The Marriage Ultimatum (City of Dreams Series) (15 page)

They had both passed through a sort of crucible tonight at the Gala. She had surpassed his every expectation and assuaged any concern he’d had that his efforts at his foundations would suffer from their alliance. Quite the opposite. She was pure gold.

Now he wanted his life to normal out. To get back on the even keel of the last few years. He wanted the structure and predictability of his eighteen-hour days, working and traveling to keep his global enterprise at the cutting edge of innovation. Instead, he hadn’t scheduled one trip even within the U.S., and he could barely stand to be in the office for even eight hours a day when he knew Sabrina was waiting at home. For him.

When she’d signed the contract, he should have felt relief. Contracts and deals were the turf he understood.

But it hadn’t happened. His body and his mind were overtaken by something he could neither see nor control. He hated this lack of control over himself. The last time he felt so uneasy, so unsettled, he had been a boy at the orphanage.

There, he had been forced to learn about self-control. He had learned that hard mental and physical work and cool calculated action solved any issue, and cured every problem. He had bested friend and foe alike in recent times with the force of his intellect, and back in the day, he had done the same with the strength of his fists and the power of his body.

It was time to chill out and apply those lessons once again.

****

A week later, on the first day of Alex’s preschool, Vlad appeared just as Sergei saw them into the back of the town car. He bid them all good morning and helped settle Alex into the new car seat he had provided. Then they talked around each other, both endeavoring to keep Alex calm and happy in the face of starting pre-school, another change in his young life.

Sabrina sat rigidly against the soft leather seat; tense, barely able to form thoughts. This was the first time she was seeing Vlad since the night of the Gala and their abandoned romp in his office. For a week, he had made himself scarce. More than that. He was completely absent from Sabrina’s life.

She hadn’t seen him when she and Alex had breakfast in the kitchen nor was he ever there when they shared dinner. The night of the Gala, embarrassed by her wild behavior in his office, Sabrina had stripped off Vlad’s tuxedo jacket and covered her naked body in a throw that he kept on the couch. She’d raced to her own bedroom, next door to Alex’s.

Vlad did not seek her out that night or any night since.

After a couple of days, Sabrina asked Vlad’s housekeeper, Mrs. Field, about meals and groceries and it was then that the lady casually revealed that Vlad was staying at his Club in midtown.

She didn’t know exactly what had happened between them since that uninhibited episode, but she drew the obvious humiliating conclusion. He didn’t want her anymore. Vlad enjoyed what was on offer and had his fill. Her pride kept her from seeking him out and questioning him. She’d rather walk naked down Fifth Avenue than contact him at the office, but the pain of his complete absence was sharper than a blade between her ribs.

Everything in her life was haywire and the guy at the center of it all was somebody she’d met just under three weeks ago.

****

Sabrina watched as the other moms swept covetous gazes over Vlad. He stood taller than any of the other men in the schoolroom; his air of authority obvious without him having to utter a word. She surreptitiously drank in every detail of him, running greedy eyes over the old-school charcoal suit, pristine white shirt, and the indigo tie that matched his eyes. Even in such conservative attire, even in a room full of New York’s male and female power elite, he still managed to exude more raw energy and vitality than anyone else there.

Alex was exploring the room with his fellow schoolmates and Sabrina found herself hovering at the back of the room. What the hell? This was Alex’s first day, and she was making an embarrassing impression on everyone there. She never wanted to let Alex down or give him cause to be ashamed of her. And wow, she realized, she was also letting herself down big time.

So she peeled herself off the back wall and went to stand at Vlad’s side, briefly wishing she were a supermodel or one of those uber-put-together professionals he had dated before.

Well, those women were pre-Sabrina, she thought, lifting her chin and giving one buff, Park Avenue mom who was chatting Vlad up the benefit of her best full-toothed smile as she placed her hand casually in the crook of his arm. Then, when all the parents and kids were mingling around the teacher and introducing themselves, Alex nervously clutched both of their hands.

Alex looked up at her and said “Rina” and then raising his eyes to Vlad, he uttered “Dad.” Hearing the words, Vlad flinched, flicked a hard look at Sabrina and then pasted on a phony facsimile of a smile that meant he couldn’t wait to get out of there. Alex still had trouble pronouncing ‘Sabrina’ and she knew that with his delayed speech, Alex had likely simply been trying to say ‘Vlad’.

To his credit, Vlad hugged Alex before hightailing it out of the room and since that morning, he’d been completely absent again.

So, Sabrina alone accompanied Alex each morning to pre-school and stayed for the allotted time as the gradual separation process from parents began. After a week of slow goodbyes, the kids would be settled enough for the parents to leave directly after drop off.

All week Sergei took them back and forth in the town car. It was all very peaceful and orderly. Sabrina kept flashing back onto their previous life with its frantic and exhausting routine. Remembered with a shudder the nightmare of the mad rush to the office where Gert Bordon had always lurked near her cubicle judging everything about her. Life was infinitely better now, wasn’t it?

On Friday, Sabrina answered her buzzing cell as she was getting back into the town car having spent the allotted time with Alex in school.

“Good morning. Where are you?”

Without preamble, Vlad’s deep voice rumbled into her ear, and the fragile calm she’d built up over the past few days shattered like glass hitting the sidewalk from a ten-story drop.

“Good morning.” She thought she successfully masked the nervous flutter in her voice. “I just left Alex at school.”

“Of course. How’s it going?”

Sabrina suppressed the urge to scream a vicious curse. This show of normalcy was shredding her nerves. The first sound of Vlad’s deep drawl in almost a week had melted something icy inside her. Something she wanted to keep frozen against him. But she was fighting a losing battle. And that made her angry. She would not let him see how he tied her into knots with his absence. She forced herself to be an adult, when all she wanted to do was to curse him out before flinging her cell into the gutter.

She took a deep breath. “Good.” Another breath. “He’s settling in. Mrs. Byrnes said he’s friendly and talking to the other kids a little.” She bit her lip to keep herself from babbling on.

“Great.” She could hear the very rare smile in his voice.

“As you might imagine, I’ve had to catch up on an abundance of office matters. I just wanted to give you the heads up that you will be receiving an envelope from my assistant today containing various names and lists regarding the wedding. I’ve also hired a planner who will be contacting you later today as well so you should review the materials before then.”

Sabrina wanted to shriek. He was just so damned calm and controlled; he sounded as if he was describing paint dry, not the plans for his own wedding.

Sex. Several days ago, he said what they had was sex. And she told herself that sex, especially the mind-blowing sex they shared, would provide an intimacy that could keep them together at least for the short term. But that closeness, that amazing feeling had obviously been on her side alone. He had been there and done that, and it was all so crushing that she refused to show how much it hurt, because he so clearly felt absolutely nothing now. Not sexually or any other way.

Now it seemed that the sex part was done, and the marriage part was to begin. This was their marriage. Both of them. But he was all about the contract, the names, lists, and the planner. Nothing about them together as a couple. Were they going to conduct this marriage over a cell phone from two different parts of the city? Until Alex turned eighteen? That was fifteen years away. A long and lonely fifteen years from now.

She closed her eyes and started to take slow breaths, again trying to keep panic down and sanity at the forefront. She squeezed her hands into fists until the emerald of her engagement ring began to carve painful grooves into her palm. She focused on the pain.

“What’s the time frame for the, um, ceremony?”

She felt like she was talking about someone else’s life. This whole conversation was surreal.

“Two weeks.”

“What, wow, so soon?” Sabrina couldn’t hold back the shocked comment.

He pitched his voice lower. “If we’re to be the poster children for family togetherness, it would seem that it should take place sooner, rather than later. But even with the shortened timetable, this will be a big deal. Not a quick civil ceremony. I want the news of this to go round the world so that all the interested parties I want to see it, will see it. Think about whom you would want to attend. The invitations will go out very soon.” Then, “Gotta jump. Getting on a plane.”

Sabrina’s breath hitched faster as she pushed her cell resentfully into her purse. She felt sick to her stomach.

“Sergei, pull over. Let me out.”

“Miss, sorry but the boss says I have to stay with you, take you where you want to go. I can’t let you go alone out of the car. Tell me where you want to go and I will go with you.”

Sabrina knew there was no pulling over and no just parking in the city, unless you wanted your vehicle to be plastered with tickets. But she also knew if she didn’t get some fresh air, fast, she would throw up.

But Sergei took one look at her face and promptly found a side street with a loading zone near Battery Park and stopped. He left the car to its fate and followed Sabrina as she took a seat on a bench near the water. The autumn breeze rippled through her unconfined hair and cooled her overheated cheeks. More deep breaths and her heart rate began to slow, but she still felt vaguely queasy. She stared sightlessly at the nonstop maritime activity on lower Manhattan’s waterfront.

But really, why was she so surprised? Their conversation, if it could be called that, with Vlad doing all of the talking and Sabrina barely able to form sensible words on the other end, had been eye-opening. She was shocked by his demeanor and cursed her own stupid response.

Signing that contract had not prepared her for the reality of the lonely life she would lead with a man who cared nothing for her.

Married in two weeks? No wonder she felt nauseous. Marriage had never figured in her plans.

If she had ever thought of her wedding, that dream had been buried somewhere deep even before her mother died. She knew that when her father left, it had cut her mother deeply. If that was love, Sabrina decided, she wanted none of it.

Her parents separated when she was a toddler. They divorced when she was thirteen, but it wasn’t because her dad had been at all present in her life during the intervening years, but just because he hadn’t gotten around to it sooner.

And the liaison that produced Alex hadn’t been anything to write home about either. Sabrina had never met the guy who’d been her mom’s boyfriend, who’d promised marriage then ran out when her mom fell pregnant. Lily met him through her job, was all her mother had said.

Sabrina could barely remember whether she harbored any Cinderella-type dreams as a young girl. She had stopped believing in happily ever after a long time ago. None of those aspirations had survived the reality of day-to-day.

Now she was faced with the prospect of marriage to a man who thought she had the morals of an alley cat and was greedy and treacherous to boot. She was really quite the fantasy fiancée. Believing those things as he did, Vlad was simply anxious to wrap up the PR extravaganza with a splashy media ceremony so that he could prove to the world, especially those in his homeland, that he was a man who cared for his supposed child.

For her part, she would marry Vlad because not to do so, meant Alex would suffer if they were forced to leave the city and start all over. From the bottom. She couldn’t do that to him. She knew only too well the stark choices her mother had made. Whether to buy groceries or pay rent, the midnight flights from relentless landlords, settling in at a school only to leave when a promising job made their commute too long. They had lived on the edge for so long.

She knew that when they married, Alex would have security and the opportunity to go to top schools, to live, literally, at the pinnacle.
And you will, too,
a little voice inside her head piped up.
Yes,
she answered the voice.
Very true.
It sounded fabulous. She should have been doing cartwheels at her financial good fortune. But it just wasn’t enough. It left her cold to think of the empty years ahead, the security obtained at the cost of everything else. She had once thought that financial security would mean everything. But she had to admit she didn’t feel very happy right now. Could it be she believed in love after all?

Chapter 12

Read Between the Lines

Sabrina picked up her phone at the now familiar ring. She’d given Vlad a Batman ringtone as her own private joke in the beginning but now, it helped steel her resolve not to reveal her reaction to his dark voice when she answered. She hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks, but unlike the previous week of complete non-communication, after he called and dropped the bomb that the wedding would take place so soon, he started to call her every day.

Deprived of every other part of him but his voice, she cherished the low, faintly accented way he caressed the syllables of her name. Just his deep voice alone sent erotic chills up her spine. The kind of chills that her body remembered without prompting. The kind that sped up her heart rate, brought her breasts to painful fullness, and caused blood to pulse through her body in readiness for a possession that didn’t take place. She had to acknowledge the shameful conclusion that her body had learned to hum and throb simply to the sound of his voice.