by Lucy Ellis
‘You even apologise to intruders into your home,’ he said as if she’d revealed some secret about herself, then a look of amusement crossed his face. ‘Is that rabbit for real?’
‘His name is Dodge, and he’s a house rabbit, there’s another one around, so please keep your voice down.’
‘I wouldn’t want to frighten the woodland creatures,’ he said, lowering his voice, looking at her in a way that made Sybella weirdly think he was including her in that. He closed the door gently behind him so that suddenly her living area felt very small.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to say goodbye. I’m leaving in the morning.’
Sybella was hit by a punch of utter disappointment. He was leaving? ‘Oh.’
He wore a T-shirt and jeans, as casual as she’d seen him, only on him it looked like one of those ads in a glossy magazine where the guy was glowering sullenly at the viewer and toting some serious machismo, and usually there was a dangerous-looking motorcycle behind him. Yes, Nik Voronov appeared to have stepped out of those pages into her living room.
And he’d come to say goodbye?
‘I read your proposal about opening the gatehouse as a tourist hub for the house and estate.’
Sybella was so busy swimming in disappointment he was leaving she didn’t completely take it in.
‘‘It’s a sound proposal,’ he said. ‘I’m willing to talk about it.’
Now? This was good, he was staying—to talk about the Hall. It was a big step in the right direction—for the Hall.
Sybella did an internal eye roll. She really needed to get herself together around him.
‘The truth is I’m under a bit of pressure with the old man.’
It wasn’t what she expected to hear and it wiped all the nonsense in her head. He needed her help. He actually moved a hand over the back of his neck, the age-old posture of male admission he was willing to lay down arms. That alone spoke volumes about his feelings for his grandfather.
She melted. ‘You really love him, don’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘He’s my grandfather.’
Sybella thought of her lousy, self-interested parents and then shoved them back where they belonged, over a cliff and into the ocean of people who could break your heart if you let them.
‘I’d like to speak to you about him, something personal. Can I sit down?’
He didn’t wait for the invitation, but lowered himself onto the armchair, catty-corner from the sofa she was now inhabiting.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms over his broad knees, fixing her with that intent grey gaze.
She’d been entertaining so many romantic fantasies about this man over the last twenty-four hours, to have him in the flesh inhabiting her small living room had the quality of one of those.
‘Where’s your little girl?’
‘Her aunty Meg is here for the weekend so she’s having a sleepover with her at my parents-in-law’s house. They live on the other side of the village.’
Something flickered in his gaze and Sybella could suddenly hear her heartbeat in her ears.
‘You were going to tell me something…personal about you and your grandfather?’ she prompted, aware her voice had a slightly airless quality to it.
He gave her a half-smile as if acknowledging the irony of the ‘something personal’ when right about now everything about him being here felt personal.
‘I am,’ he said. ‘It begins with my parents. They were childhood sweethearts, Darya and Alex, and had been together for a long time before they had a separation of about a year, and my mother got pregnant with me. She mustn’t have thought that much of the guy because she rekindled her romance with Alex and he was apparently happy to call me his son.’
Sybella didn’t know what to say.
‘I don’t have any memories of my mother. She had a rare kidney condition and died when I was still a baby. Papa raised me alone until he remarried. They were good years or so I’m told. I lived on a lot of film sets but this is in Russia. Alex always used the same people and the crew were like family. When I was five I got a very flashy stepmother and several months later a baby brother. Sasha. I’m sure you’ve heard about him.’
‘Your grandfather mentions him from time to time. He seems to be in the public eye quite a bit.’
‘My little brother is famous for his films and his parties, not always in that order,’ Nik responded, but there was real warmth in his voice, as there had been when he’d spoken to his grandfather. Sybella was beginning to feel a little foolish about all her doubts. They were clearly a strong unit.
‘Sasha was four years old when our father slipped on a ledge climb in Turkey. Papa was chasing a shot for a film he was putting together. He always took risks. My brother is very much like him.’
Nik’s expression conveyed this wasn’t necessarily a positive thing.
‘I went to live with my grandparents after Alex’s death. My grandfather was a successful businessman. I don’t know if he’s talked to you about that part of his life.’
‘No, not really. We talk about family and books mainly.’
‘His favourite subjects.’ Nik was scrutinising her and she couldn’t blame him. She was fast becoming the vault of Voronov family secrets.
‘I’m not indiscreet, Nik. I won’t talk about this to anyone.’
He smiled then. ‘I wouldn’t be sharing this with you if I thought you would. I’m telling you all this, Sybella, because it appears my grandfather has taken quite a shine to you, and he’s told me how good you’ve been to him, and I behaved badly last night and I don’t want to leave here with you thinking the worst of me.’
‘But I don’t,’ she began, a little too anxious to assure him her feelings had changed. ‘I saw how close the two of you are this afternoon.’
‘I owe him so much,’ Nik said simply. ‘I only knew how much when I was fifteen and needed a blood transfusion and neither of my grandparents could help out. That was when Baba and Deda sat me down and told me the true state of affairs. I wasn’t their grandson.’
‘But you are,’ said Sybella unbidden, and then flushed. ‘I’m sorry, you don’t need me to tell you that.’
‘It’s all right.’ He was smiling at her and the effect of that smile was singing all over her body. ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘we have something in common.’
‘Have you tracked him down, your biological father?’ She stopped, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, that’s another very personal question. You don’t have to answer that.’
‘No, I haven’t met him.’ He shifted and Sybella could see this weighed on him. ‘I have his name. I haven’t done anything about it. I don’t know if I ever will.’ He rolled those big shoulders. ‘What about you? Have you gone looking for your real parents?’
Which was a neat way of diverting the conversation. Sybella wondered if he was even conscious of how everything in his body conveyed tension when he talked about his biological father.
‘According to the records office, my father is unknown and my mother was a student who gave me up for adoption,’ she answered. ‘We got together when I was twenty. She came to my wedding. She remembers Fleur with birthday cards, which is something. I think it’s hard for her to maintain relationships with people. She seems to have had a difficult life.’ She looked down at her hands.
‘I’m sorry I was dismissive about your adoptive parents the other night,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did.’
She looked up. ‘That’s all right, it’s forgotten.’
Nik was gazing back at her steadily, and this intimacy created by their mutual confessions was making Sybella feel something like the first steps in a friendship was springing up between them, only none of her friends were six-feet-six-inch Russians with Cossack eyes and a way of looking at her that made her think he might like to kiss her again.
‘What a pair we make,’ he said in that quiet, gravelly way of his.
Sybella dropped her gaze, su
ddenly immensely shy.
‘What I guess I’m getting around to, Sybella, is that Deda has helped me through some difficult times as a kid, Baba as well. I owe them both a great deal. I’m cognisant I may have dropped the ball with Deda recently, but I want you to know he’s in safe hands and why.’
Sybella blinked rapidly because she could feel ready emotional tears surging up.
Blast those pregnancy hormones. They’d arrived six years ago and never really gone away.
‘I could see how close you were earlier today.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I implied anything else. I obviously didn’t have the full picture and you weren’t obliged to tell me. I mean, it’s not as if we know one another.’
‘I’d like to get to know you better.’ His Russian accent was suddenly stronger and Sybella almost slid off the sofa again.
He would? Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t mean it like that.
‘I would too.’ She tried to think of something to avert attention from her burning cheeks. ‘I can offer you something to eat. I was just going to mix up a stir-fry for dinner. Would you like some?’
Nik didn’t hesitate despite having just eaten a full meal with his grandfather. ‘Yes, I would.’
When she leaned forward to stuff her feet into slippers, as if to completely assure the direction of the evening, her breasts moved sumptuously against her top, giving him a glorious view of how generous Mother Nature had been.
‘The kitchen’s this way,’ she said, straightening up as if nothing extraordinary had just happened, and with a shy smile she gestured for him to follow her.
Nik followed.
His gaze dropped to the fulsome curve of her bottom beneath the soft fabric of her drawstring pants. He’d never considered himself a connoisseur of the female bottom. But right now he was seeing the benefits of a woman with some heft in her pendulum. In fact he was pretty much transfixed by that sweet wobble and sway.
In the kitchen she had a bottle of Spanish red out on the counter.
‘Can you get some glasses? They’re in the cabinet over there,’ she instructed as she began gathering her ingredients around her.
He found a couple of wine glasses and poured. He’d drunk worse.
Presently the place began to smell delicious from whatever was heating up on the stove.
Vaguely he remembered his grandfather mentioning Sybella’s cooking skills, and he had to admit there was something about Sybella that made a woman being competent in a kitchen sexy.
He didn’t do domestic scenes with women. He had a chef, or he ate out. His stepmother had been allergic to anything but restaurants, and until his grandparents had swept in and given him a home he’d eaten a lot of take-out.
So deep down he associated home cooking with stability and the love of his grandparents. But he wasn’t one of those guys who clung to redundant gender roles. Which made this weird because underneath all that he was still the son of generations of conservative Russian males, and he really was enjoying watching Sybella cook for him.
‘So you work at the town hall?’
‘Yes.’ She was busily chopping up apples but she gave him her shy smile. ‘I’m the assistant archivist. You can find me in the basement with all the dusty files. We’re putting a lot of things on the computer system but so much of what we handle is original documentation, dating back before the English Civil War, registers of births, deaths and marriages, land holdings, town maintenance. It’s all there, and we keep the originals in the library for academics and the occasional documentary film maker. I chase things up for people three days a week.’
‘This interests you, doesn’t it, the past?’
‘I like permanence,’ she said, laying down the knife. ‘It comforts me to know ten generations have lived here, in this house. People have been born here and died here, been married out of this house, triumphed and suffered and dreamed within its walls. I like old things, the way they soak up the lives of the people who have lived in them and with them.’
Nik remembered what she’d told him about being adopted, about being handed back, about her adoptive parents not being in her child’s life.
This was important to her for good reasons. She’d pulled a bad hand as a kid, and, looking around her house, he could see she’d made more than a home with her daughter. She’d put down roots.
‘So what plans did you have for the Hall before I bought it?’
She looked up in surprise, ‘How did you know—?’ She broke off and shook her head. ‘You’ve been ahead of me all along, haven’t you?’
‘It’s not difficult to work out.’
‘Well,’ she said, beginning to dice again, ‘apart from turning the gatehouse into a tourist hub, we were planning on having open-day picnics in the grounds, but that was under the last owner. He was an American, you understand.’ She cast an almost mischievous look at him through her lashes.
‘Meaning a Russian is not big-spirited enough to get out of the way of English heritage?’
‘No, no,’ she said, laughing, and the sound arrested him. He’d never heard her laugh. ‘I meant he knows the value of a buck. Edbury could be quite profitable.’
It was the last thing he’d expected Sybella to say, and he agreed with her. He’d been thinking along the same lines, but ruled a line under it. This was his grandfather’s home; he wasn’t dislodging him.
‘It can’t be done. Deda loves it here.’
Sybella put down the knife she was using with a clatter. ‘Oh, my goodness, no, you misunderstand me. This wasn’t my idea, it was your grandfather’s.’
‘Prostit?’
Sybella bit the inside of her lip. She was beginning to look forward to the moments when he spoke his language to her.
‘Mr Voronov has been looking at literature from other local stately homes. We’ve been talking about what could be done here. To hold onto the heritage of the Hall to pass on to future generations. I thought you could be brought on board,’ she said, then lowered her gaze because she was beginning to wonder if in a minute he’d warn her off going within twenty metres of the Hall again. ‘We all care desperately about keeping the place historically intact for the future. And to be honest, Nik, I think it’s given your grandfather a reason to get up in the mornings.’
Nik unfolded his arms. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it, then, your plans?’
‘Truly?’ she said.
Their eyes met and hers dropped first. She began dicing a little harder.
‘Naturally it would take a lot of setting up. There are bylaws, not to mention the increase in traffic using local roads. We don’t want the village being overrun by tourists. We get quite enough in the summer. Not so much Brits but busloads from overseas. Everybody wants to poke around in some between-the-wars version of England with its winding lanes and thatched cottages.’
‘Says the woman who lives in one.’
She smiled and Nik felt something lodge behind his breastbone. This beautiful woman, who had blinked back tears when he’d told her about his parents, and dissolved in his arms the other night and now was preparing dinner for him, was smiling at him.
Those eyes stayed locked to his and he was suddenly only aware of the hard, heated consequences of being around her for the past twenty-four hours beating against the buttons on his jeans.
‘Careful.’ He laid a hand on hers where she was chopping up the apple. She looked down to see she’d almost nicked her finger. ‘You’re not paying attention,’ he chided, stroking her finger with his thumb.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said with a small smile, those hazel eyes flitting to his shyly but with a look of unvarnished sexual yearning before they swooped down to his mouth, giving her away so entirely all he could do was remove the knife from her hand and wait for her eyes to lift again and dance to his.
He hadn’t planned to make a move on her. He’d only known he owed her an explanation and an apology and the temptation of seeing her again had been too strong.
She had
lowered her lashes and he was able to study her face, the boldness of her mouth, the soft, full curve of her cheeks. She was so damn lovely.
The heat from the pot had turned her cheeks pink and curled the fair tendrils escaping from her bun around her face. The fragrance of rosemary and basil, along with the olive oil from the pan, was on her fingertips and he was imagining those fingers touching his skin.
He wanted to lift her onto the bench, lay her down among her fresh ingredients and plunder her soft pink mouth until she was his.
‘So your daughter is at her sleepover?’ Nik heard himself ask as if they were having a general conversation.
Sybella nodded, not trusting her voice. She knew what the question meant. Telling him there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d get a phone call from Meg at around eleven and Fleur would want to come home would probably sink things where they stood.
She could surely keep these two halves of her life separate for an evening. He would be gone tomorrow and she would go back to keeping all those balls in the air.
But she didn’t want to think about tomorrow. Just thinking about everything she had on her plate would surely close down her inner sex goddess completely.
She turned away from him abruptly and went over to the hob. She fumbled with the gas as she turned off the flame under the saucepan and pan, telling herself she could have this once. With this gorgeous man. Nobody needed to know.
Besides, it wasn’t anyone’s business…
Her breath caught as he put a hand around her waist and turned her and then laid a finger against her cheek and eased away an errant curl.
She gazed into his heated eyes and said, ‘Maybe we can skip dinner.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE TOOK HIS HAND, sliding her fingers along his, and he enfolded her slighter grasp within his own and she led him out of the kitchen into the narrow hall and to the foot of the stairs.
Nik saw a moment’s hesitation in her, as she laid a foot on the first step and then stopped. Which was when he picked her up. She said something ridiculous about being too heavy but he’d already mounted the stairs and she was looking at him as if no man had acted like a Neanderthal around her, when he could imagine most of the men she met probably fantasised about doing this with her. But didn’t make it past that first step. Her hesitation, the way she looked at him, told him this was not a regular occurrence in her life.