Kholodov's Last Mistress (3 page)

‘
Comfortable?
Are you kidding me? It was amazing. The tub alone—I stayed in there for an hour.’ She held out her hands for his inspection. ‘My fingers are still wrinkled like prunes.’

‘I’m glad you enjoyed all the room’s amenities,’ he said smoothly, and she dropped her hands, laughing a little.

‘Definitely. Thank you. This is all so … like something out of a fairy tale. Really.’ Her eyes held a playful, teasing light. ‘Are you my fairy godmother?’

‘No,’ Sergei said, ‘Just someone assuaging his own guilty conscience.’

‘You hardly need to feel guilty,’ she said as she slid into the booth. He caught a whiff of her honeyed scent: snowdrops, the signature scent of the complementary toiletries found in every room in his hotel. The scent, he’d always thought, of sweetness and courage.

‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he asked, reaching for the bottle of red already open.

‘Oh … well. Okay.’ She smiled, trying to be sophisticated, clearly nervous. ‘Thank you.’

She was, Sergei thought, incredibly open. Those eyes, that face, every word she said … she hid nothing. Having hidden every emotion since he could remember, he was both disturbed and moved by the thought.

He handed her the glass and poured one for himself. ‘To unexpected moments,’ he said, raising his glass, and after a second’s hesitation she self-consciously clinked her glass with his own.

‘I’ve certainly had a few of those today,’ she said after she’d taken a tiny sip of wine.

‘So tell me about this trip of yours,’ Sergei said as he sat next to her. ‘This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’

‘Well …’ She paused, frowning faintly. ‘My parents died. They were elderly, and it wasn’t unexpected, but it was all kind of … intense, and I decided afterwards that this was an opportunity to take some time out for myself.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘Even if I didn’t have any savings.’

‘I’m sorry about your parents,’ he said quietly. Her admission had given him a flicker of surprised sympathy. She was an orphan, of a sort, just as he was. ‘Savings aside,’ he continued, ‘you obviously had enough money to fund the trip at least.’

‘Just,’ Hannah agreed. ‘But it was tight. I had to close the shop, of course, and scrimp quite a bit—’ She stopped suddenly, shaking her head ruefully. ‘But you don’t want to hear about that. Very boring stuff, especially to a millionaire like you.’

Billionaire, actually, but Sergei wasn’t about to correct her. He was curious about this shop of hers, and her whole life, and the way she stared at him as if she trusted him, as if she trusted everyone. Hadn’t life taught her
anything
? It made him want to destroy her delusions and wrap her in cotton wool all at the same time.

Desirable, he reminded himself. That was it. Simple. Easy.

‘You mentioned a shop,’ he said. He shifted in his seat and his thigh nudged hers. He saw her eyes widen and she bit the lush fullness of her lip once more.

‘Y-yes, a shop,’ she said, stammering slightly, and he knew that brief little nudge had affected her. And if that affected her—what would she be like in his arms? In his bed?

Guilt pricked him momentarily, sharp and pointed. Should he really be thinking like this? She had innocence stamped all over her. His lovers were always experienced and even jaded like him, women who understood his rules. Who never tried to get close.

Because if they did … if they ever
knew …

Sergei pushed the needling sense of guilt away, hardened his heart. And pictured himself slipping that dress from her shoulders, pressing his lips to the pulse fluttering quite wildly at her throat. She wanted him. He wanted her.

Simple.

It was foolish to feel so … aware, Hannah told herself. So
alive.
They were just talking. Yet still she was acutely, achingly conscious of Sergei’s thigh just inches from hers, the strength and heat of him right across the table, the candlelight throwing the harsh planes of his face into half-shadow.

‘A shop,’ she repeated, knowing she must sound as brainless as he’d thought her this morning. ‘My parents started it before I was born, and I took it over when they died.’

‘What kind of shop?’

‘Crafts. Mainly knitting supplies, yarn and so forth, but also embroidery and sewing things. Whatever we—I—think will sell.’ Even six months after her mother’s death, it was still strange—and sad—to think the shop was hers. Only hers.

‘And you had to close the shop? You couldn’t have anyone running it while you were away?’

‘I can’t really afford it,’ she said. ‘It’s a small town and we don’t get a lot of business except during tourist season.’ And even then just drive-throughs.

‘Where is this small town of yours?’

‘Hadley Springs, about four hours north of New York City.’

‘It must be beautiful.’

‘It is.’ She loved the rugged beauty of the Adirondacks, the impenetrable pine forests, yet living in a small town as a twenty-something could get a bit lonely, something she thought Sergei surmised from the shrewd compassion in his narrowed eyes.

‘You have not wanted to move?’

‘No, nev—’ Hannah stopped suddenly, for she couldn’t
actually say she hadn’t
wanted
it; it had simply never been an option. Her parents had needed her too much, the shop needed to be run, and she couldn’t imagine abandoning it all now. The shop had been everything to them, and she needed to make a go of it, for the sake of their memory at least. She knew it was what her parents would have wanted, even expected. And yet …

‘I don’t even know where I would go,’ she said after a moment, trying to shrug the question—and the sudden doubts it had made her have—away.

Sergei’s smile glinted in the candlelight. ‘Possibility can be a frightening thing.’

‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, thinking that it never had been before. She hadn’t let herself think about possibilities, yet somehow sitting in this candlelit room with this breathtakingly attractive man gazing at her so steadily made everything—and anything—seem more possible.

Sergei cocked his head. ‘You are thinking about selling this shop,’ he said softly.

‘No—’ She’d been thinking about
him
, but she couldn’t deny that his pointed little questions had opened up something inside her, something she wasn’t quite ready to consider. ‘It was my parents’ dream,’ she told him. ‘Their baby.’

‘Weren’t you their baby?’

She shook her head, wondering why he insisted on seeing everything in such a cynical light. ‘You know what I mean. They poured their life savings into the shop, all their energy. My father had a stroke while stacking boxes in the stock room.’ She swallowed. ‘It was everything to them.’

‘So it was their dream,’ Sergei said quietly. ‘But was it yours? You can’t make someone want the same things you do.’ He sounded as if he spoke from experience. ‘You need to have your own dream.’

‘What’s your dream, then?’

‘Success,’ he answered shortly. ‘What’s yours?’

The question felt like a challenge, one Hannah didn’t want to answer. Sergei gazed at her, his eyes glinting in the candlelight, the sharp angular planes of his face bathed in warm light. His was a harsh, stark beauty, yet she could not deny the whole of his features, cold and assessing as they were, worked together to make him a truly striking man. Hannah swallowed, wanting to say something light, something that would smooth over the sudden jagged sense of uncertainty Sergei had ripped open inside her. Perhaps he understood this, for he gave her a small smile and said, ‘Perhaps this trip has been your dream.’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘It was.’ And it was over now. Tomorrow reality would return. In a day or two she would open the door to the shop, dusty and unused, and deal with the bills and the piles of uncatalogued merchandise and the creeping realisation that her parents’ baby made very little money indeed. She had ideas, she had plans to make the shop work, and they were her plans. The shop was hers. She just didn’t know if the dream was. Hannah pushed the thought away, and the resentment she couldn’t help but feel that Sergei had opened up these uncertainties inside her. ‘So your dream is success,’ she said brightly, determined to move the focus of the conversation away from herself. ‘Success in what?’

‘Everything.’

‘That’s quite a dream.’ She felt a bit shaken by his blatant arrogance, as well as the bone-deep certainty she felt in herself that such a dream was most assuredly in the reach of a man like Sergei Kholodov. ‘Well, judging by this hotel you’re on your way to achieving it,’ she said as a waiter stepped silently into the alcove and began to serve them their starters. Sergei glanced at the young man who laid their plates on the table with a solemn concentration.

‘
Spasiba
, Andrei.’

The waiter gave his boss a quick, grateful smile and then
withdrew with a little bow. Hannah felt a flicker of curiosity. Did Sergei know all his staff by name? The brochure in her room had said he employed a thousand people here. ‘So how did you build this empire of yours?’ she asked. ‘Is it a family business?’

He stilled, staring at her for a moment, the only movement the slow rotation of his wine glass between his fingers. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Not family.’

‘You made it on your own?’ She reached for her fork and took a bite of wafer-thin beef carpaccio.

‘Yes,’ Sergei said flatly. ‘I learned early that is the only way you’ll ever succeed. Don’t depend on anyone. Don’t trust anyone, either.’ His voice had hardened, and his already harsh face suddenly seemed very cold.

‘You must have someone you can trust,’ she said after a moment. Her own life was a little lonely, but not as bad as that.

‘No,’ Sergei said flatly. ‘No one.’

‘No one who works for you?’ She thought of Grigori, or even of the waiter Andrei. Both men had seemed to respect Sergei.

He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. ‘I am their employer. It is a different kind of relationship.’

‘A friend, then?’ He didn’t answer. Hannah shook her head slowly. ‘I find that very sad.’

‘Do you?’ He sounded amused. ‘I find it convenient.’

‘Then that’s even sadder.’

Sergei leaned forward, his eyes glittering like shards of ice or diamonds. Both cold and hard. ‘At some point in your life, Hannah, you’ll find out that people disappoint you. Deceive you. I find it’s better to accept it and move on than let yourself continually be let down.’

‘And I,’ Hannah returned robustly, ‘find it better to believe
in people and live in hope than become as jaded and cynical as you obviously are.’

He laughed, the sound rich and deep, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, there we are,’ he said. His gaze roved over her in obvious masculine appreciation. ‘Two very different people,’ he murmured.

‘Yes,’ Hannah agreed. Her knees suddenly felt watery, her whole body shaky. The tension over their disagreement had been replaced by something else, something just as tense. And tempting.

She didn’t think she was imagining the way Sergei was looking at her, his gaze roving over her so slowly, so … seductively. She certainly wasn’t imagining the answering, quivering need she felt in herself, every nerve leaping to life, every sense singing to awareness. He might be cynical, but he was also sexy. Incredibly so, and her body responded to him on the most basic—and thrilling—level.

She swallowed, tried to find another topic of conversation, anything to diffuse the sudden tension that had tautened the very air between them. ‘What about your parents?’ she said. ‘You must have depended on them, at least when you were a child.’

Sergei’s eyes narrowed as his gaze snapped back to her face, his expression colder than ever. Clearly she’d picked the wrong topic. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m an orphan, like you are. No family to run your little shop, and no family to run my business.’

And no family to depend on. ‘When did your parents die?’ she asked quietly.

‘A long time ago.’

He couldn’t be much more than thirty-five, she guessed. ‘When you were a child?’

His eyes narrowed, lips thinning into a hard line. ‘I don’t know, actually. No one bothered to tell me. I was raised by
my grandmother.’ Hannah stared at him in surprise, and Sergei leaned forward. ‘All these questions,’ he mocked softly. ‘You’re so very curious, aren’t you? Don’t worry, Hannah. I survived.’

‘Life is about more than survival.’ Clearly he didn’t like personal questions. ‘In any case, I’m sorry about your parents. It must have been hard to lose them, whatever age you were.’ Sergei lifted one shoulder in something like an accepting shrug, his expression completely closed.

Andrei came and cleared their plates, replacing them with the next course of
pelmeni
, a kind of Russian ravioli with minced lamb filling encased in paper-thin dough. Hannah took a bite and her eyes widened in appreciation; this was no peasant food.

Sergei noted her reaction with a faint smile, the tension that had tautened between them thankfully dissipating. ‘You like it? Anatoli, the chef here, is world-famous. His signature is haute cuisine, Russian style.’

‘It’s delicious,’ Hannah said, and took another bite. She smiled, deciding to keep the mood light. ‘So you don’t want to talk about your business,’ she said, ‘or at least anything personal.’

Sergei arched his eyebrows. ‘I don’t remember saying that.’

‘Maybe not in so many words,’ Hannah allowed, ‘but I think it was pretty clear, don’t you?’

He stared at her, nonplussed, and Hannah gazed evenly back. She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her, not when she knew underneath all that arrogant bluster there was a kind heart. Or at least a
somewhat
kind heart. He’d looked out for her, hadn’t he, in his own brusque and bossy way? She’d seen compassion in his eyes. And she trusted him, instinctively, implicitly, no matter how coldly arrogant he could seem. Underneath the bluster there was something real and good, and she felt bone-deep she was right to trust that.

His mouth twitched in something that just hinted at a smile and he set his wine glass back down on the table. ‘You’re very candid, aren’t you?’

‘If you’re saying I’m honest, then yes. But not nosy,’ she added, daring to tease just a little. ‘If I were nosy, I’d ask you
why
you don’t want to talk about personal things.’