by Jennie Lucas
He looked at Anna. “I never want my son, or you, to endure that kind of wretched life. I know I’ve given you no reason to accept anything from me, but please let me do this one thing. Let me give Michael the happy child hood I never had.”
Anna swallowed. It was hard to ignore a plea like that. And harder still to ignore the pleas of her own heart. She didn’t want to leave her baby all day long so she could go to work, but what choice did she have? It was either work or beg money from Nikos for the rest of her life.
But maybe it wouldn’t be like that.
Stupid to even consider it. She’d trusted Nikos once before and she’d just been abandoned, fired, cheated on…
He never cheated on me, a voice whispered. And, no matter how misguided and neanderthal his attempts were, he was only trying to keep us both comfortable and safe.
She stomped on the thought. She wouldn’t let herself weaken now and start going soft again. She wouldn’t let Nikos get under her skin, no matter how vulnerable he looked asking for her help, or how warm his eyes had glowed when he’d laughed with their son. She wouldn’t let herself fall back in love, no matter how wonderful he seemed to be at this moment.
She snatched the résumé back out of his hands, eager for distraction from her thoughts. “This is the job candidate you plan to interview first?”
“Yes, I thought—”
Skimming the page, she nearly jumped out of her chair. “Have you totally lost your mind? She has no secretarial experience. Her references are a strip club and—” she squinted her eyes “—a place called the Hot Mustang Ranch.”
“I was trying to keep an open mind,” he said defensively. “Your reference was Victor Sinistyn, but you were still the best damn secretary I’ve ever had.”
“But there are three typos on her résumé. Even Lindsey wasn’t this bad.” She crumpled up the paper in her hands. “There’s no point even doing an interview—not unless you need an erotic dancer with bordello experience.”
“Fine,” he said gruffly. “I’ll have her sent away. Maybe your friend Victor will hire her at one of his clubs.”
He held out his hand for the paper. As their fingers touched their eyes met, and an electric shock went through her. He looked at her so hungrily. She waited for him to take her in his arms, to kiss her senseless. To reach across the mahogany desk and take what she’d been aching for him to take.
She heard him take a long, slow breath. His fingers slowly moved up her bare arm as they both leaned forward over the table.
There was a hard knock at the door, the sound of it swinging open. “Excuse me, sir, miss?”
Anna whirled around in her chair, blushing when she saw a maid standing in the doorway.
“I have standing orders not to be interrupted in my office,” Nikos said in a controlled voice.
“Yes, sir. But, begging your pardon, it’s Miss Rostoff who’s wanted. Your sister’s here, miss. She’s quite agitated and said if we didn’t get you she’d be calling the police and telling them you were being kept here against your will.”
“Let me go!” Anna heard her sister’s voice, shrill and frantic down the hall. “Get out of my way. Anna? Anna!”
Natalie pushed past the maid, nearly knocking the girl aside. Her linen shift dress was rumpled and dirty, as if it had been slept in.
She stopped abruptly when she saw Anna in her T-shirt and shorts, sitting casually on the desk near Nikos. Natalie’s jaw dropped, then her eyes blazed through her thick glasses.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she said to Anna. “Do you have any idea what’s going on? I’ve been calling and calling, but you never called back. I thought you were in trouble. I thought he was keeping you prisoner again. And instead I find you lazing in luxury with the man you called your deadliest enemy!”
“Excuse us,” Anna said hastily, and grabbed her sister’s wrist, pulling her out of the office before she could repeat any of the insulting things Anna had once said about Nikos. She couldn’t risk alienating him now—not when they’d finally made a fragile peace and he was actually considering joint custody.
She dragged Natalie into her bedroom and closed the door behind her.
“You’ve gone back to him, haven’t you?” her sister said bitterly, rubbing her wrist. “Even after all the stuff he did. Ruining Father’s company! Abandoning you! Cheating on you! Firing you because you were pregnant—with his baby! That’s blatant sex discrimination. You should sue.”
“Natalie, I’m not going to sue the father of my child.”
“Why, when he’s such a monster?”
Anna took a deep breath. “I blew things out of proportion. And I just found out that what I told you about Father’s company…wasn’t true.”
“What?”
Anna looked at her young, idealistic sister and just couldn’t bear to disillusion her by telling her about their father’s embezzlement. “There were complications and problems that I didn’t know about. Nikos didn’t ruin the company. He was trying to save it when Father made some…bad choices.”
Natalie looked at her keenly. “So if Nikos suddenly isn’t so bad, why are you marrying Victor and moving to Russia?”
“What?”
“You don’t know?” Staring at her in amazement, her younger sister, usually so trusting and sweet, gave a harsh laugh. “No, of course you don’t. I’ve only left ten messages on your cellphone since yesterday. Victor Sinistyn just bought great-grandmother’s palace this morning from Mother. She sold it to him for a fraction of its value—two million off our debt, plus another twenty thousand to her in cash. Which she’s already spent on clothes, of course. Victor is going to raze the old palace and build something new in its place. For you.”
“For me? What are you talking about?”
“Vitya always seemed so strong, so handsome. Even after he quit his partnership with Father so suddenly I thought he was kind. I flew here last night to ask him to leave the palace alone. I thought he’d listen to me.” She shook her head angrily. “But he just laughed. He said that the air in Las Vegas was getting unhealthy, and that he needed to raze the palace immediately because the two of you would be moving to St. Petersburg as soon as you were married.”
“That’s not true!” Anna gasped. “We’re not getting married. He hasn’t even proposed.” At least not lately, she added silently.
“Well, he obviously thinks proposing is just a formality. Any reason why he’d think that?”
Anna paced across the thick blue carpet. “I’ve only seen him once since I got here! And even then it was only because…” Glancing right and left, as if she feared Nikos might be listening from the large walk-in closet or beneath the elegant canopied bed, Anna whispered, “Being Victor’s friend is my only bargaining chip against Nikos to get joint custody. So I can leave here. So I can be free.”
Natalie eyes widened, looking owlish beneath her glasses. “And you asked Vitya for help? When I went to his club I saw the kind of man he really is. He isn’t our friend. If he were, he wouldn’t have been loaning our parents money at that huge interest rate. I thought he was trying to help us. But now I think he only went into business with Father in the first place to be close to you. After you left to work for Nikos he dissolved the partnership and started loaning Father money instead.” She took a deep breath. “I think since you wouldn’t agree to marry him he’s been drowning our family in debt to force your hand.”
“It can’t be true,” Anna gasped. All right, so Victor had made advances the whole time she’d been his secretary. He’d chased off other suitors. He’d pressured her to marry him. He’d even gotten her father to try to use his influence over her. But Victor would never have deliberately hurt her family just to possess her.
Would he?
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Natalie pressed. “Why else does he keep loaning Mother money? He knows we have no way to repay it.”
Anna rubbed her head wearily. “I don’t know. But I’ll figure it out. I�
��ll handle this, Natalie, don’t worry. As soon as I get custody of Misha I’ll return to New York and find a job—”
“You still think he’ll let you repay the money?” Natalie interrupted, looking at Anna as if seeing her for the first time. “If you think he’s gone to all this trouble to let you set up some kind of payment plan, you’re as delusional as Mother. Who’s happy to take his money, by the way, because she’s sure you’ll marry him. Which you probably will. You always have to sacrifice yourself, don’t you? Even when it does more harm than good. You’ll reward him after he’s destroyed our family to get his hands on you.”
“You don’t know that’s really true!”
“I don’t?” Natalie shook her head. “You need to grow up and see the real world.”
Her baby sister was telling her to grow up? “I do see the real world—”
“My whole life I’ve thought you were some kind of saint, you know? Sacrificing your own future to take care of us. When I wanted to study accounting so I could get a good job to help support our family you insisted I major in art instead—”
“I knew art was your passion!” Anna said, stung.
“Maybe.” Natalie snorted derisively. “But it’s no way to make a living. The truth is, you didn’t want my help. You always have to be the one to do everything. God forbid you ever depend on someone else.”
“I was trying to do the right thing for you!”
“Then why didn’t you stand up to Victor ages ago and tell him to back off? Instead of running away to work for someone else? Why did you get pregnant by Nikos, then run away? Why are you still so desperate to run away from Nikos now? You’re keen to stand up for others, but when it comes to yourself you just run away.”
Anna stared at her, breathing heavily. “Natalie, please…” she whispered.
Natalie’s eyes were hard. “You want to be strong? Fine. You got yourself in your mess. With Victor. With Nikos. Get yourself out of it. Just don’t kid yourself that your choices are for us. All you’ve done is make things worse for us. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Turning on her heel, she went for the door.
“Natalie!” She grabbed her sister’s wrist. “Don’t leave like this. Please.”
“Let me go,” Natalie said coldly. Her sister wrenched her arm away, and this time Anna released her.
After she left, Anna slowly sat down on the bed in the cool darkness of her room, still shocked by Natalie’s attack. Her sister had always been the one person Anna could count on. She hadn’t asked any questions when Anna had appeared on her doorstep in Russia, but had simply taken her in her arms and let her cry on her shoulder. She’d fought Nikos’s armed henchmen to try to keep Misha safe.
Heartsick, Anna left her room and realized she’d blindly gone to Nikos’s office to seek comfort. But his door was closed. She stared at the door, longing for him to take her in his strong arms and tell her everything would be okay. She would almost believe it if he was the one who said it. No doubt another example of her being delusional.
Was Natalie right?
Instead of being the one who’d saved and supported her family, had Anna been the cause of its ruin?
It was true that she’d never really stood up to Victor. He’d made passes at her, and Anna hadn’t known how to deal with his flirtations, so she’d simply put up with them. She’d never told him flat-out to leave her alone. When they’d gotten to be too much, she’d run away to work for Nikos.
And as for Nikos…She’d known his faults, but she’d still fallen in love with him. She should have been more careful. Especially about jumping into his bed. What had she been thinking to allow herself to conceive a child with a man who not only wasn’t her husband but didn’t even love her?
The closed office door stared down at her reproachfully.
Turning away with a heavy heart, she went to the nursery, where Misha was still napping in his crib. She gently picked him up and cuddled him in the rocking chair. Tears filled her eyes as she stared out the window at the pool, where for a brief time that morning she’d felt like she was part of a happy family.
How could she fix everything she’d done wrong?
How could she make things right?
The one thing she couldn’t do was ask Nikos—or anyone—for help. Natalie was right. Anna had caused this mess. She was the one who should take care of it. Alone.
Closing her eyes, she held her baby as she rocked back and forth. It was time to face reality.
Misha shouldn’t suffer just because Anna had such a hard time being around his father. No matter how much she wanted to return to New York, she couldn’t. She had to live close enough to Nikos that they could raise their son together. Misha deserved that much.
But she wouldn’t marry Nikos either. She’d been careless enough to get pregnant, but she wouldn’t make it worse by marrying him. She’d be miserable as his wife, committing herself to a man who didn’t even love her.
Anna would share parenting with Nikos, but that was it. She needed her own place. Her own life. Her own job.
She sat up straight in her chair as her eyes flew open.
She’d get Nikos to rehire her.
It was the perfect solution. She’d be able to travel with him around the world, so Misha would always see them both. Plus, working as his executive assistant was not only the best job she’d ever had, he’d also paid her a high salary that would be virtually impossible to find anywhere else. Enough so that she could set up a payment plan with Victor, which she’d force him to take.
It might be difficult to see Nikos every day, no doubt watching him date other women, but she’d deal with it. She would take responsibility for the choices she’d made.
Misha gave a little sigh. Opening his dark eyes, so much like his father’s, he smiled up at her. Anna smiled back.
All she had to do was convince Nikos to hire her as his secretary—while keeping herself from falling into his arms—and everything else would fall into place.
It wouldn’t be easy, but, hey—Nikos had asked for her help weeding out unsuitable résumés. She grinned. She’d pretend to go through them while taking over the secretarial job herself. She’d lull Nikos into complacency while she proved she could both work and be a good mother to his child. She’d prove to them both that she wasn’t a screw-up. She’d prove she could do it all.
“What’s wrong with this one?” Nikos demanded, exasperated. “Carmen Ortega has thirty years of experience working with CEOs of billion-dollar companies!”
“Those companies had shareholders,” Anna said sweetly, tossing the résumé in the trash. “She’s accustomed to toeing the line for many bosses instead of sticking to one. Too many cooks, you know.”
No, he didn’t. He had no idea what she was talking about. Nine days of looking through résumés, and Anna had found fault with every single one. But, since he’d asked specifically for her assistance, he had no choice but to continue this farce until he could get Anna to fall in love with him.
It was proving to be harder than he’d thought.
His plan had been to lure her with romantic dinners, gifts, and family outings. Instead, work had somehow taken over. She’d turned the romantic dinners into working meals, taking notes in shorthand between dainty bites of Cavaleri’s pasta primavera and pad thai. When he’d given her flowers and chocolates, she’d thanked him gravely for remembering Secretaries’ Day. Secretaries’ Day! As if there was any damn way he’d remember some made-up holiday like that!
The family outings with baby Michael, including splashing in the pool, taking walks along the edge of the desert, and strolling through L’Hermitage, had certainly been enjoyable. Nikos had relished holding his son as they walked across the casino floor, through the Moskva Shopping Complex and into the elegant, soaring lobby of the turn-of-the-century-styled hotel. “This will all be yours someday,” he’d whispered into his son’s ear, and he’d been filled with pride.
But, though Anna seemed glad that he was learnin
g to be a father, she didn’t seem at all inclined to fall at his feet for that alone.
At least the time had made a difference at his home office. The piled-up papers were gone, sorted and filed. His appointments had already been reorganized to better suit his schedule, with no more double-bookings. In nine short days Anna had mended Lindsey’s ineptitude with efficiency and poise.
He looked around his office. A man could get used to this, he thought with satisfaction. Then he stopped himself cold. No, he couldn’t get used to this. He couldn’t let himself. After the ten days was over Anna would return to full-time motherhood. Her place was at home, in luxury and comfort, raising their son.
It had been nice working from home for the last week, though, instead of going to his office at the casino as usual. He’d seen a lot of Michael, too, since Anna was still feeding him every three hours. She usually had him in the office with them for much of the afternoon. Right now the baby was in the nursery, taking his afternoon nap, but just a few moments ago he’d been lying on a mat on the floor, batting at the dangling toys of his playgym while he gurgled and laughed. Remembering, a smile formed on Nikos’s lips.
He shook himself. What kind of work environment was this? In spite of Anna’s organization, his work habits were slipping. His usual sixteen or eighteen-hour days just weren’t possible when he was constantly being distracted by the laughter of his son and the gorgeous vision of Anna in a slim-fitting white shirt and black pencil skirt, crossing her killer legs while she took dictation.
No, he had to stick to his plan. Anna would be free of the burden of work, and he’d find some other secretary. He’d make do for the sake of his son having a happy childhood, and return to his eighteen-hour work days. He’d shown his son the empire that would soon be his; he couldn’t slack off on the job now.
But he was leaving tomorrow. He only had tonight to make Anna fall for him before he left for Singapore, and, while he still believed he’d achieve his goal, it might be time to get creative. He’d soon have no choice but to…ugh…talk more about feelings. He had no idea how to do that, but he’d improvise. How hard could it be? He’d talk about his childhood. Didn’t women swoon over stories of poverty and misery?