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Steadily, her eyes holding his, she said, ‘It means that I’m not a girl. I’m an experienced woman, and if I want to get friendly with someone, then I’ll go ahead and do it, whether—my boss likes it or not.’ She had almost said ‘whether you like it or not’, but stopped herself in time. She wanted to keep this as impersonal as possible.
But Drake had guessed and his face hardened. ‘I’m beginning to think Bob is right about you,’ he said shortly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘“The lady doth protest too much”,’ he quoted. Opening the car door, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go and eat.’
The restaurant was already quite full. It was almost impossible to tell the nationality of the customers from their dress because all looked smart; it was only as you walked by and listened to the language in which they spoke that you could tell. And everyone seemed to be talking as they ate and drank. On a small raised platform behind an equally small dance floor there was a gypsy band which was doing its best to drown out the noise of the voices.
Allie looked back over her shoulder as she turned a laughing face to Drake. ‘Is it always like this?’
He seemed to draw in his breath and gazed at her for a moment before he blinked and bent nearer to hear. She repeated her question and he nodded. ‘Wherever there are Russians you have noise.’
They sat down at a table for two at the rear of the room where an open window gave a welcome coolness. A waiter handed them menus but Drake didn’t look at his for a few minutes. His eyes were still on Allie but there was a frowning, abstracted look in them, as if he was thinking of something quite different.
‘A rouble for them,’ Allie said, her eyebrows rising.
He blinked, looked disconcerted for a moment, then said hastily, ‘What would you like to drink?’
They settled for vodka on the rocks and drank it while Drake explained the menu to her. ‘Everyone has zakuski,’ he told her. ‘That’s the same as hors d’oeuvres. And the Russians can make them last for a couple of hours. That’s mostly why westerners complain about the slow service here; they eat the zakuski and expect the main course to be served straight away, but you have to prolong the experience.’
‘Make a meal of it, you mean,’ Allie said, tongue in cheek.
Drake groaned, laughed. ‘I asked for that one, didn’t I?’
‘You didn’t take up my offer,’ Allie told him.
‘Offer?’
‘A rouble for your thoughts,’ she reminded him. ‘You were miles away just now.’
He gave a short laugh, said, ‘Was I?’ in a terse, ‘leave it’ kind of voice.
But Allie wasn’t to be put down. ‘So where were you?’ she demanded.
Picking up his glass, Drake looked down at it as he gave a small shrug. ‘It was nothing. For a second you reminded me of someone, that’s all.’
‘Oh? Who?’
‘No one you’d know,’ he said dismissively. ‘Now, have you decided what you would like to eat?’
‘Well, as I’m in Russia, I’ll guess I’ll go for something really authentic and have the beef stroganoff.’
That made him grin. ‘Very adventurous!’ he mocked.
Allie smiled back at him, wondering who it was she’d reminded him of. What woman could it have been, and what must she have meant to him to drag his mind away from the present and bring such a frown of memory to his face? ‘I take it you didn’t bring your family with you to Moscow,’ she said lightly.
‘My family?’ He gave her an assessing look at the question, probably wondering if it meant she was interested in him. ‘I have no family. I’m not married,’ he said, his tone a little abrupt.
She nodded. ‘That figures. Companies tend to send single people on foreign assignments. It’s cheaper.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
He looked slightly amused for a moment but turned to give the waiter his attention. He ordered in fluent Russian that produced the hors d’oeuvres and a bottle of Russian champagne. The gypsy band was playing away with great vigour and soon people got up to dance. Allie watched the different interpretations of the music with amusement; some tried to waltz, others to do a Highland fling, while other dancers just jigged around. The dancers were more entertaining than the band, but everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Watching her, Drake said, ‘Want to try?’
‘To that?’ She gave him a horrified look. ‘No way; I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to let my hair down to that extent.’
‘A slower one, then.’ He beckoned a waiter over and gave him some money which was taken over to the band leader, a man with dark hair and a luxuriant moustache who obviously thought he was the bee’s knees in his flamboyant costume.
The money had the desired effect and the band began to play a slow, haunting melody that could only have been a love song in any language. Drake stood and offered his hand. Hiding her reluctance, Allie let him help her to her feet and went into his arms to dance. As they moved around the room she thought how strange it was that you could be with a virtual stranger and never want or expect to be close to him, but with just the excuse of some music he could hold you as close as this, your bodies touching almost intimately, your faces, your mouths just a few inches apart. He could put his arm low on your waist, bend his head to take in the scent of your perfume, could look into your eyes and give a slow smile of awareness. An awareness that you were man and woman, that the business connection was just a superficial nonsense, a masquerade when set against the deeper, primitive sexual consciousness.
She found the thought disturbing, just as she found Drake’s nearness getting to her. He moved well and held her firmly; she could feel the muscle in his arm beneath her hand, and could only guess at his strength. He was too tall for her, of course, but her high heels had lifted her close enough for Allie to get the tang of his aftershave, to be able to study the strong line of his jaw and the firmness of his lips. There was nothing full or heavy about his features and there never would be; he was all lean planes and angles, western handsomeness personified.
She began to wonder if he was very experienced with women. He didn’t give off an obvious aura of knowledge, hadn’t looked her over stripping her as he did so, as some men did, wondering what she would be like in bed and how much effort might have to be put into getting her there. But there was a certain class of man who was so self-confident, so assured in his own masculinity, that he didn’t have to flaunt his experience. And that type of man was far more attractive to a woman than the more obvious kind.
Was Drake that kind of man? Allie wondered. A rather boisterous pair of dancers pushed towards them and Drake pulled her close and swung her out of the way. She followed him effortlessly, their steps perfectly matched, then laughed up at him. ‘That was close.’
‘Mmm.’ He looked down at her musingly for a moment and she wondered if he could guess what she was thinking about him.
Mischievously, she said, ‘You’re miles away again. Where are you this time?’
She wasn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t for him to say, completely out of the blue, ‘I know you have an ulterior motive in coming to Russia.’
She came to a precipitate stop, too disconcerted to be able to prevent her face filling with horrified dismay as she stared at him in appalled consternation. How could he know? How could he possibly have found out?
CHAPTER TWO
SOMEBODY bumped into her and Allie hastily moved out of the way, lowering her face, trying to hide her consternation. But her mind was screaming in mingled fright and anger. Who had told him? How could he possibly know? The two, oh, so vital questions burned into her brain. With a supreme effort she somehow lifted her head to look at Drake, forcing an amused smile to her mouth. Her voice sounding odd even to her own ears, she managed to say lightly, ‘What on earth gives you that idea?’
She hadn’t fooled him for a minute. Drake was gazing down at her with a frown of incredulous surprise in his grey eyes, and she could almost hear his brain computing her reaction, trying to work out why such a simple remark had disconcerted her so much. ‘It was something Bob said.’
It was such a deliberately ambiguous reply that she felt a spurt of anger but managed to fight it down, aware that he was watching her, studying her face. But she couldn’t understand how Bob could possibly know; she’d told no one, it was a secret she’d shared with only one person in the world—and she had been dead for years now. Fighting for normality, for lightness, Allie said, ‘Really? I can’t think what it was. What did he say, exactly?’
The direct question had pushed him into a corner and Allie knew that he would have to give her a direct answer, but the wretched man side-stepped again by saying, ‘He mentioned that you had an—outside interest in Russia.’
At any other time she might have enjoyed this verbal fencing, but this issue was much too important, made her too anxious to want to prolong it. And it was such dangerous ground. She gave a small shrug, pretending indifference. ‘I can’t think what he means.’
It left the opening up to Drake; he could come right out with it or he could go on playing cat and mouse with her. Allie kept her expression casual, as if nothing was the matter, even looking round the room and humming to the music.
She didn’t know whether she’d managed to deceive him or not, but she felt his eyes still fixed on her when he said, ‘Bob told me that you’ve already written a couple of books for children and would probably use this visit to get background for another.’
So that was it! Allie felt a huge wave of intense relief run through her, her legs felt as if they wanted to sag and her shoulders sank as the tightness left them. But she did her best to hide it by giving an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh, that!’
‘What else could he have meant?’ The question showed that Drake hadn’t been taken in for a minute. He was holding her quite close and must have felt the sudden loss of tension.
Ignoring the question, she glanced up at him from under her lashes, still pretending to be embarrassed. ‘I’d hoped Bob had forgotten all about my writing. He teased me about it unmercifully when he first found out. Called me the future Enid Blyton of the twenty-first century. Thought it was a great joke. You know what he’s like.’
‘Does that worry you?’
The music came to an end and Allie stepped away from him, lifted an arm to push her hair off her forehead as they walked back to their table. ‘Here I am, busy projecting myself as a successful career woman, a go-ahead jet-setter with the lifestyle to go with it. Writing stories for young children hardly fits the image.’
His voice dry, Drake said, ‘And is your image that important to you?’
Of course it darn well mattered, she thought in annoyance. Where the hell had he been if he thought that the image a person projected wasn’t all-important in their career, their chances of promotion? ‘Isn’t yours?’ she countered.
‘What one does is surely more important than the way one looks while you’re doing it.’
‘Actions speak louder than appearances, in other words,’ Allie said wryly.
His eyebrows rising at her tone, Drake said, ‘You sound as if you don’t believe it.’
‘I can’t afford to. You may not have noticed, but I’m a woman.’
Drake had been about to take a drink but stopped at that, his eyes widening. With a sudden and rather surprising smile, he said, ‘Er—yes, I had noticed, as a matter of fact.’
‘Women have to be far more image-conscious than men.’
‘Isn’t that attitude rather dated?’ he asked on a cautious note.
He was right to be cautious; Allie could easily have snapped his head off. What could he, a jumped-up bank clerk, possibly know about the fight that women with any ambition had on their hands the minute they entered the business world? To succeed they not only had to be as good as men but better, and they had to look good, too. Power-dressing was exactly what it implied—a physical projection of where they wanted to be, the path they wanted to tread.
A man could turn up for work in yesterday’s shirt, his suit crumpled, and his contemporaries immediately thought that he’d had a night on the tiles and admired him for it. If a woman turned up looking at all unkempt her male colleagues would think she was sleeping around and treat her accordingly, while her female workmates would probably think she had given up the uneven struggle and was letting herself go.
Inwardly at zero tolerance level, Allie just gave Drake a sweet smile and said, ‘No—but yours is.’
He looked taken aback and his eyes narrowed. Leaning forward, he looked as if he was going to argue, but thankfully the cabaret started, dancers dressed in vivid, exotic costumes springing onto the dance floor. The music became high and heated and it was impossible to talk. Allie turned her chair slightly to watch, her face averted, presenting only the fine line of her profile to Drake’s gaze. When the sweating dancers finished their performance, the waiter hurried to bring their main course, and when he had gone Allie made sure to turn the conversation into safer channels.
It was a prolonged meal and she didn’t enjoy it. She realised that her reaction to Drake’s remark about her having an ulterior motive in coming to Russia, which he’d made in all innocence, had aroused his curiosity. He was watchful now, scenting a mystery he couldn’t fathom. As soon as he got home he would probably be on the phone to her boss, trying to solve it, she thought with chagrin, angry at herself for having given so much away. But the remark had taken her completely by surprise, there had been no warning, no few precious moments in which to prepare herself for it.
‘Tell me how you came to write the story books,’ he invited.
‘I have a little god-daughter. I was baby-sitting one night when she couldn’t sleep, so I made up a story. But she’s a very modern child, everything has to be visual, so I had to draw pictures of the characters for her. Her father saw them and suggested I try to get it published.’ She shrugged. ‘No big deal at all, really.’
‘Did they sell well?’
‘Quite well,’ Allie admitted, with an inner surge of pleasure at the thought of her success. ‘But not well enough to give up the day job,’ she added firmly, in case he passed that piece of information on to her boss.
But Drake disarmed her by grinning as he said, ‘I’m sure Bob would be pleased to hear you say that. He told me that you’re a great asset to his company.’
‘He did?’ Allie’s eyes widened. Her boss wasn’t exactly generous with praise and compliments. The most she usually got from him was, ‘Not bad. Not bad, considering.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t want to lose you,’ Drake said in some amusement, as if reading her mind.
She didn’t like it when his mouth twisted into that amused smile; it was condescending, as if she were just some dumb female, not to be taken seriously. It put her back up.
‘How sweet of you to reassure me. And where will you be based when you leave Russia?’ she asked him. ‘Back in London—or do you just dutifully go wherever you’re sent?’
The edge of sarcasm in her tone wasn’t lost on him. Drake’s eyes narrowed, but he admitted, ‘I go where I’m needed. But isn’t that what you do?’
She gave one of her sudden, impish and completely natural smiles. ‘Touché.’ His eyes came swiftly to her face with an arrested expression, but before he could speak Allie pretended to stifle a yawn. ‘It’s been quite a long day. Would you mind taking me back to my hotel?’
‘Of course. You must be tired after your journey.’
She wasn’t; Allie had seldom felt more inwardly alert as they drove back to the city centre, but she lay back against her seat, letting him think her exhausted.
When they reached her hotel, she turned to thank him for the evening, but Drake said, ‘I’ll see you inside.’ And, opening the passenger door of the car, he escorted her into the entrance.
There she turned and offered her hand, gave him a practised smile. ‘Thank you so much for a wonderful evening. It was a perfect start to my stay here. And thank you again for meeting me and everything. I’ll be sure to tell Bob how kind you’ve been.’
There was dismissal in every sentence, distance in her smile. Drake took her hand but not the dismissal. Instead he said, ‘It was my pleasure. I know you’ll be working during the day, but have you any thoughts on where you would like to go tomorrow evening?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but I expect I’ll be busy working out my shooting schedule, that kind of thing,’ she responded easily.
‘That’s a shame. The ballet are performing tomorrow and I’m sure I could manage to get a couple of tickets.’
‘The ballet? Russian ballet?’ Allie was immediately torn; seeing the ballet performed here in Russia was a lifelong ambition. Well, she’d intended to see it some time while she was here, so why not let Drake take her? So she smiled and said, ‘You’ve found my weakness. I couldn’t possibly refuse a chance like that.’
‘Good. I’ll meet you here at seven tomorrow, then.’ And only then did he let go of her hand.
Allie smiled. ‘Thanks again. Goodnight.’ She turned and walked across the deep foyer to the lifts, joined a small group of waiting people. When the lift came she glanced back. Drake was still there, hands hooked into the pockets of his trousers, watching her. She lifted her hand in a small wave goodbye and walked into the lift.
As Drake watched her walk away from him his thoughts were on her legs. Although she was so petite her figure was perfect and her legs very shapely, with the kind of slim ankles that he liked on a woman. There were other tourists, women among them, waiting for the lift and he was sure she would be quite safe, but he stayed where he was. When Allie waved, he merely nodded, and waited until the lift doors had closed before going back to the car.
He was fully aware that she didn’t want him around; Bob had warned him that she was an independently minded girl. What he hadn’t been warned about was her attractiveness, her air of fragility that immediately appealed to his protective instincts. Fleetingly he wondered if Bob, who knew everything about his past, had deliberately brought them together for reasons other than that of convenience. But he pushed that thought aside. What intrigued him now was that moment of open fear Allie had shown earlier. If her secondary reason in coming to Russia had been merely to write a children’s book, why be so frightened that he should know? No, there had to be something more than that. Something that Bob Delaney didn’t know about.
Drake negotiated the streets and pulled into the garage below his apartment building, pondering the problem. Had she perhaps undertaken to carry out an assignment for some other organisation at the same time as Bob’s? Working for two companies without telling her employer? It was possible, he supposed. From only spending one evening with her he was aware that Allie was very ambitious. If she thought it might help her career she might well agree to take on the extra work, even though she probably knew that Bob wouldn’t approve.
Maybe she was even lining up to move on to another company, or to start up as a freelance. So perhaps it was the fact that she was deceiving Bob, who was his friend, that had made her so prickly towards him, made her react so guiltily. Whatever it was, he would do his best to discover it, Drake decided. After all, Bob had been a good friend to his parents, and to him when he’d most needed one; he owed it to him to find out.
But as he entered his flat and moved over to the window to look out over the lights of the city in the direction of her hotel Drake knew that that was just a feeble excuse; the truth was that he was intrigued by Allie herself and couldn’t resist getting to know her better. But whether that was wise, in view of his own past and even more uncertain future, was an extremely debatable point.
Allie was eager to get down to work the next morning but found that it was first necessary to get to know Professor Martos and his assistants. She was given a tour round the whole museum, which was fascinating, but her mind was entirely on the Fabergé eggs which she was shown last. The professor took her to the display case but stood with his back to it as he gave her a lecture on Fabergé and his factory, before at last moving out of the way, indicating the eggs with a flourish of his arm, like a conjuror waving his wand.
Allie gasped, and stared. The treasure that he’d revealed was the cream of an Aladdin’s cave. Gold, silver, the flash of diamonds and rubies, the gleam of platinum and crystal—all these were there, but those were mundane in comparison to the fantastic workmanship in which they were contained. There were ten eggs in all, arranged on two shelves of the large cabinet. Some of them were large, some small in comparison, but all were different. And most of them had a hidden surprise.
One of them was a clock crowned with a delicate bouquet of lilies carved from onyx, another had a scale working model of a Trans-Siberian railway train that folded to fit inside, the tiny key that wound the mechanism lying beside it. A third was a music box, and others contained miniature portraits of the Imperial family, their young faces smiling confidently into the future they would never see. A small replica of the royal yacht floated on a crystal sea, another egg opened to show a painting in a golden frame.
Her eyes wide with wonder and pleasure, Allie gazed at the eggs, the Easter gifts of the last Tsar of Russia to his wife and his mother. Last of all, she allowed her gaze to move to one of the smallest eggs. It was covered in clover leaves of transparent, bright green enamel, their shapes outlined by gold threads. Here and there between the foliage wound a thin golden ribbon paved with rubies. Although one of the smallest examples it was also one of the most attractive, a masterpiece of the jeweller’s art.
‘Doesn’t that egg have a surprise inside?’ she asked, pointing to it.
Professor Martos raised his hands in a helpless gesture and said, with his heavy accent, ‘Alas, it has been lost But records show that it once had four leaves set inside it, each with a portrait of the emperor’s daughters, and was set with twenty-three perfect diamonds.’
‘What a shame,’ Allie murmured, and hid her excitement by immediately pointing to a different egg and asking questions about it.
The professor was pleased to air his knowledge and practise his English, and they got down to fixing shooting schedules. It was arranged that they would photograph one egg per day with a break for Sunday. The eggs were to be taken from the show cabinet to a special room, but Allie wasn’t to be allowed to handle them, she was warned; the professor and his assistants would do that. But he promised he would give her all the help she needed for the very handsome fee that her company was paying the museum. She was shown the room where the shoot was to take place; it was adequate, about thirty feet square, windowless, and with the walls painted white to reflect the light. ‘I will want to take one film of all the eggs together,’ she warned.
