Shadow Alpha (21 page)

Kat knew exactly what Dair was asking.

Sergei had been full of explanations and apologies that night he flew back from Las Vegas, claiming it was all a misunderstanding, that the woman in his hotel room had been a maid who didn’t understand English very well.

As an explanation it wasn’t bad, Kat had conceded.

Apart from the fact the woman had said she was giong to join Sergei in the shower.

Except for that marriage certificate Kat had found in Sergei’s bedroom.

He’d had the unmitigated nerve to be angry that she had gone snooping about in his bedroom.

Kat’s life, a life that was far from perfect but was still her life nonetheless, had been falling apart in front of her eyes, and Sergei had told her she had
no right
?

No right!

Kat had made her biggest mistake then, when she told Sergei she was leaving him, that she was going back to England to live with her brother until she could find a home of her own, and that she would tell Gregori everything. That the baby she carried was
hers,
and she intended bringing it up alone.
 

Dair was now asking her the same question she had asked herself that night and since; had Sergei deliberately pushed her down the stairs, with the intention of killing her before she had a chance to talk to her brother or Ivan?

The answer to that question was yes.

Chapter 13

It had been chaos that night. Kat’s screams as she writhed on the floor in the agony of the knife-like pains wracking her body as she lost her precious baby. Ivan rushing from his study to see what the noise was about. Several members of the household staff also making an appearance in response to those screams.

Too many people for Sergei to finish what he had started, and just kill her.

But Kat had no doubt that he had wanted to. She had seen the hatred glittering in his eyes as he looked at her when the ambulance arrived and she was taken to the hospital.

Just as she had known, from the bruised ribs Sergei complained of when he came to visit her in the hospital the following day, that he’d been left with no choice but to confess all to his father, and received a beating because of it. Ivan didn’t discriminate between his son and his other employees. If anything he was harder on his son, and Sergei had really messed up this time.

As Kat had looked into the malevolent coldness of Sergei’s eyes that day she had known that he hated her, with a vengeance.

Unfortunately for Sergei he was never completely alone with her while she remained in the hospital, Ivan more often than not at his side. Once she was discharged Ivan had called in his own doctor to attend her at his home—Kat had no longer considered it to be her home, and she had told Ivan so. Just as she had told him that she wanted to leave.

Something Ivan had patiently explained—kindly, if inflexibly—he couldn’t allow her to do.

His answer to the situation had been the same as Sergei’s.

Sergei would ‘take care’ of the little problem of his legal wife—Kat hated to think how he would do that, but she very much doubted it would involve a divorce court—and then the two of them could quietly marry again. There was no reason for Gregori, or anyone else, to know anything about this little…mistake of Sergei’s.

A previous wife was a
little mistake
?

Kat’s insistence that she wanted to leave had resulted in her being given the meds ‘to calm her nerves’, and Sergei was charged by his father with the task of persuading her into remarrying him. Kat had refused. Repeatedly. Even in that drugged state she had known she didn’t want to be with Sergei.

“Kat?” Dair prompted again quietly.

She gave a shudder before answering him honestly. “Sergei meant to kill me that night, only his father’s presence, and the curiosity of some of the household staff prevented him from doing so.”

Dair knew of the violence in the world, hell, he lived with it every day. But just thinking of Sergei killing his unborn child, and almost killing Kat too, made it all so much more personal.

If any of Dair’s men could see him now, his stillness, the cold glitter he knew was in his eyes, then they would have described him as being in ‘killer’ mode.

Sergei Orlov deserved to die.

As if sensing that resolve, Kat shifted restlessly in his arms. “It’s over and done with now, Dair—”

“It isn’t over until someone dies,” he grated. “And that someone isn’t going to be you.”

Here, safe in Dair’s arms, Kat could believe that. But she didn’t fool herself that she could stay with him. Or that he would ever want her to.

Gregori could keep her safe too, she knew that, but she also knew it would be at a price. A price she didn’t want him to pay.

“Shit, I’ve just realized something—!”

Dair moved so suddenly that Kat found herself lying on her back with Dair looming over her before she was even aware of his moving, let alone able to voice a word of protest.

He looked down at her searchingly, his expression becoming grimmer, harder, by the second. “Damn it, you weren’t going back, were you!”

“I could never go back to Sergei—”

“To London and Gregori,” he corrected harshly.

Her gaze lowered from meeting his. “Of course I—”

“Look at me, Kat!” Dair demanded as his hand curved gently about her chin and he turned her face back towards him. “You didn’t just steal that cell phone to get back at Nurse Palmer, or with the intention of calling Gregori—”

“I’ve already apologized, repeatedly, for the cell phone thing,” she groaned in protest. “I know how stupid it was, okay!”

“Not stupid at all, Kat, not when you intended on using it for your escape.” His glittering gaze roamed restlessly over her face, with not a warm green fleck in sight amongst the silver. “How was that going to work out, Kat?” he challenged. “We arrive somewhere, like Venice, or maybe England, and while I’m distracted sorting out the details of whatever, you quietly sneak away and just disappear, with that cell phone your only possession?” His eyes narrowed. “What were you going to do for money, I wonder? Steal it from me, maybe, after I’d fallen asleep following another one of our ‘sexual marathons’?”

It was so close to what Kat had intended—although she hadn’t known about the sexual marathons at the time of planning it!—that she couldn’t prevent the guilty heat from suffusing her cheeks.

Dair gave a disgusted snort as he threw back the sheets and moved to sit on the side of the bed, his face etched in grim lines in the last of the sun’s evening rays shining in through the windows and doors.

Kat instantly scrambled up onto her knees. “Dair—”

“Don’t even touch me right now,” he cautioned, causing Kat to still as she heard the danger beneath the softness of his tone. “Why the hell didn’t you say something to Gregori at your father’s funeral—”

“I don’t even
remember
my father’s funeral!” She had tried, God knows she had tried, but everything before Dair came to her at the clinic, losing the baby, the trip to London and back, felt as if it had happened to someone else, or she simply didn’t remember it at all.

The only thing that had remained constantly with her was her hatred of Sergei, because a part of her would never forget the fact he had killed her baby.

Was it any wonder she had gone for him with a dinner knife?

A nerve pulsed in Dair’s tightly clenched jaw as he kept his face turned in profile away from her, meaning Kat could no longer read his expression.

“Ivan had arranged for me to be admitted to the clinic the moment we got back from England,” she continued dully. “The only person I’ve seen since then is Sergei. Every day, always for the same reason; I could leave the clinic if I agreed to marry him again,” she added bitterly. “Incidentally, I think someone should check into what happened to Sergei’s legal wife.”

“Kat—”

“Please, Dair.”

He sighed. “I’ll have my men look into it. But knowing Ivan I doubt he bothered with the expense, or possible exposure, of a divorce…”

Kat thought so too. “If you hadn’t come for me when you did I would probably have met the same fate if I had continued to refuse Sergei, as I fully intended to do. My death would have had to look like an accident, of course, or possibly suicide, probably from an overdose or slitting my wrists with one of those dinner knives,” there was a certain irony to that she was sure Sergei would have enjoyed. “No doubt the explanation to Gregori would have been that I’d taken my own life while suffering from depression.”

Dair stood up, too restless to remain seated any longer; at this moment in time the walls of the palace could have been four feet thick and he would still have wanted to
try
to punch his fist through them.

Kat was right, he knew she was right, and that Sergei had already started the groundwork for her suicide to happen by telling Gregori that Kat was in a clinic suffering from depression after her father’s death. The bastard had forgotten to mention the fact that he had killed his own baby, and almost killed Kat too, just a week or so before that funeral.

Dair reached down to pull on his boxers before standing up and walking over to stand beside the doors that opened out onto the balcony, welcoming the slight coolness of the night breeze on his overheated skin.

What a fucking mess.

Sergei and Ivan Orlov.

Gregori Markovic.

With Kat very nicely caught in the middle of the two powerful families.

Dimitri Markovic may have been a cold-hearted bastard, but Dair knew he would never have tolerated this insult to both his daughter and their family. Or that Gregori would be able to do so either.

There was a way out of this. There had to be. One that saved face for both families.

One that didn’t result in Kat having to suffer any more than she already had.

Dair drew in a deep and controlling breath before turning back to face her, hardening his heart at how tiny and forlorn she looked sitting naked in the middle of the bed. “You should have trusted me, Kat.”

“I did trust you,” she instantly protested.

His mouth thinned. “Not with the truth. Not until you had no other choice. Your plan was to steal money from me, take your stolen cell phone, and run, is that correct? Did you think any further than that, little Kat?” He didn’t wait for her to answer either of his questions before he continued. “Did you stop to think of what Gregori’s reaction might be when I turned up without you? Did you give even a moment’s thought as to what that might have meant for
me
and my family?”

She gave a slow shake of her head. “Gregori wouldn’t—he couldn’t have blamed you for my actions!”

“You really are still that naïve little Kat, aren’t you?” Dair eyed her pityingly. “You were going to prevent one war, between Gregori and the Orlovs, and start another one between the Markovics and the Montgomerys.”

Her shoulders slumped. “That wasn’t my intention at all.”

“Intention or not, that’s what would have happened if you had just disappeared while in my care.” It was the reason Dair had been so reluctant to get involved in the first place. He could take any heat Gregori wanted to dish out for himself, but involving his family, even if he preferred to keep his distance from all of them apart from Lucien, was something else entirely. “What was the past couple of days about, Kat?” he added scornfully. “A good fucking before you left me here to face Gregori’s wrath?”

Each word Dair spoke was like a painful dart in Kat’s flesh, making her bleed, inside if not outside where it would show.

And she knew she deserved every word of Dair’s condemnation.

She
had
been naïve to ever imagine Gregori would accept her disappearance, that he would ever stop looking for her. As to how he would react to Dair having first rescued her and then lost her again…

Dair was right to accuse her of having been naïve in all those things.

And for what had happened between the two of them the past couple of days…?

No, Dair was totally wrong to accuse her of that. She may have initially convinced herself that it was only sex, a man and a woman enjoying each other with no strings attached, but for her at least, it had become so much more than that.

Yes, Dair had changed in the past fifteen years. A lot. But then so had Kat.

Looking at him now, so big and strong, that scar at his temple only adding to those breathtaking good looks, she knew that a part of her had never changed.

She still loved him.

Not that blind teenage love of so long ago, but the love of a woman for a man. A man with faults and foibles, and a foul mouth when he was angry. This man. The Dair Grayson who had scaled walls and blown up buildings to rescue her, before driving and flying her away from danger.

And Dair had as much interest in that love as he had of ever returning it.

She gave a determined shake of her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

“No?” Dair scorned. “Then what was it like, Kat? What the fuck was it all about?” His hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

Yes, a very foul mouth when he was angry… “I wanted—” She drew in a deep breath, determined not to allow any of the tears currently stinging her eyes to fall. “I wanted something for me,” she tried again. “I just wanted something for me,” she repeated dully.