Frozen Enchantment

by Jessica Steele

  Realising that her hands were shaking and that she had got herself into something of a dither, Jolene took a few minutes out to calm herself.

  With the exception of her discovering why it was that Cheyne could make her heart behave in such a peculiar fashion, nothing had outwardly changed, she lectured herself. Her day had been a happy one and, given that she had a natural reserve about making displays of affection, it was highly unlikely that she would suddenly throw her arms around Cheyne and embrace him the instant she saw him again. Well, not unless he made some display of wanting to embrace her first, anyhow.

  For a second or two she drifted off into a dream where Cheyne came to call to take her down to dinner, but, because he felt the same way that she did, he was unable to prevent himself from taking her in his arms.

  That dream faded when reality presented itself. Apart from their sense of humour being on the same wavelength occasionally, she had seen not one single solitary sign that Cheyne might be remotely in love with her. Oh, he had kissed her a couple of times, but one of those kisses had been to shut her up, the other...

  Foolishly Jolene drifted off again to remember once more how happy she had been that day and how Cheyne had seemed to like her company.

  When the minutes had ticked by and her watch showed the same time that Cheyne had called for her the previous evening, she was ready and waiting. She had realised the folly of hoping that he might be a little in love with her, but by then she had sifted through his every 'non-work' word said to her in a search to discover if perhaps he liked her a little. By then she had seen his warning 'Steady, we can't have you falling' as stemming not from any thought that he would be mightily inconvenienced if she was injured and unable to act as his PA, but from the fact that—perhaps—he was getting to like her a little and did not want her to hurt herself.

  The answer to whether he had any feelings for her, however small, began to filter in when ten minutes went by and Cheyne did not -come and knock on her door.

  Jolene let a few more minutes go by, then thought very briefly about going to knock on his door before instantly discarding the idea, then she thought for another two minutes before quickly leaving the suite.

  She made her way down to the restaurant, having come to the speedy conclusion that it would be better for her to put in an appearance at dinner. That way she could better gauge his attitude, whereas, if she stayed in the suite, she would only go through the torture of wondering did he or did he not think anything, however small, of her.

  The answer to that hit her cruelly straight between the eyes the moment she entered the dining-room. For any faint notion she might have nursed that he might be working and had lost count of the time evaporated into thin air when she saw that he was already at the table.

  'Good evening,' she said pleasantly, when as she reached the table he stood up.

  His grunt in greeting was all she needed to know that the holiday, the rest day was over, and that he was back to being the same surly brute she was more familiar with.

  What she ate at that meal Jolene had no recollection. But she thanked God for her pride that, although part of her wanted to beg for one kind word from Cheyne, there was another part, a stronger part, that said, 'Like hell!'

  Somehow, when all she wanted was to return to her room to lick her wounds, she made herself stay right where she was. She drank her coffee, the final part of the meal, as if she had not a care in the world, and had no mind at all to dash to the upstairs suite and close the door.

  She was in the middle of wondering what the dickens had happened to change him from the warm and charming man she had seen that day to the uncommunicative swine he was now, when suddenly, not waiting for her, he stood up and seemed about to go.

  'We're leaving in the morning—be on time,' he clipped by way of a goodnight.

  'I'll be delighted,' she said sweetly, and when he gave her a sour look at her impudence, she smiled.

  She was not smiling when he had gone, however. For she had seen the way his eyes had flicked to her mouth, and suddenly she knew just why he had reverted to being such a taciturn swine.

  Jolene returned to her rooms weighed down by the embarrassment her realisation had brought. Quite plainly, she must have responded too eagerly to his kiss that afternoon. Equally plainly, Cheyne was now regretting the impulse that had prompted him to take her in his arms, and, without a doubt, he was now hell-bent on getting their relationship back on a businesslike foundation.

  By morning Jolene, after a dreadful night, had surfaced to be certain that Cheyne Templeton need not put himself out. A businesslike basis would suit her just fine. She had not asked him to take her in his arms—he could go boil his head!

  Cheyne was already down to breakfast when she entered the hotel's restaurant, and just the sight of him, broad-shouldered and manly, briefly scattered her brave thoughts. She recovered, however, when, certain courtesies being inbred in him, apparently, he got to his feet and remained standing until she had taken her place at the table.

  When his inbred courtesy did not extend to him finding a civilised greeting for her, Jolene decided that even a relationship of purely the business kind deserved an exchange of good mornings.

  So, 'Good morning', she bade him pleasantly and as if she had not so much as missed a wink of sleep on his account last night. And, not giving him time to answer, 'Could I ask you to pass the pork, please?' asked she, who did not feel like eating a crumb, and certainly not cold pork, no matter how thinly sliced.

  Her employer was not in a sunny humour that morning. Jolene could not have cared less. It was definitely raining on her parade. Far from wanting to return to Irkutsk, she wanted to return to England. Yet there was still over a week to be got through before they got on that plane in Moscow.

  It did not help matters that the taxi which was coming from Irkutsk to pick them up was late. Having made a point of being on time herself as ordered, Jolene left her luggage in the foyer and went window-shopping. From what she could make out there appeared to be a Beriozka store in every hotel, which sold things as varied as beautiful large fringed shawls, and different varieties of vodka.

  It was nearer eleven than ten when the taxi finally arrived, and the return trip took them an hour and a quarter. They returned to the same hotel they had vacated two days earlier, but were booked into different rooms from the ones they had previously occupied, though again they were both on the same floor.

  By the time the porter was taking them with their luggage up to their floor, however, Jolene, having exercised all her resources in trying to remain pleasant to her monosyllabic employer, felt used up. When the lift stopped, she followed the porter to her allocated room. Thanking the porter when he had carried her case into her room, but without a word to her employer, she went to close the door on both of them.

  'We'll lunch at one,' Cheyne told her curtly before she could achieve her intention.

  'I can't wait,' she found some stray particle of unused-up strength to tell him guilelessly.

  She saw his eyes narrow and as he stared at her harshly, she felt sure he was about to tell her to cut the impudence. She closed the door.

  To her utter relief, Alec Edwards and Keith Shaw were there when at one o'clock precisely she entered the dining-room. All three men at the table for four got to their feet when she arrived, and she felt warmed to her heart when first Alec took her right hand in his and then pecked her right cheek as though a bond of friendship had grown between them, and then Keith did the same. Her glance then lit on the third man in the group, but from his grim look she could tell that he had not sweetened up in any way.

  'How are things going?' she asked the two engineers generally when they were all seated and sampling the beetroot, cream and cheese starter.

  'So far so good,' Alec told her, 'though we've a good way to go yet, I imagine,' and turning to Cheyne, he said, 'Keith and I have kept the afternoon free hoping that we could have a meeting. If you can spare the time, Mr Templeton, I sh
ould value your opinion.'

  With her ear to the conversation, but taking no active part, Jolene disposed of the soup course, and munched her way through the course that followed. For light relief, instead of the more usual cake to follow, there was ice cream.

  'This is good,' she remarked to Keith, about her whole contribution to the lunchtime table conversation. But, having found her voice, and finding too when she looked across at Cheyne that he had his glance on her, 'Will you need me this afternoon, Mr Templeton?' she asked him politely, having formed the view from the conversation she had heard that they would manage very well without her.

  For perhaps two seconds he looked hard at her while, unblinking and trying to pretend that there had never been a time when she had used his first name, Jolene stared back at him. Then, when she was expecting something sharp from him along the same lines as his jibe about her thinking this trip was her annual holiday, he said, quite pleasantly, 'Take the afternoon off, Jolene, I've no need of you.'

  That just about summed it up, she thought when later she took her purse down to the Beriozka with the intention of making a few purchases. Cheyne had no need of her. Any PA could have done what she had done so far, she saw that clearly enough.

  Well, he could stay a grouch as far as she was concerned! her pride came to give her a nudge, as she purchased a bottle of vodka to take home to her father. By then she had realised that the only reason his voice had been in any way pleasant toiler anyhow was that Keith and Alec had been present. Her pride slipped a little so that she was liking Cheyne again in that, whatever he thought about the eagerness of her response to his kiss, he would not make her feel small in front of the others.

  Putting Cheyne firmly out of her mind, she set about buying a large shawl for her mother. Then, because she could not resist them, she bought three nests of wooden dolls, one for her mother, one for her neighbour, and one for herself—hadn't Alec told her that brightly painted dolls with their sarafan dress and headscarves were called Matryoshka, which was the forename of the wife of the original carver. With her presents neatly wrapped, Jolene was in the middle of taking her change from the sterling notes with which she had made her purchases when a voice from behind called 'Jolene!'

  Swinging round, she saw that Viktor Sekirkin had come into the hotel and had spotted her at the far end of the foyer where the Beriozka was situated. 'Dobriy dyehn, Viktor,' she smiled.

  'Good afternoon, Jolene,' he returned, and he was more grinning than smiling when he said, 'We will speak in English, I need the practice,' and straight away followed up, 'I knew it was you as soon as I came through the hotel door.'

  'You have remarkable eyesight,' she told him.

  'You have remarkable blonde hair,' he replied, and while his eyes made a meal of her shiny blonde hair, 'You will come and have a cup of coffee with me?' he invited.

  'I don't think so, Viktor,' she told him affably, but found him very persuasive when he insisted.

  'But yes, you must. There is a bar here on this floor in the hotel.'

  About to attempt to refuse again, Jolene wondered if she was perhaps being a little ridiculous. He was only inviting her to drink a cup of coffee with him, for heaven's sake! Knowing that he'd probably laugh his little Russian socks off if she trotted out something unsophisticated like, 'I'm sorry, I can't have a cup of coffee with you because you're a married man', Jolene knew she would feel equally ridiculous saying it.

  Which was why in the next minute she was going with Viktor to check in his hat and coat at the ground-floor cloakroom and then going with him to what he termed a bar. From what she could make out, though, there was nothing alcoholic served there.

  'You are not working this afternoon?' Viktor queried as soon as they were sitting with their coffee before them. 'Please say that you have not to rush off to work!' he added quickly.

  'I have the afternoon off,' Jolene told him. 'How about you, aren't you working?'

  'Oh, I don't work all the time,' he told her with a broad smile, and then suddenly he started to look very earnest as he went on, 'But this is wonderful, Jolene! If you are not working, and I am not working, it is a most perfect opportunity for me to take you on the sightseeing of Irkutsk which I wished to do before.'

  Oh, crumbs! Jolene thought, and knew then, ridiculous or not, that she was going to have to tell him thanks, but no, thanks. 'Er ‑' she began as she sought round for tact. 'Actually, Viktor,' she was forced to go on when she could see from his waiting expression that she had the floor, 'the thing is...' she began, and again faltered. 'I'm...' There was nothing else for it, she realised when she again dried. 'You're married,' she said bluntly.

  'Divorced,' he smiled.

  'I'll get my coat and hat,' she told him.

  She enjoyed Viktor's company that afternoon. He was easy to get along with and she welcomed having something else to think of other than Cheyne, when Viktor took her first to an art gallery.

  'Perhaps you will like some of the paintings,' he suggested as, first going to the cloaks area, they divested themselves of their topcoats and hats, where a lady attendant hung them up.

  'I'm sure I shall,' Jolene smiled, and sauntered with him from room to room, where in each room sat a lady attendant of mature years.

  As was the case with any other art gallery she had been to, Jolene liked some of the paintings, found others tolerable, and hated a few. But as they left the gallery Cheyne was back in her thoughts again.

  She realised then that to tell herself to forget him was one thing, but that to actually go more than fifteen minutes without him springing, unsought, into her mind was totally another. Perhaps it would be easier when she was back in England and stood little or no chance of ever being in his company, she mused, when, because she could do nothing about it, Cheyne kept her mental company as Viktor that afternoon took her to the places he thought might be of interest to her.

  At Victory Square she stood with him and watched as senior schoolchildren marched to keep guard over the Eternal Flame. 'They'll freeze if they stay there too long,' Jolene fretted as she and Viktor left the scene.

  'They will be there for only ten minutes, and then other children selected for the honour will come to take their places,' he assured her.

  Thinking that the Siberian people must be a hardy race, Jolene had more proof of that when, as she and Viktor were looking at another monument to fallen heroes, a bride, with her new husband, came to lay her bouquet. Moving away from the pretty young woman, Jolene thought she must be nearly frozen in her fine white bridal gown.

  The bride, though not the wedding, went from her thoughts however when, as she and Viktor left the monument, she noticed the car which the bridal couple had arrived in. For the car was white, and whether that was traditional or not Jolene did not know, but what was traditional, she felt sure, and in her view was rather nice, was that the roof of the car was decorated with two upright intertwined wedding rings. Through the larger wedding ring was threaded a white ribbon which went from the back to the front of the car, and through the smaller wedding ring, threaded in matching fashion, ran a red ribbon.

  Dearly wanting to know the significance, if any, of the ribbons, Jolene almost put the question to Viktor, but he was paying no heed whatsoever to the wedding car, and she was sensitive suddenly that what with him not being much more than thirty, and already divorced, perhaps he would rather not talk of such matters as weddings.

  Irkutsk, she learned that afternoon, was founded on the banks of the river Angara, and she had a chance to see the Angara when she and Viktor left the Yuri Gagarin Boulevard, and stepped to the frozen water's edge.

  'What's happening over there?' she enquired of her friendly guide, pointing to where little domes of clear plastic were dotted about on the ice.

  'Men are fishing,' Viktor answered.

  'Fishing?' she exclaimed. 'Through the ice?'

  'But of course,' he smiled. 'They cocoon themselves in their plastic cases, and drill holes through the ice.'


  'Of course,' she murmured, and as her eyes moved to the left, she was sure that either her eyes were deceiving her or that here, on the other side of the Urals, there on the ice was a huge model of the Sydney Opera House! 'It isn't!' she turned her astonished gaze to Viktor to exclaim, but when he offered to escort her over the ice to take a closer look, she declined the offer. She had walked over the ice with another man yesterday—the memory was suddenly painful. 'Perhaps I'd better be getting back to the hotel,' she suggested.

  'It is not far,' he immediately acquiesced, but spent the time until they reached the hotel in trying to get her to go out with him again.

  'I think there's a good chance that I'll be required to work this evening,' she turned down his invitation for that night, as having her hotel pass ready, Viktor escorted her past the man at the door and into the foyer.

  'You will be free tomorrow?' he refused to take no for an answer.

  'Most definitely I shall be working tomorrow,' Jolene smiled apologetically.

  'In the evening too?' he exclaimed.

  'Maybe not,' she had to concede. 'May I have your phone number, Viktor? I can give you a call if...'

  'That is an excellent suggestion!' he immediately took up, and without more ado he went to the reception desk, asked for some paper, and quickly wrote down his telephone number.

  Jolene took the piece of paper he had given her, and sincerely thanked him for his kindness that afternoon. In return Viktor shook her warmly by the hand and, with his eyes enjoying her face, told her that he would live for her phone call.

  There was a smile on her lips as she walked away from him. Somehow she had never expected a Russian to be so extravagant in his turn of phrase. The smile was still on her lips as she rounded the corner to where the lifts were. At the sight of the tall, dark-haired, grim-looking Englishman who stood there, though, her smile quickly departed. And that was before he grated;