“I had no idea you were interested in taking over the business someday,” Roman said, his tone more than a bit mocking. “I’d rather thought your interests lay elsewhere.”
She whipped around to look at him. “Such as shopping and getting my nails done? That was never my plan.”
It had been her parents’ plan, however. It was simply not done for a Sullivan woman to work. They married well and spent their days doing charitable work, not dirtying their hands in the business. No matter that she’d wanted to learn the business, or that her father had indulged her a bit and let her intern there—because business experience would do her good in her charitable duties, he’d said over her mother’s protests. Jon had always been the one intended to run the department store chain once her father retired.
Which Frank Sullivan would not have done anytime in the next twenty years had the choice not been taken from him. Now that Jon was dead, there was no one else but her. And she was good at what she did, damn it. She had to be.
“You’ve had a bad year,” Roman said softly, and her heart clenched. Yes, she’d had a bad year. But she still had Sullivan’s. More importantly, she had her son. And for him, she would do anything. Sullivan’s would be his one day. She would make sure of it.
“It could always be worse,” she said, not meeting Roman’s hard gaze. She’d told herself repeatedly that things could always be worse just so she could get through the day—but she really didn’t want to know how much worse. Losing a husband to cancer and a father to dementia was pretty damn bad in her book.
“It is worse,” he said. “I’m here. I don’t arrive on the scene until a company is struggling, Caroline. Until profits are squeezed tight and every month is a struggle to pay your suppliers just enough so they’ll keep the shipments coming.”
Caroline blinked. The stores. Of course he was talking about the stores. For a minute, she’d thought he was being sympathetic. But why would he be? She was the last person he’d ever show any compassion for.
And she could hardly blame him, could she? They hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms.
Though her heart ached, she feigned a laugh that was as light as the evening breeze. It tinkled gaily, as if she hadn’t a care in the world, when in fact she felt the weight of her cares like an anvil yoked to her neck.
“Oh Roman, really. You’ve done quite well for yourself, but your information cannot always be correct. This time, you are wrong. Dead wrong. You won’t get Sullivan’s, no matter how you try.” She waved a hand toward Fifth Avenue, encompassing the park, the horse-drawn carriage with its load of tourists passing by, and the logjam of cars and trucks packing the avenue. “Times have been bad everywhere, but look around you. This city is alive. These people are working, and they need the kind of goods Sullivan’s provides. They want what we have. Our sales are up twenty percent this quarter. And it will only get better.”
She had to believe that. Her father had made some bad decisions before anyone realized he was ill, and she was working her hardest to fix them. It wasn’t easy, and she wasn’t assured of success, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet, either.
Roman smirked. Literally smirked. “Twenty percent in one store, Caroline. The majority of your stores are suffering. You should have sold off some of the less profitable branches, but you didn’t. And now you are hurting.”
He took a step toward her, closed the space between them until she could feel his heat. His power. She wanted to take a step back, to put distance between them, but she would not. She would never give an inch of ground to this man. She couldn’t. She’d made her choice five years ago and she would stick by the rightness of it until the day she died.
“Thank you for your opinion, as unsolicited as it might have been,” Caroline said tightly. The nerve of the man! Of course she’d thought of selling off a few of the stores, but when she’d tried, the offers hadn’t exactly been forthcoming. It should have been done two years ago, but she hadn’t been the one in charge then. By the time she’d taken the lead, the economy had tanked and no one wanted to buy a department store. She was doing the best she could with the resources she had.
“I’ve done my research,” Roman said. “And I know the end is near for Sullivan’s. If you wish to see it continue, you’ll cooperate with me.”
Caroline tilted her chin up again. She’d been strong for so long that it was as natural to her as breathing. She might have been young and naive five years ago, when she’d loved this man beyond the dictates of reason or sense, but no longer.
“Why on earth would I do that? Are you saying I should just trust you? Sign over Sullivan’s and trust that you’ll ‘save’ the stores that have been in my family for five generations?” She shook her head. “I’d be a fool if I did business that way. And I assure you I am no fool.”
Miraculously, a taxi broke through the traffic and pulled to the curb then. The uniformed doorman drew open the door with a flourish. “Madam, your taxi.”
Caroline turned without waiting for an answer and entered the cab. She was just about to tell the driver where to take her when Roman filled the frame of the open door.
“This is my taxi,” she blurted as he shifted her over with a nudge of his hip.
“I’m going in the same direction.” He settled in beside her and gave the driver an address in the financial district. Caroline wanted to splutter in outrage, but she forced herself to breathe evenly, calmly. Her heart was a trapped butterfly in her chest. She couldn’t lead Roman to her door. She couldn’t bear to have him know where she lived. If Ryan came outside for some reason...
No. Caroline gave the driver the address of a town house in Greenwich Village. It wasn’t her town house, but she could walk the two streets over to her own house once the cab was gone.
“How did you know we were going in the same direction?” she demanded as the taxi began to inch back into traffic.
He shrugged. “Because I’m in no hurry. Even if you went north, I could eventually go south again.”
Caroline tucked her wrap over one shoulder. “That seems like a terrible waste of time.”
“I hardly think so. I have you alone now.”
Her heart thumped. Once, she would have been giddy to be alone with him for a long cab ride. She would have turned into his arms and tilted her head back for his kiss. Unwelcome heat bloomed in her cheeks, her belly. How many clandestine kisses had they shared in taxis such as this one?
Caroline didn’t want to think about it. She slid as far away from him as she could get, and turned to stare out the window at the mass of humanity moving along the sidewalks. A young woman in a yellow dress caught her eye as she walked beneath a streetlamp, her arm looped into the man’s beside her. When she threw her head back and laughed, Caroline felt a pang of envy. When was the last time she’d laughed so spontaneously?
Arrested by her laugh or her beauty, or some unidentifiable thing Caroline couldn’t see, the man drew the girl into his arms. Caroline craned her neck as the taxi moved past, watched as the girl wrapped her arms around the man’s neck and their lips met.
When she turned back, she could feel Roman’s eyes on her in the darkened taxi.
“Ah, romance,” he said, the words dripping with cynicism.
Caroline closed her eyes and swallowed. She bit her lip against the urge to say she was sorry for any pain she’d caused him. They’d said everything five years ago. It was too late now, and she wasn’t the same person she’d been then.
“What do you want from me, Roman?” Her voice sounded strained to her own ears. If he noticed, he didn’t comment.
“You know what I want. What I came here for.”
She turned to look at him, and barely stopped herself from sucking in her breath at the sight of him all dark and moody beside her. After five years, was she still supposed to be this affected by his dark male beauty?
“You’re wasting your time. Sullivan’s isn’t for sale at any price.”
There was silence b
etween them for a long moment. And then he burst into laughter. His voice was rich, deep and sexy, and a curl of heat wound through her at the sound.
“You will sell, Caroline. You will do it because you can’t bear to see it cease to exist. Be stubborn—and watch when your suppliers cut off your line of credit, one by one. Watch as you have to close one store, and then another, and still you cannot fill your orders or keep your stores supplied with goods. Sullivan’s is known for quality, for luxury. Will you cease to order the best, and settle for second best? Will you tell your customers they can no longer have the Russian caviar, the finest smoked salmon, the specialty cakes from Josette’s, the designer handbags from Italy or the custom suits in the men’s haberdashery?”
A shiver traveled up her spine, vibrated across her shoulder blades. Her stomach clenched hard. Yes, it was that bad. Yes, she’d been studying the list of her suppliers and wondering how she could cut corners and still keep the quality for which Sullivan’s was known. The specialty food shop was hugely expensive—and yes, she’d thought of downsizing that department, of eliminating it in some markets.
She’d wanted to ask her father. She’d wanted to sit at his feet and ask him what he thought, just as she’d wanted to turn to Jon and ask him for his opinion. But they were unavailable, and she would not choke. She would make the hard choices. For Ryan. She would do it for Ryan.
Family was everything. It was all she had.
“I won’t discuss this with you, Roman,” she said, her voice as hard as she could make it. “You don’t own Sullivan’s yet. If I have anything to say about it, you won’t ever get that chance.”
“This is the thing you fail to understand, solnyshko. You have no say. It is as inevitable as a sunset.”
“Nothing is inevitable. Not while I have my wits. I intend to fight you with everything I have. You will not win.”
His smile was lethally cold. And dangerously attractive if the spike in her temperature was any indication.
“Ah, but I will. This time, Caroline, I get my way.”
Her heart thumped. “And what’s that supposed to mean? Surely you aren’t still brooding over our brief affair. You can’t mean to acquire Sullivan’s simply to get revenge for past slights.”
She said the words as if they were nothing, as if the mere idea were ridiculous, though her pulse skittered wildly in her wrists, her throat.
The corners of his mouth tightened, and her insides squeezed into a tight ball.
“Brooding? Hardly that, my dear. I’ve realized since that night that my...” he paused “...feelings...were not quite what I thought they were.” His gaze dropped over her body, back up again. “I was enamored with you, this is true. But love? No.”
It should not hurt to hear him say such a thing, but it did. She’d loved him so much, and she’d believed that he had loved her in return.
And now he was telling her he never had. That it was all an illusion. The knowledge hurt far more than she’d have thought possible five years after the fact.
“Then why are you here?” she asked tightly. “Why does Sullivan’s matter to you? You own far more impressive department stores. You don’t need mine.”
His laugh was soft, mocking. “No, I don’t need them.” He leaned toward her suddenly, his eyes gleaming in the light from the traffic. Her stomach clenched in reaction, though she hardly knew what she was reacting to.
“I want them,” he growled. “And I want you.”
CHAPTER TWO
Kazarov Ruthless in Business and Bed, Beauty Says
HE HADN’T INTENDED to go that far, but now that he had, it was interesting to watch her reaction. Her breath hitched in sharply, her hazel-green eyes widening. She dropped her lashes, shielding her eyes from his as she worked to control her expression.
Since the moment she’d spun toward him on the pavement, he’d been remembering what it had been like with her. It annoyed him greatly. He had his pick of women. The kind of women who took lush gorgeousness to an art form, while Caroline’s beauty was less studied, less polished. Perhaps she was merely pretty, he decided. Not beautiful at all, but pretty.
But then she raised her lashes and speared him with those eyes, and he felt the jolt at gut level. She was an ice queen, and he wanted nothing more than to melt her frigid exterior. It angered him that he did. He’d had no intention whatsoever of touching her, yet here he was, threatening her with the prospect of once more becoming his mistress.
“Why?” she said, her voice laced with the same shock he felt at this turn of events.
Roman shrugged casually, though he felt anything but casual at the moment. “Perhaps I have not had enough of you,” he said. “Or perhaps I want to humiliate you as you humiliated me.”
She clutched her tiny evening purse in both hands. “You aren’t that kind of man, Roman. You can’t mean to force me into sleeping with you.”
Savageness surged within him. And the bitter taste of memories he’d rather forget. “You have no idea what kind of man I am, solnyshko. You never did.”
Her lip trembled, and it nearly undid him. But no, he had to remember how cold she was, how ruthless she had been when he’d laid his heart on the line and made a fool of himself over her. He’d trusted her. Believed her.
And she’d betrayed him.
Roman clenched his jaw tight. He’d fallen for her facade of sweet innocence—but it had been only a facade. He’d made the mistake of thinking that because he was the first man she’d given herself to, she felt more than she did.
I don’t love you, Roman. How could I? I am a Sullivan, and you are just a man who works for my father.
He hadn’t been good enough for Caroline Sullivan-Wells and her blue-blooded family. Forgetting that singular detail had been a mistake that had cost him dearly. Cost his family. When he’d been forced to leave the States, to return to Russia without a job or any money—because he’d sent most of it home in order to care for his mother—he’d lost much more than a woman he’d fancied himself in love with.
“I have a child, Roman. I don’t have time for anyone in my life besides him.”
Bitterness flooded him. Yes, she had a child. A son she’d had with Jon Wells, only months after she’d cut him from her life. She’d had no trouble moving on to the next man. Marrying the next man. Roman no longer cared that she had, but when he thought of what he’d been doing in those months after he’d left the States, the resentment nearly overwhelmed him.
His words came out hard. “I don’t believe I said anything about a relationship.”
Something flashed in her eyes then, something hard and cool—and something that spoke of panic shoved deep beneath the surface. His senses sharpened.
Interesting.
“I won’t sleep with you, Roman. Do your worst to me, to Sullivan’s, but you won’t gain what you think you will.”
Neither of them said anything for a long moment. And then, on impulse, he reached out and slid a finger along her cheek. The move clearly surprised her, but she didn’t flinch. A bubble of satisfaction welled within him as her pupils dilated and her skin heated beneath his touch. She was not unaffected, no matter that she pretended to be.
“How do you know what I wish to gain, solnyshko?” he purred.
* * *
Caroline couldn’t breathe properly. From the first second he’d touched her, sparks of sensation had been going off inside her like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Her body ached. Her limbs trembled. And liquid heat flooded her core without the slightest hesitation.
What was wrong with her?
Just because she hadn’t actually had sex in forever was no reason to respond to this man. Other men had touched her, yet she’d felt nothing. She’d tried to date a couple of times after Jon’s death, because everyone told her she should, and because she was so incredibly lonely without him in her life.
But each time her date leaned in to kiss her, she felt a wave of panic, not lust. The kisses were unremarkable, the touches not w
orth thinking about. She’d excused herself the first second she could, and she’d never accepted another invitation.
She was beginning to think she was meant to be alone, that she’d only experienced the passion she had because it had given her Ryan. Those days were long over.
Until now. Until the instant Roman had run his finger over her skin, she’d thought she was, for all intents and purposes, frozen inside.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. She didn’t want to feel anything for him. Not now. It was too complicated, and she couldn’t face the trouble it would cause her.
His ice-blue eyes were intent on hers, his presence overwhelming in the small space of the taxi. His gaze dropped to her lips, took a leisurely trip back up to meet her eyes.
“Why does anyone do anything?”
He was as she remembered, and yet he was different, too. Harder. More ruthless. In spite of what he’d said about not being in love with her, was it her fault that he’d changed? “I’m sorry, Roman,” she said, despite her determination not to. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His laugh stroked softly against her heightened nerves. “Hurt me? Nyet, my darling. You did not hurt me. Wounded my pride a bit, perhaps. But I quickly recovered, I assure you.”
Caroline swallowed. She’d been devastated after that night, but she’d borne it all with quiet stoicism. Jon had been the only one who’d known what it had cost her to marry him.
She dropped her gaze to where she still clutched her purse in her hands. She’d done what had to be done. She’d been the only one who could. When Jon’s parents had insisted on the match, when they’d threatened to sell their shares in Sullivan’s and deliver majority control to a rival who would gut the stores and scatter their employees, Caroline had stepped up and done her duty. She’d saved the family legacy and thousands of jobs. It was something to be proud of. And she was proud, damn it.
A Game With One Winner Page 2