by Jennie Lucas
Furious, he rose from his desk and paced his office, crossing to the opposite wall of one-sided windows that overlooked the main casino floor. Leaning against the glass, he stared down at the wide expanse of elegant nineteenth-century Russian architecture, the soaring ceilings with high crystal chandeliers and gilded columns, packed in with slot machines, card tables and well-heeled gamblers.
He spotted Lindsey weaving through the crowds, rushing toward the employee elevator. She was carrying a bag from a high-end lingerie store in the Moskva Shopping Complex within the casino. Even after he’d ordered her to wait for him here at the office she’d taken time to go shopping. Unbelievable.
He missed Anna.
Anna, the perfect secretary. Anna, who’d read his mind. Anna, who’d solved problems before he’d even known they existed.
He’d first met her in New York, when Victor Sinistyn had pitched that ridiculous idea for an Elvis-themed hotel-casino called Girls Girls Girls. The meeting had been an utter waste of his time. With twenty boutique hotels around the world, Stavrakis Resorts were known for their elegance, not for their go-go dancers.
Nikos had noticed Sinistyn’s executive assistant, with her cool efficiency and aristocratic demeanor. He’d needed someone who could handle the complex details of running a billion-dollar business while still maintaining the image of his company. He’d needed someone with understanding and discretion, who wouldn’t let herself be bullied—not even by him.
Anna Rostoff had been everything he’d wanted and more. Hiring her away from Victor Sinistyn had caused him no end of grief, for the man had been a furious thorn in his side ever since. But Sinistyn’s enmity had been a small price to pay. For five years he and Anna had worked together, traveling around the world in his private jet, often working around the clock. She’d never complained. She’d never failed him. She’d never made a mistake. And he’d compensated her accordingly. When he’d found out she was sending most of her salary to support her mother and younger sister in New York, he’d given her a raise that had sent her salary skyrocketing deep into six figures.
He’d known by then that she was indispensable to his empire. Indispensable to him.
“I’m here.” Lindsey’s voice was panting as she leaned against the doorway. She’d stashed the lingerie bag somewhere en route, and now brought a hand to her heaving chest. “I was…um…”
“Stuck in traffic?” he said laconically.
“Right. Stuck in traffic.” She looked relieved. “You know Las Vegas Boulevard is a nightmare this time of day.”
“Don’t worry.” Standing over his desk, he leaned forward and gave her a lazy smile. “You’re just in time.”
“In time?” Her eyes lit up, and her hips swayed as she came toward him. Harsh afternoon sunlight hit her tanned face as she stretched a manicured hand to caress his cheek. “Past time, I’d say.”
He removed Lindsey’s hand.
“Stop it, Lindsey. It’s not going to happen.”
The desire for release was strong in him. The desire to forget, to bury himself in flesh and curves and the hot scent of woman. To pull her long hair back, exposing her throat for plunder, to possess her mouth and see the answering spark of desire in her eyes…
He wanted a woman. God, yes. Just not this one.
He wanted the woman who was at home right now, hating him.
Undeterred, Lindsey stroked his thigh. “Why do you think I took this stupid job? I know we’d be perfect together. I’ll make you wild. I’ll make you so hot and worked up that you’ll forget that tramp—”
He cut her off, his tone ruthlessly cold. “You told Anna that we were lovers. When she was pregnant and vulnerable you lied to her. I want to hear it from your mouth.”
“All right.” Lindsey dropped the seductive pose, and her young, pretty face took on the hard, calculating look of a hustler. “But, the way I see it, I was doing you a favor.”
He turned to his desk and pressed a button. Two guards appeared at his door.
“Please escort Miss Miller out of the casino,” he said coldly. “Her employment here is done.”
The color drained from her face, leaving her pale beneath her tan. “What?”
“A severance check will be waiting for you at the casino office downstairs. You’ll find I’ve been more generous than you deserve.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“For every minute you argue with me I’ll instruct Margaret to subtract a thousand dollars from your check.”
She sucked in her breath. “Fine!” She turned on her designer heel and stalked out, grabbing her shopping bag just outside the door. She stopped and glared at him.
“It’s not my fault she left, you know. She was having your kid and you still wouldn’t marry her. Pathetic.” She shook the lingerie bag at him. “And now you’ll never see me in this!”
He should have gotten rid of her a long time ago, he mused, his ears still ringing with the noise of the slammed door. It took him a moment to realize he was hearing the phone. Shaking his head, he picked up the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not going to like this, boss,” Cooper said.
“What’s wrong?” Nikos’s heart gave a weird thump. “Michael?”
“The baby’s fine. With his nanny. But Anna took off. I didn’t stop her, since she didn’t take the boy. I had her followed, like you said. She took the Maserati.”
Nikos nearly choked on his bourbon. Anna had snuck out? Leaving their son behind? When it was almost dusk? Driving his favorite car?
That was her idea of going under the radar?
“Where did she go?”
“That’s the part you’re not going to like.” Coop paused. “She walked into Victor Sinistyn’s club ten minutes ago.”
“And you waited ten minutes to tell me?” he said tersely.
“Wait, boss. You don’t want to go there alone—I’m getting some of the guys—”
“I can do this alone!”
Nikos slammed down the phone and headed for the door. He went straight to his private garage and jumped on his Ducati motorcycle. Swerving through the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard, he headed downtown.
Fremont Street was gritty, for all of its brilliant lights. This was where the hardcore gamblers came to play, far from the lavish themed hotels and the families with cameras and strollers. This was the original Las Vegas, and its hard-edged glamor showed its tarnish like an aging showgirl.
Victor Sinistyn had turned his failed casino concept into a dance club. Outside of Girls Girls Girls there was a long line of lithe, scantily-clad twenty-somethings, waiting to drink and dance.
Nikos leapt off his motorcycle, tossing his keys to a valet. The bouncer recognized Nikos as he strode arrogantly forward, bypassing the line.
“No bodyguards tonight, Mr. Stavrakis?”
“Where’s your boss?” Not waiting for an answer, Nikos pushed past him.
Inside the club, colored lights were pulsing through the darkness to the beat of the music. The place was a cavern, a rebuilt warehouse with an enormous high ceiling, and it shook with the rhythm of the dancing crowd. The air was steamy, hot, redolent of sex and skin.
And then he saw her, wearing a tiny halter top and low-slung jeans that made her look virtually naked.
Dancing with Victor Sinistyn.
The man smiled down at Anna as they danced, running his hands possessively down her bare skin. She gave him a strained smile as she stepped back from him, swaying her body, moving down to her knees before she rose again. She leaned back, arms over her head, and her full breasts strained the fabric, nearly popped out of her flesh-colored top. But apparently Sinistyn wasn’t satisfied with just looking.
Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her bare belly against him and ground his body against hers, nuzzling her neck. Anna didn’t struggle, but Nikos had a glimpse of her pale face. She looked as if she were gasping for air. Why was Anna allowing him to manhandle her?
He saw
the Russian’s hands move toward her breasts. With a savage growl, Nikos started to push roughly through the crowd. All he could think was that if Sinistyn kept touching her he’d kill the man in his own club.
CHAPTER FOUR
“THERE, we’ve had our dance.” Anna panted, drawing away. “Please can we talk now?”
“The music’s not over yet,” Victor said, pulling her back close.
That was what she was afraid of—that this music would never end. Her skin crawled where he’d touched her. “But I need to ask you something important, Victor. A life-and-death favor.”
“Then you should be trying to please me now,” Victor replied, flashing his teeth in a grin as he moved his body against hers. He was handsome, Anna thought, amid the heat and the lights and the pounding rhythm of the dance music. She could see why her sister had had a crush on him since girlhood. Too bad he had such an ugly soul.
Aware that she was playing with fire, Anna wanted to run from him, far away from this dance floor.
But where would she go?
Besides, though he might have hurt business rivals in the past, he would never hurt her, she tried to reassure herself. She’d known Victor since she was eighteen years old, when he’d gone into business with her father and had personally asked Anna to become his secretary. True, she’d spent five years fending him off, but now she had no other choice but to ask for his help. If she didn’t want to be completely at Nikos’s mercy she needed a favor from the only man who could fight him and win.
“Victor—”
“Call me Vitya, like you used to.”
That was Natalie’s nickname for him, not hers. “Victor, please, if we could only—”
A hand suddenly gripped her wrist, pulling her away.
“Get away from her, Sinistyn,” Nikos said.
“Stavrakis.” Narrowing his eyes, Victor wrapped his arm around Anna’s waist, pulling her back so hard he almost yanked her off her feet. “You’ve got some nerve to come into my club and start throwing orders. Get out before I throw you out.”
“You? You’ll throw me out? Or do you mean one of your goons will do it for you?” Nikos drawled lazily, in a tone that belied the threat in his posture. “We both know you wouldn’t have the guts to do it yourself.”
Victor smiled at him, showing sharp teeth. He looked over the dance floor. Anna noticed his bodyguards hovering close by. Apparently, this gave Victor courage. “I don’t see Cooper with you tonight. It was a mistake to leave your guard dogs at home, you Greek—”
Anna physically came between them, pushing them apart. She felt sick. She’d thought Nikos would wait for his bodyguards, giving her at least thirty minutes to privately conclude her business with Victor. Having him come so quickly, and alone, had shot her plan apart.
“Please, let me go,” she said to Victor. “I need to talk to Nikos anyway. I—I’ll talk to you more later.”
For a moment Victor looked as if he were going to pummel the smirk off Nikos’s face anyway. Then he shrugged and said shortly, “As you wish, loobemaya. Go. Until later.”
He walked off the dance floor. Nikos looked as if he meant to deliver some rejoinder, but Anna grabbed his hands, forced his attention back to her. “What are you doing here?”
Nikos’s anger came back to focus on her. “The question, madam, is what are you doing here? Dancing with him? Dressed like that?”
“I can dress as I please—”
He interrupted her. “You will never see Victor Sinistyn again, do you understand?”
“No, I don’t. You’re not my husband. You’re nothing—”
With a growl, he dragged her off the floor, through the crowds and out of the club. She struggled, unable to escape his iron grip.
Outside, the cooling desert air felt fresh against her overheated skin. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm her fears as he retrieved his motorcycle from the valet.
This was going to work. It had to work. She’d use the threat of Victor to force Nikos to give her joint custody of her son. And set her free.
Tossing a tip to the valet, Nikos threw a muscular leg over the motorcycle’s seat. For a moment Anna’s gaze lingered on his body, on the way his snug black T-shirt accentuated the muscles of his chest and his flat belly, on the tight curve of his backside in the dark designer jeans.
“Get on,” he ordered, his eyes like ice.
Carefully, Anna climbed up behind him on the motorcycle. She gave a little squeak as he revved the engine and roared down the street without a word of warning.
She held him close, her body pressed against his back. Her tight suede halter top thrust her breasts upward, and they felt exquisitely sensitive, the nipples hardening as they brushed against the muscles of his back. She tightened her grip on his waist, her dark hair flying in the wind.
“You’ll never go to that club again,” he said in a low voice, barely audible over the roar of the engine.
“I’ll do as I please.”
“Promise me right now, or I swear to God I’ll turn around and burn the place to the ground.”
She felt his body tense beneath her grip as he waited. His deliciously hard body felt so good beneath her hands. It was enough to make her lose all rational thought.
Perhaps she could give in to this one request, she thought. She didn’t want to go back to the stupid club again, anyway. She had no intention of letting Victor paw at her more on the dance floor.
Next time she’d meet him somewhere else. Like a library.
“All right,” she said. “I promise.”
She felt his body relax slightly. “Good.”
A few moments later he pulled the motorcycle beneath the brilliant marquee of L’Hermitage Casino Resort.
Like the Parisian and Venetian hotels down the street, L’Hermitage’s architecture was an imposing fantasy.
Much of the design had been based upon the stately nineteenth-century palaces of St. Petersburg, but the centerpiece of the building was a reproduction of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, with its distinctive onion-shaped domes.
Tossing his keys to the valet, he took her by the hand—more gently this time—and led her through the front door for her first inside look at the finished project that had consumed them both for nearly four years.
She gazed upward at the high ceiling as he led her through the main floor of the casino. The architecture had triangular shaped Russian arches over doors, watched over by painted angels. Soaring above the slot machines and roulette tables, a simulated horizon held the breathless hush of a starlit sky on a cold winter night.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
He smiled at her then, an open, boyish smile, and it nearly took her breath away. “Wait until you see the rest.”
On the other side of the main casino floor they entered the Moskva Shopping Complex, which was built like several outdoor streets within the casino. The storefronts and streetlights, the ambient light and even the sounds of birds far overhead, made Anna feel as if she was walking through a fairytale Russian city.
“It’s just like I dreamed.” She looked at the expensive shops, Gucci and Prada and Tiffany, and her fingers tightened around his. “You made our dream a reality.”
He stared at her, then slowly shook his head. “We did it together, Anna. I couldn’t have created L’Hermitage without you.”
She blinked as tears filled her eyes. He appreciated all the work she’d done, the heart she’d poured into her work.
He looked her full in the face. “I’ve missed you.”
Anna felt her heart stop right in the middle of the ebb and flow of the busy street. The chic people hurrying into the stores seemed to blur around her. Could it be true? Just by seeing her with Victor, could Nikos have realized he missed her? Needed her?
Loved her?
Her heart gave a strange thump. Words trembled on her lips. Horrible words she couldn’t possibly say, because they couldn’t possibly be true. Could they?
&nbs
p; “You…you’ve missed me?”
“Of course,” he replied. “No other secretary has ever been your equal.”
“Oh.” The thump moved from her heart to her throat. She turned to face the large building behind her.
“Matryoshka,” she murmured, over the miserable lump in her throat. She stared up at the restaurant’s imposing domes of unpainted wood, like a miniature cathedral tucked inside the fairytale street. She had to change the subject before he realized what she’d been thinking. Before she despised herself more for being foolish enough to think he actually cared for her.
“Wait until you see the inside,” he said, taking her hand. “You’ll think you’re inside the Terem Palace.”
A slender, well-dressed maître d’ stood at a podium just inside the restaurant.
“We’d like the table by the window,” Nikos said.
The maître d’ didn’t bother looking up from his reservation page. “That particular table is booked for four months,” he said, sounding bored. “And we have nothing available for tonight—not a thing—not even if you were the King of—”
Mid-sneer, the man glanced up. He saw Nikos, and his jaw went slack. He suddenly began to cough.
“One moment, sir,” he said breathlessly. “We’ll get your table ready, for you and for your lovely lady, straight away.”
Two minutes later the maître d’, now fawning and polite, had left them at the best table in the restaurant. A little awed in spite of herself, Anna looked around.
The interior of Matryoshka had been designed in seventeenth-century Muscovite style, with intimate low ceilings made of stucco and covered with frescoes of interweaving flowers and the nesting dolls that inspired the restaurant’s name. Elaborate tiled ovens and kokoshnik-shaped arches were lit by flickering candles on the tables and torches on the walls.
As a waiter came to tell them about the specials, Nikos cut him off. “We’ll both have the salmon with caviar and champagne sauce,” he said, closing his menu. “And Scotch—neat.”
“Wait.” Anna stopped the waiter with a hand on his arm. “I would like Chicken Kiev, please. And kulich for dessert,” she added, referring to the Easter fruitcake. “And sparkling water to drink.” She closed her menu, matching Nikos glare for glare. “Not Scotch.”