‘You need to do the right thing by him and let him go for good.’
And he had.
Daniil now worked in London. Roman told himself he was here to purchase a property—that it happened to coincide with Firebird’s return was a coincidence.
In the end he had bought a ticket for tonight’s performance.
Dressed in a black suit, ready to leave his luxurious hotel, Roman had sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the earring and told himself to tear up the ticket.
To not go back.
He had made a vow to himself that he never would.
Yet he had gone to the ballet and watched silently in a box seat. His breath had caught when Anya had first briefly appeared on the stage.
And then again.
He had watched her dance and had ached with pride for all she had achieved.
That little girl who had diligently practised over and over in the kitchen, the teenager who had devoted herself to her dream was now a prima ballerina.
And she could not have made it this far with him.
He knew that for a fact.
Standing to applaud, Roman had meant to leave then, to slip away with the precious memory of watching Anya perform at her peak, but unable to resist he had called out to her. He had watched her face lift and her eyes search for him and he admitted to himself that he had lied about slipping away, for he had brought with him the gold earring that he had found on the floor as he had cleared out his bedsit.
No, he reasoned, for he took it with him everywhere.
Would she want to see him?
Roman didn’t know.
And now Anya asked a question he could not answer properly.
‘Why are you here?’ she said. They spoke in Russian and it had been a long time since Roman had used his native tongue, but he slipped into it with unexpected relief.
‘To congratulate you, of course,’ Roman said. ‘You made it. I always knew that you would.’
He leant forward and Anya breathed in again the heady scent of him and felt his arm brush her bare shoulder as he placed the missing earring on her dressing table.
She picked it up and remembered them at eighteen, lost to the world, wanting only each other.
‘You told me you couldn’t find it.’
‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘But when I packed...’
He had packed everything he had into a small backpack and left without even a goodbye.
‘You could have come and given it to me.’
‘No,’ Roman said. ‘Because we would have ended up making love. It had to be that way.’
She couldn’t dispute that they would have ended up making love, neither could she forgive his choice to leave, but that he had kept her earring for all these years meant so much.
Anya wanted to open the small box and put the earring with its partner but she decided to do that once he had gone. She did not want Roman to know just how much she had missed him, so she placed it back down and stood and turned to face him. She was tiny compared to his large frame. Her breathing was too shallow but face him she would, even if it nearly killed her to do so and to see all she had lost.
He looked immaculate.
His glossy black hair was superbly cut, he was beautifully clean shaven and scented with expensive cologne. His suit was exquisite, so much so that she reached up and touched the lapel. His chest was a toned wall of muscle beneath her fingers and she could feel tears pooling in her eyes as she saw a different Roman from the impoverished youth she had known.
His hand came and took hers, at first to remove it, because contact was too much, but then it closed over hers.
Now she lifted her eyes to his and they stared and the years that had parted them seemed to drift away.
No one could move her like Roman and it was the same for him.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
He did not answer when there was so much she needed to know; she could almost feel his reluctance to tell her.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me.’
‘I cannot stay long.’ Roman shook his head yet still he held her hand.
‘You could at least take me to dinner—we can talk properly. There is so much to catch up on.’
‘Don’t you have an after party to go to?’ Roman checked. From the shadows he had watched her accept the duchess’s congratulations and had heard the chatter.
Still they held hands, but now their fingers were entwining and their palms were exerting beats of pressure as the flame that had never died started to burn brightly again.
‘I can miss it.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘We didn’t do too well at dinner last time, remember?’
A laugh caught in her throat as she remembered the one time they had been in a restaurant together. Roman, trying to make his way as a boxer, had taken her out for a Valentine’s Day dinner, using his winnings from a fight.
Valentine’s Day had still been relatively new in Russia but Anya had wanted to celebrate it.
She had wanted flowers and, of course, chocolate.
Roman had taken her to a restaurant, though.
The first restaurant they had been turned away from as Roman had not had a jacket and tie, and in the other restaurant it had been just as much hell on the inside.
A menu had been handed to him, when he had never known such a thing even existed.
There had been a wine menu too.
He had wanted to give her everything, except he’d had nothing to give.
Nothing.
But he had taken care of her aching body after rehearsals and soothed her panic as she’d prepared for an important audition.
They had lain in his room and talked, they had glimpsed a future, even if Katya had said it would be an impossible one.
And then, without warning, he had gone.
‘You left me...’ She said it with the pain she had felt then and his hand was warm over hers as she jabbed at his chest.
‘Anya, I had to. You would not be where you are today had I stayed’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘But it’s true,’ Roman said. ‘You wanted to get to Saint Petersburg and you did.’
‘You could have come too. We could have got a flat—’
‘It would never have worked, Anya. I could not afford a flat for us and neither could I sit back and say nothing about...’
He did not finish, both knew what he referred to.
Oh, their night at the restaurant had been such a disaster.
They had left and gone back to the small bedsit he’d had and it had been the blackest of Valentine’s Days. Roman had lain there, knowing that he had embarrassed her with his unpolished ways.
No.
Anya had stared at the ceiling, wondering how she might excuse that three-course meal. There had been steak and hren, a horseradish relish that she adored, as well as wine. A large meal, though, was the very last thing she’d needed before such an important audition. She’d known he had spent everything that he’d