‘As a Russian who appreciates good caviar, I can recommend the Royal Beluga to start,’ he murmured. ‘And for the main, grilled Dover sole with Béarnaise sauce, or the grilled poussin with thyme and lemongrass are both excellent.’
Ella gave up struggling to understand the exotic menu, which featured among other things veal with a wasabi sorbet, and calf’s liver with truffle mash. She could at least recognise caviar, although she had never tasted it, and she loved Dover sole. ‘The caviar sounds fine, and I’d like the sole to follow, please.’
‘I’ll have the same.’ Vadim gave their order to the waiter. ‘And a bottle of Chablis, thank you.’
The waiter walked away, and, needing something to do with her hands, Ella lifted her glass and took another sip of her innocuous-looking red cocktail. It was rather too sweet for her liking, and tasted similar to cough linctus, but the alcoholic punch didn’t seem so strong now that she was used to it. Aware that Vadim was watching her, she gave him a cool smile and took another sip.
‘So, how old were you when you discovered your musical talent?’ he queried.
‘My mother gave me my first violin when I was four, but I was picking out tunes on the piano from as soon as I could climb up onto the piano stool.’ Ella smiled softly. ‘My earliest memories are of hearing my mother play. She was a truly remarkable musician, and I feel very privileged to have inherited a little of her talent.’
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’ Ella paused. ‘Mama developed a serious heart condition soon after I was born, which meant that she couldn’t have any more children. We were very close,’ she revealed huskily. ‘Music created a special bond between us.’
Vadim gave her an intent look. ‘I believe you said you were a teenager when she died? It must have been hard to deal with such a tragedy when you were so young.’
After more than a decade Ella still wasn’t sure she had come to terms with the death of the person she had loved most in the world, but the conversation was straying into an area of her life she never discussed with anyone, so she gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘It’s in the past now. And at least I’ve been able to follow Mama’s dream. She never had the opportunity to perform.’ Ella’s voice hardened. ‘Especially once she married my father. But she always hoped I would have a successful career as a violinist. Before she died she set up a trust fund and left instructions for my musical education,’ she explained to Vadim. ‘Thanks to my mother I’ve studied under some of the best violin tutors in the world.’
‘And do you enjoy performing? Was your mother’s dream also your dream?’ Vadim asked softly.
Ella frowned at him. ‘Of course it was…is. What a strange question. Music is my life and I love playing.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’ Vadim shrugged. ‘It sounds a little as though your life has been dictated by your mother from beyond the grave. I merely wondered whether you had ever considered a different career, or whether you truly have a burning ambition to be a successful soloist.’
‘My life is not dictated by my dead mother,’ Ella denied furiously. ‘She just wanted me to have the chances that she never had, and I’m glad I’ve been able to fulfil her dream.’ A solo career was her dream too, she assured herself, trying to ignore the voice in her head which pointed out that, although she loved playing as part of an orchestra, she did not enjoy the mind-numbing stage fright she suffered as a soloist. As for ever considering a different career—it was true she had briefly considered studying law, after she had been inspired by a talk at school given by a human rights lawyer. But she had quickly dismissed the idea. Music was her life, and she felt honour bound to follow the path her mother had planned for her.
‘Mama hoped I would have a successful career so that I would be financially independent and never have to be reliant on a man, as she was on my father,’ she said quietly. ‘Music has given me that independence, and I regard that as my mother’s greatest legacy.’
It was the second time she had intimated that she had issues regarding her father, and although Vadim never took an interest in the personal lives of the women he dated, he couldn’t deny he was curious to learn more about Ella.
‘After your mother died, I assume your father brought you up? Did you have a close relationship with him?’
For a second Ella pictured her father’s cold, thin-lipped face, and the expression of undisguised dislike in his eyes on the few occasions when they had met. He had known that she’d hated him, and with his warped sense of humour and cruel tongue had found it amusing to taunt and provoke her, aware that her fear of him prevented her from voicing her feelings about him.
She suddenly became aware that Vadim was waiting for her to reply. ‘No.’ The single word snapped like a gunshot, and, seeing his surprise, she added hastily, ‘I was away at boarding school, and he preferred to live in his villa in the South of France rather than at Stafford Hall, so I didn’t see him very often.’
She could tell that Vadim wanted to ask more, but to her relief the waiter reappeared at their table with the first course. The caviar was heaped in a crystal bowl, which was set in a larger bowl filled with crushed ice, and as Ella stared at the small, shiny, black fish eggs, her appetite vanished.
‘Um…this looks delicious,’ she mumbled when the waiter set a plate of small buckwheat pancakes in front of her.
Vadim hid his smile. ‘Have you actually eaten caviar before?’
Honesty seemed the best policy. ‘No,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I’ve heard it’s an acquired taste.’
‘It’s the food of the gods,’ he assured her. ‘The proper Russian way of eating it is straight off the spoon, accompanied by a shot of frozen vodka. But, seeing as you are a caviar virgin, I think we’d better forget the vodka so that you can experience the ultimate pleasure of the taste and texture in your mouth.’
Ella felt her face flood with colour, and she wondered if Vadim had guessed that her virginity did not only encompass eating caviar. She watched him scoop a few of the shiny black eggs onto a glass spoon, and her eyes widened when he leaned across the table and held the spoon inches from her lips.
‘Close your eyes and open your mouth,’ he ordered, his deep, accented voice as sensuous as crushed velvet. His brilliant blue eyes burned into hers, and the atmosphere between them was suddenly charged with electricity as the restaurant, the other diners and the hubbub of voices all faded and there was only Vadim.
Utterly transfixed, Ella obediently lowered her lashes and felt the cold edge of the spoon against her lips, followed by the curious texture of smooth, round berries on her tongue. The taste was indescribable: slightly fishy, slightly salty and overwhelmingly rich, she noted, as her taste buds were seduced by the intensity of flavour. Her eyes flew open and locked with Vadim’s piercing gaze. He was watching her reaction intently, and the whole experience was so incredibly sensual that Ella could not restrain the little shiver that ran down her spine.
‘What is your verdict?’
She swallowed the last morsel of caviar and touched her tongue to her lips to catch the lingering taste, the unconscious action causing heat to burn in Vadim’s groin. ‘Heavenly,’ she murmured huskily.
He inhaled sharply and forced himself to sit back in his seat, shattering the sexual tension that had held them both in its grip. ‘Then eat,’ he invited. ‘Top a blini with sour cream, add a little of the caviar, and enjoy.’
As Ella followed his instructions she was shocked to find that her hands were shaking. For a moment there she had been completely bewitched by Vadim, and in all honesty she knew she would have been powerless to stop him if he had walked around the table, pulled her into his arms and made love to her right there in the middle of the crowded restaurant. Panic surged up inside her and she suddenly longed for the evening to be over. Vadim was too much. He overwhelmed her and made her feel things she had never felt before. Her body felt taut, each of her nerve-endings acutely sensitive, and when she glanced down she was ho
rrified to see that her nipples were jutting provocatively against her red silk dress.
She shot him a furtive glance, and swallowed when she discovered that he was watching her, his eyes gleaming beneath his hooded lids before he deliberately dropped his gaze to her breasts. ‘Do you go back to Russia often?’ she asked him, in a desperate attempt to break the sensual spell he had woven around her.
‘I own a house on the outskirts of Moscow, but I only go back once or twice a year now that most of my business interests are in Europe.’
‘What about your family? Do they still live in Russia?’
For a second something flared in Vadim’s eyes—a look of such raw pain that Ella almost gasped out loud. But then his lashes swept down and hid his expression, and when he met her gaze across the table his face was a handsome, unreadable mask. ‘I have no family,’ he said bluntly. ‘Both my father and my grandmother, who helped to bring me up, died many years ago.’
Still shaken by the look she had glimpsed in his eyes, Ella took a sip of her wine, feeling instinctively that the loss of his father and grandmother had not been responsible for the savage emotion that had flared in his brilliant blue depths.
‘What about your mother?’
He shrugged. ‘She left when I was seven or eight. My father was a dour man, who spent most of his time at work or busy with his duties as a communist party official. As far as I know, my mother was much younger than him. I vaguely remember her smiling occasionally, which my father and grandmother never did, and I assume she wanted a better life than the one she had.’
‘But she left you behind,’ Ella murmured. She stared at Vadim’s hard-boned face and felt something tug on her heart as she pictured him as a lonely little boy who had been abandoned by his mother. ‘Was your grandmother kind?’ What a ridiculous question, she berated herself impatiently, but for some reason his answer mattered. ‘I mean…did she take good care of you?’
He gave a sardonic smile. ‘My grandmother came from a remote village in Siberia, where winter temperatures regularly drop to minus thirty degrees centigrade, and she was as tough as the climate she grew up in. She was in her seventies when I was born, and I doubt she welcomed having to take on the role of parent in her old age. She certainly never seemed to find any pleasure in my presence, and despite her elderly years she had a heavy hand with the belt—until I learned to run fast enough to escape her, when she passed the duty of beating me over to my father,’ he said, in a voice devoid of any emotion.
‘That’s horrible,’ Ella said, paling. ‘It sounds like you had a tough childhood.’
Vadim thought briefly of the relentless greyness of his early years, and gave another shrug. ‘I survived. And compared with the two years I spent in the army my boyhood was a picnic.’
He said no more, but his silence was somehow more evocative than words. Ella recalled a newspaper article she had once read about the institutional violence and bullying that was regularly meted out to young recruits in the Russian army, and she guessed that Vadim had learned to be physically and mentally tough to cope. She tore her gaze from him and forced herself to eat her dinner. The Dover sole was delicious, but her appetite had disappeared. She could not forget the flash of pain in his eyes when she had first asked about his family, and she couldn’t help feeling that there were secrets in his past he had not revealed.
‘Have you ever tried to trace your mother? I mean, she might still be alive.’
Vadim ate the last of his fish and took a long sip of his wine. ‘Very possibly, but I have no interest in her. Why would I?’ he demanded coolly. ‘She walked away when I needed her most, and I learned from the experience never to put my faith in another human being.’
He had clearly been more affected by his mother leaving than he admitted, perhaps even to himself, Ella brooded. She knew from experience that the emotional scars from an unhappy childhood still hurt long into adulthood, and now she had a better understanding of why he had earned a reputation as a womaniser who refused to commit to any of his lovers.
She and Vadim shared a common bond in that they had both been affected by their upbringing, she realised. Having witnessed the misery her mother had endured at the hands of her father, she was not looking for commitment, and certainly not for marriage. She valued her independence as much as Vadim did—but could she have a no-strings affair with him, as he had suggested, and emerge with her heart unscathed? Her instincts warned her that she would be playing with fire, but the feral gleam in his eyes stirred a feeling of wild recklessness within her and a longing to experience the hungry passion he promised.
She darted a glance across the table and discovered that he was watching her with a brooding intensity she found unnerving. In an effort to lighten the curiously tense atmosphere that had fallen between them she gave him a tentative smile.
Why did Ella’s smile remind him of Irina? Vadim asked himself savagely. With her pale blonde hair and English rose colouring she bore no resemblance to his wife, who had been olive-skinned, like him, and had had thick, dark brown hair. But the two women shared the same smile. He closed his eyes briefly, as if he could somehow blot out the pain that surged through him. Irina’s face swam before him, and her gentle, hopeful smile tore at his heart. She had been a quiet, shy young woman, as gentle as a doe with her soft brown eyes. She hadn’t asked for much from life, he acknowledged grimly—just that he should love her. And he had, Vadim assured himself. He had loved Irina—but to his lasting regret he had not appreciated how much she had meant to him until he had held her limp, cold body in his arms.
Ella’s smile faded when Vadim’s hard expression did not lighten, and her stomach lurched with a mixture of embarrassment and disappointment when he continued to stare at her meditatively. She had the impression that although he was looking at her he did not see her, and she wondered where his thoughts had taken him.
To her relief the waiter arrived, to enquire whether they wanted dessert. Vadim suddenly jerked back to the present, his mouth curving into a sensual smile that made her heart race, and to her chagrin she could not prevent herself from smiling back at him. When he turned on the charm he was utterly irresistible, she thought ruefully. She knew it would be very easy to fall for him, but he was a far more complex man than his playboy persona revealed, and her instincts warned her to guard her emotions against him.
Vadim steered the conversation onto other topics for the rest of the meal. He was an entertaining and intelligent companion, with a dry wit that frequently made Ella smile, and over the delectable bitter chocolate mousse she chose for dessert she found herself falling ever deeper under his spell. He could charm the birds from the trees, she thought ruefully. But the few scant facts he had revealed about himself over the course of the evening she could have discovered on the Internet, and she wondered if he ever permitted anyone to see the real Vadim Aleksandrov. He possessed an inherent dangerous quality that both repelled and intrigued her, but although she reminded herself that he was a heartless playboy, like her father had been, she sensed an unexpected vulnerability about him that made her wish she could learn more about the man behind the mask.
‘So, what are your plans for your career?’ he asked her over coffee. Although he had revealed little about himself, he had encouraged her to talk about her life as a musician, and her years studying at the Royal College of Music, and somehow he had drawn her into telling him personal confidences that she only ever shared with a few close friends.
After her cocktail and two glasses of wine Ella was feeling pleasantly relaxed, and filled with an uncharacteristic boldness which had led her to discover that flirting was fun—particularly with a man as wickedly sexy as Vadim.
‘I’m giving a solo performance at the Palais Garnier in Paris next week, and after that I’ll mainly be in London, to record the soundtrack for a film and work on my next solo album.’
His slow smile stole her breath, and the heat in his eyes caused a peculiar dragging sensation deep in her pelvis. ‘It
so happens that I will also be based mainly in London for the next couple of months, which presents us with an ideal opportunity to get to know one another better,’ he said with undisguised satisfaction.
His vivid blue eyes lingered on her mouth, before trailing a leisurely path over her slim shoulders and down to her breasts, leaving Ella in no doubt as to how he hoped to get acquainted with her body. Her new-found confidence trickled away, and she said hurriedly, ‘I’m going to be working incredibly hard, and I really won’t have time for anything else…’
He leaned across the table and stopped her flow of words by placing his finger across her lips. Her eyes flew to his, her unguarded expression of fearful anticipation causing Vadim to once again question his motives. There was a sweetness and a curious naïveté about her that reminded him of Irina, and for a moment his conscience nagged that it would be unfair to instigate an affair when he was certain he would tire of her within a matter of weeks. He would not want to get her hopes up that she could ever be more to him than a fleeting sexual encounter. But her lips felt soft and moist against his skin, and the temptation to replace his finger with his mouth and kiss her into submission caused his body to harden. Fantasies about making love to her had dominated his thoughts from the moment he had met her, and the only solution, he decided grimly, was to sleep with her until he’d got her out of his system.
‘You know what they say about all work and no play,’ he drawled softly. ‘We could have fun together, angel face.’
Maybe he was right, Ella debated silently while he settled the bill. An affair with Vadim would undoubtedly be fun while it lasted, and, contrary to her friend Jenny’s belief, she did not want to live like a nun for the rest of her life. She might be inexperienced, her knowledge of sex gleaned from movies and popular women’s magazines, but she knew enough to be confident that Vadim would be an inventive and uninhibited lover, who would arouse her to a fever-pitch of desire and appease the aching need he evoked.
Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence Page 6