‘Nothing overrides love,’ she said at last.
‘Wrong answer.’
She felt her blood run cold—knew somehow that she had just failed him.
‘When you are seven—when you lie on the floor and the man you love, the man you admire, the man you one day want to become beats you, kicks you…When you can see his eyes bulge and feel his spit on your face…’
Her tears were silent, but they were there, flowing down her face as she listened to him.
‘You tell yourself this is not your father’s doing—that he loves you—that it is the fear that makes him do this…’
‘Aleksi—’
‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘I have.’
‘How can you?’ Kate begged. ‘You have another brother. Did you look for him?’
He just stood there.
‘Have you found him?’
‘No.’
And then she asked the question he dreaded giving an answer to. ‘You haven’t even tried to find him?’
He had never known shame like it—could see the struggle in her eyes as she tried to fathom what even Aleksi couldn’t. ‘No.’
She really didn’t know what to say, so he said it for her.
‘I live as my parents have done—a life of greed and debauchery. No, I haven’t even tried to find him. So you see, Kate, perhaps it is better that you don’t know me, or try to understand me.’
‘How could you not—?’
‘We should pack,’ Aleksi interrupted, the conversation clearly over.
‘We should stay,’ Kate tried to halt him. ‘Maybe if you spoke with Levander, spent some time—’
‘I’m done with family,’ Aleksi said, and then again he surprised her. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ she asked.
‘For making me see…’ He gave a small shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
As she put her hand up to him he dusted it off and walked out the room, and Kate knew he was also done with her.
Knew then that she shouldn’t have spoken, should only have listened, because her response had been wrong.
As right and logical as it had seemed to her, as she replayed his words she let her tears fall as she realised what she had just done.
If, as she’d stated, nothing overrode love, then to Aleksi it must be simple—she’d just taken from him the last semblance of his father’s love.
Chapter Ten
‘THERE’S a job going in Bali…’
Kate walked along the beach and tried to take in what Craig was telling her. ‘Well, not a job as such, but I’ve got friends there, and the surfing is good. I’ve been wanting to go for ages.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘I wanted to know you were okay—I know I’m not a good dad, but I just…’ he pulled his hand through his long blond hair. ‘Now you’re okay, now that you and Georgie are going to be looked after…’
‘You feel that you can?’
‘I’ll write to her. I’ll send her cards, and I’ll save up so she can come for a holiday. My parents are hoping to bring her out for a couple of weeks. Here…’ He wasn’t after money; he was here to give it. ‘I know I can remember birthdays, but for Easter, for when she gets a good school report…’
She stood there as he gave her everything he could afford for his daughter—just not his time.
‘We want different things for her, Kate. I want waves and freedom, and you want schools and routines…’
‘She wants schools and routines,’ Kate said, but she wasn’t arguing with him. She actually got it—he certainly wouldn’t make father of the year, but in his own way he did love Georgie, and Kate would always tell her that.
‘Will you let my parents bring her out to see me?’ he asked.
‘Of course I will,’ Kate said, and even if it wasn’t much, somehow she was touched, because he had at least stayed around to make sure they would be okay before he left.
He just didn’t know it was all a lie.
‘I’ve got good taste in louses,’ Kate tried to joke, and she cried a little inside for herself and for Georgie.
She wished Craig well, hugged him and gave him a brief kiss, and as she walked back to the house she surprised herself—because she actually felt free.
Aleksi was having a revelation all of his own.
‘Have it.’
Monday morning at nine, he had stepped off the plane and headed straight to the office. He’d been ready to fight his mother for everything, and now Nina had handed it to him on a plate.
‘I can’t fight you any more, Aleksi…’
He stood unmoved by Nina’s tears.
‘Have Kolovsky, have Krasavitsa—just please hear Belenki out. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I have been greedy, but some of his ideas are good…’
He didn’t get her.
If he lived to be a thousand he would never get her. Always he would hate her, but sometimes, bizarrely, he wondered if he could summon love for her too.
‘You’ve changed your mind.’ He was tired of this—so damn tired of this. ‘Why?’
‘Sheikh Amallah cancelled the Princess’s order, and others have cancelled too. Lavinia has told me she is leaving—that I can stick my job and she’ll only work for you…’
Aleksi glanced over to where Lavinia stood and gave her a thin smile of welcome as the rebel returned from the coup. Then he dismissed her as Nina carried on shredding tissues.
‘Others have too—and then I saw the samples of Kolovsky bedlinen for the supermarket chain and I knew I had sold out. I know I am a poor businesswoman. No matter how I enjoy it, I see that everything your father built I am ruining…’
‘Then stop,’ Aleksi said simply, because he could not make himself embrace or comfort her.
‘I am stopping. I will concentrate on the charities. But please,’ Nina begged, ‘hear Belenki out.’
‘I can’t get hold of Belenki,’ Aleksi said wearily.
‘He’s here,’ Nina said, and Aleksi’s blood ran cold. ‘Rather, he arrives this morning; I am supposed to be meeting with him at two. Please talk with him, Aleksi. Always he confuses me—he is so strong, so forceful—and always I end up agreeing with what he suggests, always he tells me I am helping the orphans…’
It was guilt that drove her. Aleksi could almost see it.
He drove along the beach road back home and the adrenaline was still coursing in his veins—because he had expected a fight with his mother and then got tears and capitulation. Guilt for what she had done in abandoning her son and a stepson to awful childhoods in Russian orphanages. She tried to purge it by raising millions for charity.
He just didn’t know if he had enough left of his soul to forgive himself, let alone Nina, for not trying to right her sins long ago.
Didn’t know if he could ever find peace—and then he turned the key in his door and almost glimpsed it.
Walking into his house, Aleksi saw the dust of sand on the tiles, Georgie’s boogie board discarded, and the apologetic expression of his housekeeper.
‘I’m sorry, I haven’t got around…’
‘It’s not a problem,’ Aleksi said, and he meant it. ‘Leave it—take the day off,’ he offered, because he needed to be alone.
Since Kate and Georgie had moved in every homecoming was different he realised. Everything was different—even his fridge contents, Aleksi thought as he pulled it open.
Oh, there were still exotic fruit juices and imported beers, still fancy cheeses, but there were also juice boxes and little animal shaped processed cheeses that tasted disgusting but were strangely addictive.
He was growing used to waking up to laughter and conversation and chaos—chaos because even with a nanny and a housekeeper and the most efficient team of staff, every morning without fail Georgie lost something. Every morning there was a mad dash for the front door.
But not for much longer.
He didn’t need Kate now.
Except maybe he did.
He walked ups
tairs to the neatly made bed and saw her book on the bedside, picked it up and checked the page.
She was at 342 and it had been 210 on the plane.
So, she had been reading it when he’d thought she was sulking—why did that make him smile?
She had tried to talk to him since his revelation, had told him that she would try to understand, that maybe it wasn’t too late to look for his brother.
Could he do it?
Could he let her in? Could he trust not her but himself?
Not just with her future, but with Georgie’s?
Could she even want a man who had chosen to turn his back on his brother?
It wasn’t just monogamy that Kate wanted, but his truth, his thoughts, his soul. It was a lot to consider giving, and yet…He put down the book, smelt her perfume in the room and realised he had a lot to lose, too.
More than he could stand.
He would tell her—tell her what he didn’t know. About this fear that woke him at night, about the answer he was so close to remembering, about the shame that filled him each time he thought of Riminic, the brother he had left behind all these years.
How could he ask Kate to have faith in him when he didn’t know his own truth?
He walked across the bedroom, stared out at the bay—a view he had seen maybe a million times but he’d never really looked at before. All it was was a backdrop, a view he paid for, to impress but not to enjoy—but he did so now. The water was so smooth there was barely a ripple, shades of grey with steaks of azure, and then if you looked deeper there was aqua and silver and brown. It mocked Kolovsky silk over and over, because nothing could be as powerful and beautiful as nature.
The bay changed—not each day, not even each minute, but with every shift of focus, every look, there was more to see.
So, so much more to see.
Nyekamoo doveerye.
His father had been dead for two years, but as sure as if he was standing beside him Aleksi heard Ivan’s voice—and, to his regret, Aleksi conceded that his father was right.
She was walking. A sheer white sarong covered her, but not enough. Even from this distance he could see the curves barely leashed by a bikini.
Money did suit her, Aleksi thought darkly.
Those wild curls were sleeker and glossier now, and her skin glowed. He could see the flash of her jewellery and the golden dust of her tan, and she had a new-found confidence that he’d been stupid enough to think he might have given her.
“Nyekamoo doveerye”—trust no one.
The man was as blond as Georgie, and Aleksi just knew that it was Craig who was walking in step beside Kate now.
They were together.
There was an ease to them that sliced at his heart.
There was a togetherness that unleashed his anger like a snarling dog let loose.
Disgust churned black and bilious in his stomach.
Foolishness mocked him too, for daring to believe for a little while that she might be different—that he could be too.
But as Craig kissed her, as he pulled her into his arms and she leant on him for a moment, it wasn’t jealousy that ate Aleksi alive—that would come ten seconds later—it was regret.
Regret that it wasn’t him.
That Georgie wasn’t his.
That there could be no them after all.
‘Hey!’ There was an elation to her as she stepped into his home that he might once have been foolish to think had been caused by him. ‘What are you doing back?’
His muscles were shot with adrenaline, the hairs on his neck stood up, and he was slightly breathless. His body was screaming for him to fight, to confront, but he just stood there waiting, needing to hear her lie, and somehow, still at the eleventh hour, hoping she wouldn’t.
‘Where were you?’
‘Just walking.’ Kate smiled, because jet lag didn’t factor when you’d snuggled in gold pyjamas reading, eating and dozing all the way from England. ‘It’s a gorgeous day. What are you doing home?’
‘I came for my computer,’ Aleksi said. ‘The real one.’
‘The one you’ve been hiding from Nina!” Kate laughed, and the sound of it made him sick. ‘Why?’
‘Belenki is here.’ He glanced at her skin, at the dust of sand on her legs, and then to her face, to the lips that smiled at him but had just been kissed by another man. ‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘We meet him at my office in an hour.’
She didn’t want to get dressed.
Aleksi was right—she was on a high. There was a dizzy elation to her that she had never expected to come today.
There was freedom, there was lust, and there was still the prickly warmth from the sun on her shoulders and the salty smell of the bay in her nostrils. And before her was Aleksi.
She could feel his tension, knew it must be because he was meeting Belenki, and as she had done once before she wanted to soothe him.
Wanted him.
Whatever his past, she wanted his future—so badly. He made her bold, he made her ache with want, and although she felt his bristling anger she wanted to soothe him, so she stepped towards him.
‘It’s only a thirty-minute drive,’ she murmured.
She pressed into him, smelt not the ocean but him, felt his hands on her arms and placed her lips on his.
And he thought about it. Feeling her hot and oiled beneath his fingers, he thought about it. So angry, he was hard; so beguiled, he wanted release. He could feel her tongue roll around his, urging a response, and although he knew where those lips had just been he let her kiss on.
He hadn’t cried in decades—not even when beaten. The last time he had wept was when he had lain on the floor and his father had warned him to trust no one, and yet now there was a sting in his eyes and such tension in his lips that he couldn’t kiss her back. He just felt the roll of her tongue.
God, but she had a nerve!
Her sarong was off—was it her fingers or his that had done it?—and the top of her bikini was gone. Her breasts splayed against his chest, her heat pressed into him and his fingers dug into her generous buttocks.
She was grappling with his belt, but he would not give her an inch.
He pulled her so tight into him that she gasped.
Her mouth was on his cheek and his burning anger impaled her. He dug his fingers in deeper to her flesh, and he was so turned on he wanted to forget what he had seen. He wanted her so badly that it actually hurt to resist.
He wanted her seduction, yet he craved survival more.
But still he let her.
He let her kiss him, let his body respond to her, just enough to inflame them both.
He could feel the hum of her lips on his neck, feel her frantic search for his skin, her hand tearing at his shirt, and then the nibble of her teeth on his neck. He slipped his fingers into her bikini bottoms, felt the heat of her intimate skin and like an addict he craved just once more. But Aleksi was stronger than that—he was a man who could come off pain medication in one night; he could surely withdraw more easily from her, couldn’t he?
Yet she was more addictive.
Her hand was at his zipper, and it was a more skilled hand now, because she freed him in seconds.
He wanted her bikini off, but there wasn’t even time for that, so he parted the material with his erection and entered her, feeling the scrape of her bikini along his length as he pushed into her. He could sense the throb of her orgasm around him, felt her sob and moan as she convulsed around his length, and he was a second away from joining her.
Yet he was stronger than that. As she ground into him, demanded his response, screamed his name, the triumph was his as he pulled back, still erect, unsated—and, she now registered, loaded with contempt.
‘Aleksi?’
She had never been so naked, so exposed, so confused, tumbling down from the throes of orgasm to see his look of pure loathing.
‘I told you.’ He pulled up his zipper and crucified her with his eyes. ‘Get dressed.’<
br />
For Kate, it was the ultimate in rejection.
This logical voice inside her mind told her he was tired, stressed, late for the meeting, yet her gut told her otherwise.
She sat beside him as he drove in silence, her mind going over and over what had taken place, trying and failing to remember his response—she had been so deeply into him, so confident, so sure, so open with him, his fleeting resistance hadn’t confused her at the time.
It confused her now.
She could still feel the imprint of his fingers in her buttocks, and as she stared out of the window at the bay that stayed still as they hurtled towards the city, she could recall his initial imperviousness to her kisses—only she had won him round. No, she’d thought she had won him round.
She just wasn’t used to these grown-up games.
Her seduction had been her own, her devotion absolute. There had been nothing else on her mind other than him. Her motives had perhaps not been virtuous, but they had been pure—she had only wanted to make love with him.
The bay view had gone now. There was no view from her window other than shops and cafés and people and trams and cars. It was too busy for her cluttered mind to cope with so she turned to him, yet there was nothing there.
Just this dark brooding stranger with a mind she could never begin to fathom.
They pulled in outside the office. The doorman jumped, the valet parker was already moving. Aleksi was keen to get to Belenki—but Kate just sat there.
‘What happened back there, Aleksi?’ she asked quietly.
‘What?’ He frowned, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
‘What happened?’ She could hear her voice rising to a feminine, needy pitch and fought to check it, fought to check herself, to reel herself back, to heed his earlier warning—that love, a future, was something he would never be prepared to give her.
The Last Kolovsky Playboy Page 13