by Lora Leigh
He should have looked deeper into the reason for the Taites’ determined efforts to see Journey married to Beau, Ivan thought in disgust. Instead, his senses were so distracted by her that he admitted it wasn’t always easy to think.
To add to the problems, Journey’s mother, brother, and sister were demanding to see her. Their determined efforts at a family reunion were becoming impossible to ignore, he admitted. He’d have to allow them access to her soon, but he could already hear her objections. For some reason, Journey was resistant to the idea of seeing her family just yet.
She rarely mentioned her mother, refused calls from her siblings, and seemed not in the least upset to do so. And that was very un-Journey-like. She’d talked to Amara several times in the past week, as well as cousins who had contacted her, but still refused calls from her mother, brother, and sister.
Making a note to broach that subject once her anger cooled a bit, Ivan turned back to his office and his own business that awaited him. Knowledge of his engagement was sweeping through his own holdings, both legal and shadowed, and his lieutenants needed his assurances that the rumors were true. There were things to take care of, a priest to contact, a wedding to arrange, despite his bride’s stated reluctance.
She might have objected to his admission that it had been his plan all along to marry her, but he’d seen the hunger in her eyes, the dreams.
She loved him, but damn if she wasn’t a prideful little thing. That stubborn little chin had lifted like a princess staring down at a particularly irritating peon. It had turned him on, made his dick hard, made him ache to feel her submitting to him.
She would marry him though, he knew. The thought of their child would ensure it, and he admitted, albeit silently, if that was what it took to get her in front of a priest, then he’d take it. He’d convince her of the fact that she owned parts of him that went far beyond love. Parts of his soul that he’d never given to another human being.
* * *
She couldn’t allow herself to sink any further into that stupid illusion she’d demanded from Ivan. God, how had she allowed this to happen?
Pressing one hand to her stomach, she fought back the tears, the sobs, well aware that neither could help her at this point. She couldn’t think if she was crying and allowing the pain to possess her. And right now, she had to think. She had to figure out what was going on and how to help Ivan protect their child.
Their child.
She stared down at the hand covering her stomach, suddenly so amazed, so enchanted by the fact that she was pregnant. She was carrying Ivan’s child. A baby.
She’d never really considered having children. Before, she’d simply been unable to contemplate having sex with Beau to begin with, and after she’d run, she’d just assumed she’d always be too frightened of being found to allow any man to tie himself to her.
Until Ivan had taken the matter out of her hands and brought her such pleasure that snowy night in Colorado.
And now, she carried his child.
A child that would love her, completely, unconditionally. No matter what her child did, or where her baby went in life, that love would always follow him or her.
Him, she decided, aware of the silly smile that curled her lips.
Only a son of Ivan Resnova would be so sneaky about the fact he existed. She’d had no morning sickness, and though her breasts had been incredibly sensitive for a week or so right after leaving him, she’d merely marked it down to how often he’d caressed them. His lips had drawn on her nipples, the love bites he’d left on the swollen mounds.
“How do I protect you?” she whispered, her fingers moving against her stomach as though caressing the baby already. “How do I fix this, little one?”
A sound behind her had her whirling around, her eyes widening at the sight of Sophia Resnova standing inside the room, the door closing behind her.
At thirty-three, slender, delicately curved, and with thick, long black hair and dark blue eyes, she could have been Ivan’s sister. Dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt, she wore a weapon strapped to her hip that she hadn’t worn before, and her gaze was filled with icy resolve.
“Shall I help you answer that question?” Sophia asked her softly as she leaned back on the wall and crossed her arms over her breasts. “Or was it rhetorical?”
Journey gave an unladylike snort. “Does a Resnova recognize rhetorical questions?”
Not from what she’d seen. They always had an answer for everything. Arrogance didn’t even begin to define them.
A small smile tilted the other woman’s lips. “You do have a point. So we’ll assume it’s not rhetorical, and go about helping you answer it.”
Sophia could have been Ivan’s sister they were so much alike, she thought silently.
Journey shook her head. “I need time…”
“My dear, you are about four to five weeks out of time,” Sophia assured her. “No doubt your family members will be aware that you carry Ivan’s child before the night is out, and will make a move to quickly strike. If you heard what I did downstairs, then you know how very intent they will be on ensuring Ivan’s child does not survive to take its first breath.”
As if she could have missed that little detail.
Glaring at her, Journey stalked to the end of the bed, her hands latching on to the high footboard and gripping it viciously.
“How have any of you survived your lives?” she whispered, staring back at the other woman painfully. “How were you able to allow any child of Craig Taite’s to survive after what he and his father did to all of you?”
Bitterness curled Sophia’s lips. “Without the help of my brother, they could not have touched us,” she replied, lowering her arms until one hand rested on the butt of the weapon strapped to her thigh. “Our family was a shadow force, they have always been so. We were the powers behind thrones, behind generals. Politics and power did not matter when leaders knew there was a faceless, nameless force watching, always waiting. Russia is a cold, often brutal place, but until my brother stole our father’s power from him, Resnovas were always protected, as were those who followed them.” The dark head lowered for a moment, and when Sophia looked up at her once again, there was wry knowledge in her expression. “Besides, children are not to blame for the actions of their parents. They can only be held accountable for their own choices.”
How anyone could see the world in such a way, Journey had no clue. But this was how she wanted the child to feel. To know that striking against someone weaker, someone not to blame, wasn’t the choice to make.
“He wants me to marry him,” Journey told Sophia then, her heart, her mind, in turmoil at the thought. “He doesn’t love me…”
Sophia gave a soft, mocking laugh that silenced Journey’s objections.
“Journey, you have no idea of the significance of him placing that ring on your finger. That was his grandmother’s ring, the ring that should have gone to his mother at her death. When his mother was murdered, and a year later, his grandfather, on her deathbed his grandmother made him swear by their blood that no woman but one he loved, treasured beyond his own life, would wear that ring and that should she wear it, he would place it on her finger himself.” Sophia’s expression softened. “From the moment we learned he did just that, every member of his family, every friend, every man, woman, and child that he has protected knew that you were more to him than his own life. That he loved.”
Journey shook her head. “It was a bargain we made. I forced it. He wanted his vengeance, and I demanded that he pretend to love me.”
“Oh for God’s sake, stop fooling yourself.” Sophia straightened from the door then. “We’ll get back to the subject at hand. You want to protect that child.” She nodded toward Journey’s stomach. “Then you marry him. You do as he demands when it comes to you and that child and know, if you know nothing else, know that losing either of you would break what is left of his soul. Think about that, Journey. Think of each moment with him, think of the ch
anges in the man you knew before you went to his bed, to the man he became with you. He gave you the man he truly was, rather than the man the world has always seen. Think of that, then tell me Ivan Resnova does not love.”
* * *
She needed a minute to acclimate, Journey acknowledged that evening after dinner as she joined Ivan, Jordan, and Tehya in the sitting room for drinks. Sophia had given her far too much to think about that she hadn’t considered before, and thrown every argument she had straight out the door.
Thankfully, she’d never really enjoyed alcohol, so as the others sipped at their drinks she’d had Ivan pour her water instead and fought to get her bearings, even now, hours after that disastrous argument with her fiancé.
As Ivan and Jordan discussed something quietly on the other side of the room, Tehya finally did just as Journey had expected her to do. She made her way to where Journey sat, took a seat in the chair opposite the couch where she sat, and stared down at her drink for long moments.
She didn’t want what she knew was coming, Journey thought. Of everyone in her life, she’d missed most the loss of the woman she’d counted as her only true friend at one time.
Tehya had been her employer when Journey had first come to America to attend college.
Desperate for a taste of freedom, Journey had risked her father’s petty cruelties and applied for a job with the small Maryland landscaping company Tehya had owned at the time. She’d loved landscape design, still did actually.
Tehya had hired her immediately and during those almost idyllic months had befriended Journey. They’d laughed, exchanged confidences to a point, and Journey had learned what true friendship was, she’d thought. And it had all been a lie.
Tehya had known who her new employee was and she’d deliberately developed a friendship with no intention of ever revealing the fact that they were cousins. Journey hadn’t learned the truth until the night she and Tehya had been kidnapped by Stephen and Craig Taite.
He was teaching her a lesson, her father had sneered as she stared at him in confused horror. A lesson she would never forget. Oh, he’d ensured she could never forget that lesson or that night. He would have killed Tehya himself if Beau hadn’t stopped him.
That night still lived in her horror-filled dreams. Nightmares of Tehya’s death, of her cousin’s blood spilling over her hands as she tried to push it back.
“I’m sorry, Journey. I should have never lied to you. That was wrong of me, but I needed to know you without my past rising up to harm either of us. And even in that, I failed you,” Tehya whispered, the sincerity in her tone heavy with pain. “I’m not asking for forgiveness, but I am asking you to talk to me.”
The words had Journey freezing.
Had anyone ever apologized to her before? She didn’t think they had. She’d been lied to and deceived all her life, and no one had ever said they were sorry for it or that they regretted it. No one had ever admitted they were wrong until now.
Tehya’s past was brutal, she knew. She’d spent nearly her whole life running, first from the father who would have given her to her half brother to rape, then from Journey’s father, who wanted nothing more than the inheritance Tehya’s parents had left her mother.
“I understand why you didn’t tell me.” Journey shrugged, because logically, she did understand. But her emotions weren’t always logical, and the feeling of betrayal wouldn’t let her go.
“I wouldn’t, if positions were reversed,” Tehya said, once again surprising Journey.
She lifted her gaze to the other woman, watching her somberly as she tried to make sense of the pain and anger that filled her every time she saw or thought of her cousin.
Looking away from her cousin once again, Journey smoothed her hands down the silk pants she wore and tried to tell herself she just needed more time. But she’d had four years, hadn’t she? During those years, the memory of her cousin had perhaps hurt the most.
“You could have told me.” Journey knew that was the reason why she was having such a hard time forgiving the other woman. “At any time, Tehya, you could have told me and I would have never betrayed you.”
She would have loved her, been so thankful she was alive. She would have cried over her aunt’s death, her cousin’s horrors. And she would have loved her.
“And I was terrified I’d be dragging you into my past and the danger that still existed,” her cousin whispered. “I would have killed to keep that from happening, and it happened anyway. The one person I wanted to protect other than Jordan, and you were the one hurt the most.”
Journey had to force back her tears, force back the anger. She was still so damned angry over all of it, and perhaps that was the reason she found it so hard to forgive Tehya. She was part of it, no matter how innocent.
Looking away, her gaze moved automatically to Ivan to find him watching her, concern edging at his features. There was something in his gaze, in that look, that invited her into his arms, into his warmth.
“You were my only friend,” Journey revealed, dropping her eyes from Ivan’s gaze and returning to Tehya’s. “You told me about your dreams for the business; let me share them. You told me about the man you loved and how bad you wanted a puppy. But you couldn’t tell me why I was the one you confided in. It was the trust, Tehya. I trusted you with Craig’s insistence that I accept Beau’s proposal, and my fear of ever returning to France. I trusted you. And I believed in you. I thought you believed in me.”
Tehya’s eyes filled with tears, and Journey prayed they didn’t fall. If they did, there would be no way she could hold back her own. There would be no way to stem the pain and anger or to beg her cousin for explanations she knew likely didn’t exist.
Why?
Why had Stephen and Craig betrayed their entire family? They had murdered Tehya’s mother, tried to steal her inheritance when they already had so much of what should have belonged to Tehya after her mother’s death. Why hadn’t her father loved her? Why had her grandfather seen her as no more than a pawn in the depraved double life he led?
There were no answers to those questions any more than they could go back. Tehya couldn’t change the decision to protect Journey rather than allow her a bond she had been so hungry for. That with a family member who gave a damn. And admitting to that made her feel petty and childish.
“I did believe in you, Journey, and I still do. But in the past four years haven’t you wanted to trust someone with your own secrets, needed to trust, only to fear their reaction or the danger it could bring them?” Tehya asked then. “Is there anyone it would have hurt when the stories of Journey Taite’s return began showing up in the papers and on the internet?”
She thought of Amara, Ivan’s daughter, and her tears when she’d called several days before. How she’d assured Journey that she could have trusted her. But she understood, Amara had told her, forgiveness filling her voice. She understood her fear and why she’d been so determined to hide.
“All my life, I needed family,” Journey whispered then. “My sister, my brother, and I were kept apart, never allowed to develop the bonds siblings have.” She looked down at her hands for a moment, remembering the day she’d begged her brother to help her, to keep her father from pushing her into marriage with Beau. And he’d just walked away from her. “I was closer to you than I was to them at any time.” She shook her head and lifted her gaze once again. “I understand why; I really do,” she assured Tehya painfully. “And I can acknowledge I would have done the same if positions were reversed. It’s not that I can’t forgive you, Tehya, because you did nothing that should require forgiveness. Maybe it’s myself I can’t forgive, for not seeing the truth, for not realizing it at a time when you needed me.”
Tehya’s eyes widened as Journey acknowledged the truth to both of them.
“No, Journey…” She shook her head desperately.
“You were fighting for your life and all I was concerned with was trying to find an ally to help me run from Beau.” She shook her
head, realizing how immature, how thoughtless, she had been.
Her anger at her cousin had been more an expression of her anger at herself, Journey realized. And there was no room for that now. She had much more important concerns than the childishness that had driven her four years before.
“Let me help you now, Journey,” Tehya urged her softly, her expression filled with worry. “You and your baby. We don’t know what the hell is going on here, or why the Taites want to stop this marriage so desperately. Jordan and I can hide you until we figure it out.”
“Hiding me isn’t an option,” she sighed. “If I disappear, they’ll just wait, bide their time, and grow stronger.” She knew that for a fact. “Beau was given the CEO position of the businesses with our engagement, so I’m really not certain why he’s so determined to carry through with a marriage.”
It made no sense. He had what he wanted; why tie himself to a woman he didn’t love now? Stephen and Craig were in prison; they couldn’t exactly object to him running the companies now.
Still though, Tehya frowned at what she’d told her, watching her intently.
“There must have been a clause in the event the marriage didn’t follow through?” It seemed more a question than a statement.
Journey frowned, trying to remember the brief details she’d overheard the week her family had arrived in America for the announcement of the engagement.
“The only thing I remember is overhearing Craig telling Stephen it wasn’t wise to count on Beau’s ability to control me before the marriage.” Brushing her hair back from her forehead, she gave another shrug. “Too bad, so sad, I guess.” Her lips twisted with self-aware bitterness.
“Could Beau’s position as CEO of Taite’s be dependent on your marriage to him?” her cousin asked then.
Journey laughed with genuine amusement. “I can’t imagine either Stephen or Craig being so insane. They were expecting me to run, and if they hadn’t been arrested, they would have managed to stop me. They wouldn’t take the chance I’d succeed.”