Behind the Palace Walls

by Lynn Raye Harris

  “Thank you,” she said, strangely disappointed that she hadn’t tumbled over that peak after all. Her body still hummed with the aftereffects of too much adrenaline, too much thwarted pleasure.

  “Ne ze chto. Now we must go.”

  Paige blinked up at him, looking at him fully for the first time—and nearly sank to the cold ground in shock. He was a stunning man. Hollywood handsome in a way that screamed bad boy, playboy. Except he wasn’t a boy at all. It struck her how incongruous those terms were to describe a man like him.

  She’d been so focused before, so scared, that she’d barely registered any details about him.

  Now, she took them in. Every last incredible line. Beneath his cap, he had dark thick hair that was probably brown but looked black in the lights, and the kind of nose and cheekbones that artists had been sculpting out of marble for hundreds of years. His lips were full, sensual, his jaw strong. He watched her with glacial eyes that missed nothing. And he’d just told her they needed to leave. Together. Paige backed up a step, suddenly confused and wary. She’d made too many mistakes already. She’d come this far from her hotel without a plan, and nearly been assaulted. Going anywhere with this man was out of the question, no matter how much she might owe him for helping her.

  “I appreciate your help, and I’d be happy to pay you, but if you think I’m going somewhere with you to finish—”

  His expression grew absolutely stony. “You think too highly of yourself, Paige. And you will come with me now if you wish to avoid a repeat scenario. Those men could return to the square in five minutes, when they’ve realized you didn’t go into the subway or any of the open clubs.”

  “I’ll return to my hotel. It’s just down the street—” “It’s not safe.”

  “My boss is there and he can help—” “No,” he cut in. “It will be safer if you come with me now.”

  The slow burn of anger began in her belly. Who was he to tell her what to do? And what did he mean it wasn’t safe? It had to be safer than going with him! “I appreciate your help, but my sister is missing and I think Chad is the only one who can help me—”

  He took a step closer, every inch of him suddenly on alert. “Chad? Chad Russell is your boss?”

  Paige bit her lip, uncertain whether this was a good or a bad sign. “You know Chad?”

  His laugh was not precisely friendly. “Indeed, I know Chad Russell, maya krasavitsa. And I know that you had better come with me now, if you want to survive this night.”

  Paige shivered. Something in his tone made her want to back away. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said.

  He glared at her until she was certain he would grab her bodily and force her to go whether she wanted to or not. But then he shrugged. “It is your life. Do what you wish.”

  “But why? Why isn’t it safe?” she demanded, her heart racing.

  His mouth twisted disdainfully. “The streets are not safe at night, as you have so recently discovered. This is true of many big cities, I understand.”

  She felt like he was mocking her, and yet there was some sense to what he said. Would she walk the streets of downtown Dallas alone at night? Definitely not.

  “I can pay you to take me back to the hotel.”

  His bark of laughter was not what she expected. Her face burned, as if she’d insulted him somehow and embarrassed herself in the process. God, what a strange night!

  “Come with me, or go your own way. The choice is yours.” He didn’t wait for her to reply. He simply turned and started down the hill in the direction the men had gone. Paige chewed her lip, shivering and wondering what in the hell she should do now.

  Maybe she could make it back alone, assuming she didn’t get lost again. Her hotel was through the square and down the road that ran along the Moscow River. It was a long walk. Cold. Dark.

  She would run. She could make it in ten minutes if she hurried. Maybe Emma had already returned. If not, Chad was there to help.

  The sound of male voices, speaking in Russian, filtered to her on the night air. Their speech was loud and punctuated with laughter. She didn’t know if it was the same men who’d tried to grab her, but could she risk it?

  Paige pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. Oh, God, what was she doing here? Why had she thought she could handle this alone? She didn’t speak the language, and sometimes didn’t even understand the thickly accented English that was spoken to her. Her eyes strained to see the figure of the man disappearing into the night. She understood him.

  But he was a stranger. How could she go anywhere with a man she didn’t know?

  The Russian voices grew louder as they moved closer to where she still stood in front of the department store. Given a choice between meeting up with these men, or going with the man who’d helped her, she realized the truth: there was no choice.

  Paige broke into a run.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALEXEI POURED SCOTCH into a tumbler and handed it to the woman sitting so forlornly on his couch. The walk through the cold city streets had chilled her, he was certain, but a stiff drink would bring her around. And then he would find out why she’d been in Red Square at the precise time he’d been supposed to meet with his informant. Considering she was one of Chad Russell’s employees, it was quite a coincidence.

  He did not believe in coincidences. Hard work and sacrifice had gotten him where he was today, not belief in mystical concurrences. If he’d left his life up to luck and circumstance, he’d probably be lying in a crypt with the rest of his family.

  She accepted the glass without looking and took a big drink. Then she coughed. “That’s horrible!”

  Alexei sipped his own scotch, enjoying the notes of caramel and oak as it slid down his throat. The fifty-year-old single malt was perfect. And so was her performance. She definitely knew how to play the innocent.

  His mouth twisted in disdain.

  Like his father before him, Chad Russell had always believed he could ruin Voronov Exploration if he threw enough money at the right people. He hadn’t yet succeeded, nor would he.

  Alexei would die before he would lose the next round in their epic battle. Whoever could convince Pyotr Valishnikov to sell his Baltic and Siberian holdings first would reap a huge reward—and effectively leave the other company in the metaphorical dust. This deal was the culmination of everything Alexei had ever worked for. With the stroke of a pen, Valishnikov could give him the power to finally crush Russell Tech once and for all.

  Then Katerina would be avenged. It was all that mattered.

  Alexei studied the woman on his couch.

  Was she here to dig up information about his plans? If so, she would be sorely disappointed. But if she was supposed to distract him enough to let down his guard, she wasn’t doing the best job of it. She was beautiful, though in an unstudied way. He’d known many beautiful women over the years, but this one seemed quite unaware of her beauty. She hadn’t once tried to fix her hair or asked to see a mirror so she could primp and preen. Her makeup was so understated as to be practically nonexistent.

  And she seemed to be in shock, which was why he’d given her the scotch.

  As he watched, she reached into one of the pockets of her very unstylish coat and pulled out a pair of glasses. Then she glanced up at him and shrugged as she put them on.

  “I can see pretty well without them, but I get headaches if I go too long.” She dropped her gaze to the glass in her hand. “They fogged up when I went outside and I just never put them back on.”

  “What were you doing in Red Square alone?”

  She looked up at him again, her dark eyes shiny with unshed tears. Once more, he got that little kick in the gut he’d felt earlier when he’d breathed in her scent. His sister’d had dark eyes like those. Dark, haunting eyes that he couldn’t escape, no matter how successful he became or how much he tried to put the past behind him.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said numbly.

  “Alexei,” he re
plied. He did not doubt that she knew exactly who he was. Perhaps he should have taken her up on her offer to return her to her hotel. He hadn’t believed it was genuine at the time, nor did he now. But what would she have done if he’d said yes? That would have caused a bit of consternation, he was certain. When he’d first told her she needed to come with him, before he’d known who she was, he’d had every intention of driving her back to her hotel once he’d reached his apartment.

  Afterward, it had seemed unnecessary—not to mention counterintuitive to her plan. He wondered why she’d even told him she worked for Chad Russell in the first place.

  “Alexei,” she repeated.

  “Da. Now tell me about your sister.”

  He would play her game. For now.

  Panic threaded into those smoky eyes. She took another swig of scotch, coughed. If she was acting, she was doing a fine job of it.

  “Emma’s twenty-one, as of yesterday. She’s nothing like me. She’s tall and blonde, and she likes to have fun and go shopping. She went on a guided tour this afternoon while I worked to prepare Chad’s papers for his meeting tomorrow. I ate dinner in Chad’s suite while we worked, and stayed with him until about eight-thirty. I had a text from Emma around eight, telling me she would be in the hotel bar for a while. She wasn’t in our room when I got back, but I didn’t think anything of it until she didn’t return by eleven. I tried calling her, but she never answered.”

  The twinge of feeling he got when he thought of this woman with Russell surprised him. Because he doubted very much that she’d simply been working with her boss all that time. A beautiful woman like her with a man like Russell? He’d lay odds they’d been doing far more than going over paperwork.

  She plunked the tumbler on the table and stood. But she must have gotten up too quickly because the color drained from her face and she sank back down again. Then she put a hand to her head.

  “I don’t usually drink alcohol,” she said more to herself than to him. She looked up again, her eyes slightly glazed. How could anyone get drunk on two gulps of scotch? “I have to find her,” she whispered.

  “I will find her for you,” Alexei said smoothly. Let her believe her plan was working. “You looked for her in this bar?”

  She clasped both hands in her lap, her knuckles whitening. “Yes. I asked if anyone had seen her, but they claimed not to remember.”

  “So you decided to wander alone through Red Square at midnight?”

  Her eyes were huge and liquid. “It was stupid, I know. But I thought she couldn’t have gone far, thought maybe she was outside. And then someone said there was another bar, so I went there. Each place I went was farther than the last until I found myself in the square and those men started bothering me.”

  “Where is your cell phone?”

  She patted her coat, came up empty. “I think I dropped it when they grabbed me.”

  Alexei took his phone from his jacket and handed it to her. “Try to call your sister.”

  She punched in a few numbers. He could hear the error message on the other end as she handed the phone back, her expression a mixture of frustration and fear. “I don’t know how to dial it from a foreign number.”

  “Tell me the number.” He punched it in while she recited it, adding the proper codes, then handed the phone back when it began to ring. Her face screwed up while she concentrated, as if she were willing her sister—assuming there really was a sister—to answer.

  It didn’t work, however, because she gave the phone back to him a moment later, her expression crumpling.

  Alexei dialed another number. After issuing instructions to his head of personal security, he hung up.

  “Why don’t you give me your coat? I will turn on the fire to warm you.”

  “I really should be going,” she said, her pretty bow mouth drawing his attention as her teeth scraped her bottom lip worriedly.

  Alexei tried very hard to ignore the arrow of arousal that shot straight to his groin. She’d been uncertain earlier, but she’d warmed up to their kiss, coming alive beneath his touch. It had been everything he could do to push her away when all he’d wanted was to sample the rest of her. To see if the fire in that kiss would translate to the bedroom.

  Odd, when she wasn’t his usual type of woman. He liked glamorous women, effortlessly feminine women who wore their confidence like a second skin. Paige was neither glamorous nor confident, though she was definitely feminine. Authentic was the word that came to mind—though of course that couldn’t be the case when she was working for Chad Russell. She was simply a very good actress.

  “It is safer to remain here,” he said. “In case those men are looking for you.”

  She blinked. “How could that be? They don’t know me—”

  “Your phone.”

  Her eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that. I still don’t know why they’d care.” She shook her head suddenly. “But they wouldn’t. And I need to find my sister, so I should go back—”

  “I will find your sister, I promise.” He said it impatiently, since she couldn’t really want to leave yet, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  She blinked at him, her eyes adorably owlish behind her glasses. “Do you really think you can find her?”

  He nodded. “You are in Russia, maya krasavitsa, and I am Russian. I guarantee I will find her before your Chad could do so.”

  Real hope kindled in the depths of those eyes. It made him wonder, for an instant, if he was wrong about her motives for being here.

  That is exactly what you are supposed to think.

  He shoved the thought aside, but not before he pictured another set of eyes gazing at him with hope. Katerina, I’m sorry…

  A cold hand gripped his, pulling him back to the present. He didn’t mind the cold. It was the touch of her skin that surprised him. The jolt must have surprised her as well, because she quickly pulled away.

  “Thank you, Alexei,” she said in that soft, breathy voice that reminded him of film stars of the 1940s. “You have been very kind. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

  If the whole scenario hadn’t been a setup, then he knew exactly what could have happened—and it wasn’t pretty.

  “You must never go out alone at night in a strange city where you do not speak the language or understand the culture.” He said it rather harshly, he thought, but she merely nodded.

  “You’re right, of course.” She sank back against the cushions and closed her eyes. When she didn’t open them again, he grew concerned. A moment later, her jaw dropped open and a soft snore escaped.

  Alexei stood there for a moment in disbelief. Tossing back the rest of his scotch, he decided to turn the lights down and leave her where she was. If she were here to spy, she’d be up in no time. All he had to do was wait and see.

  Paige was warm and cozy. Something soft nestled against her cheek as she stirred. She smiled, sighing as she burrowed deeper beneath the cover. The hotel bed was comfortable, but it felt different tonight than it had the night before. Firmer. And why was she still wearing her clothes?

  A tendril of unease twisted through her. Something wasn’t right. Her eyes popped open—a second later, she bolted upright. Her gaze darted around the room, but nothing was familiar.

  Where was she?

  Her surroundings were luxurious—the couch she lay on was covered in silk brocade, oil paintings adorned the walls and the cover she’d been snuggling into was made out of some kind of fur.

  A fire burned softly in the grate, the only sound in the room. Paige stood, wrapping the blanket around her though she was still fully clothed, and turned in a circle. She didn’t have a watch, and she’d lost her cell phone in the square. She had no idea what time it was, or whether Emma had been found.

  How had she managed to fall asleep when she was so worried?

  “Alexei?”

  She started walking toward a hallway directly behind her. It might be late, but she couldn’t simply
sit on the couch and wait until morning. She had to know if Alexei had found Emma.

  The thought of her enigmatic rescuer sent a wave of a different kind of heat rolling over her. She’d been wary when he’d first told her she needed to go with him, but once they arrived at his apartment, she’d realized he had money. This apartment was in one of the old Baroque buildings that had withstood time, several wars and a revolution. It was also furnished with expensive paintings, antiques and woven rugs.

  And he knew Chad, though she still didn’t know how he did, come to think of it.

  But she’d relaxed a little then. Surely he did not need to lure poor American women back to his apartment for evil purposes. No doubt women fell all over a man who looked like he did. Add in the money, and you had a sure recipe for success.

  No, Alexei did not need to bring her here in order to have his wicked way with her. He’d kissed her because it was necessary, not because he was attracted to her.

  Paige lifted her chin. Nor was she attracted to him. He was a handsome man, no doubt, but he wasn’t Chad. Chad was tall, blond, Texan, bigger than life. Everything she’d ever dreamed about when she was a girl growing up in tiny Atkinsville, Texas.

  She knew that Chad taking her to lunch—and picking her to accompany him on this trip—might not mean anything, but a girl could dream. Though he usually dated underwear models, actresses and beauty queens, he wasn’t seeing anyone just now. She knew because she was the one who usually got the task of ordering the flowers and making the dinner reservations. There had been none of those for over a month now.

  Not that it meant anything, she reminded herself, when he’d been working nonstop on this Russian deal.

  A lamp burned in one of the rooms off the hallway. Paige pushed the door all the way open. “Alexei?”

  There was no answer, but she stepped inside to be sure he wasn’t there anyway. The room was an office, with floor to ceiling bookcases, a desk and filing cabinets. A computer stood on the desk, and a printer sat idle nearby. There was an Italian leather couch on one wall, and a couple of chairs facing it.