Black Knight, White Queen (13 page)

“Yes, you are.”

Another silence.

Shit, why was she even bothering to argue? Yeah, he may be fascinating, but his complications were so not what she needed right now. This trip was supposed to be about her, about what she wanted, her needs. Not about getting involved with someone like him.

She had to stop being so sensitive to him. She had to stop being so bloody sensitive full stop.

“Okay,” she said after a moment. “We spend the night together now, and tomorrow we’ll go our separate ways. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

Izzy ignored the barbed sense of hurt that tightened her chest. She wanted something from him, an acknowledgement of some sort. An acknowledgement she clearly wasn’t going to get.

Still. It wasn’t as if he was entirely immune to her. He’d lost control after that chess game. She’d made him come undone. So he could deny it all he liked but she got to him. Yeah, she did.
 

And maybe, if she stayed tonight, she’d get to him a little more. Put a few extra cracks in that façade of his. It would be worth it.

“Well, I can live with that.” She picked up her beer, took another sip, dismissing the hurt. “So why don’t you tell me all about chess?”

“No. We’ve talked quite enough about me. I want to know about your drawing.”

The question surprised her. “My drawing, huh? I thought we didn’t need to know each other?”

He shrugged. “Don’t tell me then. But I’m curious. Most people take photos. Yet you draw.”

Izzy bit her lip, fighting a losing battle with resistance. Losing because if there was one thing she loved talking about, it was her drawing. “Yeah, I always have,” she said eventually, giving in. “I suppose if chess is your passion then drawing is mine. Ever since I was a little girl.”

“Is that how you earn your living?”

“Kind of. I’m a graphic artist—” She stopped abruptly, remembering. “At least, I was a graphic artist.”

“But not now?”

“I quit when I decided to come to Southeast Asia. I thought it was easier since I didn’t know how long I’d be here.” The decision had been frighteningly simple. Frightening because she’d loved her job once and yet handing in her resignation had been easy. In comparison to dealing with Angie’s death, dealing with everything else was child’s play.
 

One black brow rose. “So you came here with no plan at all?”

“No,” she said. “I just wanted to get away from all the crap to do with Angie. I cleaned out my savings and…” she raised a hand, made a shooting motion with it, “…bam. I was out of there.”

“When are you going back then?”

Funny he should ask that question. Funny he should want to know. Izzy took another sip of her beer. Then she looked at him. “I’m not.”

Izzy sat with a curiously defiant look on her face as if daring him to argue with her. In her blue silk wrap, her narrow white shoulders exposed, white-blonde curls everywhere, she looked so fragile. But the expression in her eyes was anything but.

He found that so incredibly attractive even if it annoyed the crap out of him. With her defiance and unexpected strength, she would never be a doormat. She would fight.

Holding his beer loosely between his hands, he studied her. “Not ever?”

“I…” She hesitated. “For the foreseeable future, at least.”

“So you’d leave your job, your family, your whole life, just like that?” He didn’t understand why. She had what he’d never had. A home. And now she was planning on leaving it?

Defensiveness crept over her face. “Yeah. I didn’t plan it when I left. It’s just how I feel about it now.”

“Why? Because your parents are ignoring you?”

She flushed. “No. God, that makes me sound like a sulky teenager.”

“Then why?”

“Because the whole atmosphere back home is like this big, suffocating blanket and I can’t breathe.” Izzy looked away from him, down at the table. “I’m tired of it. Tired of feeling all this anger and grief and…stuff. I just want out for a little while.”

“Forever?”

“Maybe not. I haven’t thought about it.”

“But that’s what your sister did, didn’t she? Wanted out?”

Izzy’s chin snapped up. “What the hell? How is me not wanting to go home anything like Angie taking her own life?”

“If you don’t go back, then you’re not there anymore. No, it’s not the same, but that’s essentially what you’re doing. Removing yourself.”

Izzy’s flush deepened, anger stark in her eyes. “You’re damn right it’s not the same. Since when did you get the right to tell me what I’m doing is wrong?”

“I’m not telling you it’s wrong, Izzy.”

“Then what’s with all these questions?” Her knuckles had whitened around her beer bottle. “It’s got nothing to do with you. We’re just ‘lovers’—”, she did air quotes around the word with her free hand, “—so why you think you can say all this stuff to me I have no idea!”

Christ, she felt everything so intensely it was almost painful to watch. “And yet you can ask me all kinds of private questions, but I can’t ask you?” He kept his tone level. “I’m just trying to understand what you’re running away from.”

“I’m not running away!”

“Aren’t you?”

Her breathing had quickened, the silk across her breasts shimmering in the dim light of the bar. With a jerky movement she raised her beer and drained it then put it back on the table, the bottle wobbling. “It’s my fault,” she said baldly. “It’s my fault Angie died and I can’t stand it.”

“Your fault? I thought you said she took her own life?”

“She did. But I was the last person she spoke to before she died.”

“That doesn’t mean she—”

But Izzy carried on right over the top of him. “She sounded so tired. Told me she’d been feeling down. She’d had depression in the past, but she was on top of it now so I thought it was nothing. A passing comment. I was busy that night. I had a dinner date with friends and was running late. So I told her I didn’t have time to talk. She said that was fine, that she’d call me later and I…I hung up. The next morning she…” The rush of words came to an abrupt halt. She’d gone pale as ashes, blue eyes huge and dark in her face. “I shouldn’t have gone out. I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have been late. If she’d only told me that she needed someone to talk to, that she needed help, then I could have done something. But I didn’t know. I didn’t think. I didn’t do anything at all. And she…she died.”

Her hand rested on the table and the urge to reach for it became unstoppable. Providing comfort for someone else was alien to him, but he did it anyway, her fingers icy beneath his. “No, you didn’t know. She chose not to tell you she needed help. She made the decision to end her life. You can’t blame yourself for someone else’s choice, Izzy.”

“But I should have, Aleks. I should have.”

“Why?”

“I told you, she’d had depression in the past. She’d—”

“Plenty of people have depression but not everyone kills themselves.”

“Yes, but I should have gone over there anyway. Made sure she was okay.”

“Why would you? She said she was tired. She said she was fine.”

“But I…I should have known. Somehow I should have known.”

He didn’t know what to say or how to make things better for her. All he could offer was logic. He tightened his fingers over hers. “You couldn’t have known unless she told you, Izzy. And even if you had, what would you have done? If you stopped her this time, what’s to say she wouldn’t have tried to end her life again? At a different time? You can’t predict everything people do. Viktor used to say…” He faltered, cleared his throat, then went on, “Viktor used to tell me a story about one of the chess greats who was often asked how many moves ahead he thought. He answered, ‘Only one move ahead. But it was always the best move.’” He stared into her eyes. Into her pale face. “You can’t predict your opponent all the time, Izzy. You can strategize and plan for every eventuality, but sometimes a move comes out of left field that you hadn’t seen coming. All you can do is the best you can with the information you have at the time.”

Izzy’s hand was motionless under his. The look in her eyes unreadable. “You know,” she said hoarsely. “Sometimes you do a very good job of acting like a robot, but then you’ll come out with something like that.” Her hand turned, cold fingers twining with his. “Thanks, Aleks.”

The liquid glint of tears sparkled in her eyes, and something tight squeezed his chest. Something uncomfortable. Sharing grief and anger and comfort in a bar on Patpong Road wasn’t what he’d intended when he’d come out with her. It felt too intimate. Too intense.

The silence lengthened, her fingers around his starting to become more than a comforting touch. More than a sexual one. A connection.

The urge to leave, get away, became overwhelming. Aleks pulled his hand from hers, unable to make the movement gentle. “We should go.”

“What? Why? You don’t want another drink?”

His heart raced strangely. He took a slow, silent breath, trying to calm the hell down. Trying to find his usual detachment. Why did he feel like this? Christ, this just got worse and worse.

Perhaps he should get rid of her tonight. Perhaps once she’d gone things would get back to normal.

Yet as he looked into her eyes, he found himself saying, “Okay, fine. One more drink.”

Damn.

“Tell me about Viktor,” Izzy said as he came back to the table with the next beer round.

Aleks slid back into the booth, pushing the beer over to her, a guarded expression on his face. “What do you want to know?”

“How you met him. Why he was so important to you.” She let out a breath. “I’m sick of talking about me and my bloody problems. Let’s try yours for a change.” Exhaustion had crept up on her. All she wanted was to think about something else for a while. Not Angie. Not going home. Not guilt or grief or anger. Perhaps going back to the hotel would be a better idea, but then she liked just sitting here with him.

His gaze moved over her face. “You look tired.”

“I am tired. All this hot sex and baring of my soul is killing me.”

“Do you want to leave? Go back to your hostel?”

Man, he’d never get this humour thing, would he? “Joke, Aleks. I’m quite happy with all the hot sexing, thank you very much, no matter how tired it makes me. Though perhaps I’ll shut up about my sister for a while.”

But he frowned. “Perhaps I’ll run you a bath when we get back.”

“A bath?”

“Well, they’re supposed to be relaxing, aren’t they?”

Dear God, the man was trying to look after her. The warmth that had settled in her chest the moment his hand had covered hers began to spread outwards, dulling the previous hurt. Easing the sharp points of her emotions.

She swallowed past the lump that had taken up residence in her throat. “Yeah, apparently they are. Thanks, I’d love one.” She gave him a faint smile. “But don’t think this gets you out of telling me about Viktor.”

“There isn’t much to say.” He lifted a shoulder. “I met him after I got out of the kid’s home. I was living on the streets and trying to avoid the police at the time. I think I was twelve.” Aleks ran a thumb over the glass of the beer bottle, wiping away the condensation. “I went into a park to avoid the cops and found a bunch of old men sitting around playing chess. I sat next to one of them, hoping the police wouldn’t see me and started watching the chess game. Pretty soon I’d forgotten about them because the game was far more interesting.”

“Hey, back up. You were on the streets?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.

“Yes.”

“So you left the orphanage?”

“As soon as I could.” Silver glinted underneath dark lashes. “The moment I got sent back to Russia I decided I was going to go back to the States somehow. That no one was going to take my life from me just because I smashed a vase against a wall. And that wouldn’t happen if I stayed in the orphanage. So I got out as soon as I could.”

“When did you get out?”

“A few years afterwards. When I was ten.”

“Aleks.” His name was a soft, shocked breath. “That’s so young.”

“I survived.” Something cold gleamed in his eyes. Something hard.

Izzy took a sip of her beer, her mouth dry. Understandable then, his detachment. The things he must have seen, and so young too. “So what happened in the park?”

“The police spotted me, but the man I was sitting next to happened to be Viktor and he told them I was his grandson. Then he made me sit next to him the rest of the day while he taught me how to play chess.” His gaze turned distant. “Every day I went back to the park. Viktor knew I was living on the streets and tried to give me money but I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t want anything from anyone. So he played me for it.” Aleks’s mouth softened. “I think he let me win those early games just so he could give me money. But then I got better. Much better. I started hustling money from other players to earn more cash until Viktor suggested the chess tournaments. The prize money eventually got me to the States.”

His voice had gotten quiet, and she could see the weight of memory in his eyes. And the weight of grief.