Modern Romance June 2016 Books 1-4

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE,’ Ella whispered unevenly. ‘It would be too much of a coincidence.’

‘Coincidences happen,’ Nikolai countered, for he had no intention of taking her into his confidence and sharing his ultimate plan.

‘Not one this unlikely,’ Ella argued, backing away from the desk while her brain endeavoured to regroup to this most surprising change of circumstance.

‘You rang the firm who handle my legal work and asked to see me,’ he reminded her levelly. ‘Here I am.’

‘I wasn’t prepared for a personal visit, maybe a phone call or an appointment,’ she muttered uncertainly, barely knowing what she was saying because the temper that was often her strength had subsided in fear like a pricked balloon. No, she couldn’t possibly shout at or drive off her father’s main creditor. Even angry, she wasn’t that stupid.

The silence lay between them as thick and heavy as treacle. She stared at him, incredulous at such a piece of unwelcome happenstance as the combination of events that had brought Nikolai Drakos back into her life again. A man she had naturally assumed she would never see again, a man she had prayed she would never see again! And she had preferred that reality, had needed to know she could bury that silly little episode and wipe it from her mind as an insane moment while she was still grieving for the man she had loved. Being confronted by him again was a real slap in the face and she could feel her face warming and prickling as though she had sunburn.

‘As you say...here you are,’ Ella acknowledged woodenly. ‘You can’t be surprised that I’m shocked that my father’s creditor is someone I’ve met before.’

‘Would you call it a meeting? A brief encounter in a car park would be more accurate,’ Nikolai murmured with a dry mockery that made her yearn to knock his teeth down his throat, for he made it sound as though they had shared rather more than a kiss.

And had she been willing, they would have done. She had no doubt of that. He was a player, the kind of male who did what he wanted when he wanted and he had certainly been in the mood for sex. Her face flamed at the awareness that, had she agreed and had it been physically possible, they could well have enjoyed a sordid, sweaty encounter there and then in his car and she would never have made it back to the misleading respectability of the hotel he had suggested. Inwardly she cursed her fair skin as mortification burned her cheeks, while he studied her with a measured attention that warned her he was picking up on her every reaction.

‘So, you own Dad’s debts,’ Ella recapped, striving to push onward past the personal aspect and withstand the odd tingling heat that infiltrated her every time she clashed with Nikolai’s stunning dark, black-lashed eyes. It was attraction. What else could it be? And it made her hate herself.

‘You wanted the chance to speak to me,’ Nikolai reminded her levelly. ‘I have no idea what you want to say to me...apart from the obvious. If you’re planning to pluck the violin strings, it won’t work on me. Let’s cut to the bottom line: this is business, nothing personal—’

‘But it is personal to my family!’

‘Your family is no concern of mine,’ Nikolai declared with unapologetic assurance. ‘But I do, as it happens, have another option to offer you.’

Tension made Ella rise slightly on her toes. ‘Another option?’ she queried breathlessly.

Nikolai gazed into those luminous green eyes and read the hope writ large there and for some reason it made him feel like a bastard. He crushed that foreign sensation and irritably squashed down his conscience. What was it about her? That air of vulnerability? Her physical delicacy? The shocking naivety that could persuade her to look at a stranger hoping that he was about to play the good Samaritan? How could she still be that trusting at her age? Sadly, he was not a soft touch, never had been, never would be and there was no point in even trying to pretend that he was. He didn’t get close to anyone; he didn’t connect with other people. He had been that way for a very long time and he had no plans to change his basic nature. When you let yourself care about anyone, you got kicked in the teeth and it had happened to him so often when he was a boy that he had learned his lesson fast.

‘There is one situation in which I would be prepared to write off your father’s debts,’ he admitted.

In the unearthly silence that dragged, her tension heightened and her tummy gave a nervous flip. ‘Well, what is that situation?’ she pressed impatiently.

‘You move in with me in London for a period of three months,’ Nikolai outlined smoothly.

Her eyes opened wide and rounded in bewilderment. ‘Move in with you? And exactly what would that entail?’

‘What it usually entails when a man and a woman live together,’ Nikolai countered, wondering why he wasn’t just spelling the terms out with his usual directness.

Possibly he was a little squeamish about the terms. Her reactions, the unmistakeable shyness she couldn’t hide, were persuading him that, unlikely as it seemed, she might indeed be a virgin. He would very much like to take her to bed but he really didn’t want her there on sufferance. He didn’t particularly want to be the man who deflowered her either, although, when he thought about that aspect, he realised that he didn’t want any other man to do it for him.

All of a sudden his brain was leaping about in directions he hadn’t counted on, throwing up objections to what had seemed perfectly simple and straightforward only an hour before. And all that had changed was that Ella Palmer was now in front of him, and, instead of being merely a step in an ongoing project, was becoming very much a lust object in her own light.

Nikolai was confounded by that too because she was not his usual type. He went for tall, curvy blondes and Ella was tiny, skinny and almost as bare of curves as a teenaged boy. So, he had no understanding of precisely why he had developed a throbbing hard-on the instant a slight movement made her tiny, unfettered breasts shift below her T-shirt. Now he could see pointed nipples poking through the thin fabric and his body was eager to see a lot more of that slender but highly feminine body of hers. However, that was sex, nothing more, and he had many more convenient options in that line, didn’t he? Diavole, why was he thinking such thoughts? What was the matter with him? He had never allowed himself to be driven by what lay south of his belt.

‘You want me to be your girlfriend...?’ Ella mumbled in wonderment, barely crediting that they were truly having such a conversation.

Nikolai winced. ‘I don’t have girlfriends... I have sex.’

‘So, you’re a man whore,’ Ella pronounced before she could think better of it, for in her experience there were only two types of men available. One type was open to the possibility of meeting the one and commitment while the other type only wanted to sleep around with the maximum possible number of women.

His dark-as-jet eyes flashed like golden flames. ‘Don’t apply that label to me!’

‘Oddly enough I wasn’t trying to be insulting. I just meant that you only want sex and I know there are women like that too, so, although I shouldn’t have said it, I was simply stating a fact.’ Ella finally fumbled to a perspiring halt, her skin dampening below her clothing while she inwardly acknowledged the foolishness of saying anything he could find offensive. ‘I’m only trying to interpret what you suggested as an option—if not girlfriend...?’

‘Mistress,’ Nikolai slotted in cool as ice.

Ella blinked, thinking he did not just say that...did he? Such a delightfully old-fashioned role for such a modern man. But then what did she know about Nikolai Drakos? She turned away from him, wandered over to the window and was surprised to see a big glossy dark limousine complete with driver parked outside. The limo could only belong to him, which meant that Nikolai was rich and privileged and that the concept of having a mistress to cater to his sexual needs might not seem as much of an anomaly to him as it was to her.

Unhappily, shock had welded Ella’s tongue to the roof of her mouth because he was sexually propositioning her and nothing could have prepared her for that possibility. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous...ironically, he was! Male heads didn’t tend to swivel when Ella walked down the street because she had neither the length of leg nor the curves usually deemed necessary to attract such attention. Why on earth could he be making her such an offer?

‘But we don’t even know each other,’ she framed dazedly. ‘You’re a stranger...’

‘If you live with me I won’t be a stranger for long,’ Nikolai pointed out with monumental calm.

And the very sound of that inhuman calm and cool forced her to flip round and settle distraught eyes on his lean, darkly handsome face. ‘You can’t be serious about this!’

‘I assure you that I am deadly serious. Move in and I’ll forget your family’s debts.’

‘But it’s a crazy idea!’ She gasped, having failed to get him to acknowledge that reality and floundering against his restrained silence. It was obvious that he was determined to behave as though such a proposition were an everyday occurrence.

‘It’s not crazy to me,’ Nikolai asserted. ‘When I want anything, I go after it hard and fast.’

Her lashes dipped. Did he want her like that? Enough to track her down, buy up her father’s debts, and try and buy rights to her and her body along with those debts? The very idea of that made her dizzy and plunged her brain into even greater turmoil. ‘It’s immoral...it’s blackmail.’

‘It’s definitely not blackmail. I’m giving you the benefit of a choice you didn’t have before I came through that door,’ Nikolai Drakos fielded with glittering cool. ‘That choice is yours to make.’

‘Like hell it is!’ Ella fired back. ‘The choice you’re offering is totally unscrupulous.’

‘When did I say I had scruples?’ Nikolai asked almost conversationally. ‘I want what I want and I want you in London to take out and show off.’

‘But...why?’ she interrupted, helpless in the grip of her desire to know that answer. ‘Why pick me? I said no that night...was that all it took to fire you up? For you to suggest this?’

‘I’m not going to answer those questions. I don’t need to,’ Nikolai told her without apology. ‘My motivation is my own. Either you want to consider the option I’ve offered or you don’t. It’s entirely up to you.’

‘But a mistress...!’ A driven laugh fell from Ella’s convulsing throat because she was struggling to accept that he could have confronted her with such an insane choice. ‘Don’t you understand that even if I wanted to say yes I couldn’t?’

He frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘My father wouldn’t live with himself if he knew I was sleeping with a man just to get him out of trouble! No, the mistress option is a total impossibility as far as I am concerned.’

‘That’s for you to decide.’ Nikolai settled a business card down on the desk. ‘My phone number. I’ll be staying at the Wrother Links Hotel until tomorrow.’

‘I’ve already made my decision and it’s a no,’ Ella hastened to tell him.

Nikolai flashed her a slow wicked smile that radiated charisma. ‘Think about it properly before you say no but if you discuss it with anyone else, I’ll withdraw the offer,’ he warned her smoothly. ‘It’s a strictly confidential option.’

‘You know, you can’t simply ask a woman you don’t know to live with you,’ she bit out, fit to be tied at his sheer nerve and nonchalance.

Black curling lashes screening his shrewd gaze, Nikolai shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I believe I just did.’

‘But it’s barbaric!’ she exclaimed. ‘A complete cheat of a supposed offer!’

Nikolai sent her a gleaming sideways glance. ‘No, the real cheat was you kissing me the way you did last year and then saying no and acting as if I had grossly insulted you,’ he murmured with lethal quietness.

‘You did insult me!’ Ella flung back, her cheeks hot as fire while she wondered if her refusal that night had started off his whole chain reaction. What else could possibly be driving him?

Nikolai straightened lazily as he opened the door. ‘If you take offence that easily, maybe it’s just as well that the answer is no.’

Strangely that wasn’t what she wanted to hear and she didn’t understand that truth, nor the feeling that his departure was somehow a low point rather than something to be celebrated. She watched the limo drive off, her thoughts miles away, trailing back down the timeline to the moment she had first met Nikolai Drakos...

* * *

Her stepmother’s best friend, Ailsa, had been a wedding planner and when one of Ailsa’s part-time workers had taken ill, Joy had insisted that Ella step in. Ella could have declined but she had been too well aware that if she crossed the older woman Joy would throw a tantrum and rain down misery on the whole family. And she had always hated listening to her stepmother torment her father with nasty, sneering comments. When Ella had arrived at the country house that evening she had been startled to be asked to park cars rather than wait tables as she had dimly expected. And, truth to tell, with an advanced driving test under her belt and a love of fast cars, parking the luxury models driven by the wedding guests would have been fun, had her foot not slid off the pedal of that McLaren Spider, causing the wing of it to be grazed against an overhanging bush.

Nikolai had started shouting and Ailsa had come running out to smooth over the incident. Unfortunately, Ella’s immediate apology had had no effect and Ailsa had made a big deal out of supposedly sacking Ella simply to comfort Nikolai. That was when Nikolai had suddenly cooled off, dismissed the matter and insisted that he didn’t want Ella sacked before striding into the house to join the rest of the guests.

It had been much later that night before she’d seen Nikolai again. She had been outside the ballroom listening to the DJ playing for the evening party while half dancing to the beat of the music to keep warm in the cold. And when she had heard something behind her, she had spun and he had simply been standing there watching her, dark eyes glowing golden as melted caramel in the reflected lights.

‘If you want your car, you can fetch it for yourself,’ Ella told him.

‘You’re right. I wouldn’t allow you behind the wheel of it again,’ he admitted, strolling almost soundlessly closer to gaze down at her. He had moved very quietly for such a big male. ‘When do you finish tonight?’

‘I’m finished now. I’m waiting for a lift home from one of the bartenders.’

‘Could be a long wait,’ he murmured softly.

‘Could be.’ Lifting her head, Ella shook her hair back from her face because the breeze was blowing it into her eyes.

‘You have gorgeous hair,’ he breathed.

‘Thank you...’ In the light flooding through the windows behind her, she could see his lean dark features with clarity and all she could think at that moment was that he was definitely the most gorgeous man she had ever come across.

‘And stunning eyes...but, you’re a rubbish driver.’

‘My shoe slid on the pedal. I have an advanced driving test.’

‘Don’t believe you.’

Ella lifted her chin. ‘Your problem, not mine.’

‘My problem is that I want you,’ Nikolai said boldly. ‘I saw you dancing by the window and it gave me a high.’

Sharply disconcerted, Ella reddened. ‘Oh—’

‘Oh?’ he mimicked with derision. ‘That’s it, that’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ Ella rolled her eyes expressively. ‘I’m not looking for a man right now.’

‘And I’m not looking for a woman... I’m looking for one night,’ Nikolai admitted silkily, lean brown fingers reaching up to curl into the fall of her hair and urge her closer than she would have chosen to be, had she been in her right mind.

As for that, what happened next proved to her that she was not in her right mind when Nikolai was around her because he closed his other hand to her spine and tilted her forward into sudden searing contact with his long, hard body. Within seconds he was kissing her as she had never been kissed before, forcing apart her lips with the hard pressure of his, sliding in his tongue, and sending such a jolt of wild excitement through her that her head swam and her knees buckled. He was passionate and demanding and all-male hungry, every sinuously sexual movement of his lean hips and powerful thighs against her warning her that a kiss could be almost as sizzlingly intimate as a naked embrace.

He lifted his handsome dark head and the chill of the night air on her back contrasted with the heat of his powerfully aroused body against hers. Immediately, Ella remembered who she was and where she was and the chill on her skin slivered inside right down to her stomach, and sickened her.

‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said tartly, pulling free and starting to walk away.

‘You can’t be serious,’ he breathed, his surprise audible because he knew she had been fired up just as much as he.

But what he didn’t know was that Ella had never been that aroused...ever. And mere weeks after she had watched the love of her life being laid in the ground at twenty-four years of age, that truth hurt so bad that she almost sobbed over it. She had believed she truly wanted Paul but Paul had never made her feel like that and the pain of that acknowledgement tore into her grief and ate her alive with guilt.