Oh, God, she thought, was I ever so foolish to believe that it was like a fairy tale, and that though he never said it, he loved me all the time as I did him. Fairy tale. Romance. Surely she couldn’t have been so foolish. He had enjoyed her, that was it. That was the way it often was; she simply hadn’t wanted to believe it. Not her. Other women could be used by men, not Erin McCabe … Erin Steele. That was a laugh. He had never wanted her to have his name. And he didn’t want her to have his child.
“The wall will not change, you know. It has stood so for centuries.”
Startled, she turned to see Sergei Alexandrovich with gloved hands stuffed in his pockets, his eyes gently upon her.
“Sergei …” Erin murmured. “I—I like to come here. St. Basil’s is really so beautiful, and the Kremlin wall never fails to amaze me. I understand it is over twenty feet thick in places.”
“And you couldn’t care less about the wall at the moment,” Sergei finished for her, coming closer and slipping an arm through hers. “I have just spoken to your husband, and he is half insane. What a temper! He is now out in the city looking for you, my dear Erin, so I thought it might be best if I found you first. And I am pleased with my instincts. I knew you would be here.”
Erin found herself being turned and led toward a car beyond the square on the street. “Sergei—”
“We will have some afternoon tea,” Sergei interrupted before she could continue, “and when you are rested and ready, only then will I take you home.”
She was tired, very tired, and too dispirited to argue and Sergei didn’t press her. They rode silently down the side streets of Moscow to a building that looked like a hole in the wall but proved to be a small hotel with an elegant and intimate cafe. Sergei ordered them bread, sausages, cheeses, tea, and little rum cakes, telling her that the building had actually been there since the time of Peter the Great and that the crystal chandeliers that graced them with their dim light were also from that era. Erin listened vaguely, sipping at her tea.
Sergei’s hazel eyes were very warm, his voice gentle. He paused in his monologue to gaze at her for several seconds. “Come, come, Erin, you must eat something. That little child within you that you attempt to starve is also my cousin, you know.”
Erin glanced from her tea to Sergei with horror. “He told you?”
Sergei shook his head. “I keep tabs on you, Erin. I know where you have been.”
She should have been outraged, but she wasn’t. She merely shrugged. It was no great surprise these days to find her movements easily monitored.
“Don’t be angry, Erin. I watch you because I am concerned, not because I think you guilty of anything.” He fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “Like my cousin Jarod, Erin, you are a private person. You do not talk. So I will talk to you. And you will understand Jarod.”
“I do understand Jarod.”
“Maybe not.” Sergei savored a piece of cheese and took a sip of tea as if they were discussing the weather. “Ahhhh … this is good! It is made from the milk of the hearty cattle of the Ukraine. You must try some.” Suddenly his demeanor changed. “You know about Cara, yes?”
Erin nodded numbly. “Jarod’s first wife.” His only wife, she added bitterly to herself.
“I will ask you to answer me nothing else, my American cousin,” Sergei said. “I will only tell you what I presume, and then you must think things through for yourself from there. I presume, Erin, that you told your husband today that you were expecting a child—and that his reaction was not the joy one would expect from a man offered his first child.”
Joy. Oh, Lord, it certainly wasn’t joy, Erin thought, but she said nothing.
“He hurt you very badly, judging by his temper. But I will tell you why, Erin. He still lives with a certain pain, a natural pain, but an unnatural guilt. His Cara was to have a baby. She was a very tiny, gentle creature, not made to have children to begin with. But they were very much in love and very happy about the baby they expected. When Cara did not feel well, she would not tell Jarod. And so when she went in labor very, very early, he was working. She called him but did not tell him what was wrong. Consequently, he finished his business before leaving work. Things were very bad when they reached the hospital. The doctors could not stop the bleeding. Jarod lost both his wife and his daughter.”
Erin was stunned by the story she didn’t for a minute doubt. She was horrified, but felt vaguely like another person, one not involved. And then she trembled, thinking that Jarod must be wishing that she didn’t exist, that he would be bitterly wondering why Cara and the child he had wanted lay dead while she walked about in perfect health with an unwanted child growing within her.
“It is strange in this day and age, Erin, but Jarod is afraid of childbirth. He has lost once—”
“But Jarod doesn’t love me,” Erin heard herself say.
Sergei shrugged. “Who is to say exactly what love is? Jarod needs you, he cares for you, he wants you to a distraction. Perhaps there is love in that, maybe a love deeper than he would ever care to acknowledge. Love can be a painful thing, Erin. Maybe the only thing that can create vulnerability in a man like my cousin, Jarod Steele:”
They both fell silent, sipping tea. Again, Erin felt too overwhelmed by all the events and emotions of the day even to think. Her mind and heart both seemed numbed and cold. She hurt for Jarod, but she also hurt for herself, and all the hurting couldn’t solve a thing.
“Shall I take you home now?”
Erin nodded. She had to face it some time.
Jarod was home when they returned, stalking the living room with tense, pantherlike treads. He stood still as she entered the hallway, glaring coolly at her first, then Sergei.
“Ah, cousin, I see that you are here,” Sergei said affably, ignoring the static in the air. “I have been caring for your wife.”
“I’ll take care of my own wife,” Jarod interrupted. His voice was quiet but still a whiplash that brought silence in its wake.
Sergei shrugged and turned to Erin, taking her hand in his and smoothly kissing it. His eyes rose to hers with a bit of a twinkle, as if he wished to convey a message of reassurance. Jarod’s attitude was amusing Sergei, and for the life of her Erin couldn’t understand why.
“Do sveedah nyah, Jarod,” Sergei waved. Bowing slightly with his hat in his hands, he turned and left. The click of the door in his wake seemed deafening.
Erin and Jarod stared at each other for moments of tension that felt like eternity.
Finally he spoke. “You worried me sick.”
Erin shrugged, wondering why she trembled. He wouldn’t hurt her, what was it she was so afraid of? Still, she felt as if she were being stalked, the tension building higher and higher.
“I don’t know why you worried. I’m hardly the type to go jump off a tall building.”
“Don’t be absurd. This is Russia. I don’t like you wandering the streets.”
“Don’t you be absurd. I’ve been here a long time now. I know the main streets of the city, and no tourist is under lock and key! Were I to find myself lost, I would still have no difficulty; the Russians civilians are very nice people, not beasts.”
“What a generous observation.”
“Oh, stop it! If someone around here has a hangup on Russians, it’s you, not me.”
His lids flickered for a second, and she saw the twist of his jaw. Hands in his pants pockets, he stalked a line in the living room that made Erin feel as if she could actually see a coiled wire twist tighter and tighter. It would have to give, it would have to spring. But he was keeping his distance from her. He was probably afraid he would strangle her if he came too close, she thought ruefully.
“Whether I had cause to worry or not,” he said bitterly, “I don’t appreciate your running out on me—or the method by which it was accomplished. I don’t like being duped.”
“I don’t like being held against my will—I don’t consider it particularly fair that you are the stronger—but that is
the case, so if my methods don’t seem fair to you, I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” he murmured. “Just remember what happens to those who cry wolf. And those who behave childishly. I think we had something to talk about—it was ridiculous for you to run away in the middle of it.”
“I didn’t run away in the middle of it. As far as I can see, we were quite through talking.”
“Erin—” The coil was springing. His pacing turned determinedly toward her.
But she was to be saved before he reached her. The door swung open and Ted and Mary and a laughing Tanya entered, all in the best of spirits from the antics of the circus.
Erin closed her eyes for a single instant in desperation, then opened them wide, meeting Jarod’s with a naked plea. She saw him pause, take a deep breath and stiffen, then exhale slowly, tensing and then loosening his fingers as he did so. Please, Erin kept silently pleading, don’t make a scene before these people.
He understood. He was the first to speak. “So how was the circus?” he inquired of Mary and Ted, moving with apparent ease to the doorway to greet them. “Tanya,” he smiled, bending to kiss the woman’s cheek in greeting.
Mary went into a speech on how wonderful the show had been while Ted stood silently by with his small smile hovering over his lips—a smile that etched eternal affection and tolerance for his wife. When he had a chance to get a word in edgewise, he too quietly praised the performance.
“Glad you enjoyed it,” Jarod said, bringing his guests into the living room. “Drink anyone? Ted, bourbon?”
“Sounds good,” Ted agreed.
“Mary? Tanya? Erin, the usual?”
Erin nodded mutely, breathing again with gratitude. He might still be intending to throttle her, but he was going to do it later.
Jarod announced after mixing the drinks that since it was Mary and Ted’s last night, they had planned to have dinner out. Tanya was cordially invited and happy to accept, and they were shortly dining at one of the city’s elegant tourist restaurants. Erin couldn’t find fault with his behavior for the entire evening—but she couldn’t relax, because his touch was an inferno. Even his thigh, pressed against hers in the booth seemed to burn through fabric to scorch her flesh.
It was a long night—naturally. Mary and Ted were leaving in the morning, and they all stayed late in the living room talking. When the conversation finally became more yawns than words, Ted stood and profusely thanked Jarod and Erin for their hospitality. “We really didn’t mean to intrude in your apartment this long,” Ted said, “but I did appreciate being in a home rather than the Rossia.”
“No problem,” Jarod assured him. “We’ve enjoyed having you.”
Not a problem at all, he thought. He had been the one to insist Mary and Ted spend their entire time in his apartment rather than transferring their belongings over to the Rossia. Neither of them would ever know how grateful he had been for their arrival, the event which had returned him to his own bedroom … to Erin.
A lot of hugs went around the room, and Tanya left, insisting that she was fine, had the company car Sergei had insisted she keep while assigned to Erin, and really didn’t need Jarod to see her home.
Erin found herself walking Mary and Ted up to the den. She glanced at Jarod with a nervous question in her eyes.
“I’ll be right up,” he told her, and a glance in his eyes informed her that he certainly would be right up and that there would be no running away and no interruptions.
In the bedroom Erin changed into a gown and robe and sat at the foot of the bed. She had considered feigning sleep, but that would be childish, and besides, it wouldn’t work. In his present mood he would rip the covers off and drag her back up.
When he finally entered the room he closed the door behind him and leaned against it, crossing his arms and staring at her. He unnerved her so with his glacial eyes and terse stance that she began talking, which she hadn’t at all intended to do.
“I’m grateful, Jarod,” she said regally, “that you curtailed this discussion until we were alone, but I sincerely feel that we have finished with all we have to say. There is nothing further to discuss.”
“There’s nothing to discuss?”
He felt a crippling fury and confusion as he watched her. The fury because she spoke as if she were a queen deigning to speak to a subject, the confusion because his emotions were in a turmoil he couldn’t understand.
Pieces of memory he had locked away in a guarded shell came now too easily, too vividly. The love with which Cara had once given him the news of the child she had prayed so long to conceive … the uncanny uneasiness that he had felt from the beginning, the fragility of the tiny wife who so dearly desired a child and cherished the life within her.
Cara was dead, their child was dead. He had accepted it, he had lived with it. But now here was this slender, remote, and haughty blond goddess informing him they had nothing else to discuss. Even her weaknesses emerged as strengths. For all her slender agility she possessed radiant health, the ability to conceive immediately.
Now she didn’t even want to speak to him. She, who had everything necessary to bear and love a child, obviously found her pregnancy nothing more than an annoyance. She had told him, but then just as smoothly informed him that it was her business, not his.
He believed she intended to abort the child, and that inflamed his heart and fury more than he had ever deemed possible. She had a life she was anxious to get back to, and that life couldn’t include a child. The careful control he had exercised and nurtured all his life seemed to be slipping away from him like the shedding skin of a snake.
Because there was something else there. He didn’t want to let her go. He had come to expect her to be a part of his home, a part of his life. He wanted her in his bed at night, he wanted to hold her, to care for her, to speak to her over coffee in the morning, to sit down to a meal she had prepared and compliment her eager efforts as a chef. He liked to watch her brush her hair, to see her eyes in lazy, shimmering half slits as she luxuriated in the aftermath of love making, to watch her stretch luxuriously in satiated drowsiness when he dressed to leave in the mornings.
The bitterness, resentment, longings, and needs suddenly exploded. He took a step toward her which was indeed a pounce, grasping her wrists and wrenching her to her feet and hard against his chest. A startled cry escaped her, but he was beyond caring. The soft, feminine feel of her body against his was channeling the storm-swept turmoil of his emotions into a savage desire that demanded release.
“So we have nothing to discuss?” he demanded darkly, crushing her against him and forcing her chin to tilt back so that her wide silver eyes met his. “Accidents do happen?”
“Jarod, please.” She began to work at the wrists he held within his grasp, pinioned behind her to the small of her spine.
“Jarod …”
“Ahh, yes, your wrists, my sweet. Funny, but I find it hard to believe that they’re bothering you.” His lips suddenly came down on hers hard, unscrupulously parting them, bruising them with the demand of the kiss. His teeth commanded a further parting, his tongue sought hers in an undeniable primitive duel.
She couldn’t fight him. She was held within the vise of his body, unable even to twist her head, unable to deny that despite his ferocity she was being swept up into it. A weakness was stealing over her, a loss of breath that robbed her strength, a trembling that left her gasping against his chest when he finally released his brutal hold on her lips.
His hands moved swiftly to her shoulders to slip beneath the fabric of her gown and robe, pulling them roughly down. Erin shuddered. This wasn’t Jarod’s touch. This was cruel in its strength.
“Jarod,” she protested again. Stupidly, she wanted him; she was accustomed to sleeping with him, joyfully exploring the range of fire and heavenly delight he had given her. She loved him, pathetically. Even if he did not return that love, she couldn’t stop loving him. But this was wrong. Jarod could be fierce, his passions could rage li
ke a thunderstorm, but there was no cruelty in the man she had come to know. “Jarod, please.” How stupid her protests sounded when she hung weakly against him.
“The way I see it,” he murmured bitterly against her ear, “the accident has already happened. Abstinence at this point would be rather absurd, don’t you think? Consenting adults …”
She felt his anger when the gown and robe she wore were torn and drifted in pieces to her feet. Then she was in his arms, being bounced onto the mattress. He followed her down, his body pressing hard against hers. This time she managed to twist her head from his lips, and her cry of his name permeated the boiling turmoil of his mind.
Her eyes were tightly clenched when she felt him go still. She kept them closed, gasping for breath and fighting the tears that threatened to slip from beneath them.
Seconds suspended into timelessness. Then she felt his weight lift from hers. She lay still, breathing, and then the bedroom door opened—and closed in his wake.
The tears slipped from beneath her eyes. She turned and stared at the door. His name escaped her lips once more. “Jarod …” It was a plea, a sobbed out plea, and he might have understood it had he heard it. But he was already out of the house, his footsteps unconsciously guiding him toward Red Square.
XIII
ERIN LAY STARING AT the door in a daze for a long time. Then she pulled her body from the bed and walked into the bathroom, feeling as if she had grown very old, as if her legs had grown hard and stiff. In the mirror above the sink she surveyed her reflection. Her tears had dried against her cheeks, her eyes appeared absurdly swollen.
She closed her eyes against her appearance and took a shower, standing beneath the spray of the water in hopes of revitalization. She wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t possibly sleep feeling so terribly tired. It didn’t make any sense.
Where had he gone, she wondered listlessly. He would come back, he had to come back, it was his apartment, she was the intruder.
Depression swamped over her. He would come back, then so what? There was nothing to say, nothing that could be done.
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