She gasped, as though she had read his mind, as though she had seen into his filthy fantasies. But, though he wouldn’t act on them, he was fine with her being aware. Let her know. Let her understand. Let her feel the control slip from her grasp as she realized that he was the one with the upper hand.
That, while he felt the attraction, if he chose to act on it, she would be powerless to resist. That he could have her, begging, naked, if he wanted.
The color heightened in her cheeks, as though he really had kissed her. As though he had spoken the words that were running on a loop through his mind out loud.
“That’s better.” He released his hold on her and took a step backward, much more affected than he should be. Than he cared to be. He had been doing this to exercise control yet again, and yet again, she had tested it. “Now you look much more like a woman who has just been with her fiancé.”
“I think the ring would’ve done it,” she said, the crystal edge her voice normally held dulled, replaced by something much more husky. Something thicker, richer. And he knew that would be the voice she would use in bed. Soft like velvet and just as luxurious.
Desire slugged him sharply in the gut and he turned away from her. “That you think the ring would’ve been enough makes me wonder what you know about relationships, Ms. Calder. Perhaps that is why the engagement to your prince didn’t work out?”
It was an unkind thing to say, but he didn’t really care. He had never much minded whether or not people saw him as kind. In fact, he generally preferred for people to see him as the grumpy bastard he was.
Which was part of his problem now. He’d taken no pains with his reputation at all. His life had opened up wide when he’d retired from fighting, when he’d earned his money and he’d taken the chance to live it as he saw fit. To live without limits.
Too bad the public didn’t appreciate his expression of freedom to the same degree that he did.
“Fortunately for you, Mr. Markin, I do not need to understand personal relationships. I only need to understand how to improve one’s image in the media. I only need to understand how to put on a gala and get a charity running, and on that score I am an expert. I’ll let you worry about the rest. You seem to be doing an adequate job. I bid you good day.”
And when he turned back around she was gone, and he had the inescapable feeling that she had won a round yet again.
* * *
Victoria spent the next two weeks fielding congratulatory phone calls from friends and family and putting together plans for the launch of the Colvin Davis Foundation. A venue in New Orleans had been selected, local restaurants were providing food as a donation, she had managed to find a minor celebrity to act as master of ceremonies and she was just generally feeling really good about the decisions she’d been making lately.
Now that all of her overseas responsibilities had been arranged, she was doing one of her favorite things in the world. She was packing for a trip.
She’d never been to New Orleans before so she’d spent the morning researching what she might need to bring, then finding the corresponding items in her closet, making lists of what she didn’t have, and planning on when she could buy them.
She and Dmitri would be leaving in just two days. She managed to avoid him in the weeks since they’d made their engagement official. The media was chomping at the bit for a picture of the two of them, but in her mind that was so much the better. Better to leave them wanting than give them too much.
They would make their official debut as a couple at the fantastic and glittering affair she had planned. There, Dmitri would read his mission statement for the charity and cash would flow into the coffers like water flowing forth from a burst dam. She could see it all clearly in her head. More importantly, she could see very clearly the moment when she told her father that she had reclaimed their family business.
The Calder family hadn’t been ruined by the loss of London Diva—no, they were far too successful, with many diverse investments.
But money hadn’t been the issue. Not really. It was her father’s pride.
A man of no significant background, he’d clawed his way into the elite social circles, earning his fortune through hard work. London Diva had been his flagship company, the means by which he’d changed his whole life. And she had lost it.
But of course he had allowed the world to believe that it had been a foolish mistake of his that had cost him the boutique. He had allowed all of those upper-crust snobs to believe they’d been proven right, so that she wouldn’t suffer. He had done that to protect her when she had not deserved protection. Even in his anger he had done that for her.
And he had suffered. Invitations to events had all but disappeared, many investors had jumped ship, good friends had proven false. The reputation, the respect her father had worked so hard to achieve, wiped out by one foolish act on her part.
She’d been an idiot with stars in her eyes, feeding vital company information to a man who had so clearly never loved her that just thinking about it now made her cringe.
Yes, the wisdom that came with being a twenty-eight-year-old woman meant that she knew now just how disinterested Nathan had really been. The man had barely kissed her. At the time it seemed romantic. That he was somehow honoring her by refraining from taking her to bed.
The years, and that experience, had made her so much more cynical. She saw it now for what it was. Dear Lord, when a man was trying to take advantage of you and he didn’t add sex to that, he was so uninterested there was almost no scale by which to measure it.
And when she remembered her ultimate humiliation... No. She wouldn’t remember it.
She was organizing. She was in her happy place. She pulled out a few of her favorite outfits and walked out of the closet and into her bedroom, laying each carefully hung and wrapped ensemble on the bed. She stood there for a moment regarding them when her phone started buzzing from its position on the comforter.
She saw her father’s name and her heart did a shimmy up to her throat. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d made the engagement with Dmitri official. Mainly, she spoke to her father when she went home for dinner with him once a month. Being with him was difficult. Ever since her mistake it had been.
But then, it was sort of difficult to sit down to a meal with someone you’d betrayed so badly, whether or not you’d done it on purpose.
She took a breath to try to dispel the tension in her chest and picked up the phone. “Hello, Dad.”
“Hello, Victoria. What is this I see about your engagement?”
He was not one for preamble, her father. “Oh, yes. That. I was going to ring you about that.”
She’d intended to ring him about it a couple of weeks ago. She’d intended to ring him about it last week, too. She also intended to ring him about it last night. But every time she had started to dial his number she’d got cold feet. After the way the Stavros thing had blown up she hadn’t been feeling very keen. Because she knew that this time her father would be suspicious of it working out, and in the end of course he would be right, because she didn’t intend to marry Dmitri. But it wouldn’t matter in the end because she would have returned what she had lost. Even so, it was a conversation she had been delaying purposefully.
“I confess I did not expect to read about my only child’s engagement in the newspaper.”
“Yes, well. That is unfortunate. I was quite surprised when Dmitri asked, and given his position the press is all over it of course.”
Her father continued on without pausing. “He owns London Diva.”
“Yes—” bugger, she had been caught out “—he does. I am aware of that.”
“What is it you are doing, Victoria?”
“Getting