Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Dani Collins

  As the estate grew small in the distance Ella vowed that she would never let herself be so cruelly used by these two men ever again. She would not let this destroy her. She would find a way. A way to cut them from her life, a way to secure her own freedom. And she would never, ever believe in fairy tales ever again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was wrong of the wolf to have underestimated Little Red Riding Hood. An oversight on his part and one that would change everything he thought he knew.

  The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood

  —Roz Fayrer

  IT HAD BEEN eight months since Ella had set foot in Russia and though it felt as if everything in her life had changed, the landscape around her hadn’t. She stood in the gardens of Vladimir’s estate in Rublevka on the outskirts of Moscow, nestled amongst the houses of various celebrities and the Russian elite. Snow lay thickly on the ground even this far into March, covering the sprawling garden in a strange white blanket, but her waterproof knee-high boots prevented the frigid dampness from reaching her. All the lights were on in the grand neoclassical building behind her, casting a false warmth on the bleak horizon. But only she and one other remained. Konstantin would stay on for another month, closing down Vladimir’s vast and deeply secretive estate, his pension well accounted for in the terms of Kolikov’s will.

  Her guardian’s life goal of uniting the two families locked within his once vast empire complete, Vladimir had finally succumbed to pneumonia and passed away seven days before. And she didn’t know how to feel. How to feel about a man who had used her as bait, but had also protected and nurtured her, allowed her certain freedoms and withheld others. While there had been legal conversations conveyed through her and Vladimir’s lawyers the moment she’d realised that her marriage had triggered her trust fund, only one phone call had actually passed between them.

  She had expected explanations or apologies, but she’d been mistaken. Again. She had felt so horribly mistaken about everything. As if every single aspect of her life had been a lie. But Vladimir’s assurance during that last conversation that he had protected her interests, her trust fund and her future with Kolikov Holdings hadn’t been a lie. Because while he had made good on his word to hand over control and ownership of the company he and her father had set up more than thirty years ago to Roman, Vladimir had had one last card to play. He had given her ten per cent of his shares—bringing the total, inclusive of the ones she had gained upon access to her trust fund, to twenty-five, automatically making her a shareholder on the board. Automatically handing her a voice, a bargaining chip, against the man she’d once thought of as her husband.

  A man who hadn’t even bothered turning up to Vladimir’s funeral. Throughout the entire service her body had been on fire with nervous energy, drenched in ice-cold sweat one second and ferocious heat the next, hatred and disgust turning nauseous sweeps in her stomach. For every single minute of it, her concentration had been fractured with the expectation that Roman would appear, as if summoned by a call that even he couldn’t refuse. But refuse he had. And she hadn’t been the only one surprised by Roman’s absence.

  Various business associates Ella remembered from her childhood had come, seemingly not to pay their dubious respects to a man who had ruled with an iron fist, but instead wanting to see the fabled prodigal grandson return, each wanting to know what her husband’s plans were for the company.

  Ever since Célia had discovered Ella sobbing over a laptop open to a search about her husband—something she’d had neither the thought nor inclination to do during their time in France—she’d determinedly avoided any and all thoughts about Roman, Vladimir and that damned business. Célia’s reassurances that Ella had been both too busy and too worried about her grandmother did nothing to protect her from her own self-disgust at the shocking naivety with which she’d met and married a stranger.

  A stranger who was reportedly not only uniquely ruthless in business—a fact she now well knew—but also thoroughly disreputable between the sheets. At first she had been shocked by the contrast of the almost idyllically respectful man she had married—the one who had wanted to preserve her innocence—and the notorious playboy he was proclaimed by the world’s press. It was then that she realised the true extent of his deception. That he really had only wanted one thing from her. Access to Vladimir.

  And somehow that had hurt so much, so acutely that it had stolen her breath and stopped her tears.

  Strangely, she had found no sympathy with her former guardian. Because there too she had done her research. The man had disowned his daughter, cutting her off both financially and emotionally, for not wanting to marry Nathaniel.

  Ella shivered again at the actions of two men hell-bent on destroying each other…and her in the process. And now? All she wanted was to be free. From this, from him. From the memories of her own stupidity.

  And worse, the hopes and dreams that had died that day. The ones that she had not realised she’d even had before Roman had conjured them from her like a magician. A childhood yearning for the things she had lost. And then he’d taken them away—the loss as real as if they had been solid things and not just the thin veils of heartfelt fantasies. And no matter how much she might want to erase her marriage to Roman, she knew she’d never be able to erase the mark he’d left on her heart.

  And once again, as if a flame had touched the detonating cord of her anger, she was furious. Furious that Roman hadn’t come to the funeral today. Hadn’t bothered even to respond to the lawyers she had sent after him for a simple signature on the divorce papers she had had drawn up almost the moment she had been back in Célia’s little Parisian apartment. So this was how it was to be then. The hunted would become the hunter. Ella embraced her resentment and relished the thought of tracking Roman down. It was he who would soon know the feeling of regret. Because she was no longer the innocent he had claimed her to have been. No. Now she was a force to be reckoned with.

  * * *

  Roman took a conservative mouthful of ice-cold zubrowka, despite wanting to down the lot in one go. He knew himself well and, loath as he was to admit it, tonight—the day his grandfather went into the cold, hard ground—would be a trigger and he wanted his wits about him. He could feel it crackling in the air about him, as if a finger from the past had pressed against the back of his neck and burned an ice-cool trail down his spine.

  As much as he’d wanted to see Vladimir laid to what he hoped would be unrest, a greater part of him didn’t want to see his wife. For somehow throughout the last eight months he had stopped viewing Ella’s fiancé as some separate part of himself and embraced the person chained, legally and bodily, to her as her husband.

  Because Roman was unable to forget that kiss. It was, he’d decided, the moment the disguise had evaporated. It hadn’t been Ella’s fiancé who had stolen that impassioned, impulsive moment. No. It had been Roman himself. He’d wanted more. He still wanted more. He was not such a Neanderthal that he put the constant state of his frustration down to the fact he hadn’t spent time in a woman’s bed for nearly ten months now. He knew he could have had his pick ever since leaving Kolikov’s estate. But he hadn’t. It had struck him with a painful irony that some of Ella’s fiancé had rubbed off on him, and all the talk of the sanctity of marriage had somehow bled into him.

  And it was that which was most threatening to him. That he had begun to believe his own lies. Begun to meld parts of the fiancé to parts of himself. In truth, it wasn’t just marital faithfulness that had wrapped around his conscience, but some unfathomable desire for something beyond revenge and vengeance. Some unnerving yearning for something he’d long thought himself not only incapable of, but utterly immune to. A craving that scratched at him from the inside, rolled around his chest, one that took effort to beat back down.

  In its place he sought the safer familiarity of anger, the need for revenge, but even that had been infected, ruined by the near gut-chur
ning agony of realising that he had never really got his vengeance. Roman’s deathbed promise to his mother had gone unfulfilled and he hated himself for it, whilst hating Vladimir more. But the one overriding question he couldn’t help voicing to himself in the deepest, darkest nights was whether Ella had known. Whether she had been playing him too. He knew it wouldn’t be answered until he looked her in the eye. Which was—as he repeatedly told himself—the only reason he had so far refused to sign the divorce papers her lawyers insisted on peppering him with.

  As he took another controlled sip of his drink, in the back office of his nightclub in Moscow, Dorcas shifted by his feet. He’d not been able to rid himself of the beast. She had persistently followed him wherever he’d gone, seemingly not put out by either the noises of his clubs nor the strangely isolated life he’d returned to. And he’d come to enjoy the discomfort of the board members of Kolikov Holdings when they realised Dorcas would be attending his business meetings. It did great work in putting them on the back foot.

  She had appeared to mope, somewhat disconcertingly for the first few months, roaming the rooms and halls as if looking for Ella. But she had finally settled into some long-term sulk that was appeased only by food or a good ear rub.

  His mind returned to the question of Ella’s involvement in his grandfather’s plans. He appreciated the irony of doubting the truth of her intentions, despite the sheer villainy of his own. But with more than a few months’ distance, the assurance of her innocence had begun to fade. Because surely no one raised by Vladimir Kolikov could have ever been that innocent.

  As he scanned the security feeds of the club in his back office, he paused, frowned and returned to the previous screen, his fingers tightening around the small cut-glass tumbler.

  Ella Riding. His salvation or damnation, for her to decide.

  * * *

  She looked up at the waistcoated barman, who appeared oddly like an old-world Victorian with the most improbable handlebar moustache. She’d not known what to expect from Roman’s figurehead bar. Perhaps something a little more…seedy? A den of iniquity? Writhing, scantily clad women whose skin glowed beneath harsh red lighting even.

  But certainly not this, with Art Deco stained glass designs across the ceiling and behind the bar, backlit and throwing soft yellows, greens and blues across a space full of dark wooden booths designed for privacy. The lighting somehow made the bar feel out of time—it could have been one in the afternoon rather than the morning, each of the customers seemingly ready to begin their night’s festivities rather than coming to the end of it.

  It was, she ruefully acknowledged, beautiful. She ordered a single glass of ice-cold vodka from the barman who, much to her satisfaction, couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. She had dressed purposefully for her task here. And while she would never usually wear such a thing, the skin-tight scarlet dress, slashed down almost to her waist, was having the desired effect. Because Ella had realised the need for disguise since she had married Roman Black. And now she would wield it as well as he once had.

  Konstantin, still proving his complete and utter efficiency, had located Roman at this bar, at this very moment. And while Ella knew that she could ask, or even look, for her husband, another thing she had learned was that it was more important for the prey to come to the hunter. As she once had.

  And her husband would come to her. She knew it as well as she knew her own mind. She’d done her research, and she’d planned and prepared this time. No longer would she wait to be used by others. She would be the one in control.

  As she took a sip of her vodka, her eyes connected with a man openly staring at her with an invitation that needed no words. He was tall, attractive, but utterly uninteresting to her. Just as she was considering whether it would suit her purpose to appear to entertain such an invitation, the hair at her nape raised and the skin on her arms pebbled with goose bumps. She felt a bank of heat at her back, the towering presence looming over her from behind and, if that hadn’t been confirmation enough, the look on the other man’s face dropped as his eyes glazed over, having taken in the presence over her shoulder, and he turned away quickly.

  Her pulse flickered, and she hated the fact that Roman still held this sensual power over her. But not for long. Tonight she would get him to sign the divorce papers. Tonight she would finally be free.

  ‘I hope you didn’t wear that to the funeral. Otherwise they’d have been digging at least four more graves for the board members whose heart attacks you would have ensured.’

  She silently cursed, having forgotten, or chosen to ignore, the effect his dark tones once had on her. Still refusing to turn, she placed the glass on the table before her and, head held high, steeled herself.

  ‘From what I hear, that would have done you a favour. Tell me, is all well? Or is there something rotten in the state of Kolikov Holdings?’

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘Really? I’m surprised you think you know me well enough to say so.’

  ‘How well do I know you? That is a very good question and one I’ve been wondering for quite some time now.’

  * * *

  Roman skirted the table, refusing to stare any longer at the backless dress revealing more of his wife than he’d ever seen. The distracting need to run a thumb, or tongue, down the length of her spine had nearly embarrassed him. Not that the view from the front was any better—his hungry eyes ate up the inches of smooth pale skin between the shocking red fabric of her dress at her chest.

  Forcing his eyes to her face, he saw she was both the same and somehow changed. At first, he thought the signs subtle. The way she held herself before his unwavering gaze, the way she was dressed. But perhaps this was who she had been all along and he had been taken in as much as she.

  Her hair was twisted up into a knot held high at the back of her head. Not even a stray tendril spoke to the softness of her that he had once relished. The coldness in her eyes did nothing to dampen his arousal, only inflame.

  Worthy.

  That was what he thought. She was now worthy of doing battle with him.

  ‘What does it matter how well you knew me? You got what you wanted.’

  ‘We both know I didn’t. Not really.’

  ‘And that is my fault?’ she demanded, just an edge of heat to her words betraying the smooth, calm, icy exterior.

  He didn’t react, didn’t move a muscle. He felt every inch the predator he knew she believed herself to be—and he relished it. This was what he had hoped lay beneath the soft innocence she’d presented to him before. This thread of steel, encasing a molten core of passion and heat.

  ‘You have the audacity to try to blame me?’ she said on a half laugh, as if incredulous. ‘You made your bed, Roman. It would seem to be beneath your dignity to whine about it.’

  Her easy dismissal roused his ire. ‘You come to me in that dress and talk of beds, Ella? It would be remiss of me not to warn you against such a thing.’

  ‘Still looking out for my innocence, husband?’

  Choosing not to answer her question, he pressed on. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’ She was playing with him. He could tell she understood what he wanted to know.

  ‘What Vladimir was up to. Did you know?’

  * * *

  There was part of Ella—a very large part—that wanted to say yes. Wanted him at least to believe that she had been more in control in that month in France than she had been in reality. Wanted him to think she’d had the upper hand all this time. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to be part of this cycle of hatred. It made her feel dirty and disgusted.

  ‘I didn’t even know what you were up to. How on earth was I supposed to know what my guardian was planning?’ She saw his gaze narrow, searching her features, her disgust and resentment plain and clear. ‘Would it make it easier for you? If I had been? Would that somehow exc
use the horrifying lengths you went to achieve your revenge?’

  Only because she had been studying his face as fiercely as he studied hers did she think that just this once she had struck home. That she might have been right. But she refused to credit Roman with enough conscience for that.

  ‘Well, I didn’t. Up until that night, I’d only known my guardian as the man who rescued me, gave me a home, education, security—’

  ‘All the things he should have given his own daughter.’

  ‘Is that why? Why you took your vengeance out on me? Because in some way you thought I had stolen what was rightfully your mother’s?’ She needed to know. It was the one burning question that cut through her like a knife. The fear that somehow she was responsible for bringing his vengeance down on her too.

  ‘I took my revenge through you because, for a moment, I forgot what a cold unfeeling bastard my grandfather was and thought that he might have actually valued you as opposed to using you as bait.’

  He spat the words out at her and if he regretted them, she simply couldn’t tell any more.

  ‘So, I was inconsequential to you both in your double-edged plans for vengeance.’

  ‘Inconsequential? Do you know what it was like? To turn up at that estate, to have to beg a man for whom money was no concern for the equivalent of a measly twenty thousand euros for medical treatment that would have saved his daughter’s life?’

  Ella had wanted to know, had wanted to understand, but this? This was horrifying to her. Growing up, she’d been aware that Vladimir had once had a daughter and had believed the silence surrounding her had something to do with the grief he’d felt. She’d even been touched by the idea that they had been brought together by loss. Him somehow replacing her parents, and her Vladimir’s lost child. And when she’d learned that he’d cut her off she’d been horrified. But to think that he’d held within his power the chance to save his own child and said no? It seemed almost impossible. Nausea mixed with the ice-cold vodka in her stomach, curdling, turning and twisting in her thoughts.