The Marriage Ultimatum (City of Dreams Series) (10 page)

He was tired. They had done many things last night, but sleeping hadn’t been one of them.

Chapter 8

Back in the New York Groove

Sabrina was curiously disoriented, uncharacteristically detached as New York City bounced back from another weather disaster with its usual aplomb. The temperature had risen to a sunny sixty-five degrees, and people were out clearing debris and getting their lives back on track. She sat in the backseat shielded by the darkened window from the reality of the outside world, watching Vlad in the front negotiating the traffic with his Ray Bans in place.

She was glad he wore the dark glasses. The last thing she wanted to do was look into those insightful blue eyes now, because just hours ago, she’d believed there had been something in them for her alone. He hadn’t even had to lie or make empty promises to get her into his bed, she realized. He just set about seducing her and succeeded in a New York minute.

All to find out the information she supposedly possessed about the scheme to discredit him. And she had to admit, if she had known anything about the supposed plot he was so freaked out about, she would’ve spilled her guts to him. She’d been that enthralled by him and what he could make her body feel.

All told, she had been an embarrassingly eager conquest. A sure thing. An easy lay.

He didn’t know how much of an easy target she had been. She’d been a virgin, but he didn’t realize because, of course, he didn’t know Alex was not her son.

But still. He must be feeling quite the stud.

When he pulled into an underground garage, Sabrina was jolted out of her thoughts.

She jumped out of the vehicle.

“Where are we?” She was disoriented in the darkened space.

“My apartment complex.”

“Oh no, you don’t.” She was not going to be nice or polite. She had to get away from him, from here. And besides, what else could he possibly do to her?

She tried to tamp down her anger at him, at herself and the desperation she felt to get away from the scene of her humiliation. She forced her voice into neutral.

“I need to see Alex now. I’m not staying here. I’m going home.”

“No, that’s not happening.”

Again, he was speaking to her as if she were a very small child. She ground her teeth together.

“The press is all over your block,” he continued. She’d heard him receiving updates from his legal team all morning about the presence of the paparazzi.

“I don’t care.” And she didn’t. She headed off at a fast pace toward the exit sign at the far end of the garage.

He strode after her and grabbed her arm.

“Listen! Don’t be such a child! They’re camped outside this building, too. The only reason they’re not in here right now is I have more security.”

“What part of ‘I don’t care’, don’t you understand? I’m going home to Alex. I should never have left him.”

There was a definite wobble in her voice now, and tears were filling her eyes again. They were clogging her throat, too. In a moment, she wouldn’t be able to speak. She had to go before she broke down and made a total idiot of herself.

Sabrina pulled away from his grip. She had to get the hell out.

He stood for a moment looking at her as if she was a nut.

Wow, had no one ever challenged him in his life?

“Okay, I’ll take you. Get back in the car. I’ll bring you to Alex.”

She took a moment, risked a look straight into his treacherous blue eyes then nodded and got back into the Navigator. She figured if Vlad was lying, if he didn’t bring her to Alex, she’d just jump out at a corner and take the subway.

Like the earlier trip, this one was completed in silence. When they neared her street, Sabrina could see the phalanx of vehicles and reporters with cameras blocking the road. Vlad turned the vehicle and took the long way around by the docks.

He’d been on his cell the entire time, and she tried to ignore the deep rumble of his voice because if she closed her eyes, she could imagine they were back in bed together and he was whispering to her in that same low voice. Telling her the things he wanted to do to her and then doing them. Her body shivered in response to her wicked thoughts. God, it had been less than twenty-four hours ago. How could things have changed so much?

Abruptly, he told her to get out of the Navigator as they pulled up beside a small sedan belonging to one of his staff. Someone from the team drove off in the Navigator and they got into the little sedan and pulled up to the alley behind her building.

“Very cloak and dagger.” Sabrina was unimpressed. “I’ve had it. Let me out.”

She had to leave him now, before she threw herself at him and wrapped herself around him like a vine.

His beautiful lips thinned. He took off his sunglasses again and narrowed his gaze on her.

“Get Alex and come back down,” he said in a voice just this side of furious. “If you’re not back here in five minutes, I will come up there and get you.”

She looked into his piercing navy eyes though it pained her to do so. “I’m done. This is over. Just go away.”

“We’re in this together Sabrina, until I can fix the situation you created. You should have thought twice before you contacted that tabloid and took the money.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

She was so tired of his accusations. She couldn’t defend herself. She would never tell anyone she wasn’t Alex’s mother, not even in front of an army of accusers, if there was the least chance she would lose him.

He looked into her mutinous face. “Five minutes.”

She was sick of being ordered around. She turned her back and raced into her building. Sabrina found Alex content but restless in Mrs. Egan’s apartment.

“He was asking for you a little bit,” the babysitter confessed, eyeing Sabrina curiously.

“Thanks, Mrs. Egan, we’re all tired and…we’ll talk later, okay?”

No doubt Alex was confused. They’d never spent a night where they hadn’t both been under the same roof. She opened her arms to her brother.

“Hey, Alex. Hey, little guy. Let’s go home. I missed you, buddy.”

“Rina!” he exclaimed, his little boy exuberance lavishing a wealth of feeling into his nickname for her. He snuggled into her, and she carried him down to their apartment where they were confronted by the chaos that was their home.

“Ugh. I’ve got to clean up.” Usually this was a chore accomplished in a stolen hour or two on a night or a weekend when she didn’t feel too wiped out, but she realized that with no job she now had plenty of time to clean.
Yippee!
She also had plenty of time to look for a new place. After she found another job. Which she had to do. Pronto. She had to keep her house of cards from wobbling any further or they would be out in the street.

But she couldn’t think about that right now. She needed to give Alex some normalcy, starting with a home that didn’t look like a tornado had just blown through it. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, shoved their dirty laundry into the bag, and dragged it to the door in readiness for the laundromat.

Alex sat in the middle of the floor reacquainting himself with his toys.

She was leaning up against the kitchen counter, making up a grocery list when the apartment door crashed open.

Alex burst into tears.

She fisted her hands on her hips and a wordless look passed between her and Vlad in which she dared him to make a scene.

She picked up Alex and soothed him as she said, “Leave us alone.”

“If I could turn the clock back, believe me, I would,” he said baldly and Sabrina felt even more like crying than she had before.

She stood with Alex in her arms, her fingers smoothing over his fluffy black hair. Her stance was defiant, and Alex burrowed into her neck like a lion cub, one eye blinking up at the tall man at the door.

Vlad looked at them steadily, his eyes angry, his arms hanging impotently by his sides.

She tried for outward composure, put her game face in place, and stared right back at him.

He went on attack. “In case you need reminding, you’re out of a job. You’ve upended my life with the tale you invented, and I can’t get it back on track till this is cleared up. You did this, not me, so I don’t want to hear another word about how you’re over it. Now we’ve both got to deal with the fallout.”

She settled Alex back down near his toys.

Vlad was taking this too far.

“Leave me be. You’ve already fired me. I mean, c’mon, really. Don’t people have better things to think about than you?”

He wasn’t a film star or a professional athlete for God’s sake. But could that maybe be why the story had some traction? Was it even juicer?

****

“There’s a person planted somewhere at each of these media outlets keeping the fiction alive for a price.” He shrugged. That was the way this stuff worked.

He rubbed the side of his jaw. “Other people, defenseless people, will be hurt if I don’t deal with this. I can’t just deny it, and I can’t walk away from it.”

He was humoring her, he figured, by telling her information she must certainly be aware of, but, when he thought about it, it was just like them to pay someone off for a job without telling details. Why should they? And if the financial gain were great enough, she would have simply done it. Done what she was told and just taken the money. No questions asked.

They would never have felt compelled to explain the reasoning behind why they were targeting someone in a smear campaign. And he had no specific idea who had approached her. All she would need to know or care about was that she had money in her pocket.

His gaze traveled over the threadbare rug and shabby curtains. Not that it looked like she was spending it yet. The apartment was a shambles aside from the professional photos of her son that filled every available wall space and nook.

She crossed her arms under her chest throwing her rounded breasts into prominence. He could see the tracery of her lacey bra underneath the T-shirt. Blood rushed straight to his groin as if programmed. He turned away in an effort to relax his wayward body and blank his mind to the vision of her in just that bra and the lacey thong he knew matched it.

He decided to elaborate a bit. As much as he hated to reveal the smallest bit of information about himself, he could see the wisdom in having her working with him, not against him. Maybe if he could get her out of that defensive posture and on his side…

“I, ah, support a number of charities that cater to orphans in Russia. It would be a coup for people who want to see me fail to make the public believe I fathered a child out of wedlock, a child I supposedly proceeded to ignore. Donations might drop off and worse.” He felt his jaw harden. “I will not let that happen. No matter what they told you or paid you. I will not let that happen.”

Sabrina stared into his eyes and he looked back at her, schooling his features into an impassive mask. “That’s all I will say about it. You have no job. If you choose to assist me, I will repay you handsomely though you hardly deserve that kind of consideration. If you refuse, I’ll see that you never work in New York again.”

He folded his arms across his chest. Checkmate. She had to decide in his favor, but he waited for her to admit it.

****

His eyes were as cold as the depths of the Hudson River in winter. This was the Vladimir Grigory whom business rivals feared and his own staff avoided crossing. There was no hint in his face of the Vlad who had been her lover for a day and a night less than twenty-four hours ago.

She had no choice, but damned if she would let him see the pain his words caused.

He hustled them out of the building and into the tiny sedan she had exited minutes before. He was on and off his cell phone the entire time. Sabrina set Alex next to her in the backseat buckled into a seatbelt. She didn’t have a toddler car seat, never had a use for one before. She had never gotten a driver’s license even. They traveled by subway or walked. Once she had secured him enough to prevent him from sliding out of the belt, she took a moment to relish the almost relaxed feeling of riding in a car, even a small one, with Alex as opposed to the stench and grime of the subway. It was a treat to be savored.

She had thrown a few of Alex’s best clothes in a backpack. Sad to say that practically his entire wardrobe plus some of her own things fit inside it. They owned nothing more than the bare minimum. Alex grew so quickly, it didn’t make sense to stock up his wardrobe even if she could have afforded it.

They drove past a group of vehicles near the entrance to the underground garage, and Sabrina instinctively ducked her head in the backseat. But it was okay. Perception was a funny thing. The paparazzi didn’t expect to see Vladimir Grigory driving a Prius.

At his Manhattan apartment building, an imposingly handsome new tower near the tip of Manhattan, the private elevator took them straight to the penthouse overlooking lower Hudson Bay. The rooms were surrounded on all sides by sun-dappled views of the water and Lady Liberty. The center of it all was the huge living area from which five different paths led to various rooms of the apartment: kitchen, office, bedrooms, and all with an unimpeded view of the harbor. Sabrina felt like she was at the prow of a ship.

“My housekeeper brought in some food and other supplies so you should find anything you or Alex might want in the kitchen or your rooms. Your bedrooms are at the far end of that hall.”

He waved his hand at the corridor encased in a thick linen wallpaper then disappeared down another long hall of the penthouse that had more square footage than most houses, giving every appearance that he was escaping a nightmare.

Trying not to make Alex pick up on her own discomfort at the opulence of their surroundings, Sabrina gave him a quick bath because it always soothed him. He ate a banana and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and washed it all down with milk. He fussed at the concept of a separate room so soon after spending two nights with just Mrs. Egan. She settled him in the ginormous bed in her room, and in minutes, he was asleep.

She took her own shower then and marveled that even from the bathroom there was a stunning water view out the window into the harbor. High above the noise and chaos of the city, she tried to enjoy the magnificent serenity of the water, the play of the sun on the swell of the river, but she was too keyed up. It was way too early for her to sleep, and she wouldn’t have been able to close her eyes anyway with the thoughts running through her mind.