And now Nikolai Ivanov, King of the Jungle, accused her of trying to blackmail him! Lisa ground her teeth, reviving at the thought. Well, if he wanted a fight, she was going to show him that she was every bit as tough and nasty as he thought she was. And she was going to win.
The doorbell rang. Lisa had no doubt at all who it was. She whipped upstairs, past Tatiana in her doorway, and flung it open like a cavalry charge.
‘Go away!’
Unseen behind her, Tatiana bit back a smile and retreated into her own part of the house. Neither Lisa nor Nikolai noticed.
He held out the shopping she had left in his car and stood his ground.
‘We started off on the wrong foot,’ he said. ‘My fault. I’m really sorry. Can we start again?’
Lisa was unimpressed. ‘Is this the charm offensive now?’
A faint look of annoyance crossed the handsome face.
And it was handsome, Lisa had to admit. He had deep-set eyes over high cheekbones and a thin, haughty nose. And his mouth! In the days before she had decided men were a waste of space Lisa had been rather a connoisseur of mouths. And in this one, wide and mobile, she read sensuality warring with control. Which would win if it came to all-out war? she pondered. It would be a challenge to find out.
Lisa came to herself with a start. Would have been a challenge, she corrected herself. Would have been. In the past. In the days when she had still been playing games like that. Now the whole idea left her unmoved. Didn’t it?
Nikolai curbed his annoyance and permitted himself to look penitent.
‘I was unfair,’ he said mendaciously. ‘Put it down to my affection for Tatiana. Let me make amends. Why don’t I buy you a late lunch?’
Lisa gaped.
His smile deepened the lights in his eyes until they looked as warm as a friendly fire on a dark night. It was the sort of smile a lot of girls would dream about turning to…drowning in… Fortunately she was not one of them, Lisa reminded herself.
‘Why?’ she croaked.
‘You can tell me all about your arrangement with my aunt Tatiana. And I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me.’
She toyed with the idea of saying she didn’t want to know a thing about him. Then she saw his expression. That was exactly what he was expecting her to say. Lisa stopped herself just in time.
‘A name would be nice,’ she said drily.
And saw with real triumph the way the phoney warmth flickered out.
Nikolai recovered quickly. ‘I’m sorry. Nikolai Ivanov.’
He held out a hand. To her own annoyance, Lisa found herself shaking it. His fingers were long and she had that tingling sensation of his physical strength again. She pulled her hand away.
‘Hello and goodbye,’ she said curtly.
‘I told you, we need to get better acquainted,’ he drawled, amused. ‘Come on, have a meal with me. Call it compensation for waking you up.’ Nikolai’s voice was soft, but he sounded horribly determined.
Lisa felt a shiver of reaction. She hung onto her cool irreverence. But it was an effort. ‘No need.’
‘Oh, but there is.’ He smiled straight into her eyes. ‘If you don’t come, we’ll both die of—shall we call it curiosity?’
Lisa could hear the blood pounding in her ears. How did he do that? She swallowed.
Hardly believing it, she heard herself say, ‘All right. Let me unload the groceries and you can take me to 192.’
Nikolai nodded, without comment.
She wasn’t sure whether that indicated that he knew the fashionable local brasserie or that he accepted her acquiescence. Probably the latter, thought Lisa, annoyed with herself. To judge by his expression it was only what he’d expected.
She hugged the carrier bag to her and ran downstairs. Nikolai followed. Quickly she unloaded the groceries while he strolled around the sitting room. She braced herself to parry a cutting comment but he said nothing. Balked, she disappeared into the bedroom to change.
When she came back he was sitting in a bamboo chair that was one of the few pieces of her own furniture in the room, putting down the phone.
‘What are you doing?’ Lisa demanded, instantly suspicious.
‘Booking a table.’
He had stood up when she came in. Now he surveyed her appreciatively. Lisa had changed into slim black trousers and a leather jacket over a peacock silk shirt. The silk, Nikolai was prepared to admit, was a welcome surprise.
‘Nice,’ he said.
Lisa’s chin tilted to a challenging angle.
He didn’t rise to it. ‘Let’s go.’
He did not make the mistake of taking her arm, but when they got to the car he opened the passenger door for her courteously. Lisa looked incredulous. Clearly not used to being treated like a lady, Nikolai thought. He bit back a smile and held the door a little wider.
Lisa laughed. Her eyes crinkled up at the corners when she laughed. It made her look like a mischievous little animal, Nikolai thought. She ran on the spot, shaking the rain out of her eyes.
‘You aren’t seriously thinking of driving there? Great heavens, it’s ten minutes’ walk, tops.’
It was Nikolai’s turn to stare. When he took girls out, he was used to taking them right to the door of the restaurant. They expected it. Especially in London’s weather.
‘But it’s raining.’
Lisa shook her head scornfully. ‘You know, no one would think you were a great explorer,’ she informed him.
For a moment, Nikolai’s sense of humour got the better of him.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Shall I throw you over my shoulder and swing from lamp post to lamp post?’
Lisa gave a choke of startled laughter. ‘I’d like to see you try.’
His eyes gleamed. He took a step towards her. But Lisa was already off down the street.
‘Come on,’ she called. ‘I’m hungry and I’m getting wet.’
Nikolai laughed and followed her.
The restaurant was exactly as he remembered it from December: gleaming with chrome and minimalist furniture and full of delectable smells. It was too late for it to be full but several people were still perched at the bar reading the restaurant’s lavish supply of Sunday newspapers.
Lisa looked round with pleasure. ‘I like this place. Nobody shows off.’
Nikolai surveyed a rumpled redhead, alternating wine and black coffee at the bar. The face was famous. The casual clothes bore designer labels and it looked as if she had slept in them. He gave a soft laugh.
‘I see what you mean.’
A friendly woman, more elegant than any of her current customers, seated them and gave them menus. Nikolai saw with amusement that Lisa didn’t bother to glance at hers.
‘Come here often?’ he asked blandly.
Lisa took a policy decision. Her feelings about this man were not going to spoil her lunch. She was starving and she knew the food here was heavenly.
So she grinned and told him the truth. ‘Well, I don’t cook.’
Nikolai was curious. ‘I don’t know many women who would admit that,’ he remarked. ‘Why not?’
Lisa chuckled. ‘That sounds dangerously sexist.’
‘Does it?’ He didn’t care, and it showed. ‘Don’t you like cooking?’
She shrugged, her amusement dying. ‘Never learned,’ she said briefly.
A waitress arrived. Lisa gave her order without waiting for Nikolai to ask her. His eyebrows rose involuntarily.
She saw it and stuck out her chin again. ‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’ He gave his own order. ‘And what would you like to drink? Bucks Fizz? Kir Royale? Something else?’
‘Oh, Bucks Fizz,’ said Lisa impatiently, as uninterested as if she drank champagne every day.
He nodded to the waitress, who wrote it down, gathered up the menus and left.
Before she was out of earshot Lisa was demanding, ‘Why did you look at me like that?’
‘Like what?’ said Nikolai, prevar
icating.
‘Like I’d just spat gum into the sugar bowl.’
He blinked. ‘What a horrible idea.’
‘Quite,’ said Lisa drily. ‘So what did I do?’
‘Nothing of any importance,’ said Nikolai smoothly. ‘Now tell me, how did you meet Tatiana?’
But Lisa was not going to let him off the hook. ‘What did I do?’
He made a deprecating gesture. ‘I wouldn’t want to offend you.’
‘Force yourself,’ said Lisa hardily. ‘I want to know.’
‘But it is not important,’ he said. There was a slight edge to the suave voice now.
She leaned forward. ‘You might as well tell me. I’m not going to shut up until you do.’
Nikolai lost his suavity altogether. He looked at her in some dudgeon. ‘You must be a very difficult girlfriend.’
Lisa sat back in her seat and gave him a dangerous smile. ‘That’s not something you have to worry about, is it?’ she said sweetly. ‘Tell.’
He shrugged, and did.
There was a small, incredulous silence.
‘I ought to have waited for you to ask me what I wanted to eat?’ Lisa said at last. She sounded stunned.
Nikolai gave her a forgiving smile. ‘As I am your host, it would have been polite. A small convention. As I said, it is not important.’
Lisa shook her head. ‘It’s barmy.’
Nikolai stiffened. If she had been apologetic, he would have assured her that it was nothing. He would even have meant it. Faced with outright revolt, however, he felt he had something to defend.
‘On the contrary, it’s civilised.’
Lisa made a rude noise.
Nikolai gave her a narrow-eyed smile. ‘There are some benefits to civilisation, you know,’ he drawled. ‘I spend my working life studying animal behaviour, so I know what I’m talking about.’ It was a challenge and they both knew it.
Lisa’s head reared up. ‘Are you calling me an animal?’
‘We are all animals. Some of us just learn to curb our grosser instincts.’
Lisa drew a shaken breath. ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’
Nikolai raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you?’
Their eyes met with the force of a lightning strike. Lisa blinked.
Then she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, I suppose I don’t.’
‘Something we have in common, then,’ he said with pleasure.
‘We have nothing in common,’ Lisa said positively.
She was tempted to walk out, but the waitress came back with their drinks. Somehow it seemed silly to make a scene with the waitress as audience. It was not as if they were arguing lovers, for heaven’s sake.
So she sat tight and took a long swig of the orange concoction.
Making her voice deliberately brisk, she said, ‘Now look, Boris—’
He frowned. ‘Nikolai.’
Lisa waved a careless hand. ‘Whatever. I’m hungry and arguing is bad for the digestion. So let’s get it over with. What do you want to know?’
Nikolai gave her a slow, caressing smile. It was one that usually worked like a dream. On Lisa, however, it had no detectable effect. She raised her eyebrows, scepticism written all over her.
Nikolai was piqued. He did not let it show, however.
‘What does any man want to know about an attractive woman?’ he said easily.
Lisa was not deceived. ‘Oh, please.’
He abandoned the caressing manner with a shrug.
‘OK. Have it your own way.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me everything there is to know.’
And he smiled into her eyes with deliberate intimacy. Anyone watching would have been fully justified in thinking they were lovers. For a crazy moment, Lisa almost thought it herself.
She clung to sanity in a reeling world. ‘You do want my ancestry and my bra size,’ she said astringently, dragging her eyes away.
His smile widened. ‘If that’s where you want to start,’ he said smoothly.
Lisa thrust her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket and unobtrusively clutched it across her breast.
‘I’ve been with Napier Kraus since I was sixteen. Dealing room all the time. Now, as I said, I’m Head of Bond Trading,’ she said crisply.
Nikolai nodded, as if he were committing it to memory.
‘Family?’
She was surprised. ‘I have a mother and a sister. End of family.’
There was something in her voice which made him narrow his eyes. ‘Close?’
‘We keep in touch,’ said Lisa evasively.
‘Does Tatiana know them?’
‘Why should she?’
He was frowning. ‘So you met at dance class. You talked—’ He looked up with a shrewd expression. ‘What did you talk about?’
‘Life,’ she said flippantly.
‘Yours or hers?’
She sighed. ‘Both, as a matter of fact. It’s called communication.’
Nikolai smiled triumphantly. ‘So how come she doesn’t know where you work or what you do?’
‘Because she’s not interested.’ Lisa nearly shouted it. ‘Don’t you know your great-aunt at all? I work in the City. With money. She doesn’t talk about money. Sex, yes. Even death, sometimes. Not money. It’s vulgar and men deal with it. That’s Tatiana’s philosophy.’
Nikolai watched her with an arrested expression. At length he said, ‘She is at least two generations ahead of you. It’s not surprising she should see things differently.’
Lisa took a swallow of her drink and then turned the glass round and round in her hands, looking at the golden depths as if she was seeing something very different. Suddenly she was not indignant any more.
‘I don’t think that’s just a generation difference,’ she said at last, quietly. ‘People on the edge of survival have always talked about money, I think.’
He sat as still as he knew how. As still as he had sat in the Goreng Forest, watching reintroduced gorillas reclaim their birthright. As still as he had sat in the Anderson Gorge, listening for the tell-tale fall of pebbles that signalled the start of an avalanche.
Around them the cheerful noise of a popular restaurant rose and fell. But Nikolai Ivanov concentrated all his attention on the silent woman opposite. And she did not notice.
At last he stirred.
‘What do you know about the edge of survival?’
It was so casual it seemed as if it were just idle conversation. You would have said that he really didn’t care one way or the other. But his eyes weren’t casual. And Lisa was too distracted by memories to notice.
‘When did you…’ he paused, changed what he was going to say ‘…start working for Napier Kraus?’
Lisa looked up, her eyes still far away. Not a very happy place, he thought.
‘I told you, straight from school,’ she said without much interest. She gave herself a mental shake and returned to the fray. ‘Does that answer all your questions?’
‘Hardly.’ He surveyed her for a frowning moment. ‘How much have you told Tatiana?’
Lisa looked at him with a contempt she didn’t even try to hide.
‘She didn’t ask the same questions as you.’
‘What did she ask?’
‘Well, she knows I don’t come from what you would call a “good family”,’ Lisa said with bite.
Nikolai was annoyed. ‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Their food arrived. She picked up her knife and fork and attacked a cutlet as if it was a personal enemy. One she had to finish off fast.
Nikolai watched for a moment. Then he said, with that edge back in his voice, ‘If you’re trying to prove to me what a little savage you are, don’t bother. I’m convinced.’
Another man had called her that. Lisa thought she had forgotten, but the word brought all the hairs up on the back of her neck. She felt winded. Her eyes flashed.
Nikolai gave a reluctant laugh.
&
nbsp; ‘One hell of a girlfriend,’ he said with feeling. ‘How do the men in your life handle it?’
Lisa’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘He,’ she said, deliberately misleading, ‘survives.’
Nikolai made a great show of surprise. ‘Only one?’
‘One at a time, anyway.’
‘An old-fashioned girl,’ he mocked.
‘An old-fashioned savage,’ she corrected with venom.
He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘That was uncalled for. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I don’t care what you think of me.’
‘I can see that.’ He paused. ‘And does this fortunate man also live in Tatiana’s basement?’
Lisa looked at her cutlets. ‘I think that’s my business.’
‘And Tatiana is mine,’ Nikolai said with a hint of sharpness. He leaned forward, trying to force her to meet his eyes. ‘She is elderly and alone. In some ways she is very unworldly. It’s up to me to see that she isn’t exploited. What would you do in my place?’
She looked up. ‘Why are you so suspicious of me?’
‘According to Tatiana, she virtually took you in off the street. Yet you claim to have a job everyone knows pays a fortune. Wouldn’t you be suspicious in my place?’
There was something in what he said. But Lisa disliked him too much to admit it, even to herself.
‘Oh, would you like a copy of my bank statement as well?’ Her voice dripped sarcasm. ‘Or—no. Bank statement and wage-slip, of course.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said sharply. ‘And I’m suspicious because I know that bond dealers are licensed to gamble big-time and get paid a proportion of their winnings. Now, either you’re not very good—in which case you must be lying when you say Napier Kraus has made you head of the department—or you can afford to buy a luxury penthouse somewhere. Living in Tatiana’s basement just doesn’t fit.’
Lisa tensed. But all she said was, ‘If Tatiana isn’t worried, I don’t see what it has to do with you.’
‘The fact that Tatiana isn’t worried is exactly my problem.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t think Tatiana is as gullible as you seem to think. She’s an independent woman. She still has a damned good career. She doesn’t need you to look after her.’
The Millionaire Affair Page 5