‘Oh, dashing off...’ Rachel said, and there was a bitter ring to her tone.
They were descending into a row and he did not want that for either of them. ‘You have your hair appointment. I have to sort things for my departure on Monday...’
Whoops, the M word.
But he did need to organise things. Nikolai wasn’t an idle billionaire on a superyacht—he ran it, from the payroll to navigation...
As he went to leave, they were locked in pretence that things were normal and he moved in to kiss her. But Rachel couldn’t lie for a second longer, she couldn’t give away even the smallest of kisses, not another shard of her heart, to a man who could not love her back.
She pulled back her head and denied him a kiss and her emerald eyes flashed in anger.
‘Just go,’ she hissed.
And he did so and it was at that moment, at the closing of the door, that she was sure she had lost him.
He woke up his driver with a knock on the window and was taken back to his yacht. There, as he charted the route they would take on Monday, he was conflicted. The first week here had been so long, the second, with Rachel, had sped by. He was used to short affairs, sailing off, literally, into the sunset without a backward glance.
Not this time.
Tomorrow Sev returned, and after the christening the three men would catch up.
He was looking forward to it now rather than dreading it.
And even if babies were not his thing he had enjoyed catching up with Daniil and Libby.
Even Anya.
There was history, there were shared pasts, and now he fetched the photo that Daniil had given to him and looked at it properly.
It was good to be back in touch.
More than that, it was good to be here.
He had always liked London when he had visited but never more than now.
For the first time there was a place that he didn’t want to leave.
Or was it a person?
A woman who, like him, had been determined not to get too involved.
Except they were.
He had run away once, from the worst of things.
It felt now as if he was running away from the best.
He recalled her tense lips and the anger in her eyes that silently told him she was hurting, and in that moment, Nikolai knew, his love was born.
* * *
Rachel had her hair done.
It didn’t help.
The hairdryer was too loud and the conversation grating.
She hated how they had ended and fought not to text him.
After her hair, she went to a luxury store to buy Nadia a little gift. She would go over next week with a cake and try to repair the damage to her friendship that not being at the christening would make.
Rachel knew exactly what she wanted to get and watched as a beautiful porcelain ballet figurine was nestled in its box. As she waited for it to be gift-wrapped she wandered around the store.
And there she saw it—a small crystal sculpture of a ship. It was so beautiful and intricate and absolutely perfect for Nikolai.
Why would she get him a gift?
Because she wanted to.
She let out a breath when she enquired the cost. It was way out of her league, just far, far too much.
And then she thought of how he made her feel in his arms.
And he’d lost his ship.
It wasn’t about money, Rachel thought as she handed over her credit card and braced herself. This morning they had parted badly, tomorrow she had the wedding... Time was running out and she was wasting it by sniping.
She wanted to end things with a smile.
He deserved that much at least.
Happy with her purchase, determined to handle things better with Nikolai the next time they met, she headed to her own party.
Friends and colleagues were gathered and Libby had even brought along little Nadia. There was cake and champagne and all things forbidden.
Including André.
Rachel politely ignored him.
She cut her cake and that was followed by a couple of speeches and then the room went dark and she sat next to Libby and watched on the screen a montage of her career.
There was even footage of her at fifteen, when she’d received a full scholarship and had boarded. A little bit of school, a whole lot of dance. She could remember the relief at leaving home.
She’d been so young, Rachel thought as she watched herself, and anger seemed to clutch at her heart for what that bastard had done to that little girl.
‘Give me a hold,’ Rachel said to Libby, and she held Nadia and watched herself dance.
‘Oh!’ There she was as a swan princess and it was such a lovely memory. And there she was again, except on that night her costume had been too short.
‘Remember they lost your costume.’ Libby laughed.
‘I might have to do a quick edit,’ Rachel said, because she was so tall that that night her knees had been visible.
It was just a wonderful keepsake that captured all her dancing years.
And then it was over, and the lights came back on. It was the end of her career and Rachel truly didn’t quite know where she was going.
In any part of her life.
‘We really want you there tomorrow,’ Libby said as she went to head off. ‘I understand you have to go to the wedding but I just want you to know that you will be missed...’
‘I know.’ It actually broke her heart a little that she couldn’t be Nadia’s godmother; instead she would be at a wedding she didn’t want to go to just because she didn’t know how to say no.
‘I’m going to have to get going,’ Libby said.
‘Thanks so much for coming.’
‘Well, I was hardly going to miss your leaving party...’ Libby said, and then stopped what she was saying.
Rachel was missing the christening after all.
There was a tiny wedge between them and Rachel understood why—they were close friends and the fact that she wouldn’t be there tomorrow hurt.
People started to drift away and finally Rachel felt she could make her excuses and leave.
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ André offered.
‘There’s no need.’ Rachel tried to keep her voice light.
‘Come on, Rachel.’ André’s voice was the voice of reason. ‘We need to talk and surely it’s better to clear the air now than at some Christmas dinner five years down the track.’
He was right, she knew.
It was better to say what she had to now rather than let it fester for years, and that was why she got in the car.
‘We were never going anywhere,’ André said as they drove towards her flat. ‘You made it very clear that you didn’t want to get too involved.’
‘I know all of that,’ she said, ‘but now you’re marrying my cousin. It’s just not right.’
‘Shona’s pregnant,’ André said. ‘If she wasn’t...’
‘I don’t want to hear that. I don’t need to know that!’
Rachel stared ahead, it was hard to sort out the jumble of feelings in her head. André thought her jealous. She was so far from jealous and she did her best to articulate that.
‘I’d just like to keep work and my private life and family separate and now every bloody Christmas, every wedding...’ They had pulled up at her home and Rachel knew she wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining things. ‘I’m not just cross with you. Shona hasn’t even given a thought to the fact that you’re my ex. Does she know that we were still sleeping together when you met?’ And then, because it really was a case of speak now or for ever hold your peace, she voiced a dark truth. ‘I introduced you in Singapore. I didn’t know you were see
ing each other but I do know that we slept together after Singapore and I wouldn’t have if I’d known you were seeing my cousin.’ She was furious, embarrassed and appalled and she got out of the car and walked up her drive.
‘Rachel!’ André followed her. ‘Don’t storm off.’ He came to the door. ‘Look, you and I get each other. You don’t want hearts and flowers, you’ve told me that, and just because Shona and I are getting married it doesn’t change us.’
‘What?’
‘I get that you’re hurting, but it doesn’t have to change anything...’
Sometimes the things that hurt most didn’t register at first. So stunned was Rachel as his mouth was on hers that she just stood there. His hand slid around her waist and he pulled her in just as thought surfaced.
He was getting married tomorrow and yet he would sleep with her today.
She just stood there, appalled.
Rachel could feel his mouth on hers and she wanted to recoil yet she stood there, only jumping when suddenly André jerked backwards.
It took a moment to register it was Nikolai who had pulled him off her and he had André literally by the scruff of his neck.
‘Get inside,’ he said to Rachel, and his voice was black with malice.
‘I wasn’t...’ Oh, God, he’d seen her with André. Nikolai had seen André’s tongue down her throat and...he was furious. ‘We weren’t...’ she attempted.
‘Get inside,’ he barked his order.
She just fled into her house and a short while later Nikolai came through the door, a bit breathless and still very angry. Yet, instead of running from him, Rachel ran to him, desperate to plead her case, confused when he wrapped her in his arms.
And her reflexes were moving so slowly because when he held her, when she was locked in his embrace, it took a moment to register that, yes, he was furious.
But not with her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NIKOLAI WASN’T ANGRY with Rachel.
He had seen her expression when André had moved in on her and he’d recognised the fear and helplessness because he had known it too.
‘I wasn’t going to do anything, I wouldn’t have slept with him...’ Rachel pleaded, and then she knew he wouldn’t believe her.
She didn’t even believe herself.
Her head was spinning as it ran through scenarios.
He took her through to the lounge and she sat on the chair as Nikolai knelt down.
She remembered this morning and their difficult parting. The fact that he had come to see her should have her heart soaring, yet he had found her in another man’s arms.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she insisted.
‘I know that.’
‘You don’t,’ she insisted.
‘Then tell me.’
‘I can’t,’ she said, and she looked into brown eyes that waited patiently and wondered if she could. ‘I just panicked.’
‘And you could not move?’ Nikolai asked. ‘Like you had no voice and that even if you spoke there was no one to hear it?’
He could remember the blast of the horn from the school bus and knowing it was pulling away and how he had just sat there immobilised by confusion and fear.
‘It was like when my mother’s boyfriend...’ She looked down at her hands and his were wrapped around hers but she was quite sure that they wouldn’t be soon. ‘He kept coming into my bedroom. He would sit on the bed and say goodnight and at first he played with my hair. Sometimes I’d lie there and hear noises and I just told myself I was hearing things but then he started to touch me.’
She stared down at his fingers that stayed warm around hers as he asked her a question.
‘Did you tell your mother?’
‘I tried to,’ Rachel said. ‘I told her that he made me feel uncomfortable. But she got cross and said I was jealous that she was finally happy. She said I was always creating drama when there was none and that he treated me better than my own father ever did. She reminded me that he paid for my ballet, and do you know what?’ She took a breath. ‘A part of me didn’t want him to leave her because I knew she’d fall apart again. She just can’t live without a man in her life so maybe I didn’t try hard enough to tell her. I don’t know.’
‘I do,’ Nikolai said. ‘She knew, she just didn’t want to know.’
Yes, his hands were still there but they wouldn’t be soon, Rachel knew, because she hadn’t told him the worst part.
‘I didn’t want her to fall apart.’ It was the black truth. ‘And I wanted my ballet lessons.’
‘Of course you did.’
‘I wanted to get a scholarship and get out of the house for good. And that meant more lessons, private ones. I remember the term bill came and my mum was getting upset and he said it was too much and then the costume bill came in too. And then a quote for my braces. He said that I needed braces and said that he would pay for them...’
Rachel took a breath.
‘I told him I wanted ballet, and I knew, as I said it, what would happen. That night I pretended to be asleep and he came in and said I didn’t have to worry, he’d take care of the bill, and then instead of sitting on the bed he got in...’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not. I’m not.’ Rachel sobbed. ‘I pretended to be asleep and it was awful but when he came in the next night I enjoyed it apparently...’
‘Is that what he said?’
Rachel leapt with shame, she felt as if she wanted to climb out of her skin and walk off, to leave the carcass on the chair that could be painted pretty rather than reveal the wreck inside.
‘Beris druzhno ne budet gruzno,’ Nikolai said, and she wanted to believe him because the burden was so heavy.
‘Sometimes I came.’
And she screwed her eyes closed yet she was sure even that could not shield her from his disgust. She almost expected a huff of revulsion, a slap to the cheek or the slam of the front door.
None of them happened.
She opened her eyes and Nikolai knelt there, the same as before, just the same.
He knew all about a body awoken too soon, and the guilt and confusion that made.
And he was still there and still the same. He held her as she spewed out all the conflicting thoughts and the terror and the shame of a body that had responded, and then she ranted at him.
‘At least you did something about it. You ran away. I stayed, I just lay there and pretended to be asleep...’
‘You did get away,’ he said. ‘You got your scholarship.’ He just took the jumble of her mind and replaced it in a neater order. ‘If it hadn’t been the ballet he would have used something else. Did he remind you how bad your mother would be without him?’
She nodded.
‘Mine told me that he would report Sev for cheating, that he would lose his chance to go to a good school.’
Rachel took a breath as Nikolai spoke on.
‘I got away from that man just as you did. And the day I told Yuri was my hardest day but the best day because they keep you locked in a shame that is not yours to own. I thought my friends would think I liked it, or that I was gay when I knew I liked women. I didn’t understand then that fear and forbidden and simple friction can make you come but that’s not enjoyment. That bastard left you scared of the dark and a touch in the night, so clearly there was no real pleasure.’
Rachel opened her eyes to his and he was still there and, yes, she had shed her skin but it was not a carcass on the chair, it was her.
And he was there and had been through the same. This strong, together man had once held the same fears as she.
She was suspended at fifteen.
Trapped in a guilty body, where every orgasm made her feel wrong and conflicted.
And she wanted t
o feel lighter, and she did.
Almost.
Not quite.
‘Do you want to confront him?’ Nikolai asked.
And that had been the dream. To return as an adult and face the man not as a child, to let rip, to unleash the anger she held inside her.
‘Did you?’ Rachel asked.
‘I wanted to but then Yuri offered to take care of him. And I guess then I thought, no, I didn’t want that. And I didn’t want to see him again or give over any more of my life to him. I thought about it, though.’
So did she.
Every single day.
‘Do you want me take care of him?’ Nikolai offered.
Did he mean...?
Rachel was a little worried to verify just what Nikolai was suggesting but for the first time since her revelation her face broke into a smile and he looked at that lovely mouth and the gap in her teeth—she was so perfect to him.
‘No,’ Rachel said to his very kind offer. ‘But thank you.’ And she thought for a moment longer and maybe she would confront him but her mind was still dizzy.
‘Will he be at the wedding?’ Nikolai asked.
‘No, no.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘They broke up a couple of weeks after I went to dance school.’
‘I bet they did.’
She glimpsed his anger even if his eyes were kind.
She wanted to lie down and sleep but there was the burden of the wedding still to face. ‘I don’t want to go to the wedding.’
‘Then don’t,’ Nikolai said, as if it really was that simple.
‘I have to.’ Rachel asked for help when she rarely did. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I’m not asking you to meet the family or a proper date or anything. It would just help if you were there.’
‘I can’t do that.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to stand in a church and watch the groom wearing a black eye I gave him recite vows we know to be lies...’
‘You blacked his eye?’
‘I did,’ Nikolai said, ‘and I’ll tell you something else. My knee has made sure he’ll be black and blue in another place. It won’t be a good wedding night.’
She almost smiled again but not quite. Rachel had asked just one thing of him and he had said no and he was adamant about that.
Billionaire Without a Past (Irresistible Russian Tycoons) Page 12