His Diamond of Convenience

by Maisey Yates

  Victoria spent the next several minutes talking about the charity and letting everyone know where they could make a donation. Dmitri barely heard her. Was she acting? Was this all an act? Not her supporting the charity, for there was no reason for her to do this if she didn’t care about the charity. But what he cared about was whether or not she meant that he was a good man. Whether or not she meant that she loved him.

  He recognized which part of London she was in then based on the background that was visible out the windows behind herself and the host.

  He picked up his black T-shirt from the ground and pulled it over his head. He should shower. He should change. But he didn’t have time.

  He had to get to Victoria. He had to get to her now.

  Because he suddenly realized with perfect clarity that he would never be able to atone for his sins. He would only be able to ask for forgiveness. It had been easy for him to see in Victoria. The way she punished herself endlessly. That she deserved more. But he had not recognized the same thing in himself.

  He did now. And he was tired of living in the darkness.

  He had a choice.

  He was ready to step out into the light.

  * * *

  Victoria felt drained after the interview. It’d been awful, sitting up there, trying to maintain composure when she just wanted to weep. When she just wanted to curl into a little ball of misery and lie on the floor for the rest of her life.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of demand in the little ball of misery market. No one seemed to have much use for one, it didn’t pay very well and at the end of the day, it was intensely boring.

  She took a deep breath and stepped out onto the London street, putting her sunglasses on as she did. She wanted the freedom to cry a little bit as she walked back to her apartment. It wasn’t that far, and it was preferable to taking a cab or the tube in her current condition.

  She dodged the deep scars in the pavement as she went, thinking that she imagined it was what the inside of her chest looked like about now. Cracked. Broken.

  Damn that man.

  The people in front of her slowed, and she could sense that something was holding up the flow of foot traffic. She looked up and saw a man standing there, wearing a long dark coat, dark pants and...athletic shoes.

  People were walking around him, doing the skillful tuck and roll, managing to maneuver their way by him without touching him. And he was facing the wrong way, holding everything up, simply standing. Simply standing and staring at her.

  “Dmitri?” She hadn’t meant to say his name out loud, but she found she didn’t have a whole lot of control where he was concerned.

  “You told me to watch you on TV. I did. I figured out you were filming near here.”

  “Yes. I was.” The response sounded so stupid, because it was obvious, but she couldn’t come up with anything more clever.

  “Did you mean what you said?”

  “Of course I did. Dmitri, regardless of what went on between us it doesn’t change the fact that your charity is worthy. It doesn’t change the fact that what you’re doing is good.” She wanted him to know that. Wanted him to understand his value, because he certainly didn’t seem to.

  “Not that.” He took an unsteady breath. “Not that.”

  “Then what?” Her heart was beating so fast, she was afraid it would beat right through her chest.

  “Did you mean it when you said you would always love me?”

  She felt light-headed now, dizzy. She had said that. She hadn’t even been aware of it. It had simply come pouring out of her because it was true. “We’re blocking the way.”

  He closed the distance between them, grabbing hold of her arms and tugging her close to him. “I don’t care. People can walk around us. Did you mean it?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It is everything,” he said, his voice rough. “It is all that matters.”

  “Yes. Yes, Dmitri, it’s true. I love you. I loved you when you said all of that horrible stuff to me in your hotel room. I loved you while I lay down on my couch and cried. I loved you when I took your ring off my finger and put it in that courier’s envelope. And I love you now. Right now, standing here on the street, with you giving me the third degree and not telling me why.”

  “Thank God.” He cupped the back of her head and pulled her to him, kissing her hard, kissing her deep. “Thank God for that.”

  She pulled away from him, anger, hope, desire all vying for top spot inside of her. “Aren’t you going to tell me why?” She desperately tried to catch her breath. “You said you didn’t love me.”

  “I lied to you. I knew I loved you, I knew I loved you when I sent you away. This is not new information to me. Victoria, I think I have loved you from the moment you chose me at that ball in New Orleans. And that night in New York when you tied my hands, when you made me yours, I wanted nothing more than to stay that way, forever. But I told myself it would end. I told myself it always did. After all, my own mother didn’t want me—why would you? But I realized something else today. It wasn’t that. I have been punishing myself since that day my father died. Everything I’ve done has kept me there, in the past. If I won, that win was always tempered by blows to the face. Literally, in most cases. Victoria, choosing passion is choosing to leave behind my sins. To do more than seek out temporary means of forgiveness. Choosing to be with you means that I can’t punish myself anymore. It means I can’t protect myself anymore.”

  “You don’t need to protect yourself from me,” she said.

  “But I did, my love, because I knew you had the power to devastate me. I knew that day my own mother wished that I had died instead and so I...I took that on myself. I lived as though I had died that day. As though I’d lost everything I was. I let that rejection, that wound, define me. I couldn’t face the idea of being rejected again.”

  Her throat tightened, tears stinging her eyes. “I understand, Dmitri. I understand that so well.”

  “I know you do. And I saw what you were doing to yourself, and yet still somehow had a blind spot in my own life.”

  “Because it’s so much easier to see the flaws in other people than it is to see them in yourself,” she said. “Certainly I recognized that you needed to change much sooner than I realized I needed to. But, Dmitri, I needed to change, too. You’ve changed me. You made me want more. You made me trust myself again. I hated my desires. I hated them for so long. I thought my feelings were broken, evil. But you made me see things differently. You made me see me differently.”

  “You’ve done the same for me. Because, Victoria, if you love me, how can I hate myself? And I did. For so long. I said I left the man I once was behind, but he followed me around, a constant reminder of what I did. Of how my mother hated me in the end. I couldn’t let go, and so I couldn’t move on. I could never have more than that horrible moment back in Moscow because I was still living in it.”

  “Please don’t hate yourself,” she said, the words coming out a choked whisper. “You are the best man that I know. I meant that, too.”

  “I was just a scared boy, and when my own mother looked at me like I was the devil, it was easy to believe that I was. And everything hurts so much I was constantly looking for ways to manage it, ways to deal with it while holding on to it. While keeping the reminder. That was why I fought. To remind myself that I didn’t deserve life, success, without pain.”

  “That was why I lived life the way I did, too. Lonely. Striving to please my father. Because I didn’t deserve to forget. I didn’t deserve to walk away from my mistake. But I’m done with that. I realize now that your mother, my father, should’ve loved us. My father should’ve hugged me after. He should’ve blamed the villain. But instead he blamed his daughter. And so I was still blaming me. I’m not saying I have no fault in what happened, but don’t
I deserve to walk away? Haven’t I paid enough at some point? Haven’t you?”

  “I think we both have.”

  “I love you, Dmitri. I want to stop living life as Geoffrey Calder’s disgraced daughter. I just want to be Victoria. And with you, for the first time in so long, that’s what I feel like. Just Victoria.”

  “Just Victoria who walked into my life like a hurricane and changed everything. You’re quite something, just Victoria.”

  “So are you, Dmitri. So are you. Maybe neither of us are so bad. How could we be? We changed each other.”

  “I love you, Victoria. I left love behind the day I left my family home. I haven’t loved anyone since. And I know full well no one has loved me. Until now. Until you. And I don’t have room inside of me anymore for anger, for hate, hate directed at other people or myself. Because I’m too full with what I feel for you.”

  “Oh, Dmitri. Me, too. Me, too.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, and she didn’t care that everyone was having to walk around them. Didn’t care that they were holding up traffic, didn’t care that they were making a scene. Only a month ago, she wouldn’t have allowed something like this. Wouldn’t have let herself be in the way. Wouldn’t have exposed herself to criticism in this way. But she didn’t care now.

  Because she was happy. Because she was in love.

  Because Dmitri loved her for who she was, not for how she behaved.

  He stepped away from her again, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and taking out the ring. “I want to give this to you now, again. For real.”

  “Oh...”

  “Unless you want a clear diamond. I won’t force you to wear a ring you don’t want.”

  “It’s funny. I wouldn’t choose a different ring now. Because this one came from you.”

  “To make you angry.”

  “I think that makes me like it even more. I think yellow is my color, after all.”

  He took her hand in his and slid the ring onto her finger. So different from the first time he’d given it to her, when she had put it on her own hand. When she had been angry with him for going against what she had asked for just to be contrary. “Victoria, will you marry me? And will you allow me to give your family London Diva as a wedding present?”

  She scrubbed at her face, wiped away the tears that were flowing down her cheeks. “I will. To both. But you know I don’t need London Diva.”

  “I know. But it is customary to attempt to win the favor of one’s father-in-law, is it not?”

  She laughed, a shaky, watery sound. She was happy, and she was on the verge of tears. She had never felt so full of emotion in her life. And it was wonderful. “I think so. And I might be on my way to being back in his favor, too.”

  “He should be trying to win back yours. Like I am. I have something else for you,” he said. “Something that means more than the ring.” He reached into his pocket again and produced the leather cuff. “This is yours,” he said. “Because you are right. I was bound up in the past. And I want to be free. The only one allowed to tie my wrists...is you.”

  More tears joined those that had already flowed, tracing the well-worn tracks on her cheeks. She took the cuff from him and held it out. “I don’t think either of us needs this anymore, do you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t. I don’t need anything to tie me to the past. I’m ready to walk into the future.”

  She turned and tossed the cuff into the bin. “I’d love to have been more dramatic and thrown it over a bridge or something, but I don’t want to spoil the moment by getting a fine for littering.”

  He laughed. “Well...there was slightly less drama to all that than I imagined there might be.”

  “It’s because you’ve already let it go,” she said. “You already had the ceremony.” She put her hand on his chest. “The change already happened here.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it did. And I thank you for that.”

  “You did the same for me. So I guess I owe you thanks, too. Oh, and vows. That I’ll stay with you forever and ever and—”

  He cut her words off with a kiss, and when they parted, he smiled down at her. And she could sense the lightness in him. Could sense that a weight had been removed from his shoulders. That there was no longer anything standing between them.

  “I know I am not a prince. This might seem like a bit of a downgrade.”

  “Not at all. Better the devil you love, than the prince you don’t, right?”

  “I’m not sure about that, but I’m very glad you are.”

  She pressed another kiss to his lips. “We should probably get out of the sidewalk now. And find somewhere private. If I recall correctly, when I proposed to you, you asked that I take off my dress.”

  “I vaguely remember that.”

  “I know I was a bit uncooperative the first time around. But this time, I’m feeling a little more agreeable.”

  “Oh, never get too agreeable, Victoria. I enjoy you far too much when you put up a fight.”

  “Once a fighter, always a fighter.”

  He laughed. “Perhaps. But I’m not going to fight you.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Because, you are mine now, always and forever. Unconditionally.”

  “You have no idea how much those words mean to me.”

  “I have a fair idea. Because I know how much they would mean to me.”

  “Then it’s a good thing that you belong to me, that we belong to each other.”

  She looped her arm through his, and they began to walk down the street together, keeping the pace of the crowd, rather than holding it up. “Yes, we do. Always.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for a special excerpt from PART TIME COWBOY by Maisey Yates.

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  SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM

  Read on for a sneak peek of PART TIME COWBOY, the first story in the COPPER RIDGE series from USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates.

  SADIE WATCHED, AND TRIED not to let her mouth hang open, as Eli came closer, shirtless and muscular and just im-damned-possible not to stare at. He had dirt on his chest. His hairy, masculine, muscular chest.

  He’d looked so clean in that deputy sheriff’s uniform of his. As if he’d ironed it directly onto his body so that it would form straight to his physique and never wrinkle. And he looked good in it.

  But never had she imagined that there was something so raw and manly underneath it all. He was downright...rough and uncivilized beneath all that law and order.

  She cleared her throat and met his brown eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  And all her good intentions fell like a Jenga tower when he grabbed the middle of the crown-molding bundle she was holding and lifted it up, out of her hands, to hoist it over his shoulder.

  “Where do you want it?” he asked.

  Her brain was taking in too much stimulus to compute the exact question. He was standing there, every muscle outlined to perfection. He just looked so damned capable, holding things that had been almost impossible for her to
manage, as if they weren’t anything at all.

  Actually, that part was really freaking annoying.

  But it looked great. And she couldn’t refrain from letting herself have a little moment. One where she admired the strength in his chest, the sharp, defined lines in his stomach. And down beneath those abs, a perfectly flat plane with deep grooves on either side of it that disappeared beneath the low-slung waistband of his jeans.

  She almost had to bite her own fist to keep from whimpering.

  What was wrong with her? She didn’t lust after guys she didn’t like. Anymore. Sure she’d lusted after him as a teenager—mildly, until he’d arrested her. But she’d grown up since then.

  She liked it simple. She liked nice men who wanted a sweet, easy relationship, and when that wasn’t easily available, she did without.

  She’d been without for a while, so she was clearly just having a weak moment on the physical desire front. And, hey, that happened. But that didn’t mean she was going to do anything about it. Most especially not with Eli Garrett. No, thank you...

  Find out what happens next in PART TIME COWBOY by USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates.

  Available April 2015 from HQN Books.

  And don’t miss the COPPER RIDGE novella, SHOULDA BEEN A COWBOY, available March 2015!

  www.HQNBooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Maisey Yates