He finally took off his sunglasses, and the amused gleam in his brilliant blue eyes fuelled her temper. ‘You must see the situation is impossible,’ she said bitterly. ‘I can’t live here with you.’
Vadim leaned back in his chair and studied her broodingly. ‘We won’t technically be living together,’ he murmured laconically.
She glared at him, her pride still smarting. ‘You’re right—we won’t,’ she said sharply. ‘The staff flat has its own separate entrance, and the door between the flat and the main house will be locked at all times.’
She knew from the way his eyes narrowed that she had angered him, but his voice was level when he spoke. ‘What do you think I’m going to do—barge my way into your room and force myself on you? I have never taken a woman against her will in my life,’ he assured her coldly. ‘You have nothing to fear from me, Ella. But may I remind you that yesterday you made it clear that you hoped I would spend the night with you.’
Scarlet with embarrassment, Ella was forced to bite back her angry retort when Lily dashed back up the garden and threw herself onto her lap. ‘Mummy’s had a new baby,’ the little girl announced.
‘I know. His name’s Tom, isn’t it?’ Ella ruffled her goddaughter’s curls and thought briefly of her cousin Stephanie, who had given birth to her second child three days ago. ‘Is he tiny?’
Lily nodded and held up her doll. ‘I’ve got a new baby too. Her name’s Tracy.’ She paused, her attention drawn to the big, dark-haired man sitting opposite. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Vadim,’ he replied, his smile deepening when the little girl frowned.
‘You sound funny.’
Ella shot him a lightning glance, but to her surprise Vadim appeared quite at ease talking to a young child.
‘That’s because I come from another country,’ he explained, in the gravelly accent that brought Ella’s skin out in goose bumps. ‘I am from Russia.’
Lily’s eyes were as round as saucers as she regarded Vadim for several seconds before nodding her approval. ‘You can hold Tracy if you like.’
‘Thank you.’ Vadim stared down at the rag-doll Lily had placed on the table in front of him, and closed his eyes briefly as pain swept through him. It was incredible how after all this time the sight of a doll could open up the floodgate of memories. His mind flew back across the years and he saw another doll, another little girl.
‘You hold my dolly, Papa. Sacha’s scared on the swing.’ He could hear Klara’s sweet, childish voice, speaking in Russian, as clearly as if she had just uttered the words. ‘Promise you’ll take care of her, Papa?’
‘Of course I will, devochka moya. I’ll take care of both of you.’
But he had broken his promise, Vadim thought grimly, pain slicing his insides like a knife in his gut. He hadn’t taken care of his little daughter, nor her mother. He picked up Lily’s beautifully dressed doll, with its bright golden curls, and thought of the raggedy doll with brown wool hair that Irina had so painstakingly mended each time the stitching had broken and more stuffing had spilled out.
‘When the business does better I’ll buy Klara a new doll,’ he had told Irina as she’d squinted to thread her needle in their poorly lit apartment.
‘She likes this one.’ Irina had stared at him, her pretty face troubled. ‘And she’d rather see her papa more often than have a new doll.’
It was a pity he hadn’t listened. The guilt would be with him for ever.
‘Do you like Tracy?’ Lily’s voice wrenched him back to the present. ‘I got her for my birthday.’
‘She’s a beautiful doll,’ he assured her gravely. ‘How old were you on your birthday, Lily?’
‘Five.’
The knife sliced again, deeper; the pain no longer the dull ache that served as a constant reminder of the past but so agonisingly sharp that he inhaled swiftly. Klara had been just five years old. It was no time at all, he brooded dully. She should have had so much longer on this earth, but instead she had been buried by the tons of snow that had hurtled down the mountainside and all but wiped out Irina’s home village.
Ten years had passed since that fateful day when his wife and little daughter had been killed by an avalanche, and he had learned to contain his grief. But Lily, with her cheeky smile and halo of curls, was an agonising reminder of all he had lost. And the limp rag-doll, which travelled with him wherever he went in the world, was a poignant link with the only two people he had ever loved.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WELL, Vadim, I think we’d better give you some peace to settle into Kingfisher House,’ Rex Portman gasped, panting and pink-faced from chasing his granddaughter around the garden. ‘There’s not much else to show you, apart from the summerhouse down by the river. If there’s anything else you need to know, Ella will be able to help. She’s lived here for—what is it now, Ella—four years? She was responsible for most of the interior decoration too. I’m sure you’ll admit she’s done a classy job.’
‘The house is delightful,’ Vadim murmured, replacing his sunglasses on his nose so that his expression was unreadable. The demons that haunted him were too private and personal to be shared, and he had never spoken of his past to anyone.
‘Oh, I almost forgot. Photos of the new baby.’ Rex extracted a packet of photographs from his pocket and handed them to Ella. ‘Handsome little chap, isn’t he? Steph says he looks a lot like me.’
Ella stared at the round red face and bald head of her cousin’s newborn baby son, glanced at her uncle’s sweat-beaded pate, and conceded that there was a strong resemblance.
‘He’s very sweet,’ she said softly, surprised by the pang of maternal longing that gripped her.
Uncle Rex nodded. ‘I expect you’ll want to settle down and have a couple of kids of your own soon.’
She shook her head firmly. ‘I doubt I’ll ever have children. For one thing, I believe children should grow up with two parents who are committed to each other,’ she explained, when her uncle gave her an incredulous look, ‘and as I never want to get married I’m just going to have to enjoy being a godmother.’ She gave Lily a hug, and was rewarded when the little girl squeezed her so hard that her ribs felt in danger of cracking. It wasn’t that she did not like children, she mused. She adored Lily, and loved spending time with her, but music and her career put huge demands on her time and she had always thought it would be selfish to have a child when she spent five or six hours a day playing.
‘Well, there’s plenty of time for you to meet a chap and change your mind,’ Uncle Rex assured her cheerfully, patently believing she needed reassurance that she wouldn’t end up a childless spinster. But she wouldn’t change her mind, she thought fiercely. She accepted that not all marriages were the route to hell—Rex and her mother’s sister, Aunt Lorna, had been happily married for thirty years—but they were the exception rather than the norm. Many of her friends had divorced parents and split families, and she would never put herself or a child through all that misery.
But if she was certain she did not want to get married, what did she want? Ella brooded later that afternoon, asking herself the same question that Jenny had posed when Vadim had sent her the bouquet of red roses. Until now music had dominated her life and she hadn’t given men or relationships much thought. But all that had changed when she had met Vadim in Paris. Since then he had invaded her mind far too often, and when he kissed her and touched her… She bit her lip and tried to dismiss the erotic fantasy of their naked bodies intimately entwined.
Suddenly her life, which had been plodding along quite nicely, was in turmoil, and she no longer knew what she wanted. She could not remain at Kingfisher House when Vadim would be an unnervingly close neighbour, but she had no choice until she found another flat, she debated with herself. There was only one way to deal with the confused thoughts in her head, and that was to lose herself in music. Her violin was a faithful friend, and a sense of calm settled over her when she settled her chin on the chin-rest and drew her bow acros
s the strings.
For the next hour or two there was no danger that she would disturb the new tenant of Kingfisher House. Shortly after Uncle Rex and Lily had left Vadim had announced that he was going to a nearby pub for lunch. She had turned down his invitation to join him, citing the need to get on with some household chores. She would spend an hour running through the piece by Debussy that she hoped to include on her next album, and after that she would no longer be able to put off visiting the supermarket to restock her fridge.
‘Do you realise you’ve been playing virtually without a break for three hours?’ Vadim’s deep voice came from the French doors, which Ella had left open. ‘Maybe longer,’ he added. He had arrived back at the house after lunch to hear the strains of Elgar drifting across the garden, and instead of a reading an important financial report, as he had planned, he’d spent the afternoon listening to Ella play. ‘It’s time to come and eat,’ he told her, when she lowered her violin and frowned at him.
‘Eat?’ she said vaguely. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Almost seven.’
‘Damn!’ Ella came back to reality with a thump. The supermarket shut at four on Sundays, her fridge was a barren wilderness, and the growl from her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten all day. A delicious smell was drifting in from the terrace. She sniffed appreciatively and Vadim’s lips twitched.
‘I ordered dinner. Do you like Thai food?’
Hunger battled with the decision she’d made earlier that, for the few weeks until she found another flat, she and Vadim would lead completely separate lives. Hunger won. ‘I love it.’
‘Good.’ His brief smile broke the stern lines of his face, but she noticed that it did not reach his eyes. He seemed remote, almost sombre tonight, and for a moment she sensed an inner loneliness about him that tugged on her heart. It was gone before she could define what she had seen. His mask slipped back into place and his smile widened seductively, causing her heart to flip in her chest. ‘Come through when you’re ready,’ he invited, and disappeared back to his part of the house.
There was no reason why she should not eat with him dressed as she was, Ella acknowledged, glancing down at her jeans. But the sultry June evening provided a perfect excuse to change into the delicate silvery-grey silk dress she’d bought recently, after Jenny had persuaded her that it brought out the colour of her eyes. It took mere seconds to darken her lashes with mascara and apply a pale pink gloss to her lips, and she left her hair loose, sprayed Chanel to her pulse-points and swiftly appraised her reflection in the mirror, dismayed to find that the eyes staring back at her were as dark as woodsmoke, and her cheeks were flushed with the rosy glow of unbidden excitement.
It was just dinner, she reminded herself when she slipped out of the French doors and walked a few steps along the terrace to the second set of doors leading into the main house. Tonight she would be on her guard against Vadim’s seductive charm. She paused in the doorway, her eyes drawn to the table set for two, the tall candles in elegant silver holders casting soft light over the centrepiece of white roses. It was intimate, romantic… Ella swiftly dismissed the idea. Vadim was not interested in romance. She had thought that he wanted to sleep with her, but now she wasn’t sure about that—any more than she was sure about what she wanted, she admitted to herself ruefully. But when he walked towards her, looking devastatingly sexy in close-fitting black trousers and a fine white silk shirt through which she could see the shadow of dark body hair, her heart set up a slow, thudding beat, and she could almost touch the searing sexual electricity that quivered in the air between them.
‘You look beautiful,’ he greeted her quietly. Three simple words, but the slight roughness of his voice turned the compliment into a sensual caress that made the tiny hairs on her skin stand on end, and the gleam beneath his heavy lids evoked a slow-burning fire deep in her pelvis.
‘Thank you.’ Did that breathless, sexy voice really belong to her? When he drew out a chair she sat down thankfully, and took her time unfolding her napkin while she fought for composure.
‘Would you like champagne?’ Vadim lifted a bottle of Krug from the ice bucket, but Ella shook her head and quickly filled her glass with water from the jug on the table.
‘Water will be fine, thanks,’ she murmured, blushing at his mocking smile that told her he understood her determination to keep a clear head this evening. He trapped her gaze and she found it impossible to look away, the tension between them almost tangible until suddenly, shockingly, a figure walked into the room and the sensual spell was broken.
‘Ah—dinner,’ Vadim announced, walking around the table to take his place opposite her. ‘Tak-Sin is one of the best Thai chefs in London. I hope you’re hungry,’ he added, when the man pushed a trolley laden with a variety of dishes over to the table.
‘When you said you’d ordered dinner, I assumed it would be delivered in plastic cartons,’ Ella murmured wryly, her taste buds stirring as Tak-Sin placed a bowl of clear, fragrant soup in front of her. She smiled at the chef, who promptly reeled off the names of the dishes he was placing on the table.
‘Gai phadd prek, goong preaw wann…’
‘He doesn’t speak much English,’ Vadim explained, when she looked at him helplessly. ‘The first dish is chicken with green peppers, and that one is prawns with sweet and sour vegetables. This is some sort of beef dish—I think…’
‘Well, it looks and smells gorgeous, so I guess the names don’t matter,’ Ella said as she picked up her spoon and tasted the soup. The food was nectar to her empty stomach, and she spent the next ten minutes sampling each of the dishes with such concentration that Vadim smiled.
‘I’m glad to see you enjoy your food. Most of the women I know seem to survive by nibbling on lettuce leaves and the occasional breadstick.’
‘I guess I’m lucky that I can eat what I like and never gain weight,’ Ella said with a shrug. ‘But the downside is that I’ll probably always be scrawny and flat-chested.’
‘I would describe you as slender, rather than scrawny.’ Vadim paused and trailed his eyes over her slim shoulders and the delicate upper slopes of her breasts revealed above the neckline of her dress. ‘And although your breasts are small they suit your tiny frame. I think it’s a pity that so many young women have breast implants and end up looking as though they’ve stuffed a couple of footballs under their clothes. I definitely prefer the natural look,’ he added softly, his eyes gleaming wickedly when Ella blushed.
Trying not to dwell on the hordes of women he had dated in the past, and desperate to steer the conversation away from the size of her breasts, she seized on the first thing that came into her head. ‘I believe your company is the biggest mobile phone company in Russia, and now has a major stake in the European market? How did you start out selling phones?’
‘I actually started out selling Russian dolls. Yes, really.’ Vadim laughed when Ella looked at him disbelievingly. ‘Matryoshka dolls—you’ve probably seen them; they’re made of wood, usually about seven in a set, and they fit one inside another from the smallest to the biggest. When I left the army the political situation in Russia was changing, and in the early days of post-communism it was possible for the first time to set up a private business.’ He paused to take a sip of champagne before continuing. ‘I was working as a porter at a hotel; the wages were not good, and I was desperate to escape the life of poverty and drudgery that had been my father’s miserable existence.’
Vadim’s face hardened. ‘I would have done anything—and, trust me, there was a thriving black market operated by criminal gangs who lured young, dissatisfied men into their fold with the promise of easy money. But I was lucky.’ He shrugged. ‘At the hotel I met a German businessman who owned a chain of toy shops across Europe. One day he asked me about the traditional Russian dolls he had seen, and voiced an interest in stocking them in his shops. By that evening I had sourced a supply of dolls and negotiated a deal with Herr Albrecht to act as his supplier. That was the begi
nning of my career. Within a couple of years I had made enough money to be able to invest in other ventures. The gap in the mobile phone industry was waiting to be filled, and I seized the opportunity.’
‘You make it sound easy,’ Ella murmured, utterly transfixed by the story of Vadim’s route to success. ‘But I’m sure it can’t have been. You must have made personal sacrifices.’ She hesitated, and then said quietly, ‘I sometimes feel that when I was growing up I sacrificed many of the things that other young people take for granted. Music demanded so much of my time that I rarely socialised with kids of my own age, and now my career is so consuming that I have virtually no time for friends or…’ she hesitated fractionally ‘…relationships.’ She gave him a faint smile. ‘I wonder if one day we’ll look back and wonder if the dreams we chased so hard were worth the heartache?’
There was a depth to Ella that he had never found in any other woman, Vadim mused darkly. Her insight was uncomfortably close to the mark, but she had no idea that he had sacrificed the happiness and ultimately the lives of his wife and child on the altar of his ambition.
Had the single-minded determination he’d given to chasing his dreams been worth it? He now had wealth beyond anything he had ever imagined when he’d made that first deal with Herr Albrecht all those years ago. But sometimes, in the dark hour before dawn, when he surfaced from the regular nightmare that had haunted him for the past ten years and heard the echo of Klara’s terrified screams for him to save her, he knew he would gladly give up everything he owned to hold his daughter in his arms once again.
Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence Page 8