Too Proud to be Bought (15 page)

‘How was Marie-Claire?’

‘Who?’

She swallowed. Was he going to make a fool of her into the bargain? Effecting ignorance and making her wonder if she was going crazy? ‘The French actress you’re so close to!’

‘The French actress I’m so close to,’ he repeated slowly.

‘In every sense!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘This is what I’m talking about!’ She picked up the newspaper and shoved it at him. ‘Here it is, in black and white! Deny it now, if you dare!’

Nikolai looked down at the photo and gave a ghostly smile of recognition. There had been many photos like this published over the years. Sometimes the images had been faithful to the truth and sometimes they had been as far away from it as it was possible to imagine. A captured split second when someone smiled at you and it looked as if you were in your own private little world of love. He had learned many things during his time in the public eye and one of those had been that the camera could be a very unreliable witness.

‘You’d believe this rag?’ he said contemptuously. ‘Without bothering to ask me first?’

‘Who is she?’ Zara demanded.

‘I thought you knew exactly who she was! Why should I bother answering your accusations since you already seem to have made your mind up?’

‘She’s just been in New York!’

‘Along with about ten million others!’

Her heart was racing and her mouth felt like sandpaper. ‘Don’t you think you owe me the courtesy of an explanation,
Nikolai?’ she questioned quietly.

‘And don’t you owe
me
the courtesy of showing me a little trust?’

Zara blinked at him.
He
was in the wrong, surely—and now he was twisting it round and making
her
feel as if she’d done something wrong. ‘When was the picture taken?’

With a weary sigh, he walked over to the cabinet where the drinks were kept and poured himself a small glass of vodka. He drank only a little of it before putting the glass down and turning to stare at her. ‘It was taken while we were on a break—’

‘See!’

‘I went to a party and she was there. We talked and she asked me for a lift home.’

‘Which you, of course, gave her?’

‘It seemed ungentlemanly to refuse.’

‘And we all know how much of a gentleman you can be in the back of cars, Nikolai!’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Why don’t you just come right out and ask me if I slept with her, Zara?’

‘Did you?’

‘No, I damned well didn’t!’ he exploded, smashing his fist down on the cupboard so that the glass wobbled and splashed vodka down the side. ‘I haven’t slept with anyone since I first laid eyes on you. I haven’t wanted to. In fact, since the moment I met you—it’s like other women don’t even exist! I can’t seem to get enough of you.’

She bit her lip—because didn’t he make that sound more like some sort of fierce sexual obsession than anything really meaningful? ‘I find that very hard to believe.’

‘Oh, I’ll bet you do,’ he snapped. ‘What does it take to convince you, Zara? I thought I’d take things slowly.

Show you how much I care for you in
real
ways. So I didn’t object when you insisted on continuing with your waitressing—even though the money they pay you is ludicrous. I admired your independence, if you must know. And I like those little presents you buy me when I go away.’

‘Nikolai—’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You go on and on about wanting to be my equal—but emotionally you don’t have the courage to try. You dared to be tender with me the first time we made out—but now it’s as if you’re holding back all the time. You used to make me dig deep inside myself. I’d never have found out about my mother if it hadn’t been for your damned persistence. Sometimes I resented it, but at least you made me confront things. You made me feel
alive.
But not any more. Now all I get from you is precisely—’ he snapped his fingers and his face tightened ‘—nothing.’

Her fingers flew to her lips in distress. ‘Nikolai—’

‘I’ve given you more than I’ve ever given any woman and I don’t know whether there’s anything left to give—because I get nothing back. Nothing! You affect not to care about my money or power and yet, deep down, I think that you despise them. They’re all you see—instead of the man underneath—the man who stupidly thought you might be able to look beneath all the trappings.’ He bent to pick up his jacket and headed for the door and it wasn’t until Zara heard him talking on his phone to his driver that she realised he was actually
going out!

‘Where are you going?’ she yelled.

‘To the party! If I get such an empty reception at home, then maybe I’ll try to find a little comfort elsewhere. And let’s face it—’ she could hear the grim note
in his voice ‘—if I’m going to be accused of something I might as well get the benefits of it!’

She heard the door slam just as she began to frame his name and she dashed through the hall to open it just in time to see his car pulling away. For a moment she contemplated sprinting up the road after it, but the powerful car was already down by the electronic gates, its tail lights flashing. Her heart slamming, she stared at the gates closed behind it.
He’d gone to the party!
He’d spoken to her more honestly than he’d ever done before and then he had walked out.

And suddenly she saw her own part in what had gone wrong.

She had accused him of infidelity—she had wanted to believe the very worst of him—was it any wonder that their relationship hadn’t deepened when she had been sitting on the sidelines just waiting for him to step out of line? Yet he had never given her any reason to believe that he was interested in other women, had he? She wondered if her lack of trust was driven by his reluctance to offer her any long-term future—or just her general insecurity that a man like Nikolai should be living with someone like her.

So had they now reached a stalemate—with each of them too scared to proceed any further? She because she was afraid of getting hurt and Nikolai because he simply didn’t know how to express emotion?

Distractedly, Zara stared out at the beautiful garden. Yet would a man who could have any woman he wanted bother living with someone unless he felt
something?

And meanwhile he had walked out on her. Gone to some fancy party deciding that he was newly single and where any woman with a pulse would start coming onto him.

‘No!’ The strangled word was torn from her throat as
she grabbed the invitation from the mantelpiece. Because what was the point of nurturing hope if you didn’t let it spark into an almighty flame big enough to melt doubt and uncertainty? What was the point of playing safe if that caused suspicion and unhappiness? Wasn’t it time to tell Nikolai exactly how much she loved him—to let it out into the open and see what happened?

She ran outside and then, minutes later, she was out on the main street outside the gates, searching for a cab. She saw one on the other side of the road and, to a cacophony of angry horns, she dodged the traffic to hail it down and jump in the back.

‘Take me to Primrose Hill,’ she said breathlessly as the driver turned off the yellow light. ‘As quickly as possible.’

The party was being held in a house which was as imposing as she had imagined and as she saw the immaculately dressed people going inside she suddenly realised how frightful she must look with her flushed cheeks and messy hair. But she didn’t care. There was something much more important at stake here than her appearance. She just prayed that she hadn’t left it too late …

She rang the doorbell and the uniformed butler raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes?’ he questioned unhelpfully.

‘I’m here for the party!’

His face twisted into an I-don’t-believe-you expression. ‘And do you have an invitation, madam?’

‘Yes. Here it is.’ Thank heavens she’d had the foresight to bring it with her. She thrust the card at him and pushed past him, not caring what he thought.

The murmur of voices and chink of glasses directed her footsteps up to the first-floor drawing room and when
Zara walked in there was a pin-drop silence. But then, maybe that was because she was the only person in the room who was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Agricultural Students Do It In Fields'.

All eyes seemed to be fixed on her but she was aware of only one pair. She could see Nikolai on the far side of the room and she couldn’t make out whether he looked shocked, furious, amused—or all three. But suddenly she didn’t care. She had to tell him. Even if it
was
too late—he had to know how she felt.

She walked right up to him and the blonde woman who had been smiling up at him now looked at him askance, as if an axe-murderer had just muscled in on their conversation.

‘Nikolai?’ she ventured, in a tiny little voice which matched her tiny couture-clad frame.

But Nikolai didn’t appear to have even heard the woman. His narrowed eyes were fixed and intent. ‘Zara.’

‘Yes,’ she breathed as the enormity of what she was about to do hit her.

‘This is a surprise.’

His wry understatement made her draw a deep breath. She supposed she could ask him to accompany her to another room, where they might have some peace and privacy. But Zara was afraid that if she waited a second longer then her nerve would leave her and she would never dare say the words which now bubbled out of her.

‘I love you, Nikolai Komarov,’ she said, in a quiet urgent voice. ‘I’ve loved you for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to love you—only I was too scared to show it before.’

He didn’t say a word, just continued to stare at her with a steady blue gaze which was as cold as ice.

Zara drew in another deep breath. ‘I was scared that if I started to show you what I felt—that it would open up the floodgates to something so powerful that it would sweep me away on its tide. And I thought you didn’t want love like that.’

For a moment there was a silence so long that it felt as if time had stretched itself out, like a piece of elastic.
Say something,
she urged silently.
Say anything, but at least say
something.

But there was no smile and no words. Nikolai just stood there as silent and as unmoving as a block of stone and Zara could see the look of shock and something else which had darkened his eyes. Something which looked a little like fear—from a man who didn’t do fear. But he didn’t do love either, did he? He’d told her that in no uncertain terms.

As Zara listened to the heavy silence she realised that her worst nightmare had come true. The gamble hadn’t paid off. He
didn’t
love her. Didn’t even care enough to murmur a few placatory words, which might have allowed her to save face. He was standing looking at her as if she were some kind of madwoman—while the rest of the room looked on with a mixture of amused horror.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should never have come here.’

Unsteadily, she turned and stumbled from the room and the silence began to grow into an astonished roar as she made her way downstairs, brushing past the sanctimonious face of the butler and out onto the street.

Shuddering, she gripped onto the iron railing outside the house as she sucked in several deep breaths, but she still felt weak and dizzy—as if she was about to faint.

But she couldn’t afford to do that—not with people still arriving.
I have to get away,
she told herself fiercely. l
have to move away from here before I make an even bigger fool of myself.

Blindly, she made her way to the end of the street, her eyes blurred with tears, the acid taste of dryness at the back of her throat as she tried to swallow down the sobs which were building in intensity. The glimpse of green at the end of the street made her make her way towards it, some instinct propelling her towards the light and space of Primrose Hill. And that was when she heard running footsteps behind her and the sound of someone calling her name.

She would have recognised his footsteps and the sexy lilt of Nikolai’s Russian accent from miles away but Zara didn’t let her own step falter because the last thing she wanted was to face him. What was she supposed to do, turn around and tell him she was fine and that she didn’t care that she’d humiliated herself by telling him she loved him in front of a room full of snooty people?

‘Zara!’

Ignoring him, she tore into the park and then began to run up the hill, past the iconic lamp-posts. It had always been a favourite place of hers for picnics—a long ride on the Northern Line ending in a cute little hill which made you feel you were flying.

But not today. Today her feet felt leaden and she prayed that Nikolai might have taken the hint and gone back to his party.
Leave me in peace to nurse my wounds,
she prayed silently.
Don’t make it any worse than it already is. Don’t let me keep reliving the moment when I confessed my love for you in a room full of people and you stared at me as if I had just offered you a goblet of pure poison.

‘Zara!’

The voice was closer now. Almost upon her, in fact. And then she could feel his hand on her arm and it was holding her and not letting her go. In fact, he was turning her round as if it were a practised dance move and his face was tense, his eyes dark with some unknown emotion. Furiously, she began to pummel her fists against his chest.

‘Let me go!’

‘No!’

‘Let me go or I’ll scream my head off!’

‘I’ll let you go when you’ve heard me out, Zara. Please.’

It was a word he used so rarely that for a moment she hesitated. ‘Why are you here? To laugh at me?’

‘Zara. Zara. My sweet Zara—’

‘No!’ she interrupted furiously. ‘I don’t want to hear your lying words!’

‘But I’ve never lied to you, Zara. You know that.’

A sob erupted from the back of her throat as he pulled her closer. ‘Just leave me be, Nikolai,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Don’t make it worse than it already is.’

‘I’m going to make it better.’

‘You can’t. You can’t make it better.’

He took hold of both her shoulders then—so that she couldn’t look anywhere except at his face. ‘Not even if I tell you that I love you?’ he demanded quietly. ‘Or that I’ve been a fool? That I was dumbfounded when you walked into that room—your beautiful face alight with love and excitement? And that I didn’t realise how much courage it must have taken for you to come right out and tell me how you felt.’