‘Not many people argue with you.’
‘Not true,’ Demyan said, and he thought of Mikael. They had worked these streets and knew how it was, so it was safe to fight with him. He thought of Nadia but he did not argue with her, which infuriated Nadia so. Demyan did not argue with Nadia because he did not care...
He cared about Alina so.
Loved Alina so.
So much so that when his phone rang Demyan smiled as he took the call.
‘She said no to Dubai?’ Demyan was still smiling when he hung up the phone. ‘Go, Alina!’
There was a job, he’d ensured that with Hassan, but it warmed his heart to know she hadn’t taken it, that Alina was surely following her own path. He looked at his son.
‘Do you want some relationship advice from someone who has never held one down for very long?’ he asked, and Roman nodded. ‘Sort yourself first,’ Demyan said, because how he wished he’d met Alina tomorrow or next week, yet he might never have made it to this point had it not been for her. ‘Know yourself first.’
‘That is what I am doing,’ Roman admitted. ‘I know you were not keen for me to come and live here but I want to be here, I want to know my history.’ He swallowed. ‘I think I want to find out...’
‘It’s okay,’ Demyan said. ‘You have every right to know.’
Roman looked at his father and they had always been close but never closer than now. ‘What would it change for you if I found out?’
‘Nothing,’ Demyan said. ‘I have been through it and over it and have grieved and I am still standing.’
‘You’re sorted, then.’
He was, Demyan realised.
Just a little too late.
As Roman checked his messages Demyan did the same. There was one from his online ‘friend’—Alina’s father. Demyan had never responded to him but he kept trying to worm his way in.
Watch your daughter soar, you bastard...
Demyan tapped it in and then deleted it. He would save his moment but he would have it, Demyan was sure.
He wasn’t his mother, trapped in an illness, he could change. And he wasn’t Alina’s father either—he would fight to keep her in his life.
Fight to make her a part of it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DEMYAN SAT in the restaurant and watched as Alina took out her notepad and took orders from a large, noisy table. Her hips were bigger, her bottom fantastic, her breasts, well... He blew out a breath and decided it was safer for now not to look there.
He looked at her very pale skin and the dark rings under her eyes and she was either pregnant or she had the heaviest period in the world.
He hoped it was the former.
Not just because he hoped she was pregnant—Alina was still a little bit shy and he had every intention of bedding her soon. He didn’t want her embarrassed because she had her period.
He’d work on it, Demyan decided.
Every day, he would work on her shyness and the heart he had damaged so.
His eyes said that as she turned and saw him.
She didn’t go pale, she didn’t drop anything, her eyes just brimmed with tears and she shook her head.
* * *
‘Table four—Zukov,’ Pierre instructed.
‘Can Glynn serve him?’
‘He’s asked for you.’
And what Demyan Zukov wanted he got.
Not this time.
No.
Her heart quite simply couldn’t take it. A few weeks ago Alina would have run to him. Now there was another heart beating inside her and her child would never be used as a pawn in the Zukov game.
‘You’re looking very well...’ Demyan said, when she stood at his table.
He couldn’t know, he must not know.
‘I’ve been hitting the hotdogs,’ Alina said, and, yes, she could admit to mourning him, but she had to let him know she was over him now.
She had to get him out of her life.
‘I start my diet on Monday.’
‘Pity,’ Demyan said.
‘What do you want to eat?’
‘I want a cocktail,’ Demyan said. ‘You choose which one.’
‘I’ll get the wine waiter.’
‘I went to your apartment...’
‘I don’t live there any more,’ Alina said as he looked through the menu.
‘Tell me the dish of the day.’
‘Please don’t do this, Demyan.’
‘I’m hungry.’
She read out the dish of the day, she was beyond games now.
‘You didn’t take my calls.’
‘I never will.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m done.’
‘You mean, we’re done, which means I have a say in it.’
‘Don’t you try and correct my English,’ Alina snarled. ‘I’m done. What you want doesn’t come into it.’
‘Tell me the dish of the day again and the chef’s special selection.’
‘Sure.’ She blew out a breath. ‘Some messed-up Russian and for an extra treat we throw in his naked ex-wife.’
‘You forgot the teenager.’
‘Roman was never an issue.’ She could not bear it. Could not stand it. Would he not just get the message and leave?
‘I would like the soufflé...’
‘No,’ she said, because it took too long. Pierre looked around at the snap in his waitress’s voice. ‘Demyan, just go...’
‘No.’
He was going to stay to the end of her shift, she knew it. He would eat and eat soufflé and she could not stand it.
‘Fine,’ Alina said, and wrote his order down and added the cocktail of her choice.
She would rather lose her job than succumb to him again.
She handed in his order and then, without a word to anyone, she took off her apron. As unrebellious as ever, she mentioned to Glynn that table seven wanted a lemon, lime and bitters.
And then she slipped out the back of the kitchen, past the bins and into the street.
And she ran.
Demyan waited.
‘One Black Russian.’ Glynn put his drink down and Demyan felt as if he knew her soul, for she would never choose black. Alina wanted colour and light.
He heard Pierre complain that Alina was taking too long. Saw Glynn come out from the kitchen, shaking his head, and before his soufflé was even being whipped, Demyan knew she had gone.
‘Where’s Alina?’ Demyan demanded of Pierre.
‘Alina...’ Pierre hesitated. ‘Glynn will take over your table,’ he said, beaming. ‘Is there anything I can get you in the—?’
He didn’t even wait for Pierre to finish speaking. He strode into the kitchen, oblivious of the protests from the staff as Pierre frantically attempted to smooth things over.
‘Where’s Alina?’ he demanded, heading to the women’s restrooms now.
He’d lost her. Demyan felt a flare of panic. He didn’t know where she lived any more, he knew her in his heart, yet logistically he knew so little.
Demyan ran through to the street, terror clutching his heart that he might have missed her, cursing himself for not telling her his truth there and then, sure he had lost her. But suddenly there she was, running.
Running from him this time, instead of running from herself.
‘Alina!’
She heard his roar but she just ran faster. ‘Alina!’ He was easily closing on her, her head start diminishing with each of his long strides. He caught up with her and grabbed her arm and her body halted, almost defeated because with just one touch he claimed her again. ‘You will listen to me.’
‘No.’
He swung her around.
‘You will.’
‘No.’ She did as she had as a child and put her hands over her ears to block out words, because she knew how dangerous they were, how easily he convinced her she was the only one. ‘I don’t want to hear it, Demyan, I’m not going to listen.’
‘You will listen.’
‘I won’t!’ She just kept talking, telling him over and over that she wasn’t going to listen, till he put his hand over her mouth and told her that she would listen.
Alina bit him, dug her teeth into the softness of his palm and bit down and then bit harder. As he gave a stunned ‘Ow’, she released him.
She stared wide-eyed, unable to believe what she had done. She could taste him on her shocked lips and she waited for a slap, or ‘souka’, or for his true colours to show, still not understanding they had long since been revealed to her.
‘Bad girl!’ Demyan said, shaking his hand, which throbbed. She really had sunk her teeth in. ‘Bad girl!’
He started to laugh, as Alina stood there incredulous, not just at his reaction but that she had bitten him. He brought out every part of her—the wild, the shy, the timid, the good, the bad and the animal—and she was crying and laughing and just helpless when he pulled her back to the arms she craved.
His hands roamed over her. She could feel his warm palms over her arms, down her waist, over her bottom, over and over as if he’d missed her body for ever and ever. She wanted him to stop, wanted to tell him to get his filthy, Nadia-stained hands off her, but just one more moment...
One more.
He was kissing her face, her cheeks, her eyes, his lips wet with her tears. ‘Here or bed?’ he asked. ‘I tell you here or bed.’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ There was nothing he could say. An occasional mistress, even a regular one.
She couldn’t be that, yet right now how she wanted to be.
‘Here or in bed,’ Demyan demanded.
And who was she to deny that she wanted his words, wanted some hope of closure? She prayed for anger to return and make a sensible woman of her as she heard his appalling excuse. The thought was enough to part her face from his.
‘Does your ex-wife not understand you, Demyan?’
‘You understand me,’ he said, ‘or one day you will, but for now you understand me more than anyone.’
Okay, so he won a brief taste of her lips, but Alina tried to stop herself, pushed on his chest to lever her mouth from his for her lips just refused to obey her command to desist.
‘Are you staying together for the sake of the children?’ she taunted.
‘Child,’ Demyan corrected. ‘Really he is a young man but, to answer your question, no, I would never stay for the sake of the children.’ Because he was now sure she was pregnant, he wanted to make himself clear. ‘I tried it once. I will not make the same mistake twice.’
‘Then why?’ She sobbed it, almost screamed it, so loudly that passers-by turned round. And finally she did not care what others thought of her, her hurt was too much to contain. ‘How could you go with her? How could you not come and find me...?’
‘Because this messed-up Russian had a lot to sort out before he came to you. A lot,’ he reiterated, ‘but I promise you, I have not slept with Nadia, not one kiss. She leaves me cold. She has left me cold from the first time I slept with her.’ He grabbed her hand and crudely brought it to his crotch. ‘Nadia...’ he said, and smiled at her. ‘Nadia...if you wait a moment it will go down.’
‘Stop it,’ Alina begged. ‘Stop your games, your lies.’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘This is not a game and I never lie. Bed or here?’ he said again, and she knew it was his final offer.
‘Bed.’
* * *
‘Tut-tut-tut,’ Demyan said. As his mistress he could have made her. ‘Remember the number?’ he asked as they stepped into his home.
‘You didn’t change it!’
‘I didn’t change a thing.’
He hadn’t told her he loved her, but as she walked into his house, Alina knew then that he did. Somewhere in the future, if she ever doubted it, if ever she forgot just how much he loved her, all she had to do was remember this.
She was everywhere, Alina realised as she wandered around.
Her wine glass was still on the table, not a thing had been tidied or changed.
It had never been nicer to come home to a messy house.
She walked upstairs and there was her hair tie on the pillow of an unmade bed and it was all just as she had left it.
‘Where have you been sleeping since you came back?’
‘At the hotel,’ Demyan said. ‘I could not bear to be here without you.’
She tasted his tenderness then. Not for the first time, but it was the first time that neither pretended this love was not real.
His mouth roamed the changes in her body, her swollen areolae and then down, ever down to intimate, engorged petals that dripped with a nectar more designed for him than any bottled scent.
She tasted herself on his lips as he spilled inside her and she would taste him for herself one hour soon, she said, yet Alina still hadn’t told him she was pregnant.
Demyan lay there and wondered whether, had he not found her, she ever would have told him.
He felt her surface from orgasm, back now beside him.
It was question time.
‘Did you think of going back to her?’
This time he didn’t lie. ‘Yes, I thought about it, if it was the only way I could keep Roman, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I could not have another marriage for the sake of a child.’ There was just a touch of colour flooding her cheeks. ‘No point,’ Demyan said. ‘Then my mind moved to other things.’ He smiled.
‘Like?’
‘Taking your virginity.’
‘What were you doing in Russia?’
‘Sorting things out.’
‘With Roman?’
He didn’t answer.
‘With Nadia?’
‘A bit.’
He heard her sharp intake of breath and he told her something he couldn’t tell Mikael, something Alina might not understand.
‘I never loved Nadia and I have always told myself I gave our marriage our best, that it did not last because I did not make enough money...’ He turned and told her the rest of the truth. ‘My aunt was sick when I married Nadia, I was as closed off as I have ever been. I owed Nadia an apology. The death of our marriage was not all about her,’ Demyan said, ‘but mainly I was in Russia to sort out me.’
He told her about his mother, how he had arranged to have her buried in consecrated ground, and Alina started to cry when she realised that she’d hung up on him on what must have been his blackest day.
‘It was a good day,’ Demyan said. ‘A necessary day, putting old ghosts to rest. Afterwards I spoke with Roman.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘There was no need,’ Demyan said. ‘He knew. He is a bit mixed up whether or not he wants a test...’ He gave her a smile. ‘Any more questions?’
‘Dinner with Nadia?’ Alina scowled.
‘Because I don’t care about her. I can have a drink with her on my son’s birthday and perhaps in the future attend his wedding—there’s no feeling there other than I want to do the best for Roman.’ Demyan had questions now. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Painting,’ Alina admitted. ‘A lot. I’ve got my first stall at the market...’ She actually saw his cheeks pale.
‘You don’t need to be at the market.’
‘But I do.’
‘Alina, I am not having you dragging our child....’
It was then he admitted he knew...and Alina simply burst into tears.
‘I thought you’d be cross.’
‘Cross? Never, ever
cross.’ He pulled her to him. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’
‘Yes,’ Alina said, ‘when I was over you.’
‘He’d be about thirty then!’ Demyan said. ‘Make that ninety.’
He was so arrogant, so assured as to the depth of her love.
So right.
‘We can do better than the market,’ he said.
‘No!’ she wriggled away from him. ‘There you go again, get your cheque book out and buy me a career. You can’t imagine how much I’d hate that.’
‘I just want to help.’
‘I don’t need help,’ Alina said. ‘I don’t need you pretending royalty are interested in my painting.’
‘What?’
‘I know it was you.’
‘No!’ Demyan’s mouth gaped as Alina let out a squeal of horror and then they started to laugh.
‘You could be hanging on royal walls.’
‘I’ll do it my way,’ Alina said, but her laughter faded as Demyan continued.
‘Did you think long and hard about Dubai?’
‘That was you?’
‘Absolutely! That afternoon, after my mother’s service, I got the call from Elizabeth to say that you had turned it down and I knew then you were following your dreams. I told you it was a good day.’ He played with her hair. ‘Are you nervous about being a stepmother?’
‘Demyan...’ She lay there. ‘You don’t have to marry me.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Because of the baby?’
‘I told you, I don’t do that.’
‘Yes, but you said that when you already knew that I was pregnant.’ That fear was back, fluttering in her chest, leaping in her throat.
‘How can you not have faith in us?’ Demyan asked.
‘I do, but—’
‘This is the but,’ And at the most inappropriate moment Demyan got out his computer. ‘I show you my friends.’ He felt the burn of her shame as he pulled up her father’s profile and fully exposed her pain.
‘Don’t...’
‘He didn’t know you,’ Demyan said, ‘or he would never have left. I know you and I never could.’ He looked at Alina. ‘Are we in a relationship?’
The Only Woman to Defy Him Page 15