Redemption of a Ruthless Billionaire

by Lucy Ellis

  She looked taken aback and retreated a little into the safety of her doorway.

  Nik expelled a deep breath. He did not bully women, but every conversation with this girl turned into a confrontation.

  ‘I’m not interested in your financial dealings, Mr Voronov,’ she said, looking persecuted, ‘any more than I enjoy being doorstepped at nine o’clock in the morning. Say what you’ve got to say and go.’

  He looked her up and down, which she clearly didn’t like.

  ‘I’ve said it.’

  ‘Good.’

  She took another step back into her house and began to close her door. But he hadn’t finished with her yet.

  ‘Anything more you’d care to tell me before the lawyers get involved?’

  She halted and then stuck her head out again. ‘What do you mean “lawyers”?’

  ‘I seem to have an echo,’ he observed.

  She pinned her lips together and those hazel eyes fixed pensively on him as she stepped reluctantly outside again.

  ‘I—I hardly think lawyers are necessary.’

  ‘Fortunately that decision is mine.’

  Awful man. Why was he so set on blaming her for everything? And why was she still finding it difficult not to drink in every last masculine inch of him?

  Sybella tried to find something reasonable to say but what popped out was, ‘Why are you down here bothering people?’

  He leaned in a little closer.

  ‘I told you,’ he said in that fathom-deep voice. ‘I am visiting my grandfather.’

  Sybella could have told him right now it didn’t feel that way. After the events of last night it felt as if he were visiting her! For purposes that felt entirely too hormonal on her behalf.

  ‘Well, perhaps if you’d bothered to turn up before now you’d know what was going on here,’ she threw back at him a little desperately, ‘instead of stomping around like a big bully and making everyone go through lawyers.’

  ‘Given I’m based in St Petersburg, turning up isn’t that simple.’

  ‘Is that where you live?’ The question just slipped out, openly curious, and Sybella knew she’d given herself away. Her stupid interest in him.

  She could feel the heat rushing into her face.

  ‘Da,’ he said, and there was a silence during which Sybella remembered how much she’d told him about her life last night. The intimacy that had created.

  ‘Well, maybe it isn’t so easy for you to get down here regularly,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but your grandfather needs family around him at this time of his life.’

  His eyes iced over. ‘My grandfather is well taken care of.’

  ‘Is he? Do you know he doesn’t like his nurse? He doesn’t trust her.’

  Nik frowned. ‘He hasn’t said anything to me.’

  ‘Perhaps if you visited once in a while you could talk to the people around him who matter, not the people you’re employing, and you might have a better idea of what’s really going on instead of making up these stupid stories and—and picking on me!’

  ‘And you’re one of the people who matter?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t matter, but I am here. I do see what goes on.’

  Nik didn’t like the picture she painted, that his grandfather was unhappy, that in some way he was failing.

  Only her hands had migrated to her hips again, and he was finding it difficult not to be distracted by the way her chest lifted every time she made her point and the button holding back the mystery of her cleavage strained.

  ‘Here’s what I think, Mrs Parminter. You’ve been using my grandfather’s kindness to benefit yourself.’

  ‘Yes, you would think that.’

  Sybella glared back at him.

  The truth was so much more simple and delightful than anything this man could make up in his suspicious mind.

  His grandfather had forged one of those charming inter-generational friendships with her small daughter.

  Sybella had watched a lonely and reserved man come to life in the company of her forthright, imaginative Fleur, and the sight of Mr Voronov’s white head bent over a book with Fleur’s small dark one as they read together made every Thursday afternoon a treasure.

  Fleur didn’t come easily to reading. She was a child who wanted to be out of doors, climbing trees, chasing cows and getting muddy. All the things possible because they lived in the country. She was, in short, very much like her late father.

  Simon had always struggled with reading comprehension and he wouldn’t want his daughter to go through that.

  His own father shared the same difficulty.

  Mr Voronov was a godsend.

  Furthering her career had been the last thing on her mind.

  But she wasn’t telling this man any of that.

  She’d told him too much in her stupid confessional last night.

  It was her business. It wasn’t any of his.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t care what you happen to think. I am going to continue to visit your grandfather and there’s nothing you can do about it!’

  Sybella’s soaring moment of satisfaction was short-lived.

  ‘Mrs Parminter, let me tell you how it’s going to be.’ His voice had dropped to a calm dead certainty. ‘Your visits to the house are over. You are to stay away or there will be consequences. Are we clear?’

  ‘What consequences?’

  ‘Legal consequences.’

  The colour had gone; not a scrap of it remained in her face.

  Nik waited to feel satisfied by that. He didn’t. But he damn well wasn’t taking ultimatums from this woman. Dealing with this had already taken up too much of his valuable time.

  ‘Listen, I didn’t mean for all this to get so out of hand,’ she began.

  ‘Are we clear?’ he repeated in the voice he used on mine sites.

  She trembled, visibly intimidated for the first time.

  Nik could see the struggle in her face and his anger evaporated in a wink.

  He’d spent the night with some fairly explicit sexual fantasies about this woman, and this morning he’d learned a lot of things that didn’t make him very happy with her. It wasn’t a particularly good mix.

  ‘I understand perfectly,’ she said, swallowing hard, making it clear with her eyes she didn’t.

  Unlike the last woman throwing ultimatums at him like plates, a Spanish model who had apparently never heard the word no before, Sybella Parminter didn’t really seem to understand the way this was played. If she backed down, he’d give her a break. She wasn’t backing down.

  It was disconcerting because he’d just discovered he didn’t like her looking bewildered and upset.

  For the second time. Because of him.

  He stepped towards her.

  ‘Mummy!’ A small person flew out of the house and wrapped herself around Sybella’s legs.

  Mummy?

  Six years widowed. He wasn’t good with kids’ ages but this one fitted the time span. Sybella was immediately scooping her up, the little girl wrapping her arms and legs around her mother like an octopus.

  ‘This is your daughter?’ he said redundantly.

  ‘Yes.’ She turned away to go into the house and the child cast a look over her mother’s shoulder at him as if he were an ogre in a fairy tale. She stuck out her tongue.

  Nik found himself staring at a blue door shut in his face and with the uneasy suspicion he’d made a mistake.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SYBELLA DROVE AS fast as she was legally able along the familiar road from Middenwold Town Hall where she worked on Fridays, back into Edbury.

  In a panic from work she’d rung and let Mr Voronov know she was coming and that she was bringing the letters.

  Beside her on the passenger seat was the box of letters that would clear her name.

  She didn’t want to be responsible for a further breach between grandfather and grandson because family was important, but she didn’t see that she had much choice. She couldn’t put her kindly i
mpulses towards Mr Voronov above the risk to her future professional reputation if her activities at Edbury Hall were publicly condemned.

  She switched on her hands-free phone device as Meg’s name came up and her sister-in-law’s excitable voice filled the car.

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve got one in the village!’

  Sybella cursed silently. If Meg had heard about it down in Oxford, it must be all over the village.

  ‘We lay traps and snares and catch them that way,’ she responded drolly, although she was in so much trouble it was no longer funny.

  ‘What’d you use?’ said Meg wryly. ‘A net?’

  ‘No, the possibility of a lawsuit.’ Sybella breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth and told herself she shouldn’t drive and panic.

  ‘I don’t think that’s your main problem. So Nik Voronov actually stepped off his boat and onto dry land.’

  ‘Boat? What boat?’

  ‘His billion-foot-long superyacht—all Russian oligarchs have them. They live on them.’

  ‘Where do you get this from?’

  ‘I have my sources. I also have other sources. According to the village grapevine, the two of you were throwing some serious sparks last night.’

  Oh, yes, there had been sparks, but they had definitely fizzled. Then a new fear gripped her. ‘What do you mean “the village grapevine”?’

  ‘Syb, everyone knows. I’ve had three phone calls and Sarah was banging on Mum’s back door at seven o’clock this morning wanting to know if it was true you were having sex up against a SUV in the car park at Edbury Hall last night. With a man.’

  ‘Well, of course I’d be having sex with a man,’ Sybella huffed impatiently, even as she recoiled from the idea her mother-in-law knew. ‘Not that I was, mind, I was just…holding onto him—and Sarah’s been cutting my hair for five years. She should know me better.’

  ‘You’re missing the point. To half the village this morning you’re just an exhibitionist floozy—Sarah’s on board with that, by the way—but everyone else thinks you’re legitimately on together. They think he’s your boyfriend.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It explains why you were able to get the Hall opened again with so little fuss.’

  Sybella’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Now’s not the time to panic,’ advised Meg. ‘This guy owes you—after everything you’ve done for his grandfather, and now he’s compromised your reputation.’

  ‘I doubt he sees it that way,’ Sybella said, gripping the steering wheel and wondering how floozy was going to translate at the pony club and how she would navigate that with Fleur. Her friends were too little, but their mothers were not.

  ‘He’s closing down the house to the public, Meg. He came over and told me this morning. He warned me off ever going near the place again.’

  ‘He came to your house?’

  ‘He was very angry with me.’ Sybella took a breath and swallowed to avoid sounding as vulnerable as she felt. ‘Up until then I thought I could persuade him to keep the place open, appeal to his better nature.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’ But Meg was oddly quiet for a moment and Sybella got the impression she’d given something away. ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘No, don’t be silly. He’s not my type at all. He’s—he’s bearish.’

  ‘Well, remember what Goldilocks did in the original fairy tale? She jumped out of a window never to be seen again.’

  By the time she reached the Hall, parked and made her way across the crunching gravel, Sybella wished she could leap out of that proverbial window. She was also praying she’d find Mr Voronov alone. What if Nik had heard the boyfriend gossip? She wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye after that. Although she guessed, when it came to the court case, it would be his barrister who was asking the questions…

  So much depended on Nik Voronov being reasonable. Reasonable! She was so sunk.

  Sybella was shown inside and as she reached the open sitting-room door she could hear male voices. Her knees gave out a little and she wondered if she could just leave the box of letters here and run…

  ‘She has a kid. You could have mentioned it, Deda.’

  ‘How was I to know you would take this much interest?’ Mr Voronov sounded amused, his rich accent rolling the ‘r’s.

  Sybella ventured a little closer.

  ‘Nor did you mention the husband.’

  ‘She’s a widow. She was barely married when the poor boy’s van was hit by an oncoming car. It’s a sad story.’

  ‘One you fell for hook, line and sinker.’

  Sybella stiffened.

  But Mr Voronov still sounded amused. ‘Your cynicism will not win her over, my boy.’

  Win her over?

  ‘I’m realistic, and you, old man, need to stay still or this is going to hurt.’

  Sybella didn’t know what she expected to find as she came abruptly into the room but it more than niggled that if his eldest grandson was overprotective when it came to his legal rights, it wasn’t translating into the kind of care the elderly man deserved.

  What confronted her wasn’t an angry Nik Voronov bullying his grandfather, but the younger man hunkered down in front of his grandfather’s chair, deftly applying ointment to the abscess above his ankle.

  ‘Sybella, moy rebenok, this is a surprise. Come and sit down. My grandson is looking after me today.’

  ‘So I see.’ It was not a surprise; she’d rung ahead to let him know she was coming. So now she was feeling a little set up.

  Only Nik looked just as taken aback as she felt.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he growled.

  ‘Nikolai!’

  ‘I’ve brought biscuits.’ She held up the tin. ‘My mother-in-law made them and sends her regards.’

  ‘You didn’t whip them up yourself in between all the dusting and vacuuming?’ This was from Nik, who continued to lay a gauze strip over the wound and tape it up.

  Sybella couldn’t help noticing he was utterly competent at the task. It didn’t exactly fit her image of him as the absent grandson. Clearly he’d done this more than once.

  ‘I would, if I whipped them up at midnight,’ she said, not sure of her footing here. ‘My mother-in-law doesn’t work. I do.’

  Nik straightened up and Sybella was reminded all over again of his physical presence and how it could fill the room. He was entirely too dominant for her peace of mind.

  It would probably be better for everyone if he left the village today, and quickly.

  Only she kept remembering how his hands had felt against her skin, how gentle he’d been drying her hair and later kissing her, making all the lights turn on and leaving them on.

  ‘Nikolka, I think you should take Sybella to lunch.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not why I’m here.’ Sybella stumbled in her haste over the words and she knew she sounded rude but it was excruciating to think Nik might feel obligated to sit through lunch with her.

  ‘I just wanted to deliver the biscuits—’ she reached into her handbag ‘—and these. The letters you sent me, Mr Voronov, in your grandson’s name.’ She put them down on his side table. ‘I would appreciate it if you showed him the documentation I gave you. He might be a little kinder on all of us.’

  She glanced up at Nik, who was now standing dangerously close to her. Her whole body was vibrating like a tuning fork. She had to get out of here!

  ‘This just proves we were in a correspondence, or rather I was with your grandfather, and everything I did was above board.’ She couldn’t look him in the eye or she’d lose all her courage.

  ‘What have you been saying to her, Nikolka?’

  ‘Nothing he didn’t have a right to—given he had no idea what was going on.’

  She went over and crouched down, putting a hand on Mr Voronov’s arm. ‘I understand why you did it, but it’s caused me a deal of trouble and upset your grandson.’

  The elderly man covered her hand with his own. ‘Yo
u cannot blame an old man for trying.’

  Sybella rather thought she could, but she wouldn’t.

  ‘You really need to sort this out with your grandson, but whatever happens with the Hall, I’ll continue to bring Fleur here for stories. That won’t change.’

  She glanced a little furtively at Nik, who looked as if he was about to say something, and straightened up, making her way to the door. Every step felt awkward but she couldn’t be in this room a moment longer with Nik Voronov looking at her like that.

  Sybella was almost at her car when she heard his heavy crunching footsteps.

  ‘Sybella, we need to clear a few things up.’

  ‘There’s nothing to clear up.’ Sybella tried not to sound breathless, a little dismayed at how everything female in her sat up to pay attention. ‘We don’t have anything more to discuss.’

  He looked down at her as if he didn’t agree.

  ‘You know everything now,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘I’m pretty much an open book, as you can see.’

  She thrust her chin at the small cigar box he carried in his hand.

  ‘Let me drive you back to town,’ he said.

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you very much.’

  ‘You haven’t done a very good job so far,’ he said bluntly. ‘You should have spoken up for yourself earlier.’

  ‘Right. Good to know for future reference, but, if you hadn’t noticed, I was thinking of your grandfather.’

  She dipped her head as a tremor ran through her and without a word Nik put his arm around her.

  It wasn’t an invasive gesture, he was just there, and it felt so good she found herself with her face against his shoulder, taking a few sustaining breaths because she had to end this in a moment. She couldn’t be doing this with this man.

  ‘I meant to me,’ he said quietly against her ear. ‘You should have spoken up for yourself to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I like to get my own way. But I’m human, Sybella. I could have got this wrong.’

  She stilled.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘what was I supposed to do? Let this all slide? I had to get to the bottom of it. I owe my grandfather a duty of care.’