St Kilda.
Where their rollercoaster ride had started—the last stop on their first date, on that magical tour of Melbourne. But somehow the world was a greyer, bleaker place without Levander beside her.
As she headed into the café, where they had sat and talked for hours, it was as if a curtain had lifted and the scenery had been changed. Happy families were at every table: children plunging long spoons into deep glasses of ice-cream, young, beautiful couples wading through the papers and idly watching the world go by, unaware of the seamier clientele that would frequent it later.
Sitting at a corner booth, Millie ordered coffee, clasped her hands around the vast mug and wondered if she’d ever be warm again—wondered how she could go back and face them all.
And she’d have to.
Her passport, her clothes…
Oh, God, what had she done? Maybe she should have just gone through with it. Certainly she should have spoken to Levander. But how—how could she…?
How could she tell him that the autonomous, principled man she’d fallen in love with didn’t match up to a man who would make a baby to appease his father—however high the stakes?
‘I am sorry.’ His rich, deep voice broke into her racing thoughts, and her eyes darted up to where he stood over her. ‘May I sit?’
She couldn’t speak, so instead she nodded, bracing herself for a vitriolic outburst Levander style. She was bemused at the hesitancy in him, stunned when he took her mug of coffee from her and held her hands, before taking a deep breath and finally talking.
‘I am sorry—sorry to shame you. But it is not your shame, it is mine—remember that. I will tell everyone.’
‘Sorry?’ Millie frowned. His apology completely unexpected, and she was unable to look at him—just stared at his fingers entwined around hers, utterly perplexed by what he was saying and flailing for a response. ‘It isn’t about shame, Levander. It’s…I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t marry you knowing—’
‘Pardon?’ He interrupted her stumbling explanation—and for the first time she managed to look at him, saw the confusion in his eyes that mirrored her own.
‘I didn’t mean to run away—I wasn’t planning it. I just…’
‘You jilted me?’ She winced at the phrase, but the question in his voice made no sense—and what made even less sense was the tiny flicker of a smile playing on the edge of his lips. ‘You jilted me?’
‘Why do you think I’m here?’ She glanced to the large clock on the wall, and then back to him. ‘Why, when we should be walking out of the church arm in arm around now, am I sitting in a café in St Kilda, bawling my eyes out?’
‘Because I jilted you.’ His shocking words halted her. ‘Because half an hour before you were due to leave for the church I rang Annika and told her I couldn’t do it to you—couldn’t force you to be my wife…’
‘You jilted me?’ It was so appalling, so embarrassing, she could barely get her head around it. ‘I was left at the altar…?’
‘Ah…’ Levander shook his head. ‘Apparently you were never going to make it to the altar…’
And she realised then why he’d given that strange smile when she’d made her stumbling explanation. The humiliation she’d thought she’d inflicted on him, the embarrassment, the shame she’d thought she’d wreaked on another human being, eradicated now. Millie actually managed a shocked giggle as she remembered Annika shouting on the phone as she’d sped out of the room.
‘Can I ask why?’ Her smile faded as he confronted her, the real issues bobbing back up to the dark surface. ‘Why you chose not to marry me—why you think you and our child would be better off without me?’
‘I don’t,’ Millie sobbed. ‘I won’t…It’s just…Annika told me about your father—that she had begged you to have a child the night we met.’
‘My whole family has begged me to procreate for years now.’ Levander shrugged. ‘Why does that shock you? You heard us talking that night…’
‘I didn’t hear that,’ Millie gasped.
‘Millie, I am loath to give him even a few more years’ work from me—do you really think for one minute I would sign away my life for him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Millie admitted. She was crying now—crying in a way she only had since she’d met him. From the day she’d left his arms and headed back to England, from when the pregnancy test had proved positive, since he’d invaded her world and stripped her bare, inflamed her raw emotions till everything was in Technicolor—every thought, every feeling, more intense somehow. ‘I don’t know if I was just looking for an excuse not to marry you…’
‘Would you believe that I am not trying to appease my father if I tell you that last night I spoke with him? We went out, and he offered me—’
‘I know about that.’ Millie shivered. ‘I know that the first child to produce a Kolovsky heir gets the prize…’
‘I declined. It is a ridiculous idea. How could I solely inherit when I have two brothers and a sister?’ He took in her shocked reaction. ‘I told him that I would continue to work for him—but only if I can do it from London.’
‘London?’ Millie blinked at him. ‘You were prepared to move to London?’
‘I still am.’ He stated it as if it was obvious. ‘I was hoping when I said it that we would be doing it together, as a proper family, but now I accept that is not possible. However, I still want to be the best father I can be—and I cannot do that from Australia. Even if we are not together, I know you will treat me fairly.’ He looked at her stunned face and explained a touch further. ‘I trust you, Millie.’
And for someone with his past, Millie realised that trust was almost better than love. Not that it helped right now—not that it helped when the man of your dreams was telling you the reason that he couldn’t actually bring himself to marry you. But later it would. Millie knew that later, when she replayed this conversation, somehow the fact that after all he’d been through he actually trusted her might be just enough sustain her in the end.
‘I woke up this morning and I realised I trust you—that marriage is not needed for the sake of our child. I know that you will put our baby’s interests first—that I do not have to force myself into the picture to be there.’
‘Because you are there.’ Millie trembled. ‘Whether we’re married or not, friends or not, you will always be this child’s father. Always.’
‘I know that now. I know you would never keep me from my child. Not like—’He stopped himself then, and even though she was drowning in her own grief, choking on her own feelings, something in his voice reached her.
Her forehead creased into a frown. ‘Levander—things were different then. It wasn’t like now, when you can pop on a plane—they thought you were safe, they thought…’ Her voice petered out as she looked beyond his effortless beauty, beyond those brooding eyes, and right into his very soul. She saw not pain, not bitterness or regret, but raw, unbridled agony.
The dawning suspicion, when it came to her, was so utterly devastating that her first reaction was to recoil, to close her eyes and block out what she could see written in his eyes.
‘He knew, didn’t he?’
‘No.’ Levander closed his eyes, pulled back his hand. But Millie wasn’t about to let go, grabbing it back and holding tightly. ‘He didn’t know anything.’
‘She did, though…’ Millie whispered. ‘Nina knew, didn’t she?’
‘Don’t go there—it is not worth the pain.’
‘Whose pain?’ Millie asked angrily, protectively. ‘What about your pain?’
‘If my family were to know—if my father ever found out what she did…Annika, Iosef…’ He dragged in a breath. ‘They cannot know—it would finish him.’
‘It won’t finish me.’ Somehow her voice was firm. ‘You said you trust me.’
‘I do.’
‘So tell me.’
He swallowed so hard it was if he was choking. ‘What I told you before—all of it is true except…’ His eye
s found hers then, his hands held hers, gripping them tightly as he told her the truth—the real truth this time. Not the Kolovsky version, but the truth of a little boy who had seen far, far too much. ‘The day before I went to the baby house we went to my father’s—Nina answered; she was pregnant. I remember that, and I remember my father wasn’t home. My mother told Nina how sick she was. I remember because it was the first time I realised that my mother was actually dying—she was coughing and crying, and she told Nina her family could not afford to have me when she was gone…’ He faltered for a moment, so Millie held his hand tighter.
She preferred the old version. Life had somehow been easier when she’d thought him bitter and jealous. The appalling truth was more than anyone should have to bear.
‘Nina didn’t care. I just remember them arguing. My mother was crying so hard she could barely breathe, and then Nina shooed us away as if we were gypsies come begging.’
Some agonies were just too big for tears. Life was so unbearable at times that to break down and merely cry would almost be an insult. Millie wanted to howl—wanted to scream at a world that had been so cruel. Rage was churning in her—a rage so strong it almost propelled her from her seat, to find Nina, to tell Ivan…But somehow she held it in check—she knew it couldn’t possibly help him.
‘Does she know…’ She tried to keep the hatred from her voice. ‘Does she know you can remember?’
‘The day I found out you were pregnant I told Nina. Now she has to live with her fear. We all have to live with our mistakes. Last night you said you should be careful what you wish for…’A mirthless smile ghosted his lips, and his English was less than perfect as he struggled to tell her more about his past. ‘When my mother took me to dom rebyonka, the baby house, she told me it would not be for long—that I was to be good and wait, and that my father would come and get me. I don’t know if she went back to speak with him again. I don’t really want to know. But every night I looked out of the window and I wished—I wished for him, for a family, and later as I got older I wished too for money, and I wished for beautiful women. I got every last wish. Compared to those poor bastards still there, I have nothing to complain about.’
‘Oh, but you do.’
She got it then—as much as anyone who hadn’t lived his life possibly could. Since she’d found out she was pregnant she’d wondered if she was up to being a mother—the mother she wanted to be—if she could provide for her child the happy, secure childhood her own parents had given her. But for Levander there were no happy memories, no foundations on which to build. Just a much too late glimpse of family was all he had known. A family fractured by his very presence. His arrival had split the family, caused his half-brothers’ anger and blame, his father’s guilt, his stepmother’s fear.
‘I wanted us to be married. I thought that maybe then I would have more rights—I knew that if the courts had to choose between us, if my past came out…’
‘There’ll be no court,’ Millie whispered. ‘I told you there was never going to be court—and anyway, Levander, no court would hold this against you. None of this is your fault.’
‘I know that now.’ Levander nodded, and with tears swimming in her eyes she tried to look at him as she attempted to say the bravest words of her life—to tell the man who had just jilted her, the man who had wanted marriage for all the wrong reasons, that no matter how others in his life had treated him, she loved him—loved him for everything he was.
‘That night was the most rash, reckless thing I’ve ever done—but it wasn’t an accident. I didn’t fall into bed with you that night because of your looks or your money or…’ Staring skywards for clarity was her worst mistake. Tears tumbled down her cheeks as she rewound a touch—aimed for total honesty. ‘Okay, maybe your looks did play a part—but they weren’t enough to hold me. It was you, Levander—you were the first person I’d trusted, the first person I gave myself to. And whatever the outcome—that night wasn’t an accident. As dazzled as they were, my eyes were open. Did it never enter your head that all this time I’ve loved you?’
But how could it have? Millie realised as he frowned over at her. How could a man like Levander, who had never known it, believe in something as simple and as complicated as love?
‘The only reason I couldn’t go through with our marriage in the end was because I knew you’d never love me.’
‘You love me?’ He practically barked the question. ‘Through-all-of-this-you-say-that-you-have-loved-me?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘How?’ His question actually eked out a half-laugh. ‘How could you love me when I was so horrible to you?’
‘I just did…’ Millie sobbed. ‘I just do.’
‘Tell me what this love is,’ Levander asked. ‘Tell me what love feels like.’
‘Awful.’ A new batch of tears was coming, and she covered her face with her hands, wishing he wouldn’t torture her so. Surely knowing was enough?
‘But it is good at times?’
‘Lots of times.’
‘So when you love someone, you think about them all the time?’
‘All the time.’ Millie nodded glumly.
‘Like you think you are going crazy?’ Levander checked.
‘Completely crazy.’
‘Would love make you worry that you are too bitter, too cynical? That somehow you might taint the other…?’
Peeking at his face from behind her fingers, Millie felt the world stop as Levander continued.
‘And because of this love, do you want only what’s best for the other person?’
‘Always,’ Millie breathed, and he took her hands down from her face and held them as he spoke on softly.
‘This love would make you spend far too much on a picture because you have to have it—you have to have something…’
‘Tangible?’ Millie offered, only he didn’t understand. ‘Something you can feel and see and touch to know that it is real.’
‘Tangible.’ Levander nodded, as if he really liked the word. ‘You buy an expensive picture because it is tangible.’
‘Sort of.’ She gulped, crying and laughing and loving him for faltering over a single world.
‘So if you love someone—even though you want to spend every minute with them, even though all you want to do is be with them—still, if that is where you think they do not want to be, you would let them go? When you see her standing beautiful in her wedding dress, but her eyes are resigned…’
She wasn’t laughing now. This was an insight he was giving her—insight into how lonely, how unsure of his own worth he was, of the terrible effects of growing up in a world utterly devoid of love.
Levander hadn’t been able to tell her he loved her because he didn’t even know what it was.
‘Are you telling me you love me, Levander?’ Millie whispered.
‘I’m just checking with myself first,’ he said.
From anyone else the pause that followed would have been an insult, but from Levander it was anything but—just a delicious, wondrous wait as he processed his thoughts, as he assimilated all the feelings he’d never till now experienced.
‘I-love-you.’ He said it like that, each word a firm statement, and even if they were the three little words she’d wanted so badly to hear, when he said them—when he looked at her and actually said them—nothing could have prepared her for the impact of him saying them.
If she lived past a hundred, Millie swore there and then that every time he graced her with those words she would relive this moment. Even though he hadn’t even known what it meant to receive love, somehow he had found the courage to love her.
‘I love you,’ he said again, and hearing the honesty, the wonder in his voice as he joined up the puzzle, knowing how alien it was to him, made the words all the more precious to her.
‘Why are we sitting here, then?’ Millie smiled through her tears. ‘Why don’t we go…?’ She’d been about to say home, but Levander’s hotel room had never been that,
to either of them. But as her voice trailed off, Levander filled in for her.
‘There’s a church decorated and waiting, the priest is booked, and we’ve got a licence…’
‘Everyone will have gone.’
‘Perfect!’
‘But I’m in jeans….’ Millie gave a shocked laugh
‘Even better.’ Leaning over, he kissed her—one tiny kiss, but it was so laced with love, so utterly chaste and tender, it confirmed utterly what he’d just told her.
He loved her—that was enough—for anything.
‘I will ring the church…’As Levander turned on his phone he rolled his eyes. ‘Fifty missed calls—can you imagine Nina’s face?’ He winced as it rang loudly. ‘It’s Iosef. I won’t take it. He will understand…’
‘We need witnesses,’ Millie said gently, as the ringing died away. ‘Two, I believe. Why don’t you ask your brothers?’
‘My half…’ Levander started but didn’t finish. Love was flooding in now, and shining its light on so many dark places.
‘Doesn’t one have to be a female?’ Mille asked, but Levander waved her away.
‘Between the two of them—I’m sure they can rustle one up.’
And she watched, smiling, as he took the call—watched as he laughed with his brother as they shared their first secret, arranged for him and Aleksi to slip away from the drama unfolding back at the Kolovsky house and pick them up to take them to the church.
‘What did he say?’
‘That he would be proud to be there—and I hope you don’t mind, but we have another guest…’ As her face literally paled, Levander just laughed. ‘Anton—he’s distraught. They are on their way.’ Standing up, he took her hand, led her out onto the street and into her new life. ‘Now—may I suggest that we go and get married.’
EPILOGUE
THE only advantage to Levander’s past was that he loved shopping.
Expecting His Love-Child Page 14