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

by Dani Collins

  ‘Ella,’ he said again, and she felt his hand on her arm, turning her back to him. She closed her eyes, hoping that the next words from his mouth would somehow contradict everything that had just happened. Would somehow explain what had just happened, and take it away. Beg for forgiveness, plead with her.

  But when she opened her eyes, all she could see were the two envelopes in his other hand. He pressed them towards her as he looked over her head and told the driver to take her wherever she needed to go.

  He finally turned his gaze on her, that cold, painful look in his eyes doing more to damage the fragile threads of any kind of hope in her heart, and said, ‘It was all about the shares, the company, the money. All this time. From the very beginning to the very end, you were only a means to give me what I wanted.’

  And as Ella fled from his grasp, into the back of the limousine, Roman realised that he had been wrong. He’d thought he’d known pain. He thought he’d survived the worst that life could throw at him. But he hadn’t and he sure as hell didn’t deserve to this time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Red Riding Hood had always thought her grandmother’s tales were to teach her the difference between a hero and a villain or good and evil. But, she wondered, what if the only difference came down to who it was that told the story?

  The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood

  —Roz Fayrer

  LOOKING OUT FROM the patio, down the sloping green garden towards the silvery thread of the lake winding across the border of her land, Ella saw the copper dome of the gazebo glinting in the morning sun. Since returning from Paris five days ago, she hadn’t been back there.

  And she hated Roman for that. It had been her favourite place in the grounds of her home. He’d promised that it would always be hers. But it didn’t feel that way. Everywhere she turned, she saw him. She smelled him on the sheets that she had washed twice now, but it hadn’t worked. It was as if his scent clung to the very air she breathed, and she had been driven outside by the memories that crashed through her relentlessly.

  Ella hated the way her mind seemed incapable of creating walls around her heart and mind, instead opening her to everything she had experienced over the last few months, and before. All the different variations of the man she had married competing and contradicting everything she thought she knew.

  Dorcas lifted her head as a flock of swallows soared above them on their long migration towards South Africa before the winter months, but didn’t move from where she had taken up her almost constant guardianship. One eye on Ella at all times, and the other on the door as if waiting for her master to return.

  She was glad Roman had left Dorcas with her. She didn’t think she could have been here alone. Célia had offered to come and stay, but Ella had said no. There was too much going on with the company and too much breaking in her heart. She didn’t want her friend to see her like this. It was something she needed to bear alone. Because she had done this to herself. She had been so stupid.

  And, of all the things, that was what turned her stomach, fired the ache in her heart. He had fooled her once and the shame had been his. But this second time? And just as those insidious thoughts crept into her mind, her baby kicked and turned, and kicked again. As if reminding her that she’d had her reasons. That she’d wanted, so, so much, to give their child a better chance. A chance for something more than they had each had. And that she would never regret. But then the pain that Roman had taken that away from them began again.

  Her first instinct had been to sever ties with Liordis. She was still very much struggling with the desire to do it now. She hated to think that he had been in on it with Roman. That he had been part of her manipulation. That he had professed his interest in her business not because of what they could do, or how good they were, but because he too was using her for her husband’s ends. That Roman’s interference had infected the one part of her life she felt completely her own had been devastating.

  Célia had tried to reassure her, to insist that she would follow whatever Ella wanted to do with regards to the Greek billionaire. Let him go, keep him, whatever Ella wanted. No matter the effect on their business. But, despite how Ella felt personally about the man, she couldn’t deny the damage that would be done should they choose to sever ties with their first client.

  Yet that didn’t mean she was willing to let it go.

  As she dialled the contact number for Loukas, she took a fortifying breath. She could still do this. She was still the co-founder of the business. She was still capable—even if she had made terrible mistakes in the past, it didn’t mean she would carry on that way. No. Unlike the men in her life, she would refuse to make decisions about her business for personal reasons.

  ‘Naí?’

  ‘Mr Liordis? It’s Ella Riding.’

  ‘Mrs Black?’

  She flinched and was glad he wasn’t there to see it. Incensed that the man would dare to use her married name.

  ‘Not for much longer.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that.’

  She almost growled at the man’s audacity. For surely he would have known the full extent of Roman’s plans, once he had his hands on her shares. Ignoring the platitude, she pressed on. ‘I have something I want to discuss with you.’

  ‘All ears, agápe mou.’

  ‘If we are to continue to do business together—’

  ‘Wait… What?’ Loukas’s shocked voice interrupted.

  ‘Let me finish, Mr Liordis,’ she commanded. ‘If we are to continue to do business together, then we need to place all our cards on the table.’

  ‘Okay…’ His voice was laden with suspicion.

  ‘When we did our deal, I was not aware of your interaction with my husband.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it an interaction as such,’ he stated.

  ‘No? Asking me to fund an extra five million euros was not an “interaction as such”?’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone—at being caught out? she wondered.

  ‘Look, Mrs… Ella, I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but the only thing your…Roman…asked me to do was to take a business meeting. It was very much for both my and your benefit. I was the one who needed to be assured of your financial viability. Beyond that one request to listen to your proposal, there was no other interaction, other than a rather drunken night in his club in New York three years ago. I promise you, I do not mix business with pleasure. So, whatever you think passed between us, you are mistaken.’

  He seemed to give her the time to take that in, but whatever pause he had left her was not enough.

  ‘Now, I would still like to continue to work together very much and will happily put this down to a misunderstanding. But if you plan to sever ties with me, then I need to know now. I have other things riding on this, and will not risk a single one of them.’

  Part of Ella wanted to rail against the dark commanding tone she encountered now from a man who had been seen as more playboy than billionaire, but she couldn’t. Because she was lost in her own confusion.

  ‘No, Mr Liordis. That won’t be necessary. My apologies.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, his tone instantly turning back to his usual charm. ‘I shall look forward to seeing you in two months at the first gala.’

  Ella cancelled the call and the phone fell from slightly shaking hands. Liordis had no reason to lie. Well, that was not actually true. There had very much been a sense in his response that had strongly indicated how important their business deal was to him. But his surprise at the question about the money had seemed genuine.

  More genuine in some ways than Roman had sounded when he had claimed it had all been about the money. Because Roman had never been obsessed with money and the keeping of it. No, instead, money seemed to be something he was barely even aware of.

  She forced herself to think back to th
at day in the restaurant. The divorce papers. The trust fund. Now that had been an obscene amount of… Of…

  She almost tripped over Dorcas, trying to get back into the kitchen where she had thrown both sets of papers the moment she had returned from Paris, not daring to look at them since.

  She gave herself a paper cut trying to get into the envelope and pulled out the thick bundle, still with the sticky yellow tab affixed. Instead of turning to that page, she started with the first, scanning and flipping through the pages until somewhere about the fifth page she stopped.

  Looking at the inconceivable number of millions on the page outlined by little black print, she didn’t have to wonder long at where all that money must have come from. It could only have been the total amount of the sale of Kolikov Holdings, give or take an extra five million.

  Her husband had lied to her. Again. She howled out loud in frustration. What on earth was he doing? Because if it wasn’t about the money, if he had given it all in trust to their child, then what was it really about? He had pushed her away. Telling her the only thing that would make her leave. Now she remembered all the bits and pieces he’d shared with her about his childhood. The machinations of a truly awful grandparent, the insecurities of having foster parents who’d never really wanted him. Now she remembered how sincere he’d been about asking her to rethink the sale of her shares. He’d almost pleaded with her not to do it. Now she remembered how he had claimed to be a monster made in his grandfather’s image. But he hadn’t been. She’d seen him. The day he’d discovered he was going to be a father…the pain and desperation as he’d told her about his mother…the night he’d said that he could only hope to be the man she deserved to have by her side.

  And she’d said, ‘Trust me.’ She’d asked him to trust her to know that he was better. And she had been the one to break that trust. She had been the one, despite knowing that the man demanding a divorce didn’t seem like her husband, didn’t seem the man she’d fallen in love with, who had broken that trust.

  Oh, God, she thought, a shaking hand to her mouth. For all her words of assurance, her apparent faith in him…she had believed the one lie he’d truly told her, the one that had fed her fears rather than her faith. And she’d done exactly what he’d expected her to do. Think the worst. To leave. Just like everyone else in his life had done.

  * * *

  Roman strode through the tables of the club in Russia, ignoring the slightly worried looks of his staff and oblivious to the gazes of his patrons. At first, after returning from Paris, he’d thought a numbness had descended, wrapping around him and protecting him. But then he’d realised. It wasn’t numbness, but silence.

  No more little tapping noises as Dorcas trotted behind him, her toes clipping along the hard wooden floors of his apartment. The little yips of joy or pleading whines, specifically designed to incite guilt or attention. No more warm weight on his thigh as she would lean into him. How on earth had a damned dog come to mean so much to the Great Wolf? he wondered ruefully.

  And that had only been the beginning. Because as soon as he realised the absence of Dorcas, he knew it was masking the absence of her. Ella. His wife. Mother of his child. And suddenly he realised all the sounds that he would miss in the future. His child’s first cry, first laugh, first word. He realised all the sounds he was already missing. His child’s heartbeat. His wife’s cry of pleasure, her gentle, teasing laugh, the sounds she made in her sleep unconsciously, the way her hand sounded as it swept towards him across the bedsheets.

  All these noises that were consumed by the silence of his life. And even as a part of him wished he’d never met her, the other, the part of his heart still beating, still hoping, knew that he would be thankful for it for ever.

  He knew what he’d done that day. Still held to the decision he’d made. Ella was better off without him. He had told her lies and she’d believed them. His mind taunted him with evil thoughts.

  She never loved you. If she had, she wouldn’t have believed you. She only ever loved the fiancé, the man you were not.

  And he felt he deserved every single one of them. Because that questioning, that self-doubt, wasn’t that what he’d done to her that first time? If he’d known what it had been like for her he never would have taken her innocence, never would have allowed her back into his life. Because this? This was pure hell.

  So he took his punishment, knowing that he fully deserved it. Every single sharp twist of the knife, he would take a million times over because he had done worse to her.

  And that was why, no matter how much he wanted to go to her, to beg her to take him back, to beg to spend each and every day seeking to make up for his awful actions, to be better, to do better, he would not. Because he would never be worthy of her.

  He reached the corner of the bar, where a barman jumped to attention, knowing without Roman even having to ask for the bottle of vodka he’d appeared almost nightly to demand, before disappearing to his lair above the club.

  The bottle appeared on the counter top and Roman swept it up and stalked towards the lift in the back corner of the room. But in his mind he was not holding the slippery condensation-covered chilled bottle, but the warm, slim crook of Ella’s elbow, his palm heated despite the cool feel of the glass. As he swept his key card over the electronic plate he followed a ghost into the lift, unconsciously making space for the image of her with him.

  Roman caught sight of the image of his reflection in the mirrored surface, barely meeting his own gaze. He grimly acknowledged that he looked like hell, the dark sweeps under his eyes speaking to the fact that he’d not been able to sleep fully through the night since he’d left her bed and, in all likelihood, wouldn’t ever again.

  The only thing that soothed the ache was that he’d provided for them both—Ella and their child. They would never want for anything. Certainly not for a husband or father who wasn’t good enough, who wasn’t worthy enough.

  Was that what his mind had kept hidden from itself? he wondered. All these years and all that determination for vengeance. Had it hidden…this? These feelings and this fear he’d never voiced before he’d met Ella. Never needing to account for his actions or his behaviour to anyone before now.

  He cursed and, rather than waiting to cross the distance of his living area to find a glass, unscrewed the lid of the bottle of zubrowka and raised it to his lips, anticipating the taste of the ice-cool alcohol on his tongue. But, before he could take a sip, he stopped, his hand hovering before his mouth, holding the bottle but not moving.

  Ella sat on his sofa, encased in the red cape he had bought her, and he wondered whether he had finally lost all sense. Because surely his twisted mind had conjured her from his thoughts and memories. Surely she was not sitting there, her beautiful shapely legs crossed, her hands placed in her lap, her level gaze one that could easily be mistaken for serenity.

  But he knew, the moment he took a breath, that she was real because her scent had filled the air of his apartment. A delicious taste of something almost like orange blossom, mint and memories.

  Everything in him became alert, the hair at his nape raising slightly as his first fearful thought careened through him.

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘Is fine.’

  He took a moment for her assurance to sink in, to smooth out the erratic pulse of his heart, but it didn’t work. He was still fired with adrenaline as if under threat, as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet. She looked incredible. Everything he’d ever wanted, right there, within touching distance, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

  ‘Then we have nothing to discuss,’ he growled as he stalked past her to the kitchenette. ‘You can let yourself out.’

  ‘I could. But I won’t.’

  He hoped to high heaven that she didn’t see the way his fingers shook as he reached for the glass he would have easily forgone just moments earlier. He felt a growl rising
in the back of his throat, the need to lash out and release some, if not all, of this pent-up fury he felt rising in his chest. The fury of pain, of hurt, of loss.

  All of it he swallowed as he forced himself to turn around and look towards his…well…if she was here with the divorce papers then he couldn’t really call her his wife any more. Landing on that explanation for her appearance here in his apartment, a cold fist so fierce it burned struck his heart. That was it. That was why. It could only ever be that.

  ‘You could have sent the papers to my lawyers. This,’ he said with a sweep of his arm and the bottle he still held, ‘is unnecessary.’

  ‘On the contrary. I find it deeply necessary.’

  ‘If there is something you want to contest—?’

  ‘And if I wanted to contest the whole thing?’

  Roman reared back as if slapped. ‘I don’t…’

  ‘It’s not often that you are lost for words, Roman.’

  He stared at her, unsure what she was saying, unsure as to what was happening.

  ‘What game are you playing?’ he demanded.

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘The one you apparently decided we were playing.’

  ‘Would you stop speaking in riddles!’

  That his anger apparently caused her only to smile was deeply unsettling.

  ‘I think that might be the first real and honest reaction to this whole damn thing since you took me to the restaurant. A tad ironic, but real at least.’

  Roman ground his teeth together so hard he thought he might have heard something crack. For here she was again. The beautiful, proud, determined fury that he had met here six months ago. The woman who had seduced as much as been seduced. The woman who had become the mother of his child and keeper of his heart.

  ‘You want my anger? Then get out,’ he roared, even more horrified that his fury seemed to have exactly the opposite effect on Ella.