A Reputation For Revenge (13 page)

“But you can,” she choked out. A single tear spilled over her lashes. “You could be so much more….”

A flash of raw vulnerability filled his stark blue eyes as he stared down at her. “A woman like you would be a fool to care about a man like me,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t do it, Josie. Don’t.”

She stared at him with an intake of breath.

“It is growing late.” The cold mask reasserted itself on his handsome face. Abruptly releasing her, he turned towards the waiting helicopter. “Time to go.”

An ache filled her throat.

“It’s too late already,” she whispered, but he’d already turned away.

H
APPINESS COULD BE
corrosive as acid, when you knew it wasn’t going to last.

Kasimir gripped the phone to his ear as he stared at the snowy Russian forest outside the window of the dark-walled study. Greg Hudson’s voice was grating on the other end of the line.

“So—the New Year’s Eve ball tonight? I am tired of waiting,” the man complained.

“Yes. And once you are paid,” Kasimir replied tightly, “you will never contact me again, or speak of our deal to anyone.”

“Of course, of course. I just want the money you owe me. Especially since my boss at the Hale Ka’nani found out about your bribe and fired me.”

“You are sure Vladimir and Bree are attending the ball?”

“Yes. I’ve been watching them, as you said. You owe me extra, for freezing my butt off in Russia. I could be sipping piña coladas on a beach right now.”

“Eleven o’clock.” Kasimir tossed his phone across the desk. With a deep breath, he looked back out the window. It was the first time he’d seen snow in ten years.

And a million miles from where he’d woken up that morning. In the heat of the Sahara, waking in Josie’s arms to the soft pink dawn, Kasimir had known perfect happiness for the first time in his adult life. He’d held her, listening to the soft sound of her breath as she slept. For thirty seconds, he’d
known peace. He’d known joy. And the feelings were alien and terrifying….

Then he’d known that it would all soon end.

So let it end,
he thought grimly. After returning to Marrakech, and a stop for the necessary travel documents, he’d taken Josie to Russia in his private jet, to this small remote dacha—a luxurious cabin in the forest outside St. Petersburg.

He’d been cold to her. He’d done what needed to be done. He was hanging on to his control by a thread. He knew what she wanted. He couldn’t give in.

He could
not
let himself care for Josie. He couldn’t listen to her alluring whispers about a different future. She made him feel things he did not want to feel. Uncertain. Raw. With a heart full of longing for a world that did not, could not exist.

It was time to face reality.

Tonight. New Year’s Eve. He would wait until he could speak to Bree Dalton alone, at the exclusive luxury ball at the Tsarina’s palace. He would give her his blackmail ultimatum. Now. Before Josie convinced his heart to turn completely soft.

He exhaled.

And once he’d done it… he would tell Josie the truth about who he was. The kind of man who felt nothing, who got what he wanted at any cost. For once and for all, he would wipe that look of adoration off her face. Because he would not, could not give up his plans for revenge. Or keep Josie from finding out about it. For their time together in the Sahara, he’d been happy, truly happy. But it was all about to end.

So let it end. Now. Before the corrosive happiness of caring for Josie, and knowing she’d soon leave, burned his soul straight to ash.

“Kasimir?” Her sweet voice spoke behind him. “Who were you talking to on the phone?”

He whirled around to face her in the dacha’s dark study. The decor was very masculine. But then, he’d borrowed this country house from an old acquaintance, Prince Maksim
Rostov, who was spending the week of New Year’s in California with his wife, Grace, and their two young children.

Kasimir cleared his throat. He kept his voice as cold as he could. “No one that concerns you.”

Josie’s beautiful eyes filled with hurt. “I thought, now we were in Russia, maybe we could talk….”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” He told himself he was doing her a favor. This small hurt would be nothing compared to how she’d feel when she discovered he’d kept her prisoner all this time to blackmail her sister.

Let her learn the truth of his dark heart by degrees.

He had to let her go.

He had to push her away.

Now. Before she made him surrender his very soul.

Kasimir straightened the black tie of his tuxedo. “I have to go.”

Her brown eyes were deep with unspoken longing. “Go where?”

“Out,” he said shortly.

She bit her lip. “In a tuxedo…?”

“Bree and Vladimir will be at the most exclusive New Year’s Eve ball in the city. I’m going to go have a little chat.” He stopped, then kissed her briefly, not on her lips, but on her forehead. He gave her a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Your sister will be surprised to hear we’re married.”

“Take me with you,” she said.

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“I need to explain to her why I married you.” She swallowed. “She’ll be so disappointed in me, that I did it to break my father’s trust….”

“Bree? Disappointed in you?” he said harshly. His eyes blazed. “You gave up everything to save her.” Forcing his shoulders to relax, he pulled a colorful, brightly decorated phone out of his pocket. “And you can explain that.”

She blinked. “What are you doing with my dead phone?”

“All charged up now. I’ll give it to her so she can call you here. Tonight.”

Kasimir could see the emotions fighting for domination in her expression. But what she finally said was, “Thanks. That is very—kind…”

Kind.
Again. Scowling, he turned away. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” she choked out.

He stopped at the door. He looked back at her.

Josie’s beautiful eyes were huge, her soft cheeks pale. “Just tell me one thing,” she whispered. “Do you—do you regret taking me to bed last night?”

His eyes met hers.

“Yes,” Kasimir said simply, and as he saw her face crumple, he knew it was true. He regretted that for the rest of his life, he’d be haunted by the memory of a perfect woman he could never deserve. A woman he could never have again. A woman who would despise him forever the instant she heard he’d blackmailed her sister.

“Oh.” It was the kind of gasp a person makes when they’d just been punched in the gut. She blinked fast, fighting back tears. He wanted to comfort her. Instead, he said, “I’ll be back after midnight. Don’t wait up.”

“Happy New Year,” she whispered behind him, but he kept walking, straight out of the house.

As his chauffeur drove him away from the dacha, heading down the lonely road through the snowy forest, Kasimir looked up at the icy moon in the dark sky. His hands tightened in his lap. He missed her. After ten years alone, without ever letting down his guard to another human soul, he missed Josie. He missed his wife.

But his days with her were numbered. They were ticking by with every minute on the clock. And so this had to be done. Although suddenly, even in his mind, he didn’t like to specify what
it
was.

It
was betraying her.

The New Year’s Eve ball was in full swing when he arrived at the elegant palace outside St. Petersburg. Beautiful, glamorously dressed women stared at him hard as he stepped out of the expensive car, and he felt their eyes travel down the length of his tuxedo as they licked their red lips.

In another world, he would have been only too glad to take advantage of the pleasurable services clearly on offer. But not now. Kasimir looked down at the plain gold wedding band on his finger. There was only one woman his body hungered after now. The one woman who would soon leave him, no matter how much he cared. Turning away, he backed into the shadows, avoiding notice as much as he could. Watching. Looking.

“There you are,” Greg Hudson said from behind a potted plant. He nodded towards the dance floor. “Your brother and
Bree
,” he panted her name, “are over there.”

Kasimir’s lip curled as he looked from the man’s greasy hair to his totally inappropriate sport jacket, which barely covered his pot belly. With distaste, he withdrew an envelope from his pocket.

Hudson’s eyes lit up, but as he reached for the envelope, Kasimir grabbed his wrist. “If you even hint to Vladimir I’m here, I will take back every penny, and the rest out of your hide.”

“I wouldn’t—couldn’t—” With a gulp, the man backed away. “So goodbye, then. Um.
Da svedanya
.”

Turning away with narrowed eyes, Kasimir looked out at the dance floor. He moved slowly through the people, on the edge of the party. Then he saw his brother.

Seeing Vladimir’s face was almost startling. For a split instant, Kasimir saw him walking ahead in the snow on the way to school, always ahead of him, whether chopping firewood, chasing newborn calves through the Alaskan forest, or fishing frozen lakes for hours through a cut-out hole in the
ice.
Wait for me, Volodya,
Kasimir had always cried.
Wait for me.
But his brother had never waited.

Now, Kasimir’s jaw set.

In the last ten years, Vladimir had grown more powerful, more distinguished in his appearance and certainly richer. He also now had faint lines at his eyes as he smiled down at the woman in his arms.

Bree Dalton. The older sister that Josie had sacrificed so much, risked so much, to save. And there was Bree, laughing and flirting and apparently having the time of her life in his great-grandmother’s peridot necklace and a fancy ball gown.

Watching them with dark thoughts, Kasimir waited in the shadows until Vladimir left Bree alone on the dance floor. And then Kasimir approached her. He talked to her in low, terse tones. And five minutes later, he left Bree on the dance floor, her face shocked and trembling with fear.

Serves her right,
Kasimir thought with cold fury as he left the Tsarina’s palace. Josie had been so desperate to save her, and Bree had been enjoying herself all this time as Vladimir’s mistress. A tight ache filled his throat.

So much for Josie’s
sacrifice.

And still, after everything she’d done for Bree, when Josie had briefly spoken to her sister, she’d still tried to apologize.

Kasimir exhaled as his chauffeur turned the black Rolls-Royce farther from the palace and through the snowy, frozen sprawl of St. Petersburg. Letting the two sisters briefly speak on the phone had been a calculated gamble.

Where are you?
Bree had gasped. There was a pause, in which Kasimir overheard Josie’s blurted-out apology, begging her sister’s forgiveness for her marriage of convenience. Panicked, Bree had cried,
But where are you?

He’d taken the phone away before Josie could blurt out that she was right here, in St. Petersburg, not in Morocco at all. Now, Kasimir silently looked out at the moonlit night, at passing fields of snow, laced with black trees.

It was just past midnight. A brand-new year. As he traveled out into the countryside, towards the dacha, he should have been feeling triumphant. His brother had no idea he was about to lose his company, his lover, everything.

Bring the signed document to my house in Marrakech within three days,
Kasimir had told Bree coldly.

She’d answered,
And if I fail?

He’d given her a cold smile.
Then you’ll never see your sister again. She’ll disappear into the Sahara. And be mine. Forever.

Now, Kasimir clawed back his hair as he stared out the window at the moonlit night, with only the occasional lights of a town to illuminate the Russian land in the darkness.

In seventy-two hours, Bree would meet him in Marrakech and provide him with a contract, unknowingly signed by Vladimir, that would give him complete ownership of Xendzov Mining OAO. He should have been ecstatic.

Instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about how Josie had felt, soft and breathless, in his arms all night, as the hot desert wind howled against their tent, and they slept, naked in each other’s arms, face-to-face, heart-to-heart. Her reckless, fearless emotion had saturated his body and soul. He couldn’t forget the adoration in her eyes last night—and the shocked hurt in them today.

His hands shook at the thought of the conversation he’d soon have with his wife. Looking down, he realized he was twisting the gold ring on his left hand so hard his fingertip had started to turn white. He released the ring, then exhaled, leaning back in the leather seat. The last lights disappeared as they went deeper into the countryside. Dawn was still hours away on the first of January, the darkest of deep Russian winter.

The car finally turned down a quiet country road surrounded by the black, bare trees of a snowy forest. Past the empty guardhouse, the car continued down a road that was
bumpy and long. The trees parted and he saw a large Russian country house in pale gray wood, overlooking a dark lake frosted with moonlight.

The limo pulled in front of the house and abruptly stopped. For a moment, he held his breath. The chauffeur opened his door, and Kasimir felt a chilling rush of cold air. Pulling a black overcoat over his tuxedo, he stepped out into the snowy January night.

As he walked towards the front door, the gravel crunched beneath his feet, echoing against the trees. In the pale gleaming lights from the windows, he could see the icicles of his breath.

As the chauffeur drove the car away towards the distant barn that was used as a garage, Kasimir went to the front door and found it was unlocked.

Surprised, he pushed open the door. He walked into the dark, silent foyer. The house was silent. As the grave.

Where were the bodyguards?

“Hello?” he called harshly. No answer. With a sickening feeling, he suddenly remembered the guardhouse had been empty, as well. With no one minding the door, anyone could have walked right in and found Josie sleeping, helpless and alone.

He sucked in his breath. This was a safe area, but he had plenty of enemies. Starting with his own brother. If somehow—somehow—Vladimir had found out he was here.

“Josie!” he cried. He ran up the stairs three steps at a time. He rushed down the hall to their bedroom. If anything had happened, he would never forgive himself for leaving her.

He knocked the door back with a bang against the wall. In the flickers of dying firelight from the old stone fireplace, he saw a shadow move in the bed.

“Kasimir?” Josie’s voice was sleepy. She sat up in bed, yawning. “Was that you yelling?”

Relief and joy rushed through him, so great it nearly
brought him to his knees. Without a word, he sat down on the bed and pulled her into his arms. In the moonlight from the window, he saw her beautiful, precious face, her cheeks lined with creases from the pillow, her messy hair tumbling over her shoulders, auburn in the red glow from the fire’s dying embers.