by Annie West
‘That’s why you want to let it go?’
‘Well...’ She shrugged. ‘I liked the thrill of catching it but we’re not desperate for food. I could make a salad and there’s plenty of other stuff to cook.’
Alexei nodded and unhooked the fish, then put it over the side. A second later it wriggled out of his hand and away. Carissa’s beaming grin as she watched was worth it.
‘Thank you, Alexei.’
‘No problem. Especially since you’ve offered to cook.’ He paused and tilted his head to one side. ‘I know. How about you make us a nice cheese soufflé?’
He ducked and grabbed her wrist as she swept off her sunhat and batted him with it. Then, catching her off balance, he dragged her onto his lap. The boat rocked wildly.
‘That was a low blow. Just because I’m not a good cook.’ She pouted but her eyes sparkled.
‘But look what it got me. Who wants a fish when they can have a mermaid?’
Alexei slipped his hand behind her head and pulled out the pin securing her dark hair. He’d become adept at that. Carissa began the day by brushing her hair and securing it back from her face but Alexei preferred it loose.
His breath huffed out in satisfaction as he threaded the satiny locks through his fingers. Then he stroked lower, down her side to the couple of inches of warm, golden flesh showing between her pink shorts and cropped, polka-dotted shirt.
Carissa shivered and he saw the hard points of her nipples rise against the thin fabric. She stilled, looking up at him with a sultry, heavy-lidded look before she caught herself and tried to pull away. ‘You know we can’t—’
‘I know. Kisses only.’ Knowing she wanted him as much as he wanted her was strangely satisfying. Even though holding her and knowing he couldn’t have her was an exercise in sexual frustration.
Alexei pulled her closer. He heard a splash but focused instead on that wide, delectable mouth.
‘Alexei?’ Carissa struggled to sit up. ‘I think that was the net going over the side. Alexei?’
‘Leave it.’ He hauled her closer, hand splaying low on her hip. ‘I’ve got more important things on my mind.’
Their gazes collided. A shower of sparks rained down, peppering his body with pinpricks of fire. Her expression changed and in one swift move she grabbed his shirt and tugged his face down to hers.
Alexei covered her lips with his and felt her open up. Despite the turmoil of thwarted lust, he had no desire to pull back. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so...light, so unencumbered by life’s burdens.
Since childhood he’d been focused on the need to survive, to succeed, to secure his place in the world. With previous lovers there’d always been a part of him that wasn’t engaged. That focused on business or fending off unwanted expectations.
With Carissa, he simply enjoyed the moment. He felt just plain happy. It was a revelation.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘WHEN DID YOU know you wanted to be an artist?’ Alexei watched as Carissa’s sketch took shape. A couple of swift strokes and there was the outline of his hands. Another and the hint of a wrist appeared.
Watching her work, as he had these last days, left Alexei in no doubt Carissa really was an artist, not a spoiled daddy’s girl playing at being something she wasn’t.
She didn’t look up. ‘I never consciously decided. It’s just me. I was always interested in art.’
‘So your father organised for you to attend classes?’
Strange how the mention of Ralph Carter didn’t make him feel that heavy twist in the gut it had before. The anger remained, and indignation, but not the seething sense of urgency. The investigator had a lead on Carter in Switzerland, but for once Alexei wasn’t impatient to confront the man. That would come.
Alexei had other things to occupy him.
Carissa’s brow knotted as she rubbed out a couple of lines and replaced them with others more to her liking.
‘Sorry?’
‘You had art lessons as a child?’
She snorted. ‘I wish. I was self-taught till I went to art school. I’d have loved to have learned sooner. I couldn’t even take art at high school. My father didn’t approve.’
‘He didn’t?’
Carissa shook her head and a tendril of hair escaped her severely pulled-back hairstyle. It flirted over her collarbone as if inviting his attention to the tight white top clinging to her breasts.
Her clothes reminded him that she wasn’t as Alexei had first assumed. Instead of glamorous designer outfits from expensive shopping sprees, she favoured shorts and skirts, skimpy and incredibly sexy. And that black outfit, the leggings and loose T-shirt that didn’t fit with the rest yet seemed right for a woman so obviously comfortable with her body and uninterested in primping.
Carissa didn’t need fancy clothes to hold his attention. She was sexy, vehement, impulsive and had a mischievous sense of humour. She was full of energy and surprising depths.
And he wanted her more than he’d wanted anyone or anything in a long, long time. Perhaps ever.
Acknowledging it made something inside him still. As if the treadmill of his world, driving him on and on, paused, allowing him to take stock.
It was a strange sensation. As if he were an onlooker to his own life, his wants and needs.
And the result of that self-examination? The realisation that, after a lifetime of self-reliance, he wanted more. The laughter and sharing, the warmth of having someone special.
The revelation stopped Alexei’s breath, crushed his lungs and made his heart thunder.
Share his life?
It shouldn’t be a surprise. He had the example of his parents’ loving partnership. Days ago he’d begun toying with the idea of finding someone to start a family with. But now the idea wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t a theoretical, faceless woman who came to mind.
It was one specific woman. One spirited, restful, infuriating, generous woman. A woman about whom he knew so little, yet felt he knew everything important.
Not that this was love.
Alexei wouldn’t fall victim to sentimentality. But Carissa and he shared more than sex. They’d exercised abstinence for days and he grew more, rather than less, interested. This warmth, respect and liking could form the foundation of a solid relationship.
Instead of rejecting the idea, he felt a quiver of anticipation. It was like the moment he’d realised his first software innovation really worked. That it had the makings of a runaway commercial success. He was a loner but deep down he’d always wanted more than solitude.
Alexei waited for common sense to kick in and object that he’d known Carissa just a week.
It stayed silent.
And all the while the effervescence in his blood signalled he was onto a winning idea.
He always trusted his instincts.
He stared at Carissa, absorbed in her drawing. She never tried to charm or flatter. It was refreshing not to be fussed over, to be treated as an equal, or, Alexei realised with a silent huff of laughter, as an inanimate object to be sketched. But he knew one touch, one word, even a look, would have her burning for him. She was her own woman, but she was his too.
For the moment.
Did he really want more?
If so, what about her father? Alexei couldn’t let Carter off the hook.
She’d want nothing to do with Alexei once he brought her father to justice. Yet she knew that was Alexei’s goal and it hadn’t deterred her.
‘Why didn’t your father encourage you to study art?’ Maybe father and daughter weren’t as close as he’d imagined.
‘He wanted me to do something useful. Like economics.’ Mina’s tone echoed horror. ‘It would have been a disaster!’
That didn’t sound like the man who’d spoken indulgently about his artistic daughter. But Carter had said she wasn’t suited to busi
ness. Perhaps he’d originally wanted her to follow in his shoes. As for Carissa not coping with economics, Alexei recalled their conversations and knew she had a better-than-average understanding.
‘So you persuaded your parents to let you try art.’
Her hand stopped on the page, her knuckles tightening. Had he hit a nerve?
‘I didn’t ask. I just applied.’ Slowly her hand moved again, though her strokes weren’t as bold as before. She stopped and raised her head. Alexei’s curiosity rose as he saw her flushed cheeks.
‘How about you?’ Her bright eyes snared his and awareness throbbed. How easily they struck sparks. ‘How did you start in IT? Did you spend all your free time as a kid on the computer?’
‘Hardly. We didn’t have one.’
He read the question in her expression yet she didn’t ask. She kept to their unspoken agreement not to pry.
Alexei was the one pushing the boundaries. His curiosity was insatiable. He had to decide if he wanted more than the time they had left till the showdown with her father.
He needed to know more about this woman who engaged his mind as well as his body. To do that he’d have to share things he never shared with anyone. He paused, considering.
‘There wasn’t money when I was growing up, and what little we had my stepfather spent on himself.’
‘He sounds unlikeable.’
‘You could say that.’ Alexei’s vital organs knotted. ‘He targeted my mother for the insurance money she inherited when my father died. It wasn’t a fortune but it would have paid for a roof over our heads and a decent education for me.’
Instead the money had gone on his stepfather’s whims. A sports car that he crashed while drunk. A ‘get rich quick’ scheme that failed. Expensive clothes, ‘business’ expenses for unspecified enterprises that involved late-night entertaining.
‘You didn’t have a home or decent education?’ He heard sympathy in Carissa’s voice as she bent her head, concentrating on a new sketch. Of his hands clenched in fists rather than relaxed as before. There was something soothing, almost hypnotic about watching the lines appear on the page, seeing form appear out of what had seemed random scratchings.
Though she worked, he knew she focused on his words. There was a tension about her that hadn’t been there earlier. But she didn’t push. She gave him space, and a measure of privacy, avoiding his gaze.
‘We had a roof for the first couple of years. Mum remortgaged the place to finance his spending but he ran through that soon enough. He lived off her for years but when the money went, so did he.’
Alexei raked a hand through his shaggy hair, then realised what he’d done.
‘Sorry.’ He dropped his hand, fisting it on his thigh like its mate.
‘Don’t worry.’ Her upward look, with that fleeting smile, eased the old tension brewing inside. ‘I’ll sketch your hands however you hold them. I love them. I’m thinking of using them in a piece I want to do.’
Alexei scowled down at his tight hands. For reasons he couldn’t define her words unsettled him. Love. She’d used the word casually, yet he’d experienced a pang of...could it be yearning?
It was easier, suddenly, to think about the past than the knotty issue of how she made him feel.
‘He sounds despicable,’ Carissa said, her quiet voice vibrating with rage. ‘To target a woman. To use her. There are too many selfish people in the world.’
Alexei’s stare sharpened. ‘You sound like you’ve met some.’ He’d imagined she’d led a cosseted life.
‘A few.’ Her mouth flattened and she flipped the page. ‘Actually, can I move your hands?’ Her eyes held his. Something passed between them that inexplicably loosened the tension in his shoulders.
‘Sure.’ He watched as she turned his hands so they lay, palms up and fingers cupped. Her own hands were narrow and warm. Alexei liked the brush of her fingers.
‘You must have been relieved when your stepfather left.’
‘Definitely. He was a difficult man at the best of times and, believe me, there weren’t many of those.’ Alexei remembered the sound of his mother’s sharp cry, waking him in the night. The hard crack of a beefy hand against his jaw and the lash of a belt around his backside. ‘But the trouble didn’t end when he went.’
‘It didn’t?’ She lifted her head.
Alexei shrugged. ‘He’d somehow run up debts in my mother’s name, and loan sharks have no sympathy for defaulters.’ Even if the defaulter was a defeated, desperate woman struggling to make ends meet. ‘My mother worked three jobs to keep us safe from the enforcers.’ Was it any wonder she’d worked herself into an early grave?
Warm fingers clasped his. Carissa didn’t say anything but the gentle pressure was wonderfully soothing. Not that he needed sympathy. He’d conquered his past long ago. Yet he didn’t move, just let her fingers curl around his, enjoying the sense of connection.
‘That doesn’t explain your education.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You indicated your education was patchy. Surely school was free.’
Alexei added tenaciousness to Carissa’s qualities.
‘I missed school to earn money to help out.’
‘How old were you?’ Her brow scrunched.
‘Eleven. Early teens.’
Carissa shook her head and covered his cheek with her palm. The gesture felt like balm. How long had it been since anyone had tried to soothe his hurts? No one had since his mother. ‘Your mother must have been so worried about you.’
Surprise jabbed him. But of course Carissa understood his mother’s concern. After they’d stopped sniping at each other, he’d quickly recognised empathy as one of her core traits.
‘She was, but I had to do my bit for the family.’ There it was again. Family. Until this week he hadn’t let himself think about how it had felt to be part of something bigger than himself. To care and be cared for.
‘Having a mother to love you. That’s special.’
‘At least you and I were lucky enough to know our mothers.’
He frowned, registering Carissa’s brittle smile and wistful eyes. Did she miss her mother? It wasn’t long ago she’d died. ‘I’m sorry, Carissa. Sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’ She blinked, her eyes bright. Then she pulled her arm away and sat back.
* * *
Mina had no memories of her mother. She’d told herself that didn’t matter. Her older sister, Ghizlan, had been as good as any mother, making up for their father’s distance.
Yet Alexei’s words reopened a raw wound. One she’d refused for years to recognise. She felt it now, the sharp pain of loneliness, of being rejected by her father, abandoned by the mother who’d died.
Self-pity was pathetic. She had Ghizlan and she couldn’t wish for a better sister. And Huseyn, her brother-in-law, was a sweetie beneath that incredibly gruff exterior. She had her little niece and nephew in Jeirut, and there was her friend Carissa.
But no one just for her.
Mina hated the direction of her thoughts. Look at Alexei. He’d lost his father young and had all sorts of trouble as a kid but he didn’t give in to self-pity.
‘So how did you start in IT?’
‘A community youth centre.’ Alexei shook his head. ‘One of the staff was particularly persistent. I look back and realise how hard he worked even to get me to talk. But the place was heated and relatively safe so it appealed.’
‘You weren’t safe?’ Silly to feel concern now. But Mina hated the idea of a young kid alone and scared.
Alexei shrugged. As usual, his shirt hung open over his broad chest and she watched the play of his muscles. It made her slightly dizzy. She wanted to plant her palm there, where his heart beat.
‘It wasn’t a good neighbourhood. There were gangs.’ His tone was dismissive. ‘And it didn’t matter where we move
d, the heavies collecting the money we owed always found us.’
We owed. Not his mother, or even his stepfather.
We.
Alexei had assumed responsibility for something that shouldn’t have been his concern. He should have been running around a school playground without a care.
A lump rose in Mina’s throat and she swallowed hard. Why was she so sentimental? Millions of children lived in harsh conditions they didn’t deserve, some in her own country. She and Ghizlan were particularly active in supporting disadvantaged children. But why did Alexei’s past hurts specifically unsettle her?
Because you care for him.
You care too much.
‘They had an old computer. One of the guys taught me and I discovered an aptitude for it.’
‘You make it sound easy. You don’t go from being a kid with a second-hand computer to launching a megasuccessful software and communications company.’
‘True. But I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow description.’
Mina opened her mouth to protest. She was fascinated. She wanted to hear more about Alexei. Anything about him. But she sensed he’d had enough of the subject.
‘How did they meet, your parents?’
His winged eyebrows lifted, giving him the look of a particularly rakish fallen angel, especially with that tousled hair threatening to flop over his forehead.
Fire ripped through her.
‘Don’t move a muscle.’ She flipped a page and started drawing, trying to get the haughty angles, the stark beauty of spectacular cheekbones and determined jaw, the sensuality of his mouth.
As she worked, darting looks at him and then back to the paper, something changed. His expression grew less arrogant and more focused, the gleam in his eyes brighter. Mina became more than ever aware of Alexei’s scent—cedar, citrus and male, with an undertone of musk. She inhaled deeply, her hand moving furiously across the paper. If Ghizlan could bottle that scent at her perfumery, the enterprise would make a fortune.