by Penny Jordan
‘As you know,’ Vasilii told Laura, ‘Wu Ying has specifically asked for you to accompany her on this trip she wants to make today. Gang Li has volunteered to act as go-between and interpreter today, for what he has described to me as the less formal negotiations that will be conducted between Wei Wong and myself, without any other members of his retinue. I think I’m fairly safe in translating that as meaning this will be when the real business takes place.’
‘I should really be there with you for that,’ Laura told him, adding hastily when she saw the raised eyebrow he was giving her, ‘Oh, I know you are perfectly capable of translating every nuance of what Wei Wong might say without Gang Li’s help, but if I were to be there …’
‘You could run some interference and give me time to think about what I’m being asked for in order to get the contract?’ Vasilii guessed.
‘I still have a gut feeling that it’s Wu Ying who holds the key to a successful negotiation, Vasilii. Wei Wong will seek her approval because of her family connections. She hasn’t said so much as a word to that effect. She’s very discreet. But she has carefully dropped her cousin’s government status and importance into the conversation often enough for me to know that they have a close relationship—they were brought up together by their shared grandmother. We shall be alone today, so maybe she will be more forthcoming. However, if you’re having second thoughts about me going and you’d prefer me to stay, I can ask Katinka if she would stand in for me—she speaks some Chinese.’
‘No. That won’t be necessary.’
Was that because he didn’t want the distraction of Laura’s presence at his side? That was ridiculous. Why should her presence distract him? He had hired her, after all.
Nodding her head, Laura pushed her hair, which she was wearing loose today, behind one ear, preparatory to bending down to pick up her bag.
Vasilii, who was watching her, suddenly clicked his fingers and said, somewhat incomprehensibly, ‘That reminds me. Stay here.’ He disappeared in the direction of his own room, to return within seconds carrying a small cardboard box which he handed to her, saying, ‘Your missing earring. Although it wasn’t found on an initial search, my pilot e-mailed me yesterday to say that the cleaners had found it down the side of one of the chairs.’
Laura looked at him, her forehead creasing into a small confused frown, as she blurted out, ‘That’s not possible.’ How could it be, after all, when both her earrings were tucked safely away in their box?
‘I can assure you that it is,’ Vasilii insisted crisply. ‘Open the box and see for yourself.’
Surely that wasn’t actually disappointment he was feeling at Laura’s less than grateful response? What had he expected? That she would fling herself into his arms with cries of joy? That, once surrounded by the scent and touch of her, he would have every excuse to take advantage of the intimacy of an embrace she had instituted?
Almost reluctantly Laura opened the box. Sure enough there inside was one of her mother’s earrings. She picked it up; its weight resting on her palm was familiar and exactly right. But it just wasn’t possible that this was her earring. She knew that, and yet she was filled with an urgent need to rush into her bedroom to check that she hadn’t somehow or other imagined that she had found the missing earring, and that instead of two earrings in the box there was only one.
She couldn’t do that, though. Vasilii was standing in front of her, watching her, and if she wasn’t careful he would start to realise and even question her confusion.
‘Please thank the pilot for me.’
How stilted her voice sounded, her words more offered by rote than really coming from her heart. She took a deep breath and lifted her head so that she could look directly at Vasilii. Had his eyes really changed to a stormy warning grey, or was she simply imagining it?
‘I really am grateful—very grateful. I was so upset at the thought of losing it.’
‘Yes,’ Vasilii acknowledged. ‘I rather gathered that from your reaction when you discovered that you had.’
And had he done something to make sure that her earring was ‘found’ and returned to her because of that? Because he had been aware of her distress? Laura had another conundrum to battle with now. That sort of behaviour—that awareness of and compassion for the distress of someone else, especially someone else he disliked and would rather not have around him—seemed completely out of character for the Vasilii she thought she had come to know. And over what must to him have seemed such a trivial thing.
‘I’d better go and put it away safely with the other earring.’
Vasilii nodded his head and watched her leave.
Why was it that the room suddenly seemed not just empty but actually physically a couple of degrees colder, deprived of some of its sunlight without her in it? Vasilii didn’t like the feeling it gave him deep inside in that place where after his mother’s death he had promised himself that he would never allow himself to feel pain again. He was relieved that Laura hadn’t shown him the kind of exuberant physical delight in the return of her earring that his half-sister might have done, by throwing herself into his arms, because had she done so he would naturally have immediately put her from him in rejection.
In her bedroom, Laura held the small box containing her mother’s earrings in her hand, her fingers trembling slightly. What are you afraid of? she asked herself. Not even Vasilii could have magicked away one of her mother’s earrings without her knowing about it, and in any case, why on earth should he have wanted to? Quickly she opened the box—and released a gush of relieved breath. Both earrings were quite definitely there. Which meant … Which meant that she now had a third earring, nestling in its own box on the dressing table where she had placed it on walking into her room.
Reaching down, she opened that box as well, and placed the other one next to it. The earring Vasilii had given her was a perfect match, but it was not ‘her’ earring. Laura tried to think of all the possible reasons for a man to go to the trouble Vasilii must have gone to in order to get that earring made. She could only come up with two that made any kind of sense. The first was that Vasilii had hoped to please her because he wanted to take her to bed. She dismissed that immediately and unequivocally. If Vasilii had desired her—which she knew quite definitely he did not—he was the kind of person who would simply have said so, along with giving her a warning that all he wanted was sex and once he had tired of her their relationship would be at an end, Laura thought wryly. That left the only other logical explanation, which was that Vasilii had been so touched by her distress at losing her mother’s earring that compassion for her had led to him having a new one made.
As though she was tasting unfamiliar food for the first time, Laura rolled the words ‘Vasilii’ and ‘compassion’ round her tongue together, all too aware of how mismatched they were—at least when it came to the prospect of Vasilii showing her compassion. But what other explanation could there be? She certainly couldn’t think of one.
Very carefully Laura closed both boxes. By rights she ought to go straight to Vasilii now and give him back the earring, but she knew that she wasn’t going to do so. Why not? Because he wouldn’t take kindly to knowing that she had recognised his act of kindness? Did she want to protect him, then?
Ye s.
No.
What she wanted to protect was their business relationship, which thankfully, for the moment at least, seemed to be working reasonably well. And she was enjoying what she was doing. It felt good to have been given such a challenging and demanding role. She felt it was stretching her and enabling her to really use her qualifications and her skills.
Before her short tenure as his temporary PA was over Laura was determined that she would win his respect for her professionalism and the quality of her work, no matter how grudgingly it might be given. And not just because that would aid her in moving up the career ladder when she got her next job. She wanted Vasilii’s approval because … Because she wanted the satisfaction that came from r
eceiving recognition for a job well done. Nothing more than that. Nothing at all. Letting Vasilii know she was aware of what she suspected he would see as an unwanted vulnerability within himself was not going to aid that ambition. So it wasn’t because she felt anything personal for him that she wanted to protect him. No, of course not.
Of course not.
There was one small but important task Laura wanted to complete before she was due to meet with Wu Ying, and that was writing a letter to her aunt, who was someone who, having familiarised herself with modern technology, still preferred some of the more traditional forms of communication.
Laura smiled a little to herself as she sat down in the suite’s sitting room with a notepad on her lap and a pen in her hand and began to write. And that was how Vasilii saw her when he walked into the room several seconds later. Her head bent over the notepad, an absorbed expression on her face. Laura was so lost in what she was doing that she wasn’t even aware of his presence. Her lips moved as though she was speaking silently to herself, then she frowned slightly and caught up her bottom lip between her teeth, nibbling on it. She released her bottom lip, slightly swollen now. As though she’d been kissed? No. If he had kissed her then the whole of her mouth would reflect the intimacy of that kiss, and when he released it her lips would part and she would move closer to him, and then … A muscle jerked in Vasilii’s jaw as he fought against the unwanted intimate sensuality of his own thoughts.
Laura was smiling now—a soft, tender smile, a smile of love—bending her head over the paper once again, and then tensing as she suddenly became aware that she wasn’t alone.
Vasilii watched as the colour came and went in her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, ‘I didn’t realise you were there. I was just writing my weekly letter to my aunt. She prefers letters to telephone calls or e-mails.’
‘That must be time-consuming.’
‘I don’t mind. In fact I enjoy it.’ Laura put down her pad and pen and told him truthfully, ‘She was so kind to me when my parents died. I missed them dreadfully, and felt so alone, so lost, and in a way abandoned. She encouraged me then to write to them as though they were still alive, telling them how I felt. That helped me so much. It’s so hard to cope with losing a parent—but then of course you will know that. Writing to them to tell them how I felt helped me so much. I owe my aunt such a lot that spending a little time every week writing to her is the least I can do.’
Vasilii felt his heart turn over inside his chest as he listened to her. With her words she had unwittingly touched on a place, a wound within himself, that he hated admitting existed—to himself, never mind allowing anyone else ever to know about it. No one was allowed to mention his mother to him, and yet here was this woman daring to do so—daring to speak of his childhood pain.
The need to protect himself sent a surge of anger racing through him. Turning on her, he demanded harshly, ‘You say that, and yet when you could have helped her—when she asked for your help by chaperoning Alena in her absence—you refused to give it. You preferred to go to New York.’
‘That was a misunderstanding.’ Laura felt bound to defend herself.
‘When my sister passes on to you a message from your aunt, asking you to stand in for her so that Alena is not in London completely alone, and you refuse, you call that a misunderstanding?’
No, what she called it was not receiving any kind of message from his sister to ignore in the first place, Laura thought grimly. But of course she couldn’t tell him that without betraying Alena.
‘Alena isn’t exactly a child,’ Laura pointed out.
‘Not a child, no,’ Vasilii was forced to acknowledge. ‘But too trusting. And because of her nature and the situation of our family she was vulnerable.’
He meant because of his own wealth, Laura recognised, and of course what he was saying was quite true. Wasn’t it only natural that as an older brother he would turn against a person he felt had refused to protect his sister, as he had turned against her? Especially after what had happened to his own mother?
‘I’m sorry if you feel that I let you down.’ What was she doing, apologising to him? She had nothing for which to apologise. But he didn’t know that, and she couldn’t tell him without betraying Alena. His half-sister might be married now, but, having seen at first hand the power that emanated from Vasilii, Laura could well understand that even the most loved and protected of sisters might not want to admit to not following his instructions.
It was a relief for Laura when Vasilii finally left the suite ahead of his own appointment. She tried her best to hold her own when she was with him, but that wasn’t easy when all the time her own body was constantly reminding her of the desire it had once had for him. The desire it had once had? She was here for a purpose, Laura reminded herself—and that purpose was not to allow herself to dwell on the past.
Laura had apologised to him. Vasilii hadn’t expected that. But then, as he was discovering, there was something about Laura that did have the capacity to challenge his judgements. She obviously cared a very great deal about her aunt. And her sense of responsibility where her work for him was concerned couldn’t be faulted. Maybe he had been too harsh in his judgement of her? It was hard to know what was the truth about her.
The first thing that Wu Ying said to Laura when they met was, ‘There is a change I wish to make to our tour. There is a winery I would like to visit. It is here.’ She thrust a piece of paper with an address on it and a map under her nose. ‘It is not far-off the way we were already to go.’
A quick check of the address and the map confirmed that Wu Ying was right.
‘I’ll inform our driver,’ Laura assured her.
‘We will go there first, I think,’ Wu Ying continued firmly. ‘My husband has begun to collect wine. I would like to buy some for him as a special gift from this winery.’
‘In Europe we call them vineyards,’ Laura explained.
Two uniformed members of the hotel staff sprang forward as they approached the main doors, opening them for their guests, and even though the doors were double width, with plenty of room for them to walk side by side, Laura automatically held back to allow Wu Ying to pass through first.
Today Laura was wearing a pair of beautifully cut white linen trousers and a softly styled tee shirt that matched the wedged heels of her espadrilles. She had a taupe knitted cover-up that went with the tee shirt folded carefully in a fabric bag with taupe leather trimmings that matched her sandals,
The immaculately polished limousine waiting outside for them had dark tinted windows, and its driver nodded his head when Laura showed him the map and asked in Russian—a language that most of the staff working at the hotel seemed to understand—for him to take them there.
Vasilii was meeting up with Gang Li at eleven o’clock, prior to a working lunch with Wei Wong Zhang at which Vasilii was pretty sure the latter’s final decision would be made, if not passed on to him, as to whether or not Wei Wong was ready to go into business with him.
Although Laura remained convinced that Wei Wong’s wife, because of her family’s background in the government, had an equal if not more powerful influence on her husband’s decision as the nephew who might be his illegitimate son, Vasilii had not as yet seen anything tangible to back up Laura’s belief. Even if she was right, Gang Li was the official go-between, authorised by Wei Wong to act as his negotiator.
Vasilii suspected that behind the scenes a battle for who had the most influence on Wei Wong could be going on between Gang Li and Wu Ying. The brief text Laura had sent, telling him about Wu Ying’s request to visit a vineyard and why, had in Vasilii’s eyes proved that the battle had not as yet been won—hence her desire to find a special gift for Wei Wong.
Alexei had requested a meeting with him after lunch. The other Russian had already hinted that he would be interested in being involved in the development not just of a hotel complex with the Chinese, should Wei Wong decide to add one to his portfolio, bu
t also in the development of less luxurious business hotels at the container ports. Reaching for his suit jacket, Vasilii picked up his smartphone.
The minute he walked into the sitting room of the suite he was aware of it—and so strongly that it stopped him dead in his tracks. Laura’s scent. It hung softly and delicately on the air and should surely have been easily ignored. Sometimes he actually found himself having to move closer to her just to catch it, and yet here in this room today, in her absence, its chemistry reached out to him, enticed and lured him to pursue it, then surrounded and embraced him. How could something so ephemeral be so strong that it held him captive in a room in which he could neither see, touch or feel it? He was unwilling to step free of it—wanting … Wanting what? The woman to whom it belonged?
Angrily Vasilii pushed an irritable hand into his hair. This was a ridiculous nonsense that he had somehow allowed to slip under his guard. Because his guard was too weak where Laura was concerned? No, because it had never struck him that he would ever need to guard himself against something as unimportant as a woman’s scent.
Unimportant? After the death of his mother he had spent hours just sitting in front of her open wardrobe doors so that he could breathe in her scent—that exotic blend of Eastern fragrances that had been so much a part of her—until his father had ordered that the wardrobe be emptied, telling him, ‘I know how much you miss her, Vasilii, but she would not want this for you—that you should live in the past. It is time to let her go now, my son.’
His father had been right, of course. And now, remembering that part of his childhood, Vasilii was able to assure himself that the effect Laura’s lingering scent was having on him was not because there was anything about Laura herself that could touch his emotions, but because of the connection between a recognisable scent and his mother.
Having explained that prospective and dangerous weakness away to himself satisfactorily, Vasilii headed for his meeting with Gang Li feeling freshly energised. However, just as he was about to step into the lift the doors opened to reveal Gang Li’s assistant, who explained that he had been on his way to see him ahead of his meeting. If Vasilii could spare him a few minutes there was a certain delicate matter he wanted to discuss with him which might have an important bearing on the success of Vasilii’s lunchtime talks with Wei Wong Zhang.