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‘I can’t,’ she winced, embarrassment crawling through her.
And then it was over. It all happened in a moment. His mouth was gone, his hands were gone and she was leaning up against her bedroom door, clutching a towel to her near nakedness and staring into the eyes of a man who looked shell-shocked.
He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, as if removing the taste of her, and said in a low, fractured voice, ‘That was inexcusable. I’m tired. I made a mistake. Forget it ever happened.’
Maisy’s hazel eyes prickled. A mistake? Forget it ever happened?
Alexei knew he wasn’t thinking straight. The girl in front of him was staring at him as if he was mad, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d started something he couldn’t finish. He’d left her high and dry, and the ache in his body wasn’t going to go away any time soon.
What in the hell was he doing here? He had twelve security personnel scoping the property, a car waiting and a jet on the tarmac at Heathrow. And he, Alexei Ranaevsky, was tupping the nanny in an upstairs bedroom.
The goddamned nanny!
And doing a spectacularly lousy job of it.
Shoving aside the useless introspection, Alexei sized up the woman huddling against the door.
‘You need to move so I can get out of here,’ he directed. ‘And for God’s sake put some clothes on.’
Maisy flinched, but she still didn’t move. She wanted desperately to be away from him, to be behind the bathroom door, to sink to the ground and wish away all her humiliation, but she knew the moment she stepped aside she might lose her chance.
She probably already had. He seemed so angry with her it was more than likely he had changed his mind. She should have shoved him off her to begin with. She should never have responded. She should have remembered Kostya came first.
Anais would be horrified if she knew what was going on, what had just happened—in her own home, just days after … Maisy felt so sick she actually thought she might throw up.
‘Maisy.’ He spoke her name abruptly.
‘You haven’t changed your mind?’ she challenged, with what nerve she had left, strengthening her voice with the knowledge that Kostya came first. ‘About me coming? With Kostya?’
For a moment he actually looked confused, as if she had said something completely out of left field when this was the only thing that mattered, wasn’t it? Then he sighed and ran a hand over his unshaven face.
‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ he muttered. ‘God help me, I haven’t changed my mind.’
She looked so lost for a moment something twisted inside him. He remembered her driven, ‘No,’ when he had asked her to drop the towel, her hand like a trap on his when he’d sought to find the sweet wet place between her thighs.
But then why would she have left her door ajar if she hadn’t wanted him to walk in?
Cynicism firmly in place, he took one last frustrated look at what he wasn’t going to have and informed her, ‘Get dressed. You’ve got five.’
It was the hardest walk Maisy had ever had to make. She hated him seeing her after what had happened—so much bare skin, as if offering herself up to him on a plate. He must have been watching her because she didn’t hear her bedroom door close until after she’d shut herself in the bathroom and sunk onto the floor. Waves of humiliation rolled over her, and then she snatched her towel off and grabbed at the big fluffy bath sheet she should have been wearing. It wrapped around her like a hug, and she buried her face in its folds.
She’d been so uninhibited, so out of control. She’d felt his raw need, his naked desire, and she’d matched it with her own. Shame burned through her. This was not part of her bargain with herself and Anais. The last gift she could give her friend was a secure future for her son, and instead she had been wrapped around his godfather, seeking the comfort she needed, Kostya far from her mind.
It was the shock, she told herself. The grief. She would never have responded to him like that if she wasn’t half out of her mind with misery and lack of sleep. But even as she formed the excuses she knew they were a lie, and it shamed her.
She had no choice. She must get up, wash her face, get dressed and go down there and face him. This volatile, unpredictable man was going to be Kostya’s father to all intents and purposes. She must learn to deal with him.
Yet her fingers strayed to her swollen lips and she allowed herself a small shudder. That kiss. That mistake. It must never happen again.
CHAPTER THREE
THE boy, the plane … and the nanny.
No, cancel that last appellation. The red-haired sex kitten, curled up in her chair and pretending to sleep whilst he endeavoured to make sense of the figures being pumped into his email from New York. No sleep, the altitude, and now the unexpected introduction of his libido into the equation meant he was in danger of making a mistake that could cost a great many people their jobs.
He gestured to one of the attendants—a young guy named Leroy. Alexei didn’t hire attractive female staff any more for his private jet. They tended to lose focus on their job.
‘Leroy,’ he said. ‘Miss Edmonds. Move her. I don’t want her in my eyeline.’
Leroy looked from the sleeping bundle that was Maisy back to his boss. Alexei knew what the man was thinking but would never say, so he added tiredly, ‘She’s not asleep. She’s faking it.’
Maisy gritted her teeth. She had heard every word Alexei Ranaevsky had uttered since he’d sat down over an hour ago. Usually in Russian, usually brief and to the point. He hadn’t addressed a single syllable to her. It was as if she had simply ceased to be. But apparently she was distracting to his eyeline.
She lifted her head as Leroy approached her. He bent down and said in a soft voice, ‘Miss Edmonds—’
‘I know.’ Maisy gave him a resigned smile, then yawned, ruining it. She stretched and gathered up her angora travelling blanket, and climbed out of the luxurious seat. She looked pointedly at Alexei, who had removed his jacket and was propped with his feet up, scrolling through the information on the state-of-the-art laptop positioned in front of him. He didn’t even acknowledge her, his amazing bone structure taut under this artificial light. He looked more tired than she felt, which was saying something.
‘Put Miss Edmonds in a bed,’ he said as she passed by him.
Alexei heard a faint, ‘Thank you,’ in that sweet, tangy voice of hers, and felt his whole body shift instinctively in her direction.
Down boy. He growled. This wasn’t the time or the place to indulge his sudden craving for soft-eyed redheads. He’d had six long months of not particularly satisfying sex with Tara. Five months and twenty-nine days too long, in his opinion. Although not in Tara’s. She was telling the press they were still ‘good friends’ two days after he broke up with her. Ironic, as he’d never had a female friend—and if he did he wouldn’t choose Tara.
It was complicated. Maisy Edmonds was in his household, for now. Although she was no nanny. She’d lied to him straight up—another element to keep in mind. He had a fair idea who she was: one of Anais’s crew of hangers-on. Somehow she’d inveigled her way into the house and into Kostya’s life. If Leo was alive he might have vouched for her—a single word would have sufficed. But if Leo had been alive Alexei would never have met her in such fraught circumstances, leading to such a stupid indiscretion.
Which was bound to happen again.
The fierceness of her sexual response had taken even him off guard. It had turned blind need into something more exciting, edgier. It had been he who was out of control, he recognised. Whilst she had met him every inch of the way, she had also backed down fast. Meeting that resistance had saved him from a very big mistake, and possibly a costly one. Because there were always consequences.
He didn’t do casual sex. And he didn’t do sex full stop without a condom—which he wasn’t carrying. He could only have her word on where she’d been. He wondered if Leo … Then he closed down that thought, because it suddenly made him very angry. An image of Maisy Edmonds in a towel, rubbing herself against a series of men, flashed through his tired brain, firing his temper, and he swore.
It wasn’t going to happen—not in the coming days and weeks anyway. The dust still had to settle on Leo’s portfolio, and more importantly there was his child.
Kostya had been unexpectedly lively earlier on the trip, but now was sleeping as if the world had ended. Alexei envied him that ability to completely shut down. He imagined he had possessed it once, many aeons ago, when he was an infant. A childhood rubbed raw by neglect and strife had worn it off. He rarely slept a regular eight hours. The past few days had robbed him even of that.
With the kitten safely put to bed, he could focus on what the screen was telling him. None of it was good news. His shares in Kulcor were merely window dressing. If the company foundered it wouldn’t show up as a blip on his financial radar, but it was Kostya’s inheritance—he had to hold it. It was the least Leo would have expected of him. Family came first. However, growing up with nothing but the clothes on his back had taught Alexei to value material security. When people let you down, abandoned you, and all you had was yourself, several billion in the bank was a nice bulwark against destitution.
Leo’s son would never want for anything. He would make sure of it.
A bed. Not the bed—not the one and only bedroom on a private jet—but a bed. One of three. What kind of a man had three bedrooms on a plane? Maisy smiled helplessly at her thoughts. He had a private plane. The number of bedrooms was probably beside the point.
She sat down on the sumptuous bed, looking around at the luxurious fabrics on the walls and furniture. She ran her hand over the silky bed coverings in deep purple and black. A man had definitely chosen the colour scheme, although she couldn’t quite picture Alexei Ranaevsky spending much time with fabric swatches.
She could, however, imagine him on this bed, and her mind began to drift as she settled down under the luxurious covers, entertaining imagery mainly to do with him diving into bed with her. In the fantasy she didn’t stop him; she was confident and even sexually aggressive. Part of her wanted to call a halt to the daydreaming—it wasn’t healthy; she could never act on it. He probably wouldn’t fancy her in the cold light of day … But another, darker part seized on his mouth hot on hers and his hand like a brand on her inner thigh. She shifted in the bed, irritatedly aware she was arousing herself, which only made it all worse.
She was never like this. She didn’t fantasise about men to the point where she got hot and bothered. Her mind just didn’t go there. Mind you, she hadn’t had time to have a rich fantasy life, let alone an active sex life. Not with a baby. She wasn’t even accustomed to air travel. She was the original stay-at-home girl. With the Kulikovs there had been several shuttles to the Paris house, but life with a new baby had pretty much shut down her opportunities to explore further afield than the Île de la Cité.
Her thoughts drifted from blue-eyed, hard-bodied Russian oligarchs to the more prosaic realities of her life. It had been impossible to leave Kostya for more than a few hours, and Anais had insisted no one had Maisy’s ‘way’ with him. The deal had been she would have two days a week to herself, but the reality of a demanding infant had virtually turned Maisy into the mother of a newborn, with all the rigours that involved. The only normal life she had ever had was in those few months before Anais gave birth. Then they’d been girlfriends together, enjoying each other’s company and all the fun opportunities London had to offer.
Leo had been home a lot then too, as Anais grew huge, and settled, hovering over her protectively, acting on her merest whim. Maisy had envied her friend that security, that devotion. Anais in turn had encouraged her to date, pushed her out through the door with a gaggle of Anais’s other girlfriends into nightclubs.
For a few months she had lived like any other twenty-one-year-old girl in London. Those were the days when she’d had time to spend hours trawling clothes shops and dancing until dawn. She had met a couple of boys around her age and been in the awkward position of having to choose. Dan had worked at something in the music industry that apparently involved twiddling knobs, but he had been gentle and self-effacing and would sit up talking to her in little cafes until dawn drew her back to Lantern Square and Anais’s barrage of delighted interrogation.
She had finally gone back to his flat near Earls Court and slept with him. It had seemed the right thing to do, moving the relationship along, except it hadn’t quite turned out that way. She remembered lying there on his hard bed, staring at the pattern of cracks in the ceiling as Dan pushed into her virgin body, feeling self-conscious about their nakedness and wondering if she was doing something wrong. It had been quick and painful and messy, and not something she particularly wanted to repeat with him, and with that thought had came the utter certainty she had made a mistake.
She hadn’t shared this with Anais—she hadn’t told anybody. And a few days later, after an awkward coffee with Dan and an invitation to spend the weekend with him on a working trip, she’d ended it. The fact that he hadn’t seemed too bothered had made her wonder if she was the only girl in his life.
Within weeks Anais had gone into labour, and Maisy’s life as she’d begun to live it had been over. From then on, for two years, she had been the mother of a demanding baby boy.
It would have been impossible to make Alexei Ranaevsky understand the complexities of her relationship with Anais and Kostya last night. He probably would have been even less inclined to take her along. ‘A friend of Anais’s’ sounded insubstantial—and, knowing many of Anais’s girlfriends, she wouldn’t have left a pot plant in their care, let alone a two-year-old.
No, nanny sounded sensible and professional and useful.
He needed a nanny, not a flighty girl with her head in a fashion magazine and her body on a beach in Ibiza. Yet deception did not sit easily with her. She wanted to be herself, not an imitation of whatever was expected of a nanny in this man’s home. She hadn’t even asked him if he had a partner or children. It would be shocking, given his actions last night, but not unheard of. Maisy had lived long enough in Anais’s world to know adultery was a common coin and nobody blinked an eye.
What had happened tonight made no sense to her—from his perspective at least. He must have read signals into her behaviour, and she thought guiltily about the way she had visually eaten him up. She was less irresistible to him. He had been far more in control than she had. It had been he who had stopped it, owned it for a mistake.
He was clearly exhausted. The shadows under those beautiful eyes … the lines carved around his sensual mouth. Running on empty, Leo would say. Maybe she’d been available fuel, a willing female body. And she had been willing—shamingly willing. She had never felt that instant drench of attraction in her life. She still couldn’t look at him without wanting to touch him, feel the solid heat of his body pressed up against hers. It was wicked.
She rolled onto her back, staring up at a ceiling starred with dozens of tiny pinpricks of light. Was this how Anais had felt about Leo? Was this like the wellspring of her friend’s uninhibited passion for her husband, which had manifested itself as a longing for him whenever he was absent and a great deal of time spent in the bedroom, or the library, or on the kitchen table—much to Maisy’s embarrassment as she’d come home unexpectedly one afternoon?
This was what she had been looking for, Maisy realised with a start. This passion. This excitement. This much man.
Except he was the wrong man.
Just as she was the wrong woman. The nanny.
Dawn was breaking over Naples when they hit the tarmac. Maisy had never travelled in a private jet, and the waiting limos were another shock to her system.
Alexei Ranaevsky was seriously loaded.
He was also not coming with them.
In the first limo with Kostya, Maisy gathered the courage to ask Carlo, who was travelling with them, why not.
‘A chopper to Rome,’ he replied briefly. ‘London has held up several important meetings.’
Meaning his visit to Lantern Square. Perversely, Maisy felt a rush of anger towards both Carlo and Alexei. Kostya was not a hold-up. He was a little boy who had lost his parents. Surely Alexei could carve out more than an overnight flit to welcome the child?
Carlo gave her a wry look. ‘Don’t worry, bella, he’ll be back. You’ll see enough of him.’
Maisy stiffened at the familiarity of bella, and its implications. Plain enough words, but all of a sudden Maisy wondered if Alexei had spoken to Carlo, revealed what had occurred. It was too crass to bear thinking about, but Maisy’s hands made fists in her lap and her whole body was on red alert.
She averted her face to the window and didn’t say another word.
So this was where he lived.
The sixteenth-century exterior of Villa Vista Mare had not hinted at its sleek interior: soaring ceilings, glass everywhere, and blinding white surfaces. It was like stepping into the future. Maisy was accustomed to the shabby Georgian chic at Lantern Square and the pretty comfort of the Kulikovs’ other residence on the Île de la Cité in Paris. This sort of cutting-edge modernity and the money it took to fuel it was startling, and also troubling. Kostya’s life was going to be here now. It screamed style and money and glamour. It didn’t hold you in its arms and murmur ‘home’.
Seven days later she was doing her best to install some of Lantern Square into Kostya’s surroundings. She couldn’t fault the nursery. Not unexpectedly, it was over the top. Alexei clearly believed the advent of a child into his life called for lots of stuff. The life-size pony on rockers was perhaps the worst of it. A sleigh for a bed was inspired. Over the week she had shifted the worst out and created a softer space.
Kostya was universally loved by the household; Maria the housekeeper, a handsome woman in her middle fifties, doted on him. But every morning Maisy woke with the expectation that today would be the day Alexei Ranaevsky would put in an appearance, and every morning she was disappointed. She couldn’t make sense of his behaviour. He had spoken of his responsibility for Kostya, yet his actions spoke volumes as to where he saw Kostya in his life.
There was a room for the nanny off the nursery. It was utilitarian, with a view of the courtyard wall. Maisy tried not to spend any time in there other than to sleep, and she slept a lot. Alexei had organised a night nurse to be on duty, which meant she could sleep through the night for the first time since Kostya had been born. Six nights of uninterrupted sleep. She felt a hundred years younger.
Every day she took Kostya down to the beach in the morning, and read books on the terrace during the afternoon whilst he took his nap. In the evenings she would have liked to eat with Maria, but the housekeeper usually left at seven, after providing a solo meal. The rest of the skeleton staff seemed paid to be invisible. It was as if she was living in a palatial hotel all by herself.
On the seventh day she asked Maria if she might have a car to take down into the town. She had noticed a converted stable in the grounds securing seven sleek luxury vehicles.
‘I don’t want anything fancy,’ she hastened to add. ‘Just some beat-up thing I can motor about in.’
Maria laughed at her. ‘You can borrow mine, Maisy. It’s insured, and there’s a child’s seat in the back. I use it for my granddaughter.’
Maisy recognised that she was feeling a wild pleasure at the thought of getting out of the villa out of proportion to the lure of shops and other people. She ran upstairs and shimmied out of her T-shirt and shorts, replacing them with a green-and-pink floral sundress she had bought for her aborted trip to Paris. It was modest in the neckline, protecting her décolletage from the harsh sunshine, and fell just above her knees, but was virtually backless. She whipped her hair out of its ponytail and shook out her curls, solving that problem.
She got Kostya ready and strapped him into the car, giving Maria an enthusiastic wave as she rolled out of the courtyard and took off up the dusty road towards the highway that would take her down the hairpin bends and dips of the road into Ravello.
She had specific chores to undertake: organise funds from her English bank account, purchase a sturdier hat to protect Kostya from the fiery Italian sun, and stock up on trashy paperbacks. But it was impossible not to get sidetracked by the beauty of the old town.
Crossing the road after purchasing gelato for herself and Kostya, she spotted a beauty therapist’s. The warm breeze caressed her bare legs and reminded her she was in desperate need of a wax. With Kostya sucking on his ice and occupied with a box of toys, she was able to deal with her legs and have her hair trimmed and blow-dried. Feeling infinitely more attractive than she had going in, Maisy strapped Kostya back into his pushchair and headed for the gardens she had spotted at the other end of the road.
Several cars slowed down, passing her, and a group of youths called out in Italian to her. She didn’t understand a word but it was fairly clear it was appreciative. Maisy shook her head in disbelief. A pretty dress and ‘new’ hair and suddenly she was on display.
‘Don’t you grow up to be so silly, Kostya,’ she said, ruffling the top of his fair head.
A screeching of tyres made her look up. A low-slung sports car was humming alongside the kerb. Maisy froze.
‘Get in the car.’
Maisy released a deep breath, unaware she had been holding it. Alexei.
He was leaning over the steering wheel, his cobalt eyes hidden behind razor-sharp sunglasses. He looked what he was: cool, ruthless, very male.
She needed to handle this with the same cool. It was important not to appear eager or pleased or even furious that it had taken him seven days—seven days—to put in an appearance. It wasn’t easy when any woman in her right mind would have leapt in that car with him without a second thought.
She glanced ahead at the gardens and then, deciding, put the brake on the pushchair and crossed the few steps to the kerb, leaning in.
‘We’re going to the gardens. I promised Kostya.’
She turned her back on his incredulous face, kicked off the brake and kept moving, making a beeline for the gates.
Alexei slotted the car into a space overlooking the sea and took off after Maisy on foot. When Maria had casually told him Maisy had just walked out of the villa and taken the boy with her he’d been annoyed his security team hadn’t been alerted. The further information that she had taken Maria’s old Audi had infuriated him. Those hairpin bends were suicidal if you didn’t know them. But it was the sight of her in a flowery dress, with her arms and legs bare and all those pre–Raphaelite curls flowing down her back, being cat-called and ogled by Italian males that had sent him over the top.
Maisy wasn’t sure if he would drive away and leave them alone, or come after them. What she didn’t expect was for him to lay a hand on her elbow and wrench her almost off her feet. He whisked her around as if she were a doll. She had forgotten how big he was. The breadth of his shoulders and his musculature were outlined by the expensive weave of an olive T-shirt. Held up against him, Maisy felt warmth sweeping up into her cheeks, his proximity having the same upending effect on her senses it had had in London.
‘What in the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he blistered at her.
The sunglasses meant she couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them nevertheless—boring into her.
