obsession, not yours.”
“I… Do you think he’ll go to prison for what he tried to do today?”
“Assault with a deadly weapon?” Mikhail growled. “He should, but unfortunately I think a psych assessment will show treatment would be more beneficial than prison.”
Mikhail had never been more scared in his life—or more icily angry—than when he saw that knife pressing against Lindsay’s back. If anything had happened to her…
“I’m your lawyer now?” she prompted softly.
“As of yesterday,” he answered firmly.
“I thought you didn’t believe in mixing business with friendship?” Lindsay eyed him teasingly.
“Everything with you is pure pleasure,” Mikhail purred.
Lindsay felt the blush warm her cheeks. Mikhail had been right when he said she had been having sex with the wrong men, because making love with him was unlike anything she had ever felt or experienced in her life before.
“Peter Haskell and I talked it over yesterday and came to an agreement.” He shrugged. “He was quite happy to stop being annoyed with you over the Barbour deal if I was happy for Lysenko Industries to become a client of his partnership, with you as my lawyer.”
“Which explains why he’s been so pleasant!” Lindsay acknowledged dryly. “And what about me? Don’t I have any say in it?”
Mikhail rolled over so that Lindsay lay flat on her back on the bed, with him looking down searchingly into her just-been-made-love-to flushed face, the warmth of her hands resting reassuringly against his chest. “Don’t you like the idea of working more closely with me on a day-to-day basis?”
“And what happens when—when this is over?” Her gaze no longer quite met his. “Won’t that prove a little awkward?”
“Trying to get rid of me already?” Mikhail tried to make his voice light and teasing, but knew he failed as he heard himself growling the words.
“No, of course not,” Lindsay assured quickly. “I just—never mind.”
“You just what, Lindsay?” His eyes narrowed.
She gave a sigh. “I’m nothing like those supermodels and actresses you usually date—”
“Thank God!” He gave a rueful chuckle before sobering. “You’re real, Lindsay. One hundred percent real.”
“What you see is what you get!” she attempted to joke.
Mikhail placed a caressing hand against her cheek. “And what I see I like very much, on the inside as well as the outside.”
“I hope you realize becoming the lawyer of the Mikhail Lysenko is a big step up the career ladder for me?”
If Mikhail had his way she was going to be a lot more in his life than just his lawyer.
But they had several things to discuss, things he needed to show Lindsay, tell her, before he even attempted to make any of that happen.
There was always the possibility that Lindsay might not even want to know him afterwards.
Mischa growled long and mournfully inside him.
* * *
“WHAT ARE WE doing here, Mikhail?” Lindsay’s voice was hushed in the carpeted corridor of the private nursing home Mikhail had brought her to, his hand warm beneath her elbow.
This was so not what she’d been expecting when he asked her to accompany him on a visit on the way back from making their statements to the police.
Mikhail’s expression was grimly focused ahead. “I want…I need for you to meet someone.”
Lindsay was even more confused when he came to a halt beside a room where two men seemed to be standing guard outside. The two men might almost have been twins: both were dressed in black suits, hair cut military short, their faces expressionless as they stared straight ahead rather than loo
k at either Lindsay or Mikhail.
“Is he alone, Yuri?”
There was a flicker of emotion—censor?—in the dark eyes of the man standing to the left. “As always, Mr. Lysenko.”
Lindsay saw Mikhail’s jaw tighten at the condemnation in the other man’s tone, although she had no idea why.
Any more than she knew who ‘he’ was.
Lindsay’s bewilderment grew stronger as she stepped into the hospital room beside Mikhail and saw the man lying in the bed, a saline drip attached to his wasted arm; otherwise the room was bare of all signs of medication and more resembled a comfortable bedroom in someone’s home. Or a very exclusive hotel.
He was an elderly man, she saw as they stepped closer to the bed, and his eyes were closed, cheeks sallow and sunken in the pallor of his face.
Who—
Lindsay gave a gasp as those closed lids suddenly opened and eyes of ice-blue turned to look at them both.
Mikhail’s eyes…
She turned to give him a searching glance.
Mikhail’s jaw tightened. “Lindsay, I would like you to meet my grandfather, Viktor Romanov. Viktor, this is my…friend, Lindsay Carlisle.”
Mikhail had brought her to meet his grandfather? His dying grandfather, unless she was mistaken as to the reason for the wasting away of what had once obviously been a powerful body—
Viktor Romanov?
Did Mikhail just say that his grandfather was Viktor Romanov? A man so notorious, as the head of the Russian mafia in Moscow for the past forty years, everyone in the world knew his name? Also the man responsible for ordering assassinations and toppling governments in order to secure his own power base in Russia?
Was Mikhail’s grandfather that Viktor Romanov?
Lindsay was too shocked to think let alone add anything to the introduction.
If this man really was who she thought he was, then Mikhail’s grandfather was the mafia in Russia.
Why didn’t any of the newspapers or magazines report on that damning piece of information?
She instantly gave herself the answer—because none of them knew Mikhail Lysenko was the grandson of Viktor Romanov. Not the media. Not the business world in which Mikhail ruled. No one.
Except her…
Because Mikhail was choosing to tell her, show her, where he came from, who he was.
Except he wasn’t.
As far as she was concerned, Viktor Romanov’s actions all these years made him nothing more than a glorified thug. A rich and powerful one admittedly, but still a thug who surrounded himself with other thugs, like the two men currently standing on guard outside the door. Because a man as notorious as Viktor Romanov had more enemies than friends, and even on his deathbed he wasn’t safe from those enemies.
Lindsay knew Mikhail to be relentless, ruthless, even richer and consequently more powerful than his grandfather, but he possessed none of the cold-hearted cruelty with which his grandfather ruled his mafia empire.
Nor would a cold and cruel man have taken care of her and protected her in the way Mikhail had these past few days. He certainly wouldn’t have deliberately put himself in danger earlier, unarmed, by stepping between her and a man wielding a knife.
“Your friend appears to be such a mouse she has nothing to say for herself!” the old man dismissed scornfully.
Lindsay’s chin rose to the challenge she heard in Viktor Romanov’s voice. “Mikhail’s friend has plenty to say for herself, Mr. Romanov, she’s just too polite to say any of it!”
“Such as?” The older man gave a smile of amusement at her show of bravado.
“Lindsay—”
“It is okay, Mikhail.” Those faded blue eyes looked up at Lindsay for several seconds before the ice seemed to melt slightly and Viktor gave a wheezy chuckle. “I like her.” He nodded.
A nerve pulsed in Mikhail’s tightly clenched jaw. “I didn’t bring her here for your approval.”
Displeasure sparked briefly in the older man’s eyes before quickly fading to resignation. “You brought her here so that she could approve or disapprove of me.”
“Not that either.” Mikhail gave a hard and bitter laugh. “I just thought she should know who I am.”
“I already know who you are, Mikhail,” Lindsay assured him softly as her hand slid down his arm and her fingers became entwined with his.
Mikhail seemed too surprised to respond at first, and then his fingers tightened almost painfully about hers. “One of Viktor’s men—Yuri—came to tell me about my grandfather early this morning,” he told her quietly. “I haven’t seen my grandfather for ten years, but once I knew how ill he is I couldn’t—I couldn’t just ignore—”
“It’s alright, Mikhail.” She gave his fingers an understanding squeeze before turning to look at the man lying in the bed. “I hope you realize and appreciate what a wonderful man your grandson is, Mr. Romanov.”
“He is like my Natalya, his mother.” The older man nodded. “Now go, both of you,” he sighed wearily. “And leave an old man to die in peace.” He closed his eyes as an end to the conversation and the meeting.
Chapter Fifteen
“DID YOU MEAN what you said to my grandfather?” Mikhail looked at Lindsay searchingly, the two of them now sitting at the kitchen table in his apartment, drinking the coffee she had insisted on making as soon as they returned from the private clinic.
Much as Mikhail had distanced himself from Viktor and that life, he found he couldn’t refuse a dying man’s last request when one of his grandfather’s men came to see him this morning, and told him Viktor wanted to see him one last time.
“Which part?” Lindsay came back cautiously.
He gave a wry smile. “I’m sorry for just…putting you in that position earlier.” He gave a shake of his head. “I had no idea how to even begin to tell you who my grandfather is.”
Lindsay put her coffee mug carefully down onto the table. “Why did you need to?”
Mikhail drew in a deep breath. “I wanted you to know.”
“Why?” She looked at him searchingly.
He stood up abruptly, unable to stand the intensity of that scrutiny. “I lived with him in Russia for a while after…after my mother died. I was young and suddenly alone, and he was the grandfather I had never known. I was seduced by the lifestyle, I think.” He thrust his slightly trembling hands into his jeans pockets. “The money, the power, the women, the—there were drugs, too,” he added flatly.
“Is that when you had your tattoos done too?”
There was a frown between his eyes as he looked at her. “Did you hear what I just said?”
Of course Lindsay had heard, and she wasn’t going to deny that lifestyle terrified the life out of her. But if she understood him correctly, Mikhail hadn’t lived that life—hadn’t wanted to—for the past ten years.
“Money, power, women, drugs, I got all that.” She nodded. “Did you kill anyone?”
“No.”
“Did you have your tattoos done while you were in Russia?” she repeated pointedly. She didn’t need him to tell her any more about his life there. A life he had obviously walked away from without any regrets.
Mikhail shook his head. “When I came back. To remind me of who I know myself to be. Mischa,” he supplied as she looked at him questioningly. “It was my mother’s name for me. The bear. She told me Mischa is fiercely loyal and dangerous to anyone who threatens what he…what he protects.”
As he had protected Lindsay earlier. Without hesitation or any thought for his own safety.
She stood up slowly, her heart beating double-time in her chest as she crossed the kitchen to stand just inches away from him. “Then I’ll answer your earlier question now. I meant every word I said to your grandfather. Whether you think so or not, Mikhail Lysenko is a wonderful man. You’re Mischa, too—fiercely loyal and protective, and dangerous to anyone who threatens the people you choose to care about.”
Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “He’s dying.�
�
“Yes.”
“I’m the only family he has, and when the time comes I’ll attend his funeral.”
“Yes.”
“The media will no doubt have a feeding frenzy.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll keep digging until they make that family connection.”
“Yes.”
Mikhail looked down at her searchingly and found those green eyes meeting his unflinchingly. “Will you stand at my side?” he prompted huskily.
“Yes.”
“As my wife.”
“As your—!” Her eyes widened. “Mikhail…?”
He reached out to grasp both her hands in his. “I know we’ve only known each other a matter of weeks, but—” He gave a shake of his head. “I think I knew how I felt about you from the first moment I looked at you. Like all men, I fought against those feelings,” he added dryly. “Convinced myself that a few nights in bed together was sure to cure me of the affliction.”
“Affliction?” Lindsay gave a splutter of indignant laughter.
At the same time as hope surged up inside her and her heart began to sing in her chest.
“Love.” Mikhail’s hands tightened about hers. “I love you, Lindsay. With you, I’m complete. Mikhail and Mischa. You certainly bring out a fierce and possessive part of me in bed that I never knew I had,” he added self-derisively.
“Sex.”
“Making love,” he corrected with a frown. “Every time we’re together I want to just crawl inside you, to be a part of you. You make me feel, Lindsay. Love. Live. And I want to do all that loving and living with you at my side for the rest of our lives.”
“Are you sure you won’t get bored with me?” She looked up at him anxiously. “I’m really not glamorous or sophisticated, or any of the things those women are that you’ve been out with in the past.”
“You’re more, so much more.” Mikhail’s eyes glowed with the love he felt for her. “A thousand, ten thousand nights in bed together wouldn’t be enough. I want all your nights, Lindsay. All of your days, too. And maybe in forty or fifty years I’ll have found the cure!”
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