Innocent in the Ivory Tower (17 page)

She had never seen him like this. He had been angry before, but always in control, always measuring his response. That control had splintered, but the anger wasn’t directed at her. She knew him now. It was directed at himself.

But she had some of her own to serve up.

‘Listen to me, you stupid man. For your information, I would
never
have let things go that far that night in London.’ Her voice rose strong above the hum of the wind and the ocean. ‘The only reason I ever slept with you here was because
I
wanted to, and
it was everything I dreamed of—because you were sweet and kind and considerate, everything you claim you’re not. But I’m tired of being on the outside of your life, and I will never,
never
forgive you for throwing my feelings back in my face unless you get down on your sorry knees and beg my forgiveness, and then work your behind off making it up to me.’

Face flushed, body trembling Maisy took a backward step. ‘Starting right now.’

Then she swung away and headed inside. She’d had her say. At last. Whatever happened next was up to him.

It occurred to her that his friends had probably heard a great deal of what had been said—especially the last part where she’d been shouting—but suddenly she didn’t care. She felt almost light-headed with emotion. If strangers thought she was a fool, what did it matter? She was fighting for the life and the man she wanted, and she refused to be ashamed of that.

She accepted a glass of iced tea from Valery as she sat down, who murmured, close to her ear, ‘We’re rooting for you, Maisy, and by the way I love the dress.’

Maisy went red to the roots of her hair, but the adrenaline enabled her to smile and shrug.

‘Valery, stop flirting with Maisy,’ said Ivanka mildly.

Alexei had come into the room looking like thunder, hands hooked into his pockets. He stood at the end of the sofa, staring at her.

Maisy shrugged off his jacket and threw it at him.

Stiva clapped his hands and dropped into the chair opposite Maisy. ‘Now,
this
I’ve gotta see.’

‘You’re toast,’ said Valery, handing Alexei a glass of brandy.

Alexei ignored it. ‘Maisy, upstairs—now.’

‘No.’ She crossed her legs and concentrated on her drink. She could literally
feel
Alexei breathing. ‘But if you’re the—what was it?—
class-A bastard
you claim to be why don’t you just drag me out of here by my hair?’ She blinked innocently up at him, her fingernails scoring her palms.

She heard Stefania’s sharp intake of breath, and then the
solid warmth of Ivanka’s leg and hip as she slid onto the sofa close up beside her. She remembered her assurance—’I’ve got your back’—on
Firebird
, and wanted to tell her it was fine. Alexei wasn’t about to do anything so primitive. Except she really didn’t know.

And the not knowing sped up her heart.

Alexei towered over her, laser-blue eyes fixed on her alone.

‘You really want to have this out here and now?’

There was a warning in his eyes even as his voice remained cool, direct. Public voice, private eyes.

She flashed back to that morning when he had towered over her as she’d sat on the terrace, Kostya in her arms. Literally crushing her heart with his careless assertion about other women.

Except it hadn’t been careless. He had used it as a weapon to keep her at a distance and more importantly, it hadn’t been true.

Was he lying to her now? Was he doing it to push her away?

‘Alexei thinks I’m too good for him,’ she said out loud.

‘Yeah, because you are,’ said Stiva jovially.

‘Stiva!’ Ivanka glowered at him.

‘He tried to make me his mistress, but I’m not. I’m his girlfriend. Not that he’s ever even brought me a bunch of flowers.’

‘Or bling,’ put in Stefania.

‘I don’t mind about the jewellery. I told him I didn’t want any. I didn’t say anything about flowers, though.’

Maisy was talking to her glass. She knew in revealing what was between them before others she was taking a chance with this most private and closely guarded of men. These people were his family, but that probably made it worse. Yet what choice was he giving her? And what had she to lose? She needed to push him. For him to see he was surrounded by people who loved him.
She
loved him. She wanted him to love
her
.

‘A single rose from the garden would have done, or maybe some wildflowers from the roadside—’ She broke off as her
glass was snatched from her and then big familiar hands closed around her waist.

He plucked her from the sofa and she wound her arms around his neck and let him carry her, as docile as she had been that morning when he had come to seduce her.

‘Like I said,’ Valery commented dryly, ‘toast.’

Maisy threw an anxious look at Alexei’s face so close to her own. He wasn’t angry. He was determined, but it wasn’t anger he was radiating—it was something else. Something that made her instinctively cling to him.

‘Where are we going?’ she demanded, although it was clear he was taking her upstairs.

‘Why can’t we have fights like that?’ Stefania’s high voice floated after them.

Maisy suspected she was about to be ravished on that big bed upstairs and little else. A miracle would have to take place to get Alexei to talk, and she was just about out of pulling miracles from her sleeve.

Maria appeared at the top of the stairs and Maisy struggled to be put down, but Alexei held fast.

‘I have bad news for you, Alexei,’ she said simply. ‘The
bambino
wants his
mamma
.’

Alexei paused on the threshold of the nursery, expecting a difficult struggle to calm Kostya down. It was going to take many months to convince a child of this age his parents weren’t coming back. He’d been through it all with the psychologist.

The boy was with the night nanny, his little face red and screwed up with crying. It had been a long, awful day, but it was the first time Alexei had felt truly hopeless. He couldn’t communicate with Maisy, and he couldn’t protect Kostya from this.

‘Mama!’ He sniffled, big eyes latching onto Maisy and not letting go.

She moved swiftly to him, took the child into her arms and
settled into a chair. His cries subsided almost instantly as he buried his hot face in her neck and clung.

Alexei swore softly under his breath. He’d been blind. It wasn’t Anais the boy wanted. It was Maisy. She had taken the role of Kostya’s mother from the beginning.

It had always been Maisy.

It was peaceful in the nursery, but Maisy knew what awaited her outside. She’d forced this confrontation and now she was going to get it. Ready or not.

Alexei was watching them, arms folded over his chest, leaning against the bureau. He hadn’t turned tail and run in the face of the infant’s tears. For a man with no experience of children he’d adapted quickly and irrevocably to the fact he had one in his life. It was clearly just
women
he had a commitment problem with.

Kostya’s body was sleep-heavy, and Maisy knew the moment had arrived. She moved reluctantly to stand.

‘Here, let me take him.’

Alexei’s deep voice had the volume turned down, but its impact shuddered through Maisy as she gave up the baby to him. He lifted Kostya from her arms with a practised move that caught at Maisy’s raw emotions. His eyes flickered to hers. They had done this so many times, she realized. Like a tag team—
like parents
. She saw acknowledgement of this in his expression for the first time.

Shaken, Maisy fetched Kostya’s favourite blanket, draping it over his sleeping body, and then without saying a word or sparing a glance for Alexei she slipped outside.

She was halfway down the hall when she heard the nursery door click shut, and then Alexei’s hushed voice whipped her around. ‘Not so fast.’

In that instant Maisy realised she was actually running away from him. She was behaving like a scared little mouse—the timid girl who had started at St Bernice’s all those years ago and looked to Anais to fight her battles. She was a grown
woman now, and if anything the past few weeks had taught her she could handle one large, moody Russian male—except this time she needed to do it without sex muddying the waters and confusing the issues.

He stalked towards her, the down lights on the walls throwing his shadow so that he seemed to increase in height as he stood over her.

Maisy’s trembling hands automatically found her hips. ‘If you think I’m going to jump into bed with you and have mad, passionate, angry sex so you can put this behind us and just go on as before—’

‘We’ve done that, Maisy, and moved on from it,’ he interrupted.

The fact that he was on the same page with her brought Maisy up short.

‘What I want to know is what was that about downstairs?’

Testosterone was pounding out of him, and Maisy was so distracted by the urge to press herself up against him she had trouble concentrating.

‘The stuff about the jewellery,’ he clarified, his accent clotting up the words.

Maisy shook herself. She was doing the very thing she had warned him against.

‘I’m sorry for embarrassing you,’ she answered. ‘But I was very angry—’

‘You didn’t embarrass me, Maisy,’ he broke in impatiently. ‘I want to know what it was about.’ He seemed to close in around her. ‘What do you want from me? I’ll bring in a jeweller tomorrow—you can have whatever you want.’

‘I don’t
want
jewellery!’ she exploded. ‘Oh, how can you be so ridiculously obtuse?’

‘
I’m
obtuse? You made it very clear in Paris that anything—
anything
—I bought for you was payment. Can you blame me for being wary about putting anything around your neck?’

‘So it’s all
my
fault? I don’t know what I’m doing, Alexei. Have you ever thought about that? It’s not like I’ve ever been
a rich man’s mistress before. Forgive me if I make mistakes. You never gave me a rule book.’

‘You’re not my mistress,’ he said firmly. ‘I have never,
never
treated you as a mistress.’

‘You dress me; you chauffeur me around in limos; you keep me separate from your working life. Until now I’ve never met any of your friends. What else am I?’

‘I’m looking after you. You and Kostya. The three of us.’

‘No, Alexei,’ she said softly, sadly. ‘It’s just you.’

Her words fell like stones into the silence. Maisy’s emotions trembled with the weight of the impact of what she had said. He looked so lost, her big, steely take-no-prisoners Alexei.
He needs me so badly
, Maisy realized, and it gave her the courage to go on.

‘That’s what you do, Alexei, to protect yourself. You shut yourself off. You choose women who pick you because of what you can give them—
stuff
, luxury and publicity—and that way it’s never about emotions. And God forbid anyone asks for more than that—falls in love with you because you’re so scared to be vulnerable to someone, to trust and lay yourself open to being abandoned and hurt again.’

Alexei said something harsh in Russian. The sound of it was enough to dry up the words in Maisy’s mouth. He was very pale and very menacing in the down lights, his shadow pressing down on her.

‘I
know
I would never abandon a child who needed me,’ she pressed. ‘Anais never bonded with Kostya. It was all I could do to get her to be there in the morning when I got him up. I
do
know what it is to be abandoned because I watched it happen to a child I love. It made it impossible for me not to do everything I could to care for Kostya. And you clearly felt the same way—because you came and rescued him, because that’s how you show love. You offer protection. But I don’t need your protection. I’m not two years old. I need you to open yourself up to me and trust me not to take advantage of you, not to hurt you.’

‘What is it you want from me?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Name it and I’ll do it.’

He still wasn’t prepared to risk himself. Maisy felt the weight of the only choice left to her bearing down. She had to leave him and go back to London. She had done all she could to make Alexei see what was standing in front of him. She loved him, but she didn’t know if he was ever going to change. Nothing she had said seemed to have made a whit of difference.

She needed to protect herself emotionally or he would destroy her. It was the only way forward for both of them. It meant she could very possibly lose him, but what choice had he left her?

She had to risk herself, because he wouldn’t. ‘Anything?’ she whispered.

He turned, his features entirely Tartar, menacing, miserable. It broke her heart.

‘Let me take Kostya back to Lantern Square.’ Her voice dropped an octave as she felt the world shift and tumble away from her feet. ‘Let me go.’

He flinched as if she had struck him. ‘Kostya is my responsibility, not yours,’ he said, in a strained voice she barely recognised.

‘I can’t leave him,’ she whispered.

He turned away from her. She could see all the muscles in his shoulders converge on that one point at the nape of his neck where she used to link her hands. Those shoulders rose and fell.

‘You’re the only mother he’s ever known,’ Alexei said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself. ‘It took me until tonight to recognise that.’

Maisy felt time stop as he turned slowly, his blue eyes so dark in the down light they seemed black. His eyes held hers, as if in challenge. ‘All things considered, I think going back to Lantern Square might be exactly what you need,
dushka
.
But I am in Kostya’s life. You’re never going to be free of me whilst you’re with him.’

‘I’m packing now,’ she answered, swallowing hard. ‘And I’m going first thing in the morning. Can you organise that for Kostya and me?’

‘
Da
. But this isn’t over, Maisy.’

She shrugged, her throat clenching with the effort to keep her emotions in check. There was nothing more to say. She’d said it all. It was up to him now.

M
AISY
heard the bells chime over the door. No clients had been scheduled today, so she expected it was Alice, back early from the school run.

She put down her pen and got up to put the kettle on, pouring Earl Grey tea leaves into the pot. Her eyes were a little sore from peering at the laptop screen, but Alice would be pleased when she heard her good news. She’d managed to source French
valenciennes
lace and get it under price.

Alice’s little shop was a dream come true for Maisy. After landing back in Lantern Square, her first week had been absorbed by resettling Kostya back into a routine and organising a crèche for him before she got stuck into looking for a job.

It had been whilst she was filling in forms with a couple of the other mothers at the crèche around the corner that she had got talking to Alice. With her youngest now at school she had taken her millinery business off the internet and into a store, and hadn’t been looking forward to toiling through the pile of applications she’d received for an assistant’s job. Maisy had seen her chance and taken it.

All the role required was sourcing materials, a little bookkeeping work and chasing up orders three times a week. It was perfect.

It also kept her busy. Today was a record day for her. It was the first morning she’d woken up and her first thought hadn’t been of Alexei. No doubt she’d think about him some time today—slide into a little reverie, maybe even soak her pillow
tonight in tears—but it had only been a month, and she didn’t expect to get over him any time soon.

What mattered was that during the day she was her own woman. She had already established a small circle of friends through Kostya’s activities and her own work here in the shop. She went out to the cinema, she shopped, she met other people for coffee. It was simple and restrained, but it suited her. That lifestyle of limos and hotels and personal shoppers had never sat well with her. This was on her own terms, and if it didn’t include Alexei it wasn’t through any lack of trying. She’d told him what she wanted from him. It was becoming eminently clear he couldn’t give it to her.

She turned to make room at the table for Alice, and almost tripped. Standing in the doorway was not slender, elfin-faced Alice but six and a half feet of Russian male—the same male she had been alternately longing for and cursing over for four long weeks. He was wearing simple and expensively tailored dark trousers and a white shirt open at the throat, and he looked every inch of what he was: a ruthless, sophisticated guy. So out of place amongst the lace and frou-frou of a ladies’ hat shop it was almost humorous.

Almost.

Alexei noted the wide eyes, the pink cheeks, the shock, and took immediate advantage.

No sense in wasting time.

He had known Maisy had garnered herself a job virtually the minute she’d walked back in the door of Lantern Square. He knew she was rarely home, that she took Kostya with her here to the shop when he wasn’t in the crèche, or on play dates to various addresses over London. She preferred the bus to expensive cabs, and she went to the cinema most Thursday nights.

The millinery shop was within walking distance of the house and Alexei had come on foot, turning over the bare facts of Maisy’s existence since she’d vanished from his sight.

It all sounded completely ordinary, and he knew Maisy must love it.

But
this
he hadn’t expected. The small, elegant shopfront, the tinkle of bells as he entered, the subtle fragrance in the air that reminded him of daisies and blue skies. He was rendered overgrown and slightly clumsy in this rarefied atmosphere, and he wondered with a smile if
any
man had dared step inside.

According to his report Maisy worked here on Thursday afternoons until four. He could hear somebody moving around at the rear of the shop and he strode across the shiny black and white parquet, sidling around the counter, noting the lack of security cameras or any security devices at all. He frowned.

She was standing with her back to him, head slightly bent. From the top of her bright head down to the elegant pale blue sheath dress, cinched at her small waist and clutching her rounded hips, down the seams of her pale stockings to the pretty French heel of her shoes, she was all lovely lines and femininity.

Then she turned, and those cinnamon eyes flared, and her face happened to him all over again.

But she didn’t do any of the things he might have expected her to. A gasp, a frown, or more preferably throwing herself into his arms. She simply stood there, slender arms at her sides, bright titian ringlets framing a solemn expression tinged with a little wonder. She didn’t make a move towards him, but nor did she move away.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She’d been magnificent in those last couple of days they’d had together, lifting the bar on their relationship so high he’d been unable to cross it. Exerting her own will, matching it against his. Few men had the guts for it, but she hadn’t blinked. Then again, those men didn’t burrow up against him in bed and lift soft eyes that turned all his intentions her way.

Yet, unlike every other woman he’d come across, she hadn’t used sex to manipulate him. She’d given him an ultimatum, and she’d stuck by it. He hadn’t known she’d had it in her. All
he’d seen was the sweet, artless girl he had fallen in love with on sight. But, damn, he respected her for it. And she’d been right.

‘Alexei.’

‘Hello, Maisy.’

Looking up into the familiar, beautiful lines of his face, she struggled to find the man whose wretched eyes had haunted her dreams for weeks now. He had returned to being the hard-edged, sophisticated guy who had come bursting into her kitchen and changed her life for ever. Except when his eyes rested on her a little smile she recognised tugged on the corner of his lips, and his blue eyes softened on hers with a question.

Alexei Ranaevsky didn’t ask questions. He issued directives.

Everybody knew that. But Maisy knew differently.

It hadn’t been that way between them from the moment he’d seized hold of her arm in that park in Ravello. She remembered how his body had actually been vibrating, and in her ignorance she had thought him angry. It hadn’t been anger, and it had been more than desire for her. He had felt the connection and it had thrown him as much as it had thrown her, and they’d both been tumbling down the long hill of it ever since.

Maisy knew where she wanted to land, but it had been almost a whole month and he hadn’t called her—he hadn’t let her know how he was doing.

Every night he spoke to Kostya on the phone. It was a regular six o’clock routine. She would pick up, would hear his voice, deep and caressing, saying, ‘Maisy,’ and she would reply, ‘Kostya’s right here,’ not trusting herself to even say his name. She would sit beside the little boy as he chattered exuberantly, the faint sound of Alexei’s voice all she’d allow herself. There was always the temptation as Kostya said his goodbyes not to press ‘end’ and to speak to him herself—but what would she say?
I love you. I want to come back to you.
But it wasn’t her call. Alexei was a smart guy. If he had something to say to her he would have rung her and said it.

Actually, knowing the man as she did, he would have hopped on a plane and said it to her face.

And here he was.

In those last days together she had taken command not only of herself but of whatever was between them. Having him suddenly here, filling up the tiny space with his presence, it felt as if Alexei had seized it back, and Maisy felt slightly on the back foot.

‘What are you doing here?’ She sounded breathless to her own ears.

‘I’ve been to Lantern Square to check the security.’

It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say, and something small and bright that had lit in her mind at the sight of him went out.

‘I had it changed whilst you were with me in Ravello.’

He made it sound as if those two months had been merely a holiday. Next he would make some comment about her tan fading—that was if she’d even had a tan. Maisy stopped gazing up adoringly and pulled herself together.

‘I really don’t think it’s necessary,’ she said, as coolly as she could manage. ‘I don’t think Kostya’s in any danger.’ But even as she spoke she could have kicked herself. She knew exactly why he was so security conscious. Every time he looked at Kostya he saw himself and what he had never had.

‘Not just Kostya. I want you to be safe, Maisy.’

‘Me? Why would anyone want to hurt me?’

‘I don’t think anyone wants to hurt you. I just—’ He broke off, running a hand through his hair as he smiled at her ruefully. ‘I’m doing that thing you say I do. I’m showing you how much I love you by protecting you.’

Maisy was glad she had a table behind her to steady herself against.

‘I’m on my knees, Maisy.’ His voice was a whole octave deeper. ‘I’m begging you to forgive me. I want to take you and Kostya home with me to Ravello, where you both belong. I want us to be a family.’

Maisy’s mouth had run dry and she moistened her lips. ‘It took you almost four weeks to decide this?’

He was suddenly filling the tiny private space, and Maisy had nowhere else to go.

‘Has it been so hard without me?’

‘No,’ she lied.

‘I haven’t been able to breathe,’ he confessed roughly. ‘It hurts every time I do.’

Me too,
her heart whispered.

‘Four weeks, Alexei.’ It came out jerkily.

‘And look what you’ve done with it.’

He smiled at her then, that slow smile she loved so well. She wanted to smile back, but she felt if she did her entire life would go land-sliding towards him and she didn’t want that quite yet.

‘You were too scared to love me,’ she risked saying.

‘Precious little scares me,
dushka
, but you had me on the back foot from the moment we met,’ he confessed—so candidly she couldn’t help edging towards him. ‘That day on the yacht, Maisy, it all came apart. When we were travelling together it was easier to keep you tucked away, out of sight. I understand you felt marginalized, but that’s not what I was thinking. You belonged to me—a better me—not the man who keeps all the financial balls spinning. I didn’t want to let the air in on that rarefied atmosphere we had. It was so precious to me.’

Maisy had gone very still. She hadn’t considered it from that angle before. It had never occurred to her that
she
was the good thing in his life. All she had imagined was her inability to fit in.

‘I wish you’d told me,’ she answered softly.

‘Hell, I hardly framed it as an idea to myself. I was running on instinct, Maisy. But I knew it wasn’t fair to you, so I decided to use
Firebird
as an introduction.’

‘Except it meant then that in everyone else’s eyes I was your mistress.’ It still stung, and she wasn’t going to hide that from him.

Alexei’s blue eyes sought hers earnestly. ‘The people who mattered didn’t think that, Maisy. Anyone with eyes in their head could see how much I loved you.’

He’d said he loved her. Twice. Maisy couldn’t help reaching up to lay her hand against his chest. The heat and solidity of him felt like utter security.

‘I realised I was pushing you away when all I wanted was intimacy. I just didn’t know how to protect myself and still have everything with you.’

Maisy touched him with her other hand, just resting it on his chest, her fingers slightly curling around the fabric. He seemed to feel so guilty, and she didn’t want that.

‘I knew I’d made a colossal mistake,’ he said roughly. ‘But that meant re-evaluating everything I knew and I was struggling with it. When Leo died I was lost.’

His heavy sigh had her hands tightening on his shirt.

‘Nothing felt right,’ he said simply. ‘And then I found you and it all fell into place.’

His eyes hadn’t left hers once. His sincerity was making it difficult for her not to respond, yet she wanted to hear all of this. Desperately.

‘Watching you with Kostya, seeing how much of a mother you’ve clearly been to him from birth, and then having you open yourself up to me. We’re both very lucky males to have you in our lives.’

Maisy bit her lip.

‘It just took me a little time to adjust, and you kept pushing,’ he confessed with a half-smile, then reached out and gently thumbed the line puckering between her brows. ‘I’m glad you did,
dushka
. You made me face a few home truths. It was only when you made it clear what you wanted that I realised I’d been kidding myself.’

‘I didn’t think I had much to lose,’ she confessed. ‘You would have pushed me away anyway. You didn’t want me to love you.’

He framed her face with his big hands. ‘Maisy Edmonds, as fast as I was backing up, I had no intention of losing you.’

‘You sent me back here.’

‘You asked me to. I gave you what you wanted.’

‘If you’d argued with me I would only have resented you,’ she admitted honestly, more to herself than him. ‘I needed to find myself again, Alexei. I needed to see if I could do it on my own.’

‘Look at you.’ He gave her that slow smile that made her thighs turn to water and everything tingle. ‘The working girl.’

‘Damn right.’

Alexei was tangling one hand through her curls. ‘Now I’ve come for what I want.’

‘You’re very sure of yourself,’ Maisy murmured, thrilled.

‘
Da
, but you like me that way,
dushka
.’

‘Bossy.’

‘Taking you over, not giving you a choice.’

He leaned in and kissed her, and his tenderness was the undoing of her.

He drew back enough to say, ‘But you’ve got all the choices now, Maisy. Come back with me, be a family with me; share your life with me. You can have it all,
dushka
.’

Maisy gripped hold of his shirt front, making a mess of the sleek tailored lines.

‘I want to be with you, Alexei.’

It was an echo from another time, another place, and he recognised it immediately. By a fountain in a garden, when they’d both been reeling from the impact of what being together might mean.

He knew exactly what it meant. The rest of his life was standing in front of him.