Luring a Lady

by Nora Roberts

The tools didn’t matter, only the result. Now she was there with him, beautiful, warm, alive. And he knew it was a piece he would never part with.

  Sitting back, he circled his shoulders to relieve the stiffness. It had been a viciously long day, starting before dawn. He’d had to channel the edge of his rage into organizing the cleaning up and repair the worst of the damage. Now that the impetus that had driven him to complete the bust was passed, he was punchy with fatigue. But he didn’t want to go to bed. An empty bed.

  How could he miss her so much after only hours? Why did it feel as though she were a world away when she was only at the other end of the city? He wasn’t going to go through another night without her, he vowed as he stood up to pace. She was going to have to understand that. He would make her understand that. A woman had no right to make herself vital to a man’s existence then leave him restless and alone at midnight.

  Dragging a hand through his hair, he considered his options. He could go to bed and will himself to sleep. He could call her and satisfy himself with the sound of her voice. Or he could go uptown and beat on her door until she let him in.

  He grinned, liking the third choice best. Snatching up a shirt, he tugged it on as he headed for the door. Sydney gave a surprised gasp as he yanked it open just as her hand was poised to knock.

  “Oh. What instincts.” She pressed the hand to her heart. “I’m sorry to come by so late, but I saw your light was on, so I—”

  He didn’t let her finish, but pulled her inside and held her until she wondered her ribs didn’t crack. “I was coming for you,” he muttered.

  “Coming for me? I just left the restaurant.”

  “I wanted you. I wanted to—” He broke off and snapped her back. “It’s after midnight. What are you doing coming all the way downtown after midnight?”

  “For heaven’s sake—”

  “It’s not safe for a woman alone.”

  “I was perfectly safe.”

  He shook his head, cupping her chin. “Next time, you call. I’ll come to you.” Then his eyes narrowed. An artist’s eyes, a lover’s eyes saw beyond carefully repaired makeup. “You’ve been crying.”

  There was such fury in the accusation, she had to laugh. “No, not really. Mother got a bit emotional, and there was a chain reaction.”

  “I thought you said you’d made up with her.”

  “I did. I have. At least I think we’ve come to a better understanding.”

  He smiled a little, tracing a finger over Sydney’s lips. “She does not approve of me for her daughter.”

  “That’s not really the problem. I’m afraid she’s feeling a little worn down. She had her plans blow up in her face tonight.”

  “You’ll tell me.”

  “Yes.” She walked over, intending to collapse on his badly sprung couch. But she saw the bust. Slowly she moved closer to study it. When she spoke, her voice was low and thick. “You have an incredible talent.”

  “I carve what I see, what I know, what I feel.”

  “Is this how you see me?”

  “It’s how you are.” He laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. “For me.”

  Then she was beautiful for him, Sydney thought. And she was trembling with life and love, for him. “I didn’t even pose for you.”

  “You will.” He brushed his lips over her hair. “Talk to me.”

  “When I met Mother at the restaurant, Channing was with her.”

  Over Sydney’s head, Mikhail’s eyes darkened dangerously. “The banker with the silk suits. You let him kiss you before you let me.”

  “I knew him before I knew you.” Amused, Sydney turned and looked jealousy in the eye. “And I didn’t let you kiss me, as I recall. You just did.”

  He did so again, ruthlessly. “You won’t let him again.”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He drew her to the sofa. “Then he can live.”

  With a laugh, she threw her arms around him for a hug, then settled her head on his shoulder. “None of it’s his fault, really. Or my mother’s, either. It’s more a matter of habit and circumstance. She’d set up the evening after persuading Channing that the time was ripe to propose.”

  “Propose?” Mikhail spun her around to face him. “He wants to marry you?”

  “Not really. He thought he did. He certainly doesn’t want to marry me anymore.” But he was shoving her out of the way so he could get up and pace. “There’s no reason to be angry,” Sydney said as she smoothed down her jumpsuit. “I was the one in the awkward position. As it is I doubt he’ll speak to me again.”

  “If he does, I’ll cut out his tongue.” Slowly, Mikhail thought, working up the rage. “No one marries you but me.”

  “I’ve already explained…” She trailed off as breath lodged in a hard ball in her throat. “There’s really no need to go into this,” she managed as she rose. “It’s late.”

  “You wait,” Mikhail ordered and strode into the bedroom. When he came back carrying a small box, Sydney’s blood turned to ice. “Sit.”

  “No, Mikhail, please—”

  “Then stand.” He flipped open the top of the box to reveal a ring of hammered gold with a small center stone of fiery red. “The grandfather of my father made this for his wife. He was a goldsmith so the work is fine, even though the stone is small. It comes to me because I am the oldest son. If it doesn’t please you, I buy you something else.”

  “No, it’s beautiful. Please, don’t. I can’t.” She held her fisted hands behind her back. “Don’t ask me.”

  “I am asking you,” he said impatiently. “Give me your hand.”

  She took a step back. “I can’t wear the ring. I can’t marry you.”

  With a shake of his head, he pulled her hand free and pushed the ring on her finger. “See, you can wear it. It’s too big, but we’ll fix it.”

  “No.” She would have pulled it off again, but he closed his hand over hers. “I don’t want to marry you.”

  His fingers tightened on hers, and a fire darted into his eyes, more brilliant than the shine of the ruby. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to get married,” she said as clearly as she could. “I won’t have what we started together spoiled.”

  “Marriage doesn’t spoil love, it nurtures it.”

  “You don’t know,” she snapped back. “You’ve never been married. I have. And I won’t go through it again.”

  “So.” Struggling with temper, he rocked back on his heels. “This husband of yours hurt you, makes you unhappy, so you think I’ll do the same.”

  “Damn it, I loved him.” Her voice broke, and she covered her face with her hand as the tears began to fall.

  Torn between jealousy and misery, he gathered her close, murmuring endearments as he stroked her hair. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Let me understand.” He tilted her face up to kiss the tears. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t yell at you anymore.”

  “It’s not that.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please, let this go.”

  “I can’t let this go. Or you. I love you, Sydney. I need you. For my life I need you. Explain to me why you won’t take me.”

  “If there was anyone,” she began in a rush, then shook her head before she could even wish it. “Mikhail, I can’t consider marriage. Hayward is too much of a responsibility, and I need to focus on my career.”

  “This is smoke, to hide the real answer.”

  “All right.” Bracing herself, she stepped away from him. “I don’t think I could handle failing again, and losing someone I love. Marriage changes people.”

  “How did it change you?”

  “I loved Peter, Mikhail. Not the way I love you, but more than anyone else. He was my best friend. We grew up together. When my parents divorced, he was the only one I could talk to. He cared, really cared, about how I felt, what I thought, what I wanted. We could sit for hours on the beach up at the Hamptons and wat
ch the water, tell each other secrets.”

  She turned away. Saying it all out loud brought the pain spearing back.

  “And you fell in love.”

  “No,” she said miserably. “We just loved each other. I can hardly remember a time without him. And I can’t remember when it started to become a given that we’d marry someday. Not that we talked about it ourselves. Everyone else did. Sydney and Peter, what a lovely couple they make. Isn’t it nice how well they suit? I suppose we heard it so much, we started to believe it. Anyway, it was expected, and we’d both been raised to do what was expected of us.”

  She brushed at tears and wandered over to his shelves. “You were right when you gave me that figure of Cinderella. I’ve always followed the rules. I was expected to go to boarding school and get top grades. So I did. I was expected to behave presentably, never to show unacceptable emotions. So I did. I was expected to marry Peter. So I did.”

  She whirled back. “There we were, both of us just turned twenty-two—quite an acceptable age for marriage. I suppose we both thought it would be fine. After all, we’d known each other forever, we liked the same things, understood each other. Loved each other. But it wasn’t fine. Almost from the beginning. Honeymooning in Greece. We both loved the country. And we both pretended that the physical part of marriage was fine. Of course, it was anything but fine, and the more we pretended, the further apart we became. We moved back to New York so he could take his place in the family business. I decorated the house, gave parties. And dreaded watching the sun go down.”

  “It was a mistake,” Mikhail said gently.

  “Yes, it was. One I made, one I was responsible for. I lost my closest friend, and before it was over, all the love was gone. There were only arguments and accusations. I was frigid, why shouldn’t he have turned to someone else for a little warmth? But we kept up appearances. That was expected. And when we divorced, we did so in a very cold, very controlled, very civilized manner. I couldn’t be a wife to him, Mikhail.”

  “It’s not the same for us.” He went to her.

  “No, it’s not. And I won’t let it be.”

  “You’re hurt because of something that happened to you, not something you did.” He caught her face in his hands when she shook her head. “Yes. You need to let go of it, and trust what we have. I’ll give you time.”

  “No.” Desperate, she clamped her hands on his wrists. “Don’t you see it’s the same thing? You love me, so you expect me to marry you, because that’s what you want—what you think is best.”

  “Not best,” he said, giving her a quick shake. “Right. I need to share my life with you. I want to live with you, make babies with you. Watch them grow. There’s a family inside us, Sydney.”

  She jerked away. He wouldn’t listen, she thought. He wouldn’t understand. “Marriage and family aren’t in my plans,” she said, suddenly cold. “You’re going to have to accept that.”

  “Accept? You love me. I’m good enough for that. Good enough for you to take to your bed, but not for changing plans. All because you once followed rules instead of your heart.”

  “What I’m following now is my common sense.” She walked by him to the door. “I’m sorry, I can’t give you what you want.”

  “You will not go home alone.”

  “I think it’ll be better if I leave.”

  “You want to leave, you leave.” He stalked over to wrench the door open. “But I’ll take you.”

  It wasn’t until she lay teary and fretful in her bed that she realized she still wore his ring.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It wasn’t that she buried herself in work over the next two days, it was that work buried her. Sydney only wished it had helped. Keeping busy was supposed to be good for the morale. So why was hers flat on its face?

  She closed the biggest deal of her career at Hayward, hired a new secretary to take the clerical weight off Janine and handled a full-staff meeting. Hayward stock had climbed three full points in the past ten days. The board was thrilled with her.

  And she was miserable.

  “An Officer Stanislaski on two, Ms. Hayward,” her new secretary said through the intercom.

  “Stan—oh.” Her spirits did a jig, then settled. Officer. “Yes, I’ll take it. Thank you.” Sydney pasted on a smile for her own peace of mind. “Alex?”

  “Hey, pretty lady. Thought you’d want to be the first to know. They just brought your old pal Lloyd Bingham in for questioning.”

  Her smiled faded. “I see.”

  “The insurance investigator took your advice and kept an eye on him. He met with a couple of bad numbers yesterday, passed some bills. Once they were picked up, they sang better than Springsteen.”

  “Then Lloyd did hire someone to vandalize the building.”

  “So they say. I don’t think you’re going to have any trouble from him for a while.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “You were pretty sharp, homing in on him. Brains and beauty,” he said with a sigh that nearly made her smile again. “Why don’t we take off to Jamaica for a couple of days? Drive Mikhail crazy?”

  “I think he’s already mad enough.”

  “Hey, he’s giving you a hard time? Just come to Uncle Alex.” When she didn’t respond, the teasing note dropped out of his voice. “Don’t mind Mik, Sydney. He’s got moods, that’s all. It’s the artist. He’s nuts about you.”

  “I know.” Her fingers worried the files on her desk. “Maybe you could give him a call, tell him the news.”

  “Sure. Anything else you want me to pass on?”

  “Tell him…no,” she decided. “No, I’ve already told him. Thanks for calling, Alex.”

  “No problem. Let me know if you change your mind about Jamaica.”

  She hung up, wishing she felt as young as Alex had sounded. As happy. As easy. But then Alex wasn’t in love. And he hadn’t punched a hole in his own dreams.

  Is that what she’d done? Sydney wondered as she pushed away from her desk. Had she sabotaged her own yearnings? No, she’d stopped herself, and the man she loved from making a mistake. Marriage wasn’t always the answer. She had her own example to prove it. And her mother’s. Once Mikhail had cooled off, he’d accept her position, and they could go on as they had before.

  Who was she kidding?

  He was too stubborn, too bullheaded, too damn sure his way was the right way to back down for an instant.

  And what if he said all or nothing? What would she do then? Snatching up a paper clip, she began to twist it as she paced the office. If it was a matter of giving him up and losing him, or giving in and risking losing him…

  God, she needed someone to talk to. Since it couldn’t be Mikhail, she was left with pitifully few choices. Once she would have taken her problems to Peter, but that was…

  She stopped, snapping the mangled metal in her fingers. That was the source of the problem. And maybe, just maybe, the solution.

  Without giving herself time to think, she rushed out of her office and into Janine’s. “I have to leave town for a couple of days,” she said without preamble.

  Janine was already rising from behind her new desk. “But—”

  “I know it’s sudden, and inconvenient, but it can’t be helped. There’s nothing vital pending at the moment, so you should be able to handle whatever comes in. If you can’t, then it has to wait.”

  “Sydney, you have three appointments tomorrow.”

  “You take them. You have the files, you have my viewpoint. As soon as I get to where I’m going, I’ll call in.”

  “But, Sydney.” Janine scurried to the door as Sydney strode away. “Where are you going?”

  “To see an old friend.”

  Less than an hour after Sydney had rushed from her office, Mikhail stormed in. He’d had it. He’d given the woman two days to come to her senses, and she was out of time. They were going to have this out and have it out now.

  He breezed by the new secretary with a curt no
d and pushed open Sydney’s door.

  “Excuse me. Sir, excuse me.”

  Mikhail whirled on the hapless woman. “Where the hell is she?”

  “Ms. Hayward is not in the office,” she said primly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

  “If not here, where?”

  “I’ll handle this, Carla,” Janine murmured from the doorway.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Carla made her exit quickly and with relief.

  “Ms. Hayward’s not here, Mr. Stanislaski. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Tell me where she is.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.” The look in his eyes had her backing up a step. “I only know she’s out of town for a day or two. She left suddenly and didn’t tell me where she was going.”

  “Out of town?” He scowled at the empty desk, then back at Janine. “She doesn’t leave her work like this.”

  “I admit it’s unusual. But I got the impression it was important. I’m sure she’ll call in. I’ll be happy to give her a message for you.”

  He said something short and hard in Ukrainian and stormed out again.

  “I think I’d better let you tell her that yourself,” Janine murmured to the empty room.

  Twenty-four hours after leaving her office, Sydney stood on a shady sidewalk in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. A headlong rush of adrenaline had brought her this far, far enough to have her looking at the home where Peter had settled when he’d relocated after the divorce.

  The impulsive drive to the airport, the quick shuttle from city to city had been easy enough. Even the phone call to request an hour of Peter’s time hadn’t been so difficult. But this, this last step was nearly impossible.

  She hadn’t seen him in over three years, and then it had been across a wide table in a lawyer’s office. Civilized, God, yes, they’d been civilized. And strangers.

  It was foolish, ridiculous, taking off on this kind of tangent. Talking to Peter wouldn’t change anything. Nothing could. Yet she found herself climbing the stairs to the porch of the lovely old row house, lifting the brass knocker and letting it rap on the door.

  He answered himself, looking so much the same that she nearly threw out her hands to him as she would have done once. He was tall and leanly built, elegantly casual in khakis and a linen shirt. His sandy hair was attractively rumpled. But the green eyes didn’t light with pleasure, instead remaining steady and cool.