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* * *
From inside the limo, his world gave an impression of chilly silence. The few people on the street wore overcoats and furred hats as they hurried down the street, breath fogging in the frosty air. Yet their very presence in the cold evening spoke of perseverance and a steadfast grasp on life, entrancing Clair into forgetting she didn’t want to fall in love with anything, even his country.
How could she stay immune, though, when he’d put her in the center of a fairy tale? The limo stopped and Aleksy left the car, holding a hand to help her stand, so courtly he stole her breath.
He wore a tuxedo with a white bow tie and gloves. It ought to have seemed affected, but his features were carved with masculine perfection, his brow stern enough to make everything about him serious and deliberate. Backlit by an enormous, columned building with a rosy-cream glow, he was devastatingly handsome.
She stood on unsteady legs, taking in the milling crowd streaming around the frozen fountain toward the spectacular entrance of the theater. This was the world he inhabited. Miles above any she’d ever thought to visit. Her treacherous emotions lifted with excitement, caught in a spell of beauty and wonder.
As if that wasn’t magical enough, his presence cut a swath through the crowd of people. One glance over their shoulder and people moved aside. Aleksy kept her pressed close to him as they climbed the stairs, coldly ignoring murmurs of “Dmitriev” and Russian phrases she didn’t understand, coupled with glances at his scar.
Taking her cue from him, Clair refused to acknowledge the morbidly curious looks, pretending to be absorbed in the grandeur of the theater. She was genuinely awed. The ornamental detailing and painted ceilings looked as if they’d been finished yesterday. For a moment time slipped away and she was a nineteenth-century aristocrat carrying a fan and wearing lace to her throat. The man at her side was an arranged-marriage husband—not a far cry from today’s situation at all, she thought with a wry, inward wince. He was supporting her and there was no hope for love.
An attendant approached to take her cape and Clair revealed the modern, off-one-shoulder sparkling blue dress that clung to emphasize her narrow curves and create more height than she really had. Aleksy procured them flutes of champagne and, after a brief consultation with the attendant, told her, “We have the czar’s box.”
She tried not to drop her drink.
As if this were any casual date, he guided her through a set of double doors that led through an ornate sitting room. Another set of doors ended on a grand balcony fit for, well, royalty.
Red velvet and gold struck her from the row of luxuriant chairs with their gilded edgings to the scalloped curtains framing the box to the auditorium beyond. A wall of balconies stretched away on either side in floor-to-ceiling rows, each separated by low walls decorated with gold leaf and glittering chandeliers. An enormous cake of sparkling crystals cast glamorous winks of light from high above, sparkling off jeweled necks and sequined gowns.
Clair sank weakly into the chair Aleksy pressed her toward. “I didn’t think Russia had a czar anymore,” she stammered, half fearing they’d be executed for trespassing.
His smile warmed her as if she’d gulped her entire glass of alcohol. “It’s actually the president’s box now. We could have used mine, but as this one’s empty tonight and I’m such a valued patron…” He shrugged self-deprecatingly.
“You must love the ballet. I mean—” The way his eyebrows climbed made her rethink presuming anything about him. “You have your own box and support the company. Everyone seems to know who you are.”
“Litso so shramom.” His expression altered as he repeated the phrase she’d heard as they entered. The carefully composed lines of his face revealed nothing—which was a revelation in itself. “Scarface.”
The bluntness of the moniker made her blink in shock, but she hid it, guessing anger on his behalf wouldn’t be welcome.
“I’m hardly anonymous anywhere I go,” he said, his jaw tensing. “And no, I don’t have a particular love of ballet. Coming here is merely—forgive the ancient metaphor—the quickest way to telegraph my return to the city. Do you like the ballet?”
“I’ve never been,” she answered, lowering her gaze as she absorbed his offhand question. Her preferences had obviously been the last thing on his mind. This was the most exciting outing of her life, yet he’d brought her here for reasons that had nothing to do with her. She had to stop wishing for more! She went back to the nickname. Irrepressible curiosity made her ask, “Does it bother you that people see the scar, not you?”
“There’s no separating one from the other, is there?” His look hit her like a face full of icy slush, his tone chilling her blood.
“I don’t know,” she replied, ignoring the bite of his hostility, fighting not to take it personally even though she sensed a hint of accusation in his demeanor. “Have you looked into plastic surgery?”
“Why? Does it disgust you?” His fingertip unerringly found the line of raised tissue. He drilled her with his eyes, but she didn’t have to lie.
“No. I don’t notice it more than any of your other features, like the shape of your nose or color of your eyes.” She stopped speaking as she heard how revealing that sounded. She was stunned to realize how thoroughly she had already memorized his face: the hint of a raised bump on his nose, the wicked slant in his eyebrows, the cleft in his chin. She had to force herself not to let him entrance her now.
“It’s an advantage,” he said flatly. “While people are trying to decide how many of the rumors they should believe, I’ve summed them up and leapt three steps ahead.”
“You like that it makes them nervous. Then they don’t try to get close to you,” she guessed, earning another baleful glance that made her breath stick. She was certain she was right, though, so much so that parts of her softened toward him as she recognized their similarity. She feared isolation, so she forced herself to find contentment in being alone. What did he fear that kept him holding people off so ferociously? Caring?
The thought was a double-edged sword of understanding and hopelessness so acute it made her head swim.
“This scar reminds me who I am and where I’ve been, which is a place you don’t want to go, Clair,” he said in a gentle warning that made her heart batter her ribs. So he had suffered a very deep wound. Nevertheless, she would listen to his story if he wanted to tell her. Had he ever told anyone, she wondered?
The lights faded before she could ask. Faces below rotated to watch the curtain rise. Music swelled as Petrushka began to unfold with its tragic puppet, considered cruel but instead capable of emotion, trapped in a cell, unable to reach the ballerina he loved.
* * *
Aleksy loathed small talk. It was a step into familiarity that he never encouraged. Clair had been spot-on when she suggested he was happier holding people at a distance.
Scowling, he wondered what had possessed him to talk about his scar. It was a topic he usually shut down outright, but he’d been compelled to learn if it was behind the reserve she’d shown earlier. Clair was exceptionally beautiful tonight, and fresh bitterness had overcome him that he was such an unsightly match for her.
Intellectually they were on an even playing field, which was an anomaly for him. Rather than babbling inanities or barbs, she had a quiet sincerity when she spoke and displayed surprising insight. He avoided women who made him feel. He’d never had one who made him think.
Disturbed by a rush of both anticipation and caution, he forced himself to stop letting her get under his skin and instead focus on their surroundings.
He noted with twisted pride how her smile of pleasure attracted curious, admiring looks during intermission. He detested networking at any level and would have stayed in the private lounge attached to the czar’s box if he could, but he succumbed to convention at these things.
With hooded fascination, he watched her greet those who approached with seemingly sincere warmth, admiring dresses and jewelry if no other conversation presented itself. He was used to his dates sulking, or smiling as if it pained them to make the effort, leaving the weight of social chitchat up to him. Clair put people at ease and he found his own tension ebbing because people weren’t so nervous—which, contrary to what she’d said, always made him impatient. Aleksy glanced at the next hovering couple, smiling as he recognized the man behind the gray beard and the woman’s twinkling blue eyes. He introduced Clair to Grigori and Ivana Muratov, smoothly forcing those trying to hold his attention to move along.
After brief inquiries about their daughters and grandchildren—he had known their entire family for many years —he and Grigori became caught up in discussing politics.
“That was the chimes,” Ivana warned a few moments later, touching her husband to interrupt their conversation. “Intermission is over, but this charming young lady has just told me about the charity foundation she has started. We would like to help her with that, wouldn’t we? Aleksy has made a donation.”
The unexpectedness of Clair’s subterfuge against these of all people made Aleksy’s cheeks sting with a rush anger. Thankfully the couple didn’t notice, both smiling at Clair’s bewildered face.
“Of course we’ll match it,” Grigori agreed, clapping Aleksy’s shoulder with enough enthusiasm to nearly knock him off his unsteady feet. “Send me the details.” With cheerful goodbyes, they hurried down the hall toward their own box.
“They seem very nice. How do you know them?” Clair lifted the most guileless eyes to him but sobered as she read his forbidding expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Grigori gave me my first real job after my father was killed,” Aleksy answered. He had to school his fury with everything in him as he took her arm and led her back to the lounge. Before she could pass through to the balcony, he cut her off, closing the doors so they were alone in the sitting room.
The music rose in the auditorium and Clair lifted a nervous hand to indicate it. “The show is back on.”
Aleksy turned on her. Whatever she read in his grim expression scared her, but she held her ground with more mettle than anyone he’d ever made a point of revealing his fury to.
“Why are you angry?” she asked with rigid dignity.
“Did Van Eych teach you to work a situation like that or is it a personal gift?”
She straightened as tall as she could possibly be, a pale reed so beautifully set off by the deep blue of the gown he nearly had to close his eyes against the temptation to touch her. He focused on the finery of the dress instead, on the fact that the small fortune he’d dropped on her new wardrobe wasn’t enough. She was trying to steal from his friend, as well.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I won’t let you take advantage of Grigori’s generous nature.” The man had been his salvation, offering Aleksy not just work, but a fresh chance. Grigori had helped a desperate young man put a roof over his mother’s head while giving him the opportunity to move up the ladder toward the life he lived now. The life itself didn’t mean anything, but Grigori’s hand up when no one else had offered meant the world.
“I didn’t expect Ivana to offer a donation.” Clair managed to sound not just innocent, but hurt. “We were only chatting. She asked how we’d met, so I told her about the charity.”
“Which doesn’t exist!”
Clair’s jaw dropped open. Rather than cower under his blistering gaze, she drew a deep, hissing breath of outrage. “Don’t tell me your precious Lazlo failed to advise you of the email I sent him today? I attached the tax receipt. What?” she dared challenge as he narrowed his eyes. “You thought I asked for the Wi-Fi code so I could update my social media status to ‘mistress’?”
He ignored her biting sarcasm. “I can check,” he warned. “With one call.”
“Do it,” she choked, acting so offended as she swung away that he experienced a flash of misgiving. He shook it off and scowled at her as he withdrew his phone.
Seconds later a muted buzz vibrated in his palm. Clair’s back stiffened as though the sound were the whir of a whip and she was bracing herself for the lash.
The edges of the device dug into his hard grip as he read and reread the message.
“You told him you’d print me a copy if I asked, so he assumed I was aware,” he paraphrased, needing to hear it to fully comprehend it.
“You didn’t ask,” she pointed out, barely able to look at him.
“So it’s real, this charity of yours.” She even had a registered number.
That swung her around to face him. “Of course it’s real! I’m not a liar. You don’t truck with those, remember?”
He found himself in the completely unfamiliar state of being at a loss as he let it sink in. “I don’t understand,” he muttered, voice graveled by his impatience at being faced with something that didn’t add up. “You gave me your virginity for charity? Why would you do that?”
“People like me deserve—” She cut off her outburst and struggled visibly, jaw flexing as though chewing back words she hadn’t meant to voice. Flicking her hair back from her shoulders, she changed tack. “Look. I didn’t want all my work to die on the vine. Brighter Days fills a very real need.”
“For who?” he asked suspiciously. “Finish what you were going to say. People like you deserve what?”
Clair’s jaw ached. She didn’t want to tell him. Why? Because she was ashamed? Still? If she wanted to get anywhere with the foundation, she had to conquer this sense of being second class once and for all.
“Support,” she answered with a swell of defiance. “When there’s nowhere else to turn.” She wasn’t as confident inside as she acted. It had always been hard to believe she really deserved any such thing when no one else seemed to agree, but she deeply believed children like her deserved a caring home and opportunities to make a secure life for themselves. If she didn’t act as their voice, they wouldn’t have one, just as she hadn’t.
“What kind of people are we talking about?” Aleksy asked. “Orphans?”
“Yes.” It was incredibly hard to look him in the eye. Her stomach trembled as she braced herself for how the label would change his view of her.
Aleksy had vaguely absorbed that she didn’t have family, but the information had only penetrated distantly. Now he sensed how deeply she felt her lack and was thrown off by her vulnerability. A pang struck him dead center of his chest so hard he wanted to rub it away.
“How old were you when—?”
“Four.” She hid her flinch with a shrug, steeling her spine. This was costing her, he could see it, but she said without inflection, “Car crash. I had a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. They died instantly.”
“Why does that make you so defensive?” He had an urge to take her in his arms, but that wasn’t who he was. He didn’t coddle, but he still found himself trying to reassure her. “Being an orphan isn’t a crime. I’m one.”
“You lost both your parents? Not just your father?” Her somber blue eyes softened with empathy, threatening to pull things out of him he didn’t want to release. “What happened? How old were you?”
He was instantly sorry he’d mentioned it. “Fourteen when I lost my father. My mother lived until I was twenty. I suppose I wasn’t technically orphaned.” He glanced away, deliberately not addressing how his father had died. “I’m only saying there’s no shame in not having parents who are still alive. It’s hardly something you can help.”
The irony of his assurance twisted inside him. He suffered deep shame over his father’s death and the fact that he’d never been able to provide properly for his mother. He lived daily with the anguished guilt that even if his mother had survived to live as he did now, it wouldn’t have cured the broken heart that had been the real cause of her withering away.
Suppressing the agonizing memories, he focused on Clair’s circumstance instead, observing, “Four years old is still young enough to be adopted.”
Tendons rose in taut lines against her throat as she said with stunned hurt, “That wasn’t really in my control, was it?”
He might as well have kicked a puppy. He wished he could take it back, but the damage was done. She was pulling herself inward, composing herself into the untouchable woman he had seen several times now. Her skin was incredibly thin, he realized. He’d bruised her without even knowing he could do so. The way she mentally distanced herself caused an unexpected gap of agitation to open beneath his feet.
He moved forward, taking her arms in a light grip, as if he could prevent her retreat into herself.
She stiffened and her hands came up to his chest. He read the same conflicting signals of resistance and subtle, sensual melting that he’d felt in her earlier in his apartment. She liked his touch but was trying to shield herself at the same time, something he understood all too well, but she didn’t have to fear him on this.
“You’re right, of course,” he murmured, experimenting with a light massage up and down her arms. “I shouldn’t have said that. Where did you live, then? An orphanage?”
“Yes.” He felt a quiver go through her, one she suppressed as she said with quiet dignity, “The home was the only real one I had. It was stable and I needed that after being in foster situations for the first few years. That’s why I’m trying to ensure that it has enough funding to stay open, but I don’t need the donation from Grigori. The amount you’ve promised is so much more than Victor offered that I can keep them going and actually support expansion. Tell Grigori whatever you like. I won’t bring it up again. I’ll just tell people we met in London and leave it at that.” She turned her face away, lips tight.
He had dismissed her charity as a ruse when she first mentioned it, imagining that at best it was the illusion of a bleeding-heart idealist incapable of solving real problems, but the full impact of it being genuine continued to jar through him. She wasn’t a gold digger; she was a mother bear fighting to protect children.
The knowledge sliced a fresh cut of ignominy through him, but he ignored it, too caught up in trying to understand her.
“You might have given me some indication,” he admonished. “Why let me believe your motivations were shallow?”
“What do you care what motivates me? This isn’t the sort of relationship where we talk about our scars, visible or otherwise, is it?” she challenged, pupils contracted with wounded pride.
A knot of complex emotions pulled his gut tight.
“No,” he agreed. His hands unconsciously tightened on her arms.
“Good. Because I don’t want you in my h-head,” she said shakily, but he heard the underlying hurt.
The constant rejection in her life had made her understandably wary of intimacy, Aleksy guessed, but he couldn’t stand that chilly shell she was trying to recover. She wasn’t just in his head; she was under his skin so deep he could barely breathe without feeling her. Physical intimacy was the salvation for both of them, he told himself.
“How about your body?” he murmured, pulling her hips into a delicate crash against the erection that had rarely subsided since he’d met her. Sex seemed the only way to get past her shields, and he would use it, now, before she’d locked her barriers into place. “Do you want me inside you?”
She started with surprise and drew a sharp breath, face flooding with a sexual blush. “I— Well, y-yes. I mean, that’s what we’ve agreed, isn’t it? Um.” Her words caught and faded into a husky tone of arousal. “Un—um, uncomplicated and…” She licked her lips nervously and the play of her tongue was almost a visceral stroke up his spine.
Simple. Practical. Physical.
He tried to hang on to the words as he backed her toward the divan, the need in him, once acknowledged and released, so intense his muscles began to shake. Every cell in his body ached for the pleasure she promised, but there was a primordial aspect to it that he refused to examine too closely. He wanted more from her than sexual accommodation. He wanted her to give herself to him because she wanted to, not for any orphaned children. He wanted her as ensnared by this wild passion as he was.
He levered her slight body onto the cushions and lowered himself to cover her.
Clair released a helpless whimper as Aleksy’s hot mouth touched the racing pulse in her throat. Her overwhelmed senses took in the painted ceiling and the music beyond the doors. Had he locked any of them? The back of the divan offered a bit of protection if someone walked in but not much.
“Aleksy,” she choked, voice thick with the conflict of wanting him so instantly she was almost willing to risk discovery and holding back because she was upset. All her internal guards were shattered and in bad need of repair. She should wait until she had a better hold of herself, but he was strangely reassuring in the way he caged her beneath him without crushing her. The way he trailed his lips across her bare shoulder, pausing to drink in the scent of her skin.
“I want everything you’ll give me.” The statement spurred a light-headed rush, one that nearly lifted her off the divan as he slid his finger under the diagonal edge of her bodice to reveal her breast.
His mouth found the tip and her mind exploded. His urgent demand was as exciting as his mastery, causing a thrilling flood of heat into her extremities. She wove her fingers into his hair, making him lift his head. She was desperate to own his mouth but too shy to say it.
Her body spoke for her, knee bending to bracket him into the space between her legs. He responded by stroking her ankle, her calf, her thigh. With their eyes locked in ever-intensifying connection, he climbed his hand beneath the skirt of her gown until he touched her so intimately she had to close her eyes.
That only made her excruciatingly aware of the deliberate way he tantalized her. She lodged the back of her hand against her open mouth, muffling the cry of pleasure that escaped as he caressed and teased, making her long for more—
“Oh!” He pressed into her wet core and she clenched, surprising herself with an unexpected orgasm that squeezed her eyes shut and rocked her entire body. Jagged moans refused to be suffocated.
“I’m sorry! I’m so embarrassed,” she said into the paneled back of the divan, almost sobbing as he lifted her to strip her undies away.
