by Dani Collins
‘I’m sorry about Dorcas—she gets excited when we meet other people.’
At this, the beast—Dorcas—decided its master’s command had been lifted and she unfolded her giant frame and came close enough to nudge Ella’s hand with her nose. As Ella absentmindedly stroked the huge hound, it took a moment for her tired mind to understand the source of her confusion because, although she understood him completely, she couldn’t quite understand why he’d spoken in Russian.
Interpreting her confusion, the man pressed on. ‘Je suis désolé, vous m’avez surpris.’
He smiled apologetically, as if this strange encounter were his fault and not hers for walking through the woods at some awful hour of the morning dressed in…dressed in… Oh, God! Ella almost groaned, but turned it into a rueful laugh.
‘Perhaps we could continue in English, if you speak it. It’s been a…long day.’
‘It is only six o’clock in the morning, so I must assume a very long day.’ He looked her over and she suddenly realised that he could quite easily misinterpret the reason for her appearance, which made her think of all the reasons she was in the woods in a ball gown and red velvet cape after spending twelve hours by her grandmother’s bedside.
The forest’s dew had soaked into the cloak and, more than its heaviness, she now felt cold. Cold and hungry and tired. But as she began to shiver she realised that it was not from the damp or the temperature, but the effect of being this man’s sole focus.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked gently, as if not wanting to scare her further.
‘My grandmother’s house. It’s just up the path and not far.’
She braced herself as Dorcas leaned into her, almost at waist height.
‘Dorcas!’ the man almost growled at his dog in warning, yet the dog only answered with a playful yip before collapsing in a heap at Ella’s feet and showing her belly as if to say, Here. Rub here.
‘Stop flirting, Dorcas,’ came her owner’s somewhat exasperated response as he tucked the lead he’d been holding into the pocket of his wax jacket.
Ella couldn’t help but smile at the interaction and it felt almost strange and unfamiliar on features that had felt so weighed down by worry and stress. She bent down to rub the massive beast at her feet and laughed as she realised that Dorcas had trapped her cloak beneath her and effectively pinned her in place. But in truth she felt more trapped by the steady gaze of the man whose name she still did not know.
‘Out past your curfew?’ he asked.
‘I… I was at a party in Moscow when I got a phone call to say that my grandmother had been taken to hospital.’
His frown deepened and for a heartbeat Ella wondered what he might look like when not frowning. She could sense a barrage of questions building between them but he asked the most important.
‘Is she okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly, catching a moment of concern in his stunning eyes before something fell over them, closing off whatever she might have seen there.
‘Are you?’ he asked. Incapable of answering that question, of putting words to whatever it was she was currently feeling, she shook her head. ‘We’re going that way if you would like the company?’ the beast’s owner pressed on.
Dorcas elegantly leapt from the forest floor as if punctuating her master’s query with excitement and joy, bringing yet another unfamiliar smile to Ella’s features.
‘Yes, that would be nice,’ she replied truthfully, and suddenly she felt she might buckle under the exhaustion she’d held at bay for the last twelve hours.
‘Roman,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘Ella,’ she replied and felt a jolt of electricity snap through her body from where her hand met his. He laid his other hand on top as if holding hers in place when she would have pulled away and, rather than feeling uncertain or awkward, she simply felt…safe.
The short journey to her grandmother’s cottage passed almost in silence and Ella found herself unusually at peace in Roman’s company.
They came to the edge of the forest and followed a dirt track leading towards the little chocolate box cottage that Ella loved so much. Her hand naturally went out to caress the small stone pillars either side of the short driveway, as she did every single time she came here. Almost on autopilot, she went to the large, worn wooden door and pushed it open—her grandmother never having once locked the entrance to her home. She led her strange procession of Roman and Dorcas into the house, and stopped the moment she saw the foot of the stairs where her grandmother had fallen and lain for hours before being found.
A shiver cut through her body and she had to fight hard against the urge to cry in front of a stranger who did not feel like a stranger.
The cottage was cast in darkness, the thin light in the centre of the front room doing little to dispel the early morning shadows, and she stood, blankly staring ahead until she realised that she was looking straight at Roman who, once again, seemed greatly concerned about her.
He nodded to himself once, as if coming to a decision, and turned towards the fireplace and set about building a fire from the logs and kindling beside it. All the while she stood there as if capable of no more. She certainly felt that way.
Once the fire was crackling and snapping, beautiful flames dancing and reaching towards the open damper, he came towards her and stood so close that she had to lift her head up to see his face. Some wicked sense within her wanted to lean into him. Wanted him to take her in his arms. As if sensing her thoughts, he lifted his hands.
‘May I?’
She wasn’t sure what he was asking for but nodded her permission anyway. She feared for a moment that she would give this stranger anything. A numbness had settled about her and she felt detached from the world about her but deeply present for the man in front of her.
His hands came together to release the clasp holding the cloak about her shoulders, and gently pushed it back and placed it aside. She shivered at the brief contact of his hands against her skin, the low neckline of her dress leaving her vulnerable to his touch. Her pulse kicked up and goose bumps prickled her skin as he guided her to the sofa opposite the fire and placed a warm cashmere blanket around her shoulders.
‘Is there anyone I can call for you?’
‘No.’
He seemed displeased by this answer, as if outraged by the thought of her being alone. Leaving her in the living area, he disappeared from sight and she heard the sounds of a kettle being boiled, cups and spoons being rattled and the fridge opening and closing.
When he returned to her, she marvelled at the lack of fear she felt as he loomed over her. No, most definitely not fear, but a strange yearning even she could recognise was outrageously inappropriate. Inexplicably, she wanted to reach for him, to steal some of the strength she could almost feel emanating from him.
In spite of the darkness of the cottage, Ella saw the molten heat in his eyes, felt it warm her more than any fire or flame. Heard the sharp intake of his breath, and watched with a sense of shame as he stepped back from her. Her cheeks burnt and she turned her head aside, hoping that she hadn’t betrayed herself, as a curl of confused humiliation swept through her.
‘I should go.’
This drew her gaze back to his, now completely shadowed by the shafts of shade in the cottage.
‘How can I thank you?’
‘We can figure that out next time.’
‘Next time?’ Ella repeated, hating that she sounded so hopeful.
‘The next time we meet in the woods.’
* * *
It was two days before she saw any sign of Roman again. Two days in which her grandmother regained consciousness and underwent operations and procedures to heal her hip and the shoulder fracture resulting from the fall.
When her grandmother had first woken, she had mistaken Ella for her mother, Adeline.
It had only been for a few moments, but the bittersweet cut to her heart had been deep. Her grandmother was Ella’s only connection to her French mother and she hoarded any fragments Claudette had ever told her. Ella’s childhood summers had been spent wandering the woods and delving deeper into the stories that her grandmother would tell of the handsome American tycoon Nathaniel Riding and the sweet innocent Adeline Ardoin who had met, fallen in love and married within months. She knew her grandmother had been heartbroken when they had relocated to Russia for Nathaniel’s business and even more lost when Adeline had passed away, and Ella had been reluctant to break the spell that had returned Claudette’s daughter to her, almost sixteen years after her death.
But her grandmother’s sharp mind had quickly orientated itself and, with a single tear slowly tumbling down her softly lined features, Claudette Ardoin had shaken her head and apologised for being an old fool. After several meetings with doctors and medical personnel, it was clear that Claudette would be staying in hospital for at least two weeks and was highly unlikely to be able to return to the cottage and her independence that she valued so much.
It was the awful practicalities, the decisions to be made, the almost upsetting specifics of moving her grandmother into a care home that left Ella feeling a little shaken and unsettled. And with startling clarity she realised the magnitude of what her guardian had done for her as a child.
When her parents had been killed in a helicopter accident, Ella had been only five. Even all those years ago, Claudette had not been able to take her in and care for her, due to her age and minimal income, and Ella had been given over to Vladimir Kolikov, her father’s business partner and closest friend. So the daughter of an American father—an only son whose parents had both died far too young—and a French mother went to live in Russia with a man who might have been a bit isolated and cold, but was more than ready and willing to give her a home, to care for her and make decisions for her. Vladimir was not the easiest of men, but Ella felt an affection there and as a child had split her time between boarding school in Switzerland, summers in France and winters in Russia.
As she prepared to leave the cottage to return to the hospital, she wondered at meeting Roman—who she had thought of a lot in the last two days. At the peculiarity of meeting a Russian in the deepest part of the South of France. Perhaps that was why she felt there was something slightly similar between her guardian and her rescuer, as she had come to think of him.
And once again she felt the painful blush of embarrassment sting her cheeks. Roman must have thought her completely incompetent. A woman who allowed a stranger into her home, watched in silence as he built a fire, made sure there was food in the fridge and went so far as to set out the makings of a cup of tea. A woman who wanted…things she should not, she concluded to herself as she grabbed her bag and opened the front door.
It was then that she saw the small parcel on the top of the steps. Casting a glance out into the woods, she saw nothing but swathes of trees with windswept leaves, enticingly cool shadowed pathways and long stretches of bluebells.
Returning her attention to the lavender-coloured tissue paper bound with brown string, she picked it up and saw a small cream tag with small, neat writing in English.
To replace what was lost.
Frowning, she picked the bow of the string apart and carefully unwrapped the package in case it might have somehow come by accident to the wrong house. The paper parted to reveal a swathe of burgundy, the softest cashmere she had ever touched. She drew out the present and marvelled at the floor-length hooded cape, by far superior to the one that had been all but destroyed by her journey through the woods two days ago.
It was exquisite and could only have come from one person. Her fingers ran down the stunning material and she was overwhelmed by the gift. Felt a heady combination of joy, surprise and excitement that Roman had thought of her and given her such a gift. Wearing it, she knew, would make her feel beautiful…but also strangely guilty. A guilty pleasure that was only surpassed by the hope that she would see him again. Soon.
* * *
Roman reluctantly turned away from the sight of Ella on the doorstep to her grandmother’s cottage. Even as everything in him wanted to consume whatever sight of her he could, he ruthlessly thrust aside his base desires in favour of his true intention. He felt every inch the predator he had been forced to become to reach his desired goal. It was imprinted on his soul—it had shaped him, directed him for so many years and now vengeance was within his grasp.
He had been shocked by her innocence. Truly. Expecting to find Vladimir’s ward hardened, sharp with angles by her time spent with such an evil man, instead he’d wondered at the untouched quality of her. She had, two days ago, seemed like a fairy-tale creature. It had made him forget his purpose. As if she had some magical power that had made him almost forget everything. He’d not missed how she had looked at him in the cottage. When the cashmere cloak had half slipped from her shoulder, revealing the curve of pale skin, he’d struggled with the urge to draw her near. He hadn’t missed the way her pupils had dilated, casting her inky blue eyes in an unfathomable dark hue that spoke of desire and want.
Nor had he missed the blush of embarrassment as if she did not know what she was wanting. And it had been that which had broken the spell.
Her beauty was undeniable and he acknowledged, reluctantly, the small part of him that wished perhaps that things were different. But they were not. He had set about this path the moment Vladimir had signed his mother’s death warrant eighteen years ago.
Searing pain gripped him hard and fast, taking him by surprise and shocking him with its intensity. A thick, heavy grief-laden nausea swirled in his gut as if he felt that terrible blow for the first time. The horrifying blankness that had descended once he’d felt the bewildering impossibility of moving forward, of surviving without the one person in his life who had anchored him, who had loved him. It had crashed over him like a wave he hadn’t already surfed. Roman struggled to breathe and forced the pressure in his chest to morph from grief to fury in a years-old practised technique.
Fury at the memory of his grandfather refusing the pleas of a thirteen-year-old boy, begging for help, for finances that would pay for the medical treatment his mother so desperately needed. Vladimir had slammed the door on him. And the consequences had been devastating.
Now Kolikov would know that same feeling. Roman wanted Vladimir to beg and plead as he had once done. Ella Riding was the only way he could take revenge against his grandfather. And he would take it by any means necessary.
CHAPTER TWO
There are many forms of disguise, some in clothing, some in nature, but the most dangerous of all are those that have the thread of truth stitched through them, making it even harder to pull truth from fiction.
The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood
—Roz Fayrer
EVER SINCE SHE had come to France, time had seemed to lose all meaning for Ella. Hours spent with her grandmother passed in a second—as if knowing it was running out, time raced headlong towards an impossible finish line. Yet mere moments spent with Roman seemed to draw out deliciously as if he held as much command over the grains of sand in an hourglass as he did over her body and senses.
But, more than that, in the last month he had become her confidant, her support. She had spoken to Vladimir on the phone, but his lack of interest in her maternal grandmother had left her feeling strangely awkward and isolated. Despite the initial fear for her health, the procedures and operations had gone incredibly well. But that relief had been short-lived as Ella suddenly found herself the only person who could, and had to, make decisions about care homes and closing up Claudette’s long-lived life in the cottage.
Ella would have found it all too much to bear had it not been for Roman. He had listened to her fears, helped her talk through the visiting of various homes, advised her on how to approach her grandmother
with the best on offer. Her grandmother’s pension didn’t cover anywhere near the amount needed and Ella had been forced to ask Vladimir for an advance on her trust fund from her parents. At the age of twenty-two, she was three years away from full access to it and the monthly stipend that had seemed more than enough simply wouldn’t stretch to the beautiful care home she had found for Claudette. Only an hour away from Toulouse, it might have seemed like an extravagance—as suggested by Vladimir, who couldn’t understand why ‘the old crone’ couldn’t be left to public health care—but Ella simply couldn’t wrench her grandmother away from the looming view of the Pyrenees that she had seen every morning since birth.
Ella had been surprised when Roman had happily put aside his business interests in the area to focus almost all his fierce attention on supporting her. Never before had she experienced such a thing and if she had been concerned with how quickly and how fast her dependence on him had come into her life she thrust it aside. Daily walks with Roman and Dorcas had kept her sane and forced her out of the cottage she would have sunk into and never left. Those walks had turned into evening meals where Roman would pepper her with questions about her life in seductive tones and with enticing smiles.
‘So, tell me. What was little Ella Riding like?’
She spent hours sharing tales of her boarding school life, her hopes for the future, plans that she had only begun to discuss with her friend Célia. The business they wanted to develop by linking powerful industries and rich investors with charities across the globe. The home that Ella wanted one day. Roman had listened, smiling and laughing, and encouraging her fantasies of what it would look like, how many rooms, bathrooms, and how much land she would like. He had seemed to sense how important it was to her when she had tried to convey how difficult it had been growing up and feeling as if she’d never had a home of her own—her time shared between her boarding school, university, her guardian’s estate in Russia and her grandmother’s cottage here in France. All of which were welcoming and wonderful, but never truly hers and hers alone.