But then the energy in the suite all around them shifted. Dramatically. There was a moment of shocked silence, then an excited buzz of whispering.
Nikolai’s gaze left hers and cut to the entryway, and then, without seeming to move at all, he froze solid. She watched him do it, saw him turn from flesh and blood to ice in a single breath.
It was the first time he’d scared her.
Alicia turned to see the crowd parting before a graceful woman in a deceptively simple black dress, flanked by two security guards. She was cool and aristocratic as she walked into the room, smiling and exchanging greetings with the people she passed. Her dark red hair was swept back into an elegant chignon, she wore no adornment besides a hint of diamonds at her ears and the sparkle of the ring on her hand, and still, she captivated the room.
And had turned Nikolai to stone.
Alicia recognized her at once, of course.
“Isn’t that...?”
“My brother’s wife. Yes.”
Nikolai’s tone was brutal. Alicia flicked a worried glance at him, then looked back to the party.
Miranda Sweet, wife of the legendary Ivan Korovin and easily identifiable to anyone with access to Rosie’s unapologetic subscription to celebrity magazines, swept through the assembled collection of donors with ease. She said a word or two here, laughed there and only faltered when her gaze fell on Nikolai. But she recovered almost instantly, squaring her shoulders and waving off her security detail, and made her way toward him.
She stopped when she was a few feet away. Keeping a safe distance, Alicia thought, her eyes narrowing. Miranda Sweet was prettier in person, and taller, and the way she looked at Nikolai was painful.
While Nikolai might as well have been a glacier.
Alicia could have choked on the thick, black tension that rose between the two of them, so harsh it made her ears ring. So intense she glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed, but Miranda’s security guards had blocked them off from prying eyes.
When she looked back, Nikolai and his brother’s wife were still locked in their silent battle. Alicia moved closer to Nikolai’s side, battling the urge to step in front of him and protect him from this threat, however unlikely the source.
Then, very deliberately, Nikolai dropped his gaze. Alicia followed it to the small swell of Miranda’s belly, almost entirely concealed by her dress. Alicia never would have seen it. She doubted anyone was supposed to see it.
When Nikolai raised his gaze to his sister-in-law’s again, his eyes were raw and cold. Alicia saw Miranda swallow. Hard. Nervously, even.
Another terrible moment passed.
Then Miranda inclined her head slightly. “Nikolai.”
“Miranda,” he replied, in the same tone, so crisp and hard and civil it hurt.
Miranda glanced at Alicia, then back at Nikolai, and something moved across her face.
Fear, Alicia thought, confused. She’s afraid of him.
Miranda hid it almost immediately, though her hand moved to brush against her belly, her ring catching the light. She dropped her hand when she saw Nikolai glance at it.
“He misses you,” she said after a moment, obvious conflict and a deep sadness Alicia didn’t understand in her voice. “You broke his heart.”
“Are you his emissary?”
“Hardly.” Miranda looked at Nikolai as if she expected a reply, but he was nothing but ice. “He would never admit that. He’d hate that I said anything.”
“Then why did you?” Cold and hard, and Alicia thought it must hurt him to sound like that. To be that terribly frigid.
Miranda nodded again, a sharp jerk of her head. Her gaze moved to Alicia for a moment, as if she wanted to say something, but thought better of it. And then she turned and walked away without another word, her smile in place as if it had never left her.
While Alicia stood next to Nikolai and hurt for him, hard and deep, and all the things he didn’t—couldn’t—say.
“I take it you weren’t expecting her,” she said after a while, still watching Miranda Sweet work the party, marveling at how carefree she looked when she’d left a wind chill and subzero temperatures in her wake.
“I should have.” Nikolai’s gaze was trained on the crowd, dark and stormy. “She often makes appearances at high-level donor events when Ivan is held up somewhere else. It helps bring that little bit of Hollywood sparkle.”
He sounded as if he was reporting on something he’d read a long time ago, distant and emotionless, but Alicia knew better. She felt the waves of that bitter chill coming off him, like arctic winds. This was Nikolai in pain. She could feel it inside her own chest, like a vise.
“A bit of a chilly reunion, I couldn’t help but notice.”
Nikolai shifted. “She believes I tried to ruin her relationship with Ivan.”
Alicia frowned up at him. “Why would she think that?”
It took Nikolai a breath to look down, to meet her eyes. When he did, his gaze was the coldest she’d ever seen it, and her heart lurched in her chest.
“Because I did.”
She blinked, but didn’t otherwise move. “Why?”
A great black shadow fell over him then, leaving him hollow at the eyes and that hard mouth of his too grim. Grief, she thought. And something very much like shame, only sharper. Colder.
“Why do I do anything?” he asked softly. Terribly. “Because happiness looks like the enemy to me. When I see it I try to kill it.”
Alicia only stared at him, stricken. Nikolai’s mouth tugged in one corner, a self-deprecating almost smile that this time was nothing but dark and painful. Total devastation in that one small curve.
“You should be afraid of me, Alicia,” he said, and the bleak finality in his voice broke her in two. “I keep warning you.”
He turned back to the crowd.
And Alicia followed an instinct she didn’t fully understand, that had something to do with that deep ache, that wide-open canyon in her chest she didn’t think would ever go away, and the proud, still way he stood next to her, ruthlessly rigid and straight, as if bracing himself for another blow.
Like that brave boy he must have been a lifetime ago, who was never safe. Or lucky. Who had given up all hope.
She couldn’t bear it.
Alicia reached over and slid her hand into his, as if it belonged there. As if they fitted together like a puzzle, and she was clicking the last piece into place.
She felt him flinch, but then, slowly—almost cautiously—his long fingers closed over hers.
And then she held on to him with all of her might.
* * *
Nikolai hadn’t expected Alicia to be quite so good at this, to fill her role so seamlessly tonight, as if she’d been born to play the part of his hostess. As if she belonged right there at his side, the limb he hadn’t realized he’d been missing all along, instead of merely the tool he’d planned to use and then discard.
He stood across the room, watching from a distance as she charmed the two men she’d thought might break into a fight earlier. She was like a brilliant sunbeam in the middle of this dark and cold winter’s night, outshining his wealthiest donors in all their finery even here, in a luxurious hotel suite in a city renowned for its gleaming, golden, incomparable light.
Nikolai had never seen her equal. He never would again.
She’d held on to his hand. To him. Almost ferociously, as if she’d sensed how close he’d been to disappearing right where he stood and had been determined to stand as his anchor. And so she had.
Nikolai couldn’t concentrate on his duties tonight the way he usually did, with that single-minded focus that was his trademark. He couldn’t think too much about the fact that Ivan had a child on the way, no matter the vows they’d made as angry young men that they wo
uld never inflict the uncertain Korovin temper on more innocent children.
He couldn’t think of anything but that press of Alicia’s palm against his, the tangling of their fingers as if they belonged fused together like that, the surprising strength of her grip.
As if they were a united front no matter the approaching threat—Miranda, the pregnancy Ivan had failed to mention, the donors who wanted to be celebrated and catered to no matter what quiet heartbreaks might occur in their midst, even the ravaged wastes of his own frigid remains of a soul.
She’d held his hand as if she was ready to fight at his side however she could and that simple gesture had humbled him so profoundly that he didn’t know how he’d remained upright. How he hadn’t sunk to his knees and promised her anything she wanted, anything at all, if she would only do that again.
If she would choose him, support him. Defend him. Protect him.
If she would treat him like a man, not a wild animal in need of a cage. If she would keep treating him like that. Like he really could be redeemed.
As if she hadn’t the smallest doubt.
Because if he wasn’t the irredeemable monster he’d always believed—if both she and Ivan had been right all along—then he could choose. He could choose the press of her slender fingers against his, a shining bright light to cut through a lifetime of dark. Warmth instead of cold. Sun instead of ice. He could choose.
Nikolai had never imagined that was possible. He’d stopped wanting what he couldn’t have. He’d stopped wanting.
Alicia made him believe he could be the man he might have been, if only for a moment. She made him regret, more deeply than he ever had before, that he was so empty. That he couldn’t give her anything in return.
Except, a voice inside him whispered, her freedom from this.
From him. From this dirty little war he’d forced her to fight.
Nikolai nearly shuddered where he stood. He kept his eyes trained on Alicia, who looked over her shoulder as if she felt the weight of his stare and then smiled at him as if he really was that man.
As if she’d never seen anything else.
That swift taste of her on a gray and frigid London street had led only to cold showers and a gnawing need inside of him these past few days, much too close to pain. Nikolai didn’t care anymore that he hardly recognized himself. That he was drowning in this flood she’d let loose in him. That he was almost thawed through and beyond control, the very thing he’d feared the most for the whole of his life.
He wanted Alicia more. There was only this one last weekend before everything went back to normal. Before he had his answer from Veronika. And then there was absolutely no rational reason he should ever spend another moment in her company.
He’d intended to have her here, in every way he could. To glut himself on her as if that could take the place of all her mysteries he’d failed to solve, the sweet intoxication that was Alicia that he’d never quite sobered up from. He’d intended to make this weekend count.
But she’d let him imagine that he was a better man, or could be. He’d glimpsed himself as she saw him for a brief, brilliant moment, and that changed everything.
You have to let her go, that voice told him, more forcefully. Now, before it’s too late.
He imagined that was his conscience talking. No wonder he didn’t recognize it.
Nikolai took her back to their hotel when the dinner finally ground to a halt not long after midnight. They stood outside her bedroom and he studied her lovely face, committing it to memory.
Letting her go.
“Nikolai?” Even her voice was pretty. Husky and sweet. “What’s the matter?”
He kissed her softly, once, on that very hand that had held his with such surprising strength and incapacitating kindness. It wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t enough. But it would be something to take with him, like a single match against the night.
“You don’t need to be here,” he said quietly, quickly, because he wasn’t sure he’d do it at all if he didn’t do it fast. “Veronika will seek me out whether you’re with me or not. I’ll have the plane ready for you in the morning.”
“What are you talking about?” Her voice was small. It shook. “I thought we had a very specific plan. Didn’t we?”
“You’re free, Alicia.” He ground out the words. “Of this game, this blackmail. Of me.”
“But—” She reached out to him, but he caught her hand before she could touch him, because he couldn’t trust himself. Not with her. “What if I don’t particularly want to be free?”
Under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But this was Alicia. She’d comforted him, protected him, when anyone else would have walked away.
When everyone else had.
It wasn’t a small gesture to him, the way she’d held his hand like that. It was everything. He had to honor that, if nothing else.
“I know you don’t,” Nikolai said. He released her hand, and she curled it into a fist. Fierce and fearless until the end. That was his Alicia. “But you deserve it. You deserve better.”
And then he’d left her there outside her room without another word, because a good man never would have put her in this position in the first place, blackmailed her and threatened her, forced her into this charade for his own sordid ends.
Because he knew it was the right thing to do, and for her, he’d make himself do it, no matter how little he liked it.
* * *
“But I love you,” Alicia whispered, knowing he was already gone.
That he’d already melted into the shadows, disappeared down the hall, and that chances were, he wouldn’t want to hear that anyway.
She stood there in that hall for a long time, outside the door to her bedroom in a mermaid dress and lovely, precarious heels he’d chosen for her, and told herself she wasn’t falling apart.
She was fine.
She was in love with a man who had walked away from her, leaving her with nothing but a teasing hint of heat on the back of her hand and that awful finality in his rough, dark voice, but Alicia told herself she was absolutely, perfectly fine.
Eventually, she moved inside her room and dutifully shut the door. She pulled off the dress he’d chosen for her and the necklace he’d put around her neck himself, taking extra care with both of them as she put them back with the rest of the things she’d leave behind her here.
And maybe her heart along with them.
She tried not to think about that stunned, almost-shattered look in his beautiful eyes when she’d grabbed his hand. The way his strong fingers had wrapped around hers, then held her tight, as if he’d never wanted to let her go. She tried not to torture herself with the way he’d looked at her across the dinner table afterward, over the sounds of merriment and too much wine, that faint smile in the corner of his austere mouth.
But she couldn’t think of anything else.
Alicia changed into the old T-shirt she wore to sleep in, washed soft and cozy over the years, and then she methodically washed her face and cleaned her teeth. She climbed into the palatial bed set high on a dais that made her feel she was perched on a stage, and then she glared fiercely at that book Rosie had given her without seeing a single well-loved sentence.
The truth was, she’d fallen in love when she’d fallen into him at that club.
It had been that sudden, that irrevocable. That deeply, utterly mad. The long, hot, darkly exciting and surprisingly emotional night that had followed had only cemented it. And when he’d let her see those glimpses of his vulnerable side, even hidden away in all that ice and bitter snow, she’d felt it like a deep tear inside of her because she hadn’t wanted to accept what she already knew somewhere inside.
Alicia let out a sigh and tossed the paperback aside, sinking back against the soft feather pillows and
scowling at the billowing canopy far above her.
She wasn’t the too-drunk girl she’d been at twenty-one any longer—and in fact, she’d never been the shameful creature she’d thought she was. Had she tripped and fallen into any other man on that dance floor that night, she would have offered him her embarrassed apologies and then gone straight home to sort out her laundry and carry on living her quiet little life.
But it had been Nikolai.
The fact was, she’d kicked and screamed and moaned about the way he’d forced her into this—but he hadn’t. She could have complained. Daniel was a CEO with grand plans for the charity, but he wasn’t an ogre. He wouldn’t have simply let her go without a discussion; he might not have let her go at all. And when it came down to it, she hadn’t even fought too hard against this mad little plan of Nikolai’s, had she?
On some level, she’d wanted all of those tabloid pictures with their suggestive captions, because her fascination with him outweighed her shame. And more, because they proved it was real. That the night no one knew about, that she’d tried so hard to make disappear, had really, truly happened.
She’d tasted him in that shiny black SUV, and she’d loved every moment of his bold possession. She’d explored every inch of his beautiful body in that wide bed of his. She’d kissed his scars and even the monster he wore on his chest like a warning. And he’d made her sob and moan and surge against him as if she’d never get enough of him, and then they’d collapsed against each other to sleep in a great tangle, as if they weren’t two separate people at all.
All of that had happened. All of it was real.
All of this is real, she thought.
Alicia picked up the paperback romance again, flipping through the well-worn pages to her favorite scene, which she’d read so many times before she was sure she could quote it. She scanned it again now.
Love can’t hinge on an outcome. If it does, it isn’t love at all, the heroine said directly to the man she loved when all was lost. When he had already given up, and she loved him too much to let him. When she was willing to fight for him in the only way she could, even if that meant she had to fight every last demon in his head herself. Love is risk and hope and a terrible vulnerability. And it’s worth it. I promise.
Not Just the Boss's Plaything Page 14