A Child Claimed by Gold

by Rachael Thomas

  When he woke several hours later, Emma’s body warm against his, he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to give up the moment. Never before had he allowed emotion into the bedroom. For him it had always been about lust and acting upon an attraction. He’d thought it would be the same with Emma when he’d taken her to his room, but the moment he’d taken her virginity, had become her only lover, something had changed.

  Gently he kissed her hair as she lay against his chest. Immediately she lifted her head and looked at him, a shy smile on her face. ‘You could always just tell me about your family and then we can stay here all day instead of going to see your grandmother.’

  His mood was lighter than it had ever been and he stroked his hands through the softness of her hair. ‘If I tell you too much, I will have to keep you here for ever.’

  ‘Promises, promises.’ She laughed, a soft, sexy laugh which pushed him further from reality.

  ‘You know the basics,’ he said as she kissed his chest, forcing him to close his eyes. ‘I grew up in Russia and when my father died my mother and I left for New York.’

  ‘That must have been tough.’ Her slender fingers traced across his chest, easing the pain of the memories, the pain of telling them.

  ‘My mother had help from a business acquaintance of my father’s and, several years later, she married him.’ The surprised rise of her brows made him think more deeply and the hum of passion dimmed.

  ‘Did you mind? That she married again, I mean, replaced your father?’ If there was one question sure to kill the desire which had rampaged through him, it was that one.

  ‘I didn’t mourn my father.’ The pain from his childhood made his voice a harsh growl and Emma pulled away from him to look up into his face. Could she sense the tension in him just thinking about how he’d been conceived, that he had been the product of a violent rape?

  ‘What happened?’ There wasn’t any disgust in her voice for his open admission, no judgement in those two words at all. Had she too known childhood heartache? Did she recognise it within him?

  ‘It was not a happy marriage and one my grandmother, Marya Petrushov, very much wanted to continue. She made things difficult for my mother, prolonged the unhappiness.’ He skirted around the truth, trying to explain without giving her any more of the sorry secret than she needed to know. She could even be storing away the information right now to put it in her damned article. He pulled away from her, broke the contact. It was the only way to be able to think straight.

  ‘Is that why you have been distracting me from meeting her?’ The bold question didn’t match the soft innocence of the image she created naked in his bed and he fought hard against the urge to abandon this conversation and use the language of desire and passion. Her next words killed that thought, so instantly his body froze. ‘I need the story, Nikolai, all of it. I have a job to do.’

  How could she look so deliciously sexy when her words were like hail thrashing his naked body? Had he fallen for the oldest trick in the book? Had she acted innocent to ensure he took her to his bed and he was now spoiling her plans? Worse than that, had she bargained her virginity just to get the story she needed? He shouldn’t be telling her the intimate secrets of his family, not when she could portray a family ripped apart by greed and power as it had risen to new heights of wealth.

  It was precisely what had happened. His mother must have been an easy target for a power-hungry man whose own family had come from nothing. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of his father’s mother selling the story. Did she expect it to keep her comfortable in her final years? Was she planning even now to blackmail him? It damn well wouldn’t happen if he had anything to do with it.

  ‘You’ll get your story,’ he growled as he stood up and stepped away from her, away from the temptation of her silky, soft skin. She was as devious as his grandmother. She’d only slept with him to get what she wanted. She’d crossed the barriers he’d long ago erected and had exposed his emotions to the light of a new day and, with it, the pain of who he was. ‘But not now. Not until I know if there are consequences from your underhanded way of interviewing me.’

  ‘Nikolai!’ she gasped and reached out, the sheet slipping, giving a tantalising view of her breasts. The fact that it turned him on, sending lust hurtling through him faster than anything he’d known, disgusted him.

  He turned his back on her, not trusting himself to leave her alone, and savagely pulled on the remainder of his clothes. He’d been a fool. He’d thought he’d glimpsed what life could be like if his past wasn’t a permanent shadow hanging over him.

  ‘You need to leave.’ He turned to look at her, allowing the anger to sluice over him and wash away the lingering desire. She was as deceitful and scheming as his grandmother and he wouldn’t allow her to expose the truth and hurt his mother. She’d suffered enough shame.

  * * *

  Emma blinked and recoiled at the change in Nikolai. Where had the tender lover gone? Anger rushed from him like a fierce tide crashing onto the rocky shore.

  ‘No, we need to talk.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything else to you.’ He spat the words back at her, the dim light of the room only making his anger even clearer. What had she done to make him suddenly hate her? The questions had only been part of her job and she’d never hidden that from him.

  He stepped closer to her and she became aware of her nakedness again, clutching the covers against her once more. From the hard expression set on his face, she knew their moment of intimacy was over. The connection between them they’d shared last night had been severed as surely as if he’d cut it.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and seconds later tossed a business card onto the bed. ‘If you want to pry into my life any more, you can contact me on that number.’

  Ice shuttered around her heart, freezing the new emotions she’d allowed herself to have for this man. How had she been stupid enough to believe he was different, that like her he was hurting because of the past? She’d thought that made what they’d shared last night more intense, more powerful.

  She took the card, holding it as if it might explode at any second. The bold black print in which Nikolai Cunningham was written was as hard as the man who stood angrily before her.

  ‘One last thing,’ she said before she could think better of it. ‘Why do you no longer use your family name, Petrushov?’ It was the one thing which had puzzled her since she’d been given the assignment on the Petrushov family and had been told the only grandson would meet her in Vladimir.

  ‘I have no wish to use my father’s name.’ The harshness in his tone made his hatred and anger palpable. It filled the room and invaded every corner. ‘And, so that you have your information correct when you use my family’s sordid past to further your career, I changed my name to that of my stepfather when I was sixteen.’

  ‘I’m not going to use any of what you’ve just told me, Nikolai. What kind of woman do you think I am?’ She couldn’t keep the shock from her voice or the hurt from cutting deep into her. Did he really think that badly of her?

  ‘You are obviously the kind of woman who will trade her virginity to climb a career ladder.’ The hardened growl of his accusation sliced painfully into her, sullying the memories of giving herself to him so completely last night.

  ‘No,’ she gasped, wishing she was wearing something so that she could go to him. How could he think that of her? ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

  He gave her one last frosty glare and then strode to the door. ‘Now you have all you need to ruin mine and my mother’s reputations, you can get the hell out of my life.’

  The door slammed behind him and she was left, blinking in shock. Only hours ago they had been locked in the arms of passion. Nothing else had existed. A tear slid down her face as she threw back the covers and picked up the black dress from the floor, trying not to remember the burn of desire she’d had for him as it had slipped off her body last night. Angrily she pulled it on, not caring about her under
wear. All she wanted was to get along the hotel corridor to the sanctuary of her room and lock herself in until her heart stopped breaking.

  Still reeling from the shock of Nikolai walking out on her, she shut the door of her own room and made for the shower, needing the warmth of the water to soothe her. After standing there for what felt like hours, Emma finally turned the water off and wrapped herself in a towel, trying not to dwell on the accusations Nikolai had hurled at her. Did he really think she’d all but sold herself just to get information out of him?

  Her phone buzzed on the cabinet next to her bed. Instantly she was on alert. What if it was Nikolai? With a slight tremor in her hands she reached for it and, as she looked at the text from her sister, she knew the day was going from bad to worse. Even with the limited words of the text Emma could sense Jess’s distress, but it was the final word which really propelled her into motion:

  I need you, Em, come now. Please.

  * * *

  Finally the overnight train arrived in Perm and Emma made her way straight to the ballet school. The tearful conversation she’d had with Jess during that long journey was still fresh in her mind, which at least had given her little time to think of the night spent with Nikolai and how it had drastically changed things, how he’d rejected her.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much, Em,’ Jess said, dragging her mind back from thoughts of the tall, dark-haired Russian who had lured the woman she’d always wanted to be out of the shadows.

  ‘Is that what this is all about?’ Emma kept her tone light but, for the first time ever, felt constrained by looking after her sister. If she hadn’t had to rush and get a train ticket sorted, she might have seen Nikolai again. She’d at least wanted to try and explain, especially after the intimacies they’d shared. All she knew was that he’d checked out.

  ‘You’ve been so far away and it’s been months since I’ve seen you. I guess I couldn’t stand the thought of you being so close.’

  ‘Not exactly close.’ Emma forced herself to forget her problems and laughed, pulling her sister into a hug, unable to be irritated by the intrusion into her life at the worst possible moment. ‘It was a very long train journey from Vladimir. It took me all night.’

  ‘I hope I didn’t spoil anything for you,’ said Jess, looking a little subdued suddenly, and Emma wondered if there was more to this.

  ‘There wasn’t anything to spoil.’ Nikolai had already done that, accusing her of all but seducing the story out of him. Well, she’d show him. Nothing he’d said to her in his room would find its way into her article, although it did go some way to explaining his shock at seeing his family home again.

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ began Jess, sounding brighter already. ‘I only have the rest of today off class, then it’s back to it.’

  ‘Then we need to do something really good.’

  Later that night, lying alone in a different hotel room, having spent the entire day with Jess, Emma’s doubts crept back in. She remembered Nikolai standing at the window, the light shadowing his body, and wished she could turn back time. The only thing she wanted to change was the doubt on his face, the worry in his eyes.

  Several times this evening she’d wanted to call him, wanted to reassure him that all he’d told her about his childhood would stay with her. She knew what it was to feel unloved and out of place. Was that why he’d gone to great lengths to put off the meeting with his grandmother? Was there another side to the story? Had she been fooled by his heart-wrenching admission of his past?

  She had spent time on the train drafting out what she wanted to write and none of it would include the torture of the man who’d shown her what being loved could be like, even for a few brief hours. If she told him that, would he believe her? She relived the moment he’d accused her of seducing him for information and knew he would never believe her.

  Tomorrow she would be taking the train back to Moscow and from there a flight home to London. There wouldn’t be an opportunity to see him; maybe fate was trying to tell her that what she’d shared with Nikolai that night was nothing more than a moment out of time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NIKOLAI STOOD AT a window of his apartment, looking at, but not seeing, Central Park bathed in spring sunshine. All he could think about was Emma. It had been almost two months since that night but the only communication had been from World in Photographs, thanking him, although he was yet to see a copy of what Emma had submitted. That, however, was the least of his worries.

  He’d replayed their night together many times in his mind and, once the anger that she’d slept with him to get her story had cooled, a new worry grew from an inkling of doubt. The more he thought of it, the more his gut was telling him they might have had an accident after she’d coaxed him back to bed...the hurried and last-minute use of the condom playing heavily on his mind.

  As he stood looking out of the window early that morning, he kept telling himself that no news from Emma was good, that their night of passion hadn’t had the consequences he’d dreaded despite the ever-increasing doubt in his mind.

  It had been many weeks since he’d marched from the hotel room and braced the snow to cool his mind and body with a walk. When he’d returned to the room, Emma had gone, and that had told him all he needed to know: he’d been used. The only good thing to come out of the night was that he hadn’t had to face his grandmother.

  Angry that he’d put himself in such a position, he’d checked out and headed straight back to New York, but he hadn’t stopped thinking about Emma. She had haunted his every waking hour and made sleep almost impossible. Something had happened to him that night, maybe even from the first moment he’d met her. She had changed him, made him think of things he couldn’t have.

  He’d done what he always did where emotions were concerned and avoided them. He still couldn’t believe he’d almost told her all about his childhood. Those hours spent in bed with her must have muddled his mind. It should have just been a night of passion to divert her from the horrible truth of who he really was, but he’d almost told her exactly what he’d wanted to remain a secret.

  He’d gone to Vladimir and confronted the ghosts of his past in order to save his mother the heartache of seeing her story all over the newspapers, exactly where it would end up once it was published by World in Photographs. What he’d found in Vladimir with Emma was something different.

  Yes, he had been guilty of wanting to distract her from the truth, but somewhere along the way things had changed. She’d reached into the cold darkness of his heart and unlocked emotions he’d thought impossible to feel. Even the woman he’d once proposed to had failed to do that, but Emma had been different.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ He snarled angrily at himself. One of the only times he’d let a woman close and she’d cheated him, used him for her own gain. He’d even begun to question if Emma was as innocent as she’d claimed. Had that too been part of the plan—to make him think he was the first man she’d ever slept with—in order to get the real story?

  The fact that she’d run out on him only added fuel to the fire. Not only that, there hadn’t been a word from her since that night when he’d stood there and looked at her, clutching the sheet against her. He’d had had to fight hard not to pull the damn thing from her and get back into bed. His body had been on fire with need for her and, despite having spent all night having sex, he’d allowed the anger he felt at himself for being used to have precedence. It had been a far more reliable emotion to feel, one which had propelled him from the hotel room without a backward glance.

  Driven by that anger, he’d left quickly, tossing her a card as an afterthought. Or was it because even then, deep down, he knew things might have gone wrong? If their night together did have consequences, then he knew he would face up to them and be the father he’d always longed for in place of the cruel man who had filled his childhood with fear.

  The fact that he knew what he would do didn’t make Emma’s silence any easier. It
irritated him. Did it mean she wasn’t pregnant? That the condom failure about which he’d since convinced himself hadn’t had any drastic consequences?

  He looked at his watch. Ten in the morning here meant late afternoon in London. He could ring her. It would be easy enough to get her number through World in Photographs, but what would he say?

  He’d replayed again the scene in the hotel room early that morning. He’d woken to find her sleeping soundly next to him and had watched her for a while. Then, as the ghosts of the past had crowded in, he’d had to get up. For what had felt like hours, he’d stood watching the dark and empty street outside the window as if it held the answer or truth about his past.

  Emma had stirred, her glorious naked body doing things to his, and he’d had to hold on to his self-control, wanting only to lose himself in her once more instead of facing the truth. That truth was not only the fact that she’d lured him to tell her things he’d wanted to keep well hidden.

  His phone bleeped, alerting him to a text, and he ignored it, wanting to focus on what to do next. Call her? Go to London and demand to see her? He’d have to find out where she lived.

  Insistently the alert sounded again and he swore in Russian, something he hadn’t done for a long time before he’d returned to Vladimir. When he picked up the phone and read the text, he almost dropped it as if it were red-hot.

  We need to meet. I’m in New York. E

  He inhaled deeply. This could only mean one thing—the very worst thing. There was no way she’d come here, all the way to New York, to tell him the article had been accepted, or show him a copy. An email would be sufficient for that. She needed to talk. His suspicions about their night together must be right—she was pregnant with his child—and that changed everything.

  He pressed his thumb and finger against his eyelids in an effort to think, but there was only one answer. The same answer that had come up each and every time he’d thought of Emma and that night together. The very thing he’d never wanted to happen. He just knew it: he’d fathered a child. Now he had to face his fears from childhood and prove to himself he wasn’t his father’s son...that he could bring up his child with love and kindness. The very idea terrified him.