by Lucy Monroe
“Both.”
“I will be there in ten minutes.”
It was a half-hour drive from his penthouse, but she didn’t argue.
*
Demyan knocked on Chanel’s door with a minute to spare in the ten he’d promised her.
What he hadn’t told her when she called was that he was already in the area.
The door swung open, and Chanel’s eyes widened with disbelief. “How did you get here so fast?”
“I was already on the road.” Had been for the better part of an hour, driving aimlessly, with each random turn taking him closer and closer to her apartment complex.
She frowned. “On your way here?”
“Not consciously.” He’d argued with himself about the wisdom of calling or stopping by after she’d told him she wanted the night to think.
So far, respecting her wishes had been winning his internal debate.
“Then what were you doing over here?”
He gently pushed past her, not interested in having this discussion, or any other, on the stoop outside her door. “I was out for a drive.”
“On this side of town?” she asked skeptically.
“Yes.”
“But you weren’t planning to come by.”
“No.” And that choice had clearly been the right one, though more difficult to follow through on than he wanted to admit.
“Do you go out for drives with no purpose often?” she asked, still sounding disbelieving.
“Not as such, no.” He went through to the kitchen, where he poured himself two fingers of Volyarussian vodka before drinking half of it in two swallows.
He’d brought the bottle with him one night, telling her that sometimes he enjoyed a shot to unwind. She’d told him he could keep it in the freezer if he liked.
He did, though he rarely drank from it.
“Are you okay, Demyan?” she asked from the open archway between her living room and kitchen. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“I didn’t like the emptiness of my condo tonight.” He should have found the lack of company peaceful.
A respite.
He hadn’t. He’d become too accustomed to her presence in the evenings. Even when she only sat curled up with one of her never-ending scientific journals while he answered email, having her there was pleasant.
Had almost become necessary.
“I missed you, too.”
“You wanted your space. To think,” he reminded her, the planning side of his facile brain yelling at him that his reaction wasn’t doing his agenda any favors.
“It was fruitful. Or have you forgotten what I told you on the phone?”
He slammed the drink onto the counter, clear liquid splashing over the sides, the smell of vodka wafting up. “I have not forgotten.”
Her gray eyes flared at his action, but she didn’t look worried. “And you’re happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
“You look it.” The words were sarcastic, but an understanding light glowed in her lovely eyes.
“You are a permanent fixture in my life. It is only natural I would come to rely on your companionship to a certain extent.” He tried to explain away his inability to remain in his empty apartment and work, as he’d planned to.
A small smile played around her mobile lips. “So, you considered me a permanent fixture before I agreed to marry you?”
“Yes.” He was not in the habit of losing what he went after.
“I see. I wasn’t nearly so confident, but I missed you like crazy when you were in Volyarus.”
“And yet you refused my proposal at first.”
“I didn’t. I told you I had to think.”
“That is not agreement.”
“Life is not that black-and-white.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” She moved right into his personal space. “I think you’re even more freaked out by how fast everything has gone between us than I am.”
“I am not.” It had all been part of his plan, everything except this inexplicable reaction to her request for time away from him.
“You’re acting freaked. Slamming back vodka and driving around like a teenager with his first car.”
“I assure you, I did not peel rubber at any stoplights.”
“Do teens still do that?”
“Some.” He never had.
It would have not been fitting for a prince.
“I said yes, Demyan.” She laid her hands on his chest, her eyes soft with emotion.
His arms automatically went around her, locking her into his embrace. “Why?”
Her agreement should have been enough, but he needed to know.
“My mom came by to talk. She told me not to give up on something this powerful just because it scares me.”
“Your mother?” he asked, finding that one hard to take in.
“Yes. She wants to try again, on our relationship.”
“She does realize you are twenty-nine, not nineteen?”
Chanel smiled, sadness and hope both lurking in the storm-cloud depths of her eyes. “We both do. It’s not happy families all of a sudden, but I’m willing to meet her partway.”
“You’re a more forgiving person than I am.”
“I’m not so sure about that, but one thing I do know. Holding bitterness and anger inside hurts me more than anyone who has ever hurt me.”
A cold wind blew across his soul. Demyan hoped she remembered that if she ever found out the truth about her great-great-grandfather’s will.
She frowned up at him. “You were driving without your glasses?”
“I don’t need them to drive.” He didn’t need them at all but wasn’t sure when he was going to break that news to her.
“You always wear them, except in bed.”
“They’re not that corrective.” Were in fact just clear plastic.
“They’re a crutch for you,” she said with that analytical look she got sometimes.
“You could say that.”
“Do you need them at all?”
He didn’t even consider lying in answer to the direct question. “No.”
He expected anger, or at least the question, why did he wear them? But instead he got a measured glance that implied understanding, which confused him. “If I can step off the precipice and agree to marry you, you can stop wearing the glasses.”
The tumblers clicked into place. She saw the glasses as the crutch she’d named them for him. Being who she was, it never occurred to her that they were more a prop.
“Fine.” More than. Remembering them was a pain.
She grinned up at him and he found himself returning the expression with interest, a strange, tight but not unpleasant feeling in his chest.
“Want to celebrate getting engaged?” she asked with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.
The urge to tease came out of nowhere, but he went with it. “You want a shot of my vodka?”
He liked the man he became in this woman’s presence.
“I was thinking something more mind-blowing and less about imbibing and more about experiencing.” She drew out the last word as she ran her fingertip across his lips, down his face and neck and on downward over his chest, until she stopped with it hovering right over his nipple.
He tugged her closer, his body reacting as it always did to her nearness. “I’m all about the experience.”
“Are you?” she asked.
He sighed and admitted, “Not usually, no. My position consumes my life.”
“Not anymore.”
“No, not anymore.” He hadn’t planned it this way, but marrying Chanel Tanner was going to change everything.
He could feel it with the same sense of inevitability he’d had the first time he’d seen her picture in his uncle’s study. Only now he knew marrying her wasn’t going to be a temporary action to effect a permanent fix for his country.
And he was glad. The sex was mind-blowing, but that didn’t shock him as much as i
t did her. What he hadn’t anticipated was that her company would be just as satisfying to him, even when it came without the cataclysm of climax.
Right now, though? He planned to have both.
*
Chanel adjusted her seat belt, the physical restraint doing nothing to dispel the sense of unreality infusing her being.
Once she’d agreed to marry Demyan, he’d lost no time setting the date, a mere six weeks from the night of their engagement. He’d told her that his aunt wanted to plan the wedding.
Chanel, who was one of the few little girls in her class at school who had not spent her childhood dreaming of the perfect wedding, was eminently happy to have someone else liaise and plan with her mother. Beatrice was determined to turn the rushed wedding into a major social event.
And the less Chanel had to participate in that, the better. If she could have convinced Demyan to elope, she would have, but he had this weird idea that she deserved a real wedding.
Since she’d made it clear how very much she didn’t want to be the center of attention in a big production like the type of wedding her mother would insist on, Chanel had drawn the conclusion the wedding was important to Demyan.
So, she gave in, both shocked and delighted to learn that her mom had agreed to have the wedding take place in Volyarus with no argument.
Beatrice had been vague when Chanel had asked why, something about Demyan’s family being large and it only being right to have the wedding in his homeland. Chanel hadn’t expected that kind of understanding from her mom and had been glad for it.
She’d even expressed genuine gratitude to Beatrice for taking over the planning role with Demyan’s aunt. Chanel had spent the past weeks working extra hours so she could leave her research in a good place to take a four-week honeymoon in Volyarus.
She hadn’t been disappointed at all when Demyan had asked her if she’d be willing to get to know his homeland for their honeymoon.
She loved the idea of spending a month in his company learning all she could about the small island country and its people, not to mention seeing him surrounded by family and the ones who had known him his whole life.
There was still a part of Chanel that felt like Demyan was a stranger to her. Or rather a part of Demyan that she did not know.
Her mother had flown out to Volyarus two weeks before to finalize plans for the wedding with Demyan’s aunt. Perry, Andrew and Laura were on the plane with Chanel and Demyan now.
Perry had made a determined effort not to criticize her, but Chanel couldn’t tell if that was because of her mother’s talk with him or out of deference for Demyan. She’d never seen her stepfather treat someone the way he did Demyan, almost like business royalty, or something.
It made Chanel wonder.
“What is it you do at Yurkovich Tanner?” she asked as the plane’s engines warmed up.
Demyan turned to look at her, that possessive, content expression he’d worn since the morning after she agreed to marry him very much in evidence.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I realized I don’t know.”
“I am the Head of Operations.”
“In Seattle?” she asked, a little startled his job was such a high-level one, but then annoyed with herself for not realizing it had to be.
Only, wasn’t it odd for the corporate big fish to personally check out the recipients of their charitable donations?
“Worldwide,” he said almost dismissively. “My office is in Seattle.”
“I knew that, at least.” Worldwide, as in he was Head of Operations over all of Yurkovich Tanner?
She’d done a little research into the company after they gifted her with a university education. It wasn’t small by any stretch. They held interests on almost every continent of the world and the CEO was the heir apparent to the Volyarussian throne.
That Demyan was Head of Operations meant he swam with some really exalted fish in his tank.
“You are looking at me oddly,” Demyan accused.
“I didn’t realize.”
He brushed back a bouncy curl that had fallen into her eye, his own expression intent. “Does my job title matter so much?”
“I know your favorite writer, the way you like your steak and how many children your ideal family would have, but I don’t know anything about your job.”
“On the contrary, you know a great deal. You have sat beside me while I took conference calls with our operations in Africa and Asia.”
“I tuned you out.” Corporate speak wasn’t nearly as interesting as science…or her erotic readings.
Now that she had practical experience, they were even more fascinating.
He smiled with a warm sincerity she loved, the expression almost common now. At least when directed at her. “You did not miss anything that would interest you.”
“I figured.” She sighed. “I just feel like I should understand this side of your life better. You work really long hours.”
So did she, but it occurred to her that maybe his long hours weren’t going to go away like hers now that she’d caught up on work for her extended honeymoon.
“It is a demanding job.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Very much.”
“Will you continue working twelve-to sixteen-hour days after we get back from Volyarus?”
“I will do my best to cut my hours back, but twelve-hour days are not uncommon.”
“I see. Okay, then.”
“Okay, what? You have that look you get.”
“What look?”
“The stubborn one.” His brows drew together. “The same one you got when you insisted on buying your wedding dress without your mother’s or my aunt’s input.”
Demyan’s aunt, Oxana, had offered a Givenchy gown. Chanel had turned her down. Demyan hadn’t been happy, wanting to save Chanel the stress and expense of searching for the perfect dress. He knew clothes were not usually her thing, but Chanel refused to compromise on this issue.
While she couldn’t really care less about the colors for the linens, what food would be served or even the order of events at the reception, there were two things Chanel did care about.
What she wore and who officiated.
On the officiate, she’d agreed to have Demyan’s family Orthodox priest perform the service so long as the pastor from the church she’d attended since childhood, a man who had known and respected both her father and grandfather, led them in their personally written vows and spoke the final prayer.
Her dress she wasn’t compromising on at all. Chanel and Laura had spent three weeks haunting eBay, vintage and resale shops, but they’d finally found the perfect one.
An original Chanel gown designed by Coco herself.
Because while her mother had named Chanel after her favorite designer, she’d also named her after the designer she’d been wearing when Chanel’s dad proposed. Chanel had wanted a link to her dad on her wedding day and wearing the vintage dress was it.
The rayon lace overlay of magnolia blossoms draped to a demure fichu collar. However, the signature Coco Chanel angel sleeves with daring cutouts gave the dress an understated air of sexiness she liked.
The dress was designed to enhance a figure like Chanel’s. Clinging to her breasts, waist and hips only to flare slightly from below the knee, the gown made her look and feel feminine without being flouncy and constrictively uncomfortable.
Buying it had nearly drained Chanel’s savings account and she really didn’t care. Her job paid well and Demyan wasn’t exactly hurting for cash.
Demyan’s mouth covered Chanel’s and she was kissing him before she was even conscious he’d played his usual get-Chanel’s-attention-when-her-mind-is-wandering card. She had to admit she liked it a lot more than the sharp rebukes she got from others because of her habit of getting lost in thought.
After several pleasurable seconds, he lifted his head.
Dazed, she smiled up at him even as she was aware of her brother
making fake gagging gestures in his seat across the aisle.
Perry shushed him, but Chanel paid neither male any heed.
She was too focused on the look in Demyan’s eyes. It was so warm.
“That’s better,” he said.
“Than?”
“You thinking about something else. You’re only thinking about me, now.”
She laughed softly. “Yes, I am.”
CHAPTER NINE
“WHAT PUT THAT stubborn look on your face before?”
She had to think and then she remembered. “You said you worked twelve-hour days, usually.”
“I did and you said that was okay.”
“No, I said okay in acknowledgment.”
“You do not approve of twelve-hour days.”
She shrugged. “That’s not really the issue.”
“It’s not?”
“No.”
“What is the issue?”
“Children.”
His brows drew together like he was confused about something. “We agreed we wanted at least two.”
He’d figure it out. He was a smart man.
“We also agreed that because of health considerations and family history, I wouldn’t get pregnant after thirty-five.”
“So?”
“So, we may have to adjust for an only child, or no children at all.”
“Why?” he asked, sounding dangerous, the expression on his gorgeous face equally forbidding.
“Children need both parents’ attention.”
“Not all children have two parents.”
“But if they do, they deserve both of those parents to make them a priority.”
“I will not shirk my responsibility to my children.”
“A dad does more than live up to responsibilities. He takes his kids to the beach in sunny weather and attends their soccer games. You can’t do that if you’re working twelve-hour days five days a week.”
Something ticked in his expression.
Her heart sank. “You work weekends.”
“Thus far, yes.”
Was this a deal breaker? No.
But she didn’t like figuring it out now, either. “I’ll volunteer with after-school programs,” she decided. “I don’t have to have children to have a complete life.”
“You are threatening not to have children if I do not cut my hours?”