Untouched by His Diamonds (21 page)

He made a ‘no importance’ gesture—so like the Serge she loved, king of his own fiefdom. As if the practical considerations of life that so bedevilled the general population had nothing to do with him.

‘You like to run, don’t you,
kisa
? Ever since I first laid eyes on you I have been chasing you. Why would it be any different now?’ His tone was almost meditative, but his eyes were charged and as wild as she had ever seen them.

‘I’m not running. I’ve come home. The holiday is over, Serge. You made that clear. You took me to Paris to break up with me.’ Her voice shattered over those words. ‘The most romantic time in my life and you took it and you smashed it.’

The colour left his face as her words sank in, and for a moment she experienced a modicum of satisfaction that he understood how truly awful that experience had been for her.
Then a deep sadness began to invade her, its tendrils reaching into every corner of her body.

‘That wasn’t my intention,’ he said, in a deep, fractured voice. ‘Clementine, please believe me—it was never my intention to hurt you.’

But you did
.

Her whole body was howling and he was just standing there, looking fierce and troubled and desperate.

‘Go and find yourself another girl, Serge,’ she said heavily. ‘I’m sure there are thousands of women in New York City alone who would be happy to take my place.’

He reached for her, leaning in, and suddenly all she could see was the turbulence inside of him and something else. Something tender—something awakened by her words.

‘Where do you get this from? When have I looked at another woman since I met you?’

For a long moment her heart felt too big for her chest. If only he meant a word of that. But she knew it couldn’t be true. She shook his hand from her arm. ‘You have a history, Serge. Do you think I was living in a bubble back in New York? Everywhere I went I heard about your airhead bimbos. This is what you’re like with women.’

‘Not with you, Clementine.’

‘We were having sex, Serge,’ she hissed. ‘Sex—that’s all it was. You told me that’s all it was. You spelt it out. How am I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to deal with that? I don’t have casual flings. I’m not built that way.’

‘I know you’re not.’

She shook her head, shaking out the soft, persuasive sound of his words. Meaningless, empty words.

‘I’m not coming back with you, Serge. It’s over.’

He caught her hand. ‘No.’ It wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t a request. It was a statement of fact.
No
.

It gave her the much needed anger to power herself up.

‘Get over yourself, rich boy.’ She shook his hand off. ‘You’re not that irresistible.’

He didn’t shift and suddenly she wanted him to know how badly he’d hurt her. But she also wanted him to know he was nothing special.

‘I met another guy like you, Serge, a year ago. A rich guy who thought he just had to throw his money around and everything would belong to him. He dated me for six weeks. He dressed me, he asked me to wear jewellery he’d loaned me, and then he offered me an apartment because he didn’t want to slum it in my flat. The problem was he was engaged the whole time and had no intention of me being anything other than his mistress. Just another guy looking for no-strings sex with an easy girl.’

Serge was looking at her as if she’d punched him.

She took a deep breath, lowering her voice. ‘Except I didn’t sleep with him. Because it means something to me, Serge, when I share my body. And the only reason I’m telling you any of this is so you understand what I risked when I came with you to New York City.’

‘Clementine—’

She heard him say her name but she barrelled on, full of emotion, hardly knowing what she was saying or revealing any more, and not caring.

‘I didn’t date for a year afterwards—until I met you and took a chance. You fit the profile, Serge. Money, charisma, the sort of guy who owns the world.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘But I thought, He’s a good guy. I should look beyond the outer trappings to the man underneath. But in the end, Serge, you’re worse than he is because you made me believe you cared about me. All that other guy did was make a fool of me.’

Serge was silent, then he said roughly, ‘You should have told me.’

‘I’m telling you now. I just wanted to go on a date,’ she said stonily. ‘I wanted to be a normal girl for a change, who gets dated instead of propositioned.’

‘I never propositioned you.’

‘Sure you did. You asked me to come with you to New York and my first thought was, Great, another jerk. And guess what? I was right.’

‘We ran out of time,’ he said softly.

‘I know. That’s why I said yes. Because I thought just maybe I’d give you the benefit of the doubt. I thought you saw
me
, Serge, the real me. More fool me.’

‘I do see you.’ Serge touched her cheek, and when she flinched turned her face to make her look at him. ‘I
do
see you,’ he repeated, his finger curling possessively under her chin.

‘No, you don’t see me at all. All you see is what everyone else sees—sexy Clementine working her stuff,’ she said bitterly. ‘You made that very clear yesterday. It’s about sex, you said. Just sex.’

‘That is not true, Clementine. I lied to you.’

She went very still.

Serge’s whole body had drawn taut. ‘I didn’t want to feel this way about you. My parents had passion in their marriage, Clementine, and it wiped out everything else. My father thought loving meant annihilating the other person. I vowed I would never do that, and whenever I found myself getting close to a woman I would pull back. Until you.’

His eyes softened on her. ‘Everything about you has been different. From the moment I saw you in that little shop, saw that smile of yours, you invited me in. It was like being a kid again, following you down that road, and when you wouldn’t let me look after you I was stumped. I couldn’t leave you there.’

His green eyes, so fierce as she’d flung her accusations at him, grew tender and their gazes locked.

‘I’ve been chasing you ever since.’

She blinked.

‘I’m in love with you, Clementine.’

She felt her legs give. She sat down heavily on her suitcase and Serge dropped to his knees beside her. In the middle of an airport terminal, under harsh, unforgiving lights. But all Clementine saw was the man she loved in front of her, on his knees, declaring himself.

‘Then why did you push me away?’ she whispered hoarsely, not really believing what he was saying.

‘Fear.’

Her chin came up. It was a huge admission for a man like Serge to make, and she met the sincerity in his eyes and believed him.

‘I didn’t want to be like my father,’ he admitted tautly. ‘I didn’t want to destroy the woman I loved. But, God help me, Clementine, when I woke up and found you gone I knew I’d destroyed what we had anyway. I was exactly like my father.’

He took her hands and held them between both of his—a strangely formal gesture that shook her to the ground.

‘You tell me I don’t see you, Clementine, but I do. Because we’re alike, you and I. I see a girl who has been on her own far too long. I see a girl who takes chances and not all of them work out.’ He swayed in against her until they were eye to eye. ‘I see a girl who when she gets scared runs away. I’m not going to let you run away from me, Clementine. I will chase you to the ends of the earth if I have to. I love you. I will always love you.’

He took a deep, sustaining breath, as if making a declaration of intent. ‘I’m a Marinov, and that is how we love our women.’

Clementine’s heart stuttered, and then began to thrum to
a deeper beat. Hope was blooming inside her and it hurt too much—because she’d been disappointed so many times in the past. People promised to love you, but love wasn’t always enough. Careers and personal desires got in the way. She’d learned that with her parents.

Serge seemed to sense her reticence. He let go of her hands and reached around her waist instead, suddenly so close he was her whole world.

‘I’ve been in hell, Clementine, because I knew I’d driven you away. At the
château
I wanted to take my words back. In the car I wanted to take them back. I tried to show you in the hotel but it wasn’t enough. When I woke up and found you gone I knew it wasn’t enough. I didn’t give you the words you needed because I found them so difficult to say—because I knew once I said them there was no going back for you and me. It’s for ever. You
do
understand it’s for ever, Clementine?’

A lava-flow of emotion pushed past the hard pylons she’d erected to protect herself and she laid her hand against his chest.

Serge gazed down at her hand, acknowledging the familiar gesture.

‘Please don’t be just saying that,’ she said.

His eyes met hers, and she was stunned by the look of blatant hope in his. He wasn’t holding anything back from her any more.

‘Be with me, Clementine. Love me. Be mine.’

All the breath seemed to have left her body. It would be so easy to just give in. But she wasn’t a little girl any more, hoping others would give her what she needed. She knew now she had to ask for it.

‘I want to know first what it would be like, being yours?’ she said softly, her voice growing more sure. ‘Because I value my independence, Serge.’

She gave him a little smile, and his eyes lit with such a fierce light it felt slightly overwhelming.

‘I will tell you what I want,’ he said, his accent thickening the words. ‘I want to live with you and work beside you and fill our house with friends and family and have babies with you. I want it all. But I don’t know how much you want, Clementine.’

She swallowed. ‘You told me once you didn’t want children.’

‘Clementine, I’ve said a lot of things I wish you’d never heard. When my father died he left behind chaos in his wake. I vowed I’d never do that. But I’d been living a half-life until I met you. I want to live fully, in the moment, and I want children with you and I want to grow old with you.’

‘I took a chance, hopping in that limo with you all those weeks ago,’ she said shyly. ‘I can’t see why I shouldn’t take another chance now.’

‘Forget the limo. You came across the world with a man you hardly knew.’ Serge’s fingers tightened around hers as he meshed their hands together. ‘But,
kisa
, you must never, never do that again. Have you any idea how dangerous it is?’

She looked at their joined hands, wondering how that had happened.

‘You’ve never felt dangerous to me. I always feel safe with you, Serge.’

‘I want you to feel safe. I want to look after you, Clementine. I don’t want you out in the world on your own. It takes years off me just thinking about it.’

‘Then don’t think about it, Slugger.’

She drifted up against him with a little smile he recognised. He kissed her softly, tenderly, with growing depth.

She wound her arms around his neck, forged that deep physical connection she had had with him from the beginning simply through the press of her body to his. But now she
knew what had been there all along—the emotional link that had been forged between them, highlighted yesterday when he had moved over her on the bed and showed her he loved her because he hadn’t had the words for how deeply he felt.

Now she understood. Serge didn’t always have the words, but he had been showing her all along.

He looked into her eyes.

‘Will you be my wife, Clementine Chevalier?’

A whole host of feelings cascaded through her, but the predominant one was certainty.

‘Yes, of course I will. Was there ever any doubt?’

Serge began to chuckle, his chest vibrating with sound.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Oh, my elusive Clementine—was there ever any doubt? But I have you at last.’

‘You always had me, Serge. You just had to ask.’

‘I’m asking,
moya lyubov
.’

My love.

Clementine’s heart caught on that sentiment. Happy tears sprinkled her eyes and Serge took her in his arms and kissed her.

‘Come on, Boots,’ he said with deep satisfaction, ‘let’s find a hotel. I want to be alone with you.’

* * * * *