by Dani Collins
“Of course lie, but in this case it was a betrayal of official duty, exposing a truth that should have remained buried.”
His words knocked the wind out of her. She had to consciously force herself to draw a breath. It seared her throat and made her chest ache. Her skin grew clammy and her stomach tied itself into knots. She had one thought. Go.
As she looked past him, gauging her chances, his arm shot out, not touching her, but making clear he wouldn’t let her leave. “You’re coming with me, Clair. Whether you like it or not.”
Everything in her gathered for the fight of her life. Before she could do more than engage his stare in a battle of wills, he ground out, “You have nowhere to hide and they’ll eat you alive. I won’t let that happen. But I won’t touch you either,” he added bitterly.
His statement was another shock, so oddly protective when her head was screaming at her that he was a danger to her. For some reason, her stupid brain stumbled on that I won’t touch you as if it were a trip wire that sent her metaphorically splatting onto her face, pride bruised. She should be relieved, but she just felt rejected. Again.
Words crowded her mouth, but her throat was too thick to voice any of them.
“I have security posted at all the doors to keep the paparazzi out.” He stepped back. “They’ll also keep you in, so you might as well give in. I really don’t need the extra humiliation of carrying you kicking and screaming to the helicopter.”
He walked away to his room, presumably to pack, leaving his words repeating in her head. Extra humiliation. As if she were in a position to injure him. Cause further injury even, because he was already hurting.
Was he hurting? She rubbed where her breastbone felt as if it were coated in acid. For a long time she stood in the lounge, arms wrapped tight around herself, confused. Frightened, but not by Aleksy. By herself.
She wanted to trust a man who’d just confessed to murder.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CLAIR HAD HEARD Russians talk about their dachas. She had gathered they were a type of summer cottage retreat, usually rustic and far enough out of the city to offer a garden plot and a return to nature. The buildings were often little more than shacks, but they were kept in families for generations.
If this was Aleksy’s dacha, he needed to work on his definition of shack. The minute she saw it, her mind heard, Welcome home.
They’d flown over nothing but trees once they’d left the outskirts of Moscow, leaving little to distract from her inner turmoil until she’d glimpsed a palace surrounded by a groomed park. The fountains were off, the canals frozen, but she’d realized they were nearing St. Petersburg. This was a place so beautiful even czars chose to summer here.
Far from summer now, the day was overcast, late afternoon flakes beginning to fall. The fresh dust of snow only made the expansive estate they touched down on look fresh and new. Untouched.
It was very new, she realized, looking at the bare, young fruit trees and nut groves that embraced the charming house. The two-story structure was built along old-fashioned lines with a wraparound porch, shuttered windows, pretty gables and a romantic turret. It was big enough to host a crowd, yet cozy and inviting. Not threatening and not something she would have expected Aleksy to build or buy.
As the pilot prepared to lift into the forbidding sky, stirring up a cloud of powdered ice, Aleksy reached onto a porch beam. “The agent said—here.” He showed her the key, then opened the door, pressing her inside before the man-made storm hit.
The interior smelled of paint, freshly cut wood and newly laid woolen carpet. All the surfaces gleamed. It was tastefully decorated in masculine colors, spacious and unfussy like its owner, but welcoming.
It struck her as a fresh start. A promising one.
Clair swallowed, reminding herself why she was here and who she was with, but choice and logic had been left back in Moscow where the apartment building had been surrounded by long-lens cameras. She really would rather take her chances with this lone wolf than the pack of coyotes baying at those doors.
And this house felt safe, drawing her in despite her misgivings. The main floor made a circle from front parlor to the dining room, passing a staircase that climbed to an inviting landing. Upstairs, a quaint powder room with a jetted tub overlooked what might be a stream if spring ever did arrive. The bedrooms with their gabled windows begged for cradles and rocking horses and train sets.
Did Aleksy harbor fantasies of a family? she wondered with a clench in her chest.
She silently followed him as he inspected everything, pausing at the threshold to the master bedroom, taking in the huge space and vaulted ceiling from the door.
He noticed her hesitation but covered his reaction with an impassive assessment of the enormous bed, the dark blue coverlet and the walk-in closet. She supposed an equally spacious en suite existed beyond the door on the interior wall.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She thought she was in love but didn’t think it would be judicious to say so. “It’s beautiful. You’ve never seen it? Is it yours?” she added as it occurred to her this could be leased as a bolt-hole.
* * *
“It is.” Aleksy searched for signs of approval in her, not sure why it was important to him. The house was only a thing, and he was past believing the acquisition of things ruled Clair, but he couldn’t deny that he wanted her to like his home.
He’d settle for her liking his things since there was no chance she’d feel anything toward him except repulsion.
Gut-wrenching loss threatened to breach the walls he’d used to brace himself when she had demanded answers at the penthouse. He’d known his past would come between them eventually, whether he revealed it or not. It was the reason they had no future, but he would have preferred they had separated naturally, before she knew any of this. It broke something in him to see her view of him damaged. To see her fear him.
The woman who’d lately been greeting him with shy smiles and the warmth of her touch now held him off with a white face and mistrust in her eyes. He cringed and looked away.
“Did you design it?” she asked, yanking him back to reality.
“To some extent.” Aleksy shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the bed. Fantasies of her white-blond hair and peach-flushed skin against the sea of blue tantalized him, but he ruthlessly shut them down. He’d promised not to touch her.
Keeping his voice without inflection, he explained, “My father worked in logging camps when my parents were first married. The accommodations were drafty bungalows. My mother never complained, but when my father was able to buy into a mill and make his own lumber, he built her a proper house. I used that floor plan as a starting point.”
Clair cocked her head, her whimsical smile sad enough to puncture the heart he’d hardened to get through this. “You always surprise me when you’re sentimental.”
“Sentimental?” The word arrested him. He suddenly saw the monument for what it was. He’d told himself he was building a place to go to, anticipating time to relax once he defeated Van Eych, but it turned out this was yet another attempt to resurrect the dead.
“I thought I just lacked imagination,” he dismissed, hiding his perturbation by circling a finger in the air, urging her to turn so he could help her out of her coat.
She huddled deeper into the thick folds for a moment, long enough for questions to flash into his mind like so many charges off one fuse. Armor against him? Didn’t want him too close? Didn’t want to risk his touch? Wanted to be ready to run when he stopped watching her long enough?
With a skittishness she hadn’t shown since that first day, she offered him her back.
As he stepped behind her, she tensed and cleared her throat but only said, “It’s not a lack of imagination to surround yourself with the familiar.”
Her scent clouded around him, so evocative of their closest moments his abdomen tightened. Heat poured into his loins. He ruthlessly controlled himself and drew her coat off her shoulders, focusing on the inane conversation to dispel the sexual awareness overwhelming him.
“Trying to fix the past by using what’s left in the present is foolish.”
“Don’t call it foolish!” She spun. Her hair whipped his knuckles in delicious castigation.
He inhaled and she folded her fingers into fists that she tucked under her bent elbows.
“The trinkets I have of my parents’ could have belonged to anyone,” she charged quietly. “They don’t offer the kind of memories that would let me pay this kind of homage. Your parents loved each other and you cherish that. There’s nothing foolish about building that into your home. I’d give anything to have a house built on love.”
She really knew how to skewer a man. How did he explain that he’d taken the love in that house and personally caused its loss? He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
“This was a stupid idea,” he muttered in Russian, wondering how he’d imagined they’d be “safe” here. He brushed past her. “I’ll get the luggage in and start a fire.”
* * *
Clair could have walked away. She was half sure Aleksy wouldn’t stop her. Bundled for the weather, passport and credit card secreted in her pocket, she even got as far as trudging into the snow off the front porch.
The world was still and quiet. The low clouds had pulled back from the horizon enough to let a glimmer of dying sunlight slant across the pristine blanket that surrounded the house. Instead of forging a path to the road, she was drawn into a bower of trees where the bare branches hung around her like silver-shot lace.
As she absorbed the sight, she conjured a picture of her own face with darker hair behind the curtain. Her own voice said, Come out, love. Daddy’s home.
In the time it took her gasp to condense on the air and disintegrate, the memory was gone.
Clair brushed at where snow drifted down and left tickling paths on her cheeks, eyes closed now, listening to her own jagged breaths as she tried to decide if it had been real. Why now? What did it mean?
Nothing, of course. It was fanciful imaginings brought on by talk of nostalgia and childhood. She still longed to run inside and tell Aleksy she had remembered her mother.
Oh, she ought to run from him, never mind the fading light and long walk in the cold! But why? He’d never once hurt her. Not on purpose. Maybe he’d said some things that were a little too blunt and honest, but he was always conscious of his strength around her. If he found the least little bruise from their intense lovemaking, he berated himself and kissed it better. He wasn’t going to turn into some maniac who wanted to harm her.
In fact, what he’d turned into was a man who’d ejected himself from her bed before she’d had to refuse him. His personal code of honor had forced him to. That action didn’t fit against one of the most dishonorable things a person could do, and it made her want answers, not escape.
Penetrated by the cold, Clair picked her way back to the house, stepping in her own footprints so she wouldn’t further mar the immaculate field of snow. She walked around to the back of the porch, stamping her feet and then sweeping the snow away before stepping into the kitchen rubbing her arms and shuddering.
Aleksy stood pouring vodka into a short glass. He knocked it back before saying, “Finished making snow angels?” through his teeth.
“Are you drunk?” Her equilibrium was yanked by that unexpected twist.
“Russians don’t get drunk.” He poured another one, then stoppered the bottle and stowed it in the freezer. “They get tough.” He moved, loose but steady, to where a tin of cocoa sat on the bench. He spooned some into a cup and poured steaming water from the kettle. Before he handed it to her, he tipped half the contents of his vodka into it. “Warm up. You’re not used to this kind of cold.”
Clair cautiously put away her boots and hung her coat. The hot mug of cocoa filled her cupped hands with warmth. She let the steam rise to scald her frozen nose.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I can make soup.”
“Maybe later,” she said, faintly bemused at this domesticated side he was revealing. Not exactly the “tough” he was referring to.
He leaned on the refrigerator, staring so hard at her she should have smoldered and caught fire. “I watched you out there, waiting to see if you would run. You looked about twelve with the snow past your knees.”
Clair felt twelve again, sinking into a miasma of confusion, hormones flashing like dysfunctional neon lights, the weight of adult emotions threatening to overwhelm her.
“I just wanted to stretch my legs,” she lied.
He snorted, swirling the clear liquid in his glass. “There was a time when I took for granted the girls who walked in front of my house. More than one did before I had whiskers and a scar.”
“You want me to believe females haven’t been falling on your doorstep all your life, scar or no scar?” She forgot about the vodka in her drink until she sipped and it bit back. Heat slid through her all the way to her toenails.
“The young girls were different,” he mused into his glass. “They were like you, the kind who knew they wanted to marry and have a family.”
“I don’t know that,” she said, flat but strong, eyes immediately seeking a place to hide. “I might have believed it when I was twelve, but it’s not something I still fantasize about.” That felt like lying again. She sipped her cocoa, savoring the glowing warmth that spread outward from her midsection. “Too many lessons in remaining realistic,” she added, recalling all those childish hopes and adolescent crushes that had amounted to nothing.
Aleksy winced. “You told me not to be ashamed of being sentimental. Don’t be ashamed of wanting those things, Clair. I did. Then. I imagined I’d choose one of those girls after I’d made my fortune.”
“Were you in love with one of them?” Her heart stilled.
“No,” he scoffed, and her knees unaccountably sagged. “But I was arrogant enough to enjoy the idea of them falling in love with me. I was convinced I’d have my pick when the time came.”
Clair frowned, hating that word. Pick your teams. Picked last. Never picked.
Skipping over it, she asked, “What made you stop wanting that? Your mother’s grief?”
Empathy stole over her like a fuzzy veil, partly due to the vodka slipping into her bloodstream. It made her feel tender, hurting for him when she considered how painful it must have been to witness his mother’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband. At least he was there to see it and not locked up in jail….
Clair frowned into her cup, thinking the booze was a bad idea. She was having trouble clicking together important pieces of the puzzle.
Aleksy wasn’t speaking, only staring into his glass, face lined with anguish.
She watched him, his powerful shoulders crushed by a weight. He looked…lonely. Inconsolable. She ached to circle his waist with her arms and press her face into the warmth of his chest.
“Aleksy,” she began.
“Yes, seeing my mother’s pain killed whatever illusions I had of leading that kind of life. Especially since I caused her grief and destroyed the happy life she’d finally been given.” The words were dragged out of him and left on the floor like internal organs.
“Finally?” she repeated tentatively. Apprehensively. “Wasn’t she always happy with your father?”
“Of course,” he conceded with a shrug, “but they struggled for years. Everyone in Russia did. When my father organized the cooperative that bought the mill, it was a chance for a future, but still just a chance. They worked hard for every potato we ate. I should have said she finally had hope.”
He drew a long breath, seeming to steel himself. H
is voice hardened.
“The problem was, profiteers were moving into Russia at the same time. One tried to bribe my father into selling his controlling interest in the mill. He refused and we were harassed for months.”
Clair closed her eyes as dread stole through her. “Victor.”
“He gave the orders. Lazlo has uncovered more evidence and will make it public soon. Victor’s son knows what’s coming and was trying to discredit me by revealing my past, but the attention will turn back on him once the truth about his father’s actions come out. I don’t think you’ll be bothered too much after that,” he concluded without emotion.
When he sent her back to London, she gathered with a little shiver. She was just getting used to sharing her life, and it was almost over. Her feet hurt and she realized she was scrunching them, trying to dig into this place, not ready to be uprooted.
“What exactly did Victor do?” she asked, afraid to hear the extent of it but needing to know before he sent her away. “Did he steal your father’s shares? Take the mill?”
“A man came to our house and set it alight in the middle of the night.”
Clair gasped and covered her mouth. The house like this one that she adored? “While you and your parents slept?” Horror gripped her. “And your father—?”
“Ran outside behind my mother and me. The arsonist was still there. My father told me not to go after him, but I had had enough. I didn’t see the knife until he did this.” His hand lifted to his face, his expression twisted with old fury and fresh pain.
“Oh, Aleksy,” Clair breathed, terrified for him. Everything in her wanted to rush forward in comfort, but he radiated too much pain, as though the least thing would break him. “And you were just a teenager.” The pieces were falling together quickly now, forming a tragic, unbearable picture.
He shuddered.
“A boy’s temper in a man’s body. I would have been killed if my father hadn’t intervened. He lost his life saving mine.” He slugged the vodka and set down the empty glass with a sharp clunk. Then he looked at his hand. His voice seemed to come from far off. “I don’t remember doing it, but it’s in the statements to police that I killed the other man.”