by Lucy Ellis
‘It should,’ he replied, enjoying her reaction. ‘It came out of it this afternoon.’
The main course received the same enthusiasm and he watched her eat, itself a rare event. Most of the women he sat down at a table with picked their way around a plate and drank like fish. Maisy hardly touched her champagne, but cleaned up her plate.
‘I’ve spoken to a child psychologist, as I told you earlier,’ said Alexei as their plates were cleared. ‘He informs me Kostya needs to feel secure here before he’s told about his parents.’
‘I agree completely.’
Her cheeks were flushed now—a combination of the spices in the main dish and her single half glass of champagne. Alexei knew they had to get this thorny question of Kostya’s welfare sorted before he could dance with her and feed her gelato and watch her lick it off the spoon, and then off his tongue. He also had to get his body under control before he stood up.
‘I’m dreading it,’ she confessed.
He experienced a measure of guilt for his lascivious thoughts. He needed to focus on this. It mattered.
‘He hasn’t asked for his parents?’ he said slowly.
Maisy folded her napkin. ‘No.’
There was a long silence. He was clearly waiting for an explanation, but Maisy didn’t know where to start without being disloyal to Anais.
For once he didn’t push her, and Maisy heard herself saying, ‘I don’t know how it is in Russia, but often in England in high-flying families the children can be overlooked.’
Alexei went very still. ‘You’re telling me Leo was a neglectful parent?’
Maisy suddenly felt uncomfortable, realising she had stepped unwarily into dangerous territory. She wasn’t the only person at the table protective of the Kulikovs’ memory. Alexei wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
‘It depends on your definition of neglect.’ She decided to talk to her plate. It seemed the easiest thing to do. ‘He was a busy man—you know that. He wasn’t always around.’
‘Kostya is an infant,’ Alexei said with some assurance. ‘It’s natural his mother would be his primary caregiver.’
‘Anais had some difficulties.’ Maisy released the breath she had been holding. ‘She was very young—only twenty-one when she had him. She wasn’t particularly close to her own mother. It’s hard to explain. Anais didn’t spend a lot of time with Kostya.’
There—she’d said it. It was out there. She looked up to find Alexei was staring at her, and it wasn’t a look she was accustomed to from him.
‘What sort of concoction is this, Maisy? You’re trying to make me believe Leo Kulikov wasn’t a good father?’
‘It’s not a concoction, and I’m not saying they were bad people,’ she insisted. ‘I’m just trying to make you understand what’s going on in Kostya’s little head.’
‘I don’t need you for that, dushka, I’ve got a child psychologist who will deal with that problem. What I’m more interested in is why you’re so keen to make me think the worst.’
‘I’m not,’ Maisy protested. ‘You wanted to know—’ She broke off, upset by the contempt she could see forming in his eyes.
‘I know how much Leo loved his boy,’ said Alexei, in a voice that brooked no argument.
Maisy pushed the remainder of her plate away. ‘I’m not hungry any more,’ she said in a low voice.
Alexei leaned towards her. ‘Listen to me, Maisy. I don’t want to hear these stories. They don’t do you any credit. I wasn’t going to bring this up with you, but I’ve got some questions about your background I’d like cleared up before we go any further.’
‘My background?’ She hated the nervous tremor in her voice. It made her sound guilty of something.
‘Daughter of an unemployed single mother, yet privately educated, and you’d never held down a job until you appeared in the Kulikov household two years ago.’ He wielded the facts as if they were accusations.
Maisy flinched from them. He’d brought back so many memories she had hoped to leave behind for ever. She didn’t want them here tonight on this Italian rooftop. She wanted to be the woman she was in the process of becoming. She wanted him to be the man she had imagined him to be.
All of a sudden she felt the past was very close to the surface.
‘How did you find out all that?’ she asked, gathering herself together.
‘It’s my business to know. What? Did you think I’d just let you in the door without a background check? Give me a break.’
‘You could have asked me,’ she said, with no little dignity.
‘Yes, but would I believe you,’ he replied silkily.
The unfairness of his accusation hurt. ‘Probably not. You seem to think I’m a liar, but to what purpose I have no idea.’
He was looking at her as if she had done something unforgivable—as if she’d crawled out from under a rock somewhere. It would have been easier to make up some story, she realised sadly, tell him the same lies everybody else had expected from her: Leo and Anais were a super couple, with a super life and a super baby. But the truth was—like everyone—they had been flawed, and because they’d been larger than life their flaws had enlarged accordingly.
‘Tell me,’ said Alexei with deceptive calm, ‘why do you think I invited you to have dinner with me tonight?’
Maisy knew she was walking into a trap. She would answer and he would say something clever and she would look a bigger fool. So she didn’t say anything. She stared endlessly at her half-empty champagne glass as the seconds ticked by.
‘Did you think, Maisy, we were going to talk about your employment contract? With you in your strapless frock and me pouring you champagne?’
Don’t say it, she willed him. Please don’t say it.
‘Or did you think I was going to take you to bed and keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed?’
His words stripped her of cover. She had nowhere to hide from them because it was true. She had wanted to go to bed with him. She had worn her best dress and her laciest knickers. She had drunk some of the champagne for Dutch courage.
Kostya’s future had come second to her desire to draw Alexei to her.
For the first time she had put the little boy second and herself first, and now she was going to pay for it. He’d set her up. She wasn’t fit to look after the needs of a young child. She was a sex-crazed bimbo.
Swallowing hard, she lifted guilty eyes to meet his icy scorn. Her dignity lay in shreds around her. She felt the same way she had when huddled behind the bathroom door at Lantern Square. He did this to her.
‘Are you going to send me away?’ she asked hollowly.
Their eyes locked.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
There was a fraught silence.
Alexei suddenly wanted to smash the last five minutes and go back to where they’d been before. She was looking at him like a deer caught in the headlights—that same lost look he remembered from London. It made him want to gather her up and shelter her from the harsher realities of life, including his own. But she’d pushed all his buttons with that crack about Leo. It was absurd and it was wrong, he told himself.
‘Kostya needs you.’
Maisy frowned. He said it as if the idea was distasteful to him. As if she was everything he said she was. It gave her the nerve to push out her chair and get up.
‘If your stupid investigator had done a better job he would know I never worked for the Kulikovs. I went to school with Anais. We were best friends. I would have done anything for her. And I won’t let you wreck her little boy’s life. I’m one hundred per cent sure if Anais had known the future she would have named me Kostya’s guardian. You’re Leo’s work. Leo made the mistake. Kostya shouldn’t have to pay for it.’
She took a deep sustaining breath, taking some satisfaction that he looked pale and tense, but also horribly aware she had said some cruel things. But he had too. He had said she wanted to go to bed with him for money. He had hurt her.
Swaying a bit on her heels, she didn’t look at him. She just walked away. He didn’t try to stop her. Lust didn’t override loyalty. Family came first. And Maisy, however inviting, was just a woman. Women were everywhere, he thought cynically.
‘That dress,’ he said coolly after her. ‘Nice for a nanny. Leo must have paid you well. I expect you’re very expensive to keep, Maisy.’
‘No one has ever kept me,’ she defended herself over her bare shoulder.
‘I bet.’ It was a crass thing to say, and Alexei instantly regretted it.
His throwaway line hit Maisy square in the solar plexus. He made her feel like a whore in her pretty dress and her make-up. All the effort she’d gone to … She spun around, determined not to let him have the last word, only to find he was already on his feet and coming towards her, his expression contrite, as if he’d realised he’d gone too far. But she’d moved too quickly, and her spindly heels wouldn’t support the shift in her weight, and she went sprawling, jarring her shoulder as she tried to break her fall with one arm. Pain speared up her arm, making her cry out, and then she was lying on the ground, holding her arm and sucking back tears.
Alexei was on his knees beside her instantly, his arms coming around her. But as he touched her shoulder she cried out again.
‘Let me help you,’ he said gently, his anger no longer evident.
Maisy was too shaken up to protest, but as he lifted her she was thrown into immediate physical intimacy with him and it robbed her of breath. She could feel his biceps hard beneath her back, his big hand fastened around her thigh. He had to do these things to carry her, she reasoned wildly, but after the terrible things he had said to her the shivery reaction running through her body felt shameful. She averted her face from him, determined to block him out. If he saw how much he disturbed her it would just be more fuel for his accusations.
He carried her across the roof to the access door and down the stairs, as if she weighed nothing. Pain was pulsing through her shoulder, but the sheer awfulness of how cruelly his taunts had gone home overwhelmed it. He thought she was a liar, a party girl who spread her legs for anybody with enough cash, and he didn’t want her looking after Kostya.
She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t show that weakness.
She had just made the biggest fool of herself in the history of her life, and now a man who couldn’t stand her—moreover a man who was an utter pig of an unreconstructed idiot, who couldn’t see simple truths if they hit him in the face—was carrying her into …
His bedroom. Maisy’s heartbeat sped up despite the pain.
And wasn’t this what you were hoping for at the beginning of the night, Maisy Edmonds? a little voice niggled at her.
His bed was large and plain and masculine, with expensive dark blue linen. Fresh sheets, she registered. Had he been planning to seduce her here? Everything he had said to her came home, and she knew with every inch of her body she didn’t want to be in here. It was too humiliating.
She began to struggle. ‘Put me down. Put me down now!’
He was forced to release her and she slid to her feet, holding her arm folded over her chest. It was throbbing, but she had no intention of playing victim.
Alexei didn’t say a word. He just made a phone call whilst she stood there, not sure what to do. He finished the call. ‘A doctor’s coming up to the house,’ he said heavily. ‘Where is the pain coming from?’
‘I don’t know. I think I jarred it,’ she answered, swallowing hard. ‘I’ll go and wait in my room, if you don’t mind.’
‘Maisy, you had a nasty fall. Lie down here and let yourself to be checked out, okay?’
It sounded so reasonable, and the pain was pumping through her body. But she kept seeing the look on his face when she’d told him the truth about the Kulikovs. It shouldn’t matter so much, but it did.
In the end the pain won out and she sat down awkwardly on his bed. Alexei did something surprising. He dropped to one knee and reached for her foot, sliding off one shoe and then the other. There was something about seeing him silent on his knees in front of her that made her say, ‘It’s not your fault I fell. I did that to myself.’
‘How’s your arm?’ he asked quietly, not making a move.
‘I think it’s going numb,’ she said in a small voice.
‘You landed at a bad angle.’ He lifted his hand, hesitated, and then gently smoothed the tangle of curls that had been disturbed and now fell over one side of her face. Maisy swallowed. ‘I’d give you some painkillers, but I think we should wait until the doctor has a look.’
‘Okay.’ The truth was she didn’t want to be alone—not when her body felt as if it was in shock. And it wasn’t only the fall. The implications of everything he had thrown at her were beginning to sink in.
The doctor was an urbane older man who clearly knew Alexei. He was scrupulously polite to Maisy as he examined her shoulder and prescribed painkillers, which he handed over to Alexei with instructions. Nothing was broken. Sleep and time would heal her.
‘I’m a fraud,’ she said tiredly. ‘Nothing broken after all.’
Alexei sat down beside her on the bed. ‘Take these, Maisy,’ he said, and pressed two white pills against her lips.
More physical proximity she couldn’t handle. Maisy drew them in with her tongue, brushing against his fingers, blushing. He’d think she was coming on to him.
He poured a little water into her mouth and she swallowed them down. His thumb lingered on her bottom lip and Maisy gazed back at him, startled, feeling heavy and tired and numb. She shifted awkwardly as the boning in her bodice dug hard.
‘I need to get my dress off,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘I can’t sleep in it.’
‘Right.’ He reached behind her, his fingers starting on the dozen tiny fabric buttons. His touch whispered down her back and Maisy shut her eyes, wishing everything was different. ‘That’s the problem with couture,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘No zips.’
‘Anais gave it to me. I didn’t know it was couture,’ answered Maisy dully. ‘I never looked.’
She caught her bodice with her good arm as the dress sprung free. She sat there, huddled in it, looking anxiously over her shoulder at him.
‘If you turn your back I can stand up and drop it and then get into bed,’ she explained awkwardly. She waited miserably for him to make some crack about it being a lousy attempt to seduce him.
Instead he said quietly, ‘Of course.’
He was so formal she could only stare at him as he stood up and turned his back.
Maisy got off the bed and dropped the frock. Selfconsciously she stepped out of the dress and kicked it away, shifting back onto the bed, pulling the cover up to her neck.
‘Thank you,’ she said awkwardly.
The pillow felt blissful beneath her head. She could feel the drugs beginning to take effect. Alexei scooped up her beautiful dress.
‘I’ll leave you now,’ he said, in that oddly formal way. ‘If you need anything just call out. I’m in the room across the hall.’
Maisy closed her eyes, damming up the tears that were brimming. She sensed the moment the lights went out.
‘This wasn’t how I envisaged the end of our evening,’ she heard him say in a low voice from across the room.
I know, she thought miserably.
CHAPTER FIVE
MAISY opened her eyes in the vast bed to a low-grade headache and a great deal of self-recrimination as the memory of last night swamped her. She thrust her head under the pillow.
Of his bed.
She bolted upright, panic setting in as she realised she didn’t have a shred of clothing to wear. She was trapped in his bed in her lacy knickers. After everything he had said to her last night the last thing she wanted was to be accused of angling for sex. Because that was what he’d come out and accused h
er of—being some sort of bimbo on the make, cavorting in couture. Ridiculous as that was.
Oh, Lord, where was her dress? The last she’d seen of it he had been carrying it away with him. Surely there were some clothes in this room?
Wrapping her arms across her bare breasts, she ran to some double doors. They opened onto a walk-in wardrobe and she spotted his shirts immediately, grabbing the nearest one and sliding her injured arm carefully into one sleeve, then the other. She had trouble with the left side buttonholes, but eventually got it done up decently enough. The shirt tails dangled almost to her knees. She went into the bathroom and washed the raccoon make-up off her face, running a hand through her unruly hair. She had to admit she didn’t look that bad, all things considered, and the pain in her shoulder was now just a dull ache that should fade in a day or two.
All that had really got hurt last night was her pride.
Other thoughts intruded now. She remembered how gentle he had been with her when he’d realised she was hurt, how he had looked after her and how good that had felt. She had made the mistake of opening up to him a little, but he didn’t want to hear it. She needed to remember that. Leo’s death was still too raw for him. Only the knowledge that Alexei’s feelings for his friend ran that deep gave her any comfort this morning, and that was in regards to Kostya.
As for what he had said in regards to them, she probably should thank him. At least now she wouldn’t make an idiot of herself over him. He wasn’t going to kiss her again. He might have—he might have done a great many things. Until she opened her big mouth and brought up Leo and Anais. Now he thought she was a liar, and apparently angling to be a kept woman. If it wasn’t so offensive she would be laughing about it. Damn him, he owed her an apology.
Maisy glared at her reflection. She was going to get one.
Alexei felt like twenty kinds of bastard this morning as he pulled on a pair of jeans and nothing else.
He’d been so focussed on sexual conquest last night he’d barely appreciated Maisy’s company, but a long night with only his thoughts had replayed her laughter and her absurd commentary about his lifestyle and made him sorry he hadn’t tried to open her up a little more. But he’d closed all that down, slinging insults at her as she just sat there, completely defenceless. He had pretty much called her a whore, with nothing to support that accusation.