by Lucy Ellis
‘Spare me the drama, dushka.’
‘It’s not drama, it’s people’s lives. Marla has a son, her son has an aunty—you’re going to bring all this down on them to retrieve money you don’t even need.’
‘And as I said, it’s not about the money.’
‘No, it’s something worse,’ said Sybella chokily. ‘If you do this it changes you. Listen, Nik, that day I came to the Hall to give your grandfather back those letters I overheard the two of you talking. You were being so tender with him, and all my prejudices about you fell away. I thought you were that man, hard on the outside because you’ve had to be, but with a genuinely good heart and the capacity to love your family.’ Her voice got stuck. ‘You are that man. Don’t let her take that away from you.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Your stepmother. You’re letting your hatred for her twist you into something you’re not.’
‘And you’re being naive, Sybella.’ He began yanking at his shirt buttons, and as they gave a couple popped and hit the floor but he ignored them, as if a tailored shirt was like a tissue in terms of loss, and Sybella began to feel entirely too queasy.
He must have sensed her distress because he stopped and turned around, his hands resting on his lean hips, shirt gaping, more beautiful than any Norse god and certainly as dangerous in his power and unpredictability.
She might as well have ripped the page out of a magazine and stuck it on her wall; he couldn’t have looked more unreal and out of place.
He didn’t belong here. He never had. She’d let the giant into the house and only now was she counting the consequences.
‘I’m a businessman and I’ve done some ruthless things in my time to get where I am.’
Sybella could only shake her head. ‘I don’t feel like I even know you.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe you don’t,’ he threw back at her, pulling off the rest of his shirt and grabbing a fresh one from his open piece of luggage he’d brought in earlier and obviously intended to live out of. Another reminder none of this was permanent.
‘But I’m not wasting any more time arguing over this. You just stick to your storybook world, Sybella.’ He speared an assessing look up under those thick brown lashes. ‘It suits you. I like you in it. I don’t want you in this world. It can be equivocal and dark and you can’t handle it.’
Sybella realised he was getting dressed again and that could only mean he was leaving, and that was when she realised what had been niggling at her.
‘Is that what happened with your grandfather?’
He just kept buttoning his shirt, head down, profile pure chiselled stone.
‘It is, isn’t it? He climbed into his own version of a storybook to find peace in his last years, to get away from your anger.’
‘Don’t even start this, Sybella—’
‘You probably can’t see it,’ she said, fumbling to make sense of concepts she’d just got her first glimpse of, ‘you’ve been living it for so long. Nik, has everything you’ve done been about getting back at your stepmother?’
‘Da, I built a multibillion-pound empire to spite Galina. You found me out.’
‘No, I think you built your business the same way Mr Voronov found a picture in a book and decided he wanted to live in it. To make you safe.’
Nik shook his head, as if she was being ridiculous. ‘I don’t fear monsters in the cupboard, Sybella.’
‘No, because you’ve had one living in your head. Nik, can’t you see? You’ll never get rid of her if you don’t let it go.’
‘Rid of who?’
Sybella sank onto the bed. ‘I blamed myself for years after my parents abandoned me. Because they were my parents, the only ones I knew. Then I met Simon and his wonderful family, and they showed me how the people who love you treat you, and that’s when I was able to let my parents go.’
Nik’s features softened at the mention of her parents; at least he was listening to her, although he didn’t look particularly convinced.
‘Your grandfather came to Edbury because he’s grieving your grandmother and you facilitated that by buying him the Hall, and then when things started happening that you didn’t authorise, that you couldn’t control, you started making a loud noise and threatening people. You were scary when you came down, Nik. You made all of us uneasy.’
‘I was protecting my grandfather.’
‘Understood, but there was no threat. It was all you.’
‘I seem to remember finding strangers outside my grandfather’s home and the house open to the public.’
But Sybella refused to be sidetracked. ‘Something you would have known about if you’d talked to your grandfather. Is that what I can look forward to? Are you going to put me in a house, fence me in with staff and make sure I’m snug between the covers of that storybook you think I want to live in?’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’
‘Am I? What are you protecting me from? That thing your stepmother is still managing to twist you into? What you’ve just told me paints you as a cold, amoral man seeking vengeance.’
‘Da, and that is what I am.’
His eyes were hard as slate. Harder than those diamonds he drilled for. Making her feel real fear for the first time. Because she couldn’t be with this man. She didn’t know who he was.
She tried one last time. ‘You’re acting as if you have absolute power over these people. If you ruin Marla Mendez’s label, you’ll be bringing down stress and hardship on a lot more people than Galina. All she loses is money that wasn’t hers to begin with.’
Nik felt something hot shoot through the centre of his brain and in its wake he could feel all the doubts he’d had himself, and ruthlessly crushed one by one as he’d walked this path.
But it was a different thing crushing Sybella’s words. He looked at her and remembered the first time he’d seen her in full light. He’d thought she was a Christmas Angel.
He didn’t even celebrate Christmas last year.
Sybella lived in a different world where people observed all the family and community gatherings, embraced the tenets of ‘what you do affects your neighbour’ and because of that you strove to do the right thing.
He even understood, given her past, why these things mattered to her.
He couldn’t convince her he was right, and a big part of him didn’t want to.
He was starting to wonder why he was even here. He zipped up his holdall.
‘The moment Marla’s label tanks and she moves on, so do I,’ he said flatly. ‘I want to hear no more of this, Sybella. It’s not your concern. It’s business.’
She gave him a stricken look. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I get the impression you don’t want me here tonight, and, after three weeks in a mining camp in the Urals, I’ve had enough of cold, hard beds.’
*
The next day, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep Sybella took two tour groups through the west wing of the Hall.
After lunch she went down to the gatehouse, where builders were putting in the new exit door and a ramp for the disabled to bring the tourist centre in line with fire and safety regulations. She chatted with a few of the volunteers, trying to soak up some of their excitement and then headed home in the late afternoon just as the skies opened up.
Nik’s SUV was out front when she turned up her street and the initial rush of joy was subsumed by uncertainty. She found herself sitting in her little car with the early spring rain beating down on the roof, wondering if she was ever going to find the courage to go in.
It was a lousy day, in keeping with her mood.
Catherine came out onto the doorstep and waved to her. Blast.
‘Darling, Nik’s here,’ she said as Sybella slid past her, dumping her bags and coat in the hall. ‘How is it going at the Hall?’
‘We’re on schedule to open the visitors’ centre at the end of the month.’
Sybella submitted to a hug, then Catherine stage-whispered in h
er ear, ‘Nik’s in the kitchen. Fleur’s playing with building bricks upstairs with Xanthe Miller. The coast is clear.’
‘For what?’ Sybella blinked at her mother-in-law.
‘I think he wants to ask you something.’
This was also said in an exaggerated stage whisper. Sybella often thought Catherine was wasted in the local theatre group. She needed a bigger stage.
A little part of her lit that wick of hope that nothing—not even abandonment at twelve—had managed to snuff out in Sybella: this hope was that she would find her old, familiar Nik waiting for her and last night had been nothing but a horrible dream.
Nik was sprawled on one of her chairs in the kitchen that somehow looked extra tiny with him on it. His shirt was open at the neck and although he was wearing suit trousers, which meant he had been up in London, he looked a little un-put-together, surprisingly unshaven, which was unlike him. He was thumbing his phone.
Hard at work. On what? More plans to ruin the lives of people he didn’t even know.
Sybella tried to crush the condemnatory thought. She really didn’t want to fight with him.
‘Dushka, I’ve got something to show you.’ He patted his knee as if she were just going to sashay over there and plant her behind down.
Sybella pictured herself doing it, Nik sliding his arm around her waist and kissing her neck and both of them pretending she knew nothing bad about him and they were all going to be fine.
Instead she came closer but not close enough.
With a slightly raised brow in acknowledgement of her decision he shifted to his feet because even being a bastard he was always a gentleman.
He showed her the screen on his phone. ‘What do you think?’
It was a photo display of rooms, luxurious, spacious living areas, lots of glass, and several bedrooms that Nik scrolled through at top speed, barely giving her time to see it even if she were interested.
‘Why are you looking at real estate?’
‘It’s an apartment in Petersburg I’m looking at purchasing.’
‘Oh. It’s very nice.’ She wanted to tell him about the visitors’ centre and she waited for him to ask.
‘Purchasing for us,’ he clarified. ‘You and me and Fleur.’
Sybella literally rocked back on her heels.
‘Why?’
‘I want you to move to St Petersburg with me. We’ll have no more talk about business. This will be our new start.’
Sybella just stared at him.
‘Nik, I can’t leave Edbury village. This is Fleur’s home. This is my home.’
‘It’s not as if you won’t be coming back—both of us have family here.’
‘But I have a job here now too. I mean, the visitors’ centre is due to open.’ She stumbled over telling him because she’d been so excited and now it had just been rendered less important by Nik’s out-of-the-blue decision.
‘Great,’ he said.
‘There’s a lot to do, but you’ve seen the plans. I think it’s going to revitalise the village.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
‘The Heritage Trust have put me up for a local achievement award,’ she blurted out, wondering why she needed to tell him that now.
‘You’ve put a lot of work in.’
He was saying all the right things but he was watching her as if waiting for her spiel to be over so he could get back to what mattered. To him and his plans.
‘The place will be up and running soon and I’m sure there are plenty of volunteers to take over. Hell, I’ll employ people.’ He gave her an intense look. ‘I want you and Fleur in Pitter with me.’
‘Nik, we belong here. My family, my friends, Edbury Hall is here and there won’t be any volunteers unless I’m around to organise them.’
Nik was shaking his head. ‘It’s a job, Sybella. You can be replaced.’ And with those few words he broke her heart.
Because as he dismissed her ambitions and small but significant achievement with a few tossed-aside words and voiced her worst fear, she could be replaced, the enchantment fell away and Sybella saw she’d been seeing what she wanted to see, not what was there.
A ruthless, ambitious man who got what he wanted when he wanted it.
‘I worked hard to make a life here after Simon’s death,’ she said, finding it difficult to take a proper breath. ‘I want to see Edbury Hall flourish and—and I want Fleur to grow up here, and I’m not coming to St Petersburg with you.’
‘Then how does this even begin to work? You’ve seen how my schedule’s been. It’s just not practical, Sybella.’ He sounded so cold and hard and certain.
‘No, probably not, and above all let’s be practical.’ She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Nik shifted on his feet. His size no longer intimidated her, but she could see he was pressing his advantage as a big, tough guy who always got his own way.
‘Sybella,’ he said with finality, ‘I have thousands of people who rely on me keeping my business interests turning over. My working life is in Europe.’
If he hadn’t told her about his plans for Marla Mendez’s label, Sybella knew she wouldn’t be fighting him so hard at this point.
If she didn’t have Fleur to consider she probably would have given in. Gone with him. Hoped they could build something together.
But she knew now what he was capable of, and she wasn’t just planning a future for herself with him, she had her daughter to think of.
‘No one is asking you to change any of that. But you have to give something, Nik. That’s what a relationship is. Give and take.’
At last that hard shell cracked and she saw some of the old feeling in him.
‘Give? I gave Deda a house to live in when he asked for it. I have allowed you and on your behalf that lunatic historical society to keep the west wing of the Hall open to the public against my better judgement. I saw this damn apartment in St Petersburg and I thought of you. Of us. What don’t I give you?’
‘Well, you could start by showing some interest in something that matters to me,’ she said quietly.
He gave her a long, hard look. ‘This is what matters to you—a tourist centre at the Hall?’
‘What the Hall means to the people who live here, and future generations. It’s not about me, Nik, it’s about living in a community and being a part of something bigger than you.’
He laughed derisively. ‘When I came down here in January, I was convinced you had an agenda, that you were advancing some little cause of your own, and here we are, a few months down the track, and it turns out I was right.’
The unfairness of it barrelled into her.
‘What cause? To keep the history of my village front and centre, so Edbury has something to be proud of? At least I’m doing this for good reasons, unlike you who thinks he can play God with other people’s lives!’
‘I knew we’d get back to this eventually.’
‘Because it really doesn’t matter to you, does it?’ She broke down, tears filling her eyes. ‘Ruin some strangers financially, shunt Fleur and me halfway across the world from everyone we love so you’re not inconvenienced.’
‘This isn’t about my convenience, Sybella, it’s you holding on tight to that dead husband of yours,’ he shocked her by saying. ‘Only think about how long it’s taken you to get this far. Think about how hard you had to work to get it. Take it from me, your precious Simon wasn’t thinking about you when he set up practice in a town where the only outlet for your career ambitions is some old pile you don’t even have much interest in.’
‘How dare you? What exactly are you accusing Simon of?’
He gave her a long hard look and she found herself reliving every tender, sweet moment between them. How she’d come to believe he saw something special in her as she did in him.
‘Nothing,’ he said tightly, shoving his phone into his back pocket. ‘Forget it, Sybella. I wish you well with your activities in the Hall. You’ve fought hard for it.’
Her environs shrank back down to normal size and everything went back to being as if he’d never been there. Only a part of Sybella understood there would be no getting over him as she had her parents, and Simon. Because she’d found her true self with Nik, the real Sybella—strong, passionate and brave—who had been there all along, only she would have to be a little braver because she was once more on her own.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NIK STOOD ON the perimeter of the mine that had been the foundation of his fortune.
It was so vast and for once he didn’t see the wealth it represented, the mastery over nature, the supplier of thousands of jobs. He saw it as what it would be for generations, even if he closed it now. A scar on the land. A reminder of all the destruction Sybella stood in opposition to.
She wanted to restore things, to use over what already existed, to make good on the past by bringing it into the present.
All he did was butcher and destroy the things that had hurt him. Lashing out like the nine-year-old boy he had once been, who had lost everything and wanted somebody to pay.
Anybody.
His stepmother was a convenient monster to slay.
Nik kicked a clod of earth near his boot and watched it spatter a few feet in front of him.
It had been three days since he flew out of the UK.
But not a moment passed when he didn’t have the oddest feeling, as if something were screwing down in his chest. He woke in the night, chilled, furious with himself.
Every email his assistant passed on about the Mendez show in Milan next week had him visualising Sybella, the look of sheer devastation in her eyes.
He shouldn’t have said what he had about her husband, even if it was true.
She thought he was trying to play God, when really all he was doing was trying to mend what was broken. Although ever since he’d told her his plans that broken thing hadn’t seemed all that important. What had taken primacy was trying to fix things with Sybella.
He’d come up with the apartment on the spur of the moment. The look on her face. The way she’d pulled away from him. Her refusal to consider leaving the village. It had all coalesced to push him out, and all he’d heard was, I came here with Simon. I stay here with Simon. You’re not fit to wipe his boots.