‘You are obviously the kind of woman who will trade her virginity to climb a career ladder.’ The hardened growl of his accusation sliced painfully into her, sullying the memories of giving herself to him so completely last night.
‘No,’ she gasped, wishing she was wearing something so that she could go to him. How could he think that of her? ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
He gave her one last frosty glare and then strode to the door. ‘Now you have all you need to ruin mine and my mother’s reputations, you can get the hell out of my life.’
The door slammed behind him and she was left, blinking in shock. Only hours ago they had been locked in the arms of passion. Nothing else had existed. A tear slid down her face as she threw back the covers and picked up the black dress from the floor, trying not to remember the burn of desire she’d had for him as it had slipped off her body last night. Angrily she pulled it on, not caring about her underwear. All she wanted was to get along the hotel corridor to the sanctuary of her room and lock herself in until her heart stopped breaking.
Still reeling from the shock of Nikolai walking out on her, she shut the door of her own room and made for the shower, needing the warmth of the water to soothe her. After standing there for what felt like hours, Emma finally turned the water off and wrapped herself in a towel, trying not to dwell on the accusations Nikolai had hurled at her. Did he really think she’d all but sold herself just to get information out of him?
Her phone buzzed on the cabinet next to her bed. Instantly she was on alert. What if it was Nikolai? With a slight tremor in her hands she reached for it and, as she looked at the text from her sister, she knew the day was going from bad to worse. Even with the limited words of the text Emma could sense Jess’s distress, but it was the final word which really propelled her into motion:
I need you, Em, come now. Please.
* * *
Finally the overnight train arrived in Perm and Emma made her way straight to the ballet school. The tearful conversation she’d had with Jess during that long journey was still fresh in her mind, which at least had given her little time to think of the night spent with Nikolai and how it had drastically changed things, how he’d rejected her.
‘I’ve missed you so much, Em,’ Jess said, dragging her mind back from thoughts of the tall, dark-haired Russian who had lured the woman she’d always wanted to be out of the shadows.
‘Is that what this is all about?’ Emma kept her tone light but, for the first time ever, felt constrained by looking after her sister. If she hadn’t had to rush and get a train ticket sorted, she might have seen Nikolai again. She’d at least wanted to try and explain, especially after the intimacies they’d shared. All she knew was that he’d checked out.
‘You’ve been so far away and it’s been months since I’ve seen you. I guess I couldn’t stand the thought of you being so close.’
‘Not exactly close.’ Emma forced herself to forget her problems and laughed, pulling her sister into a hug, unable to be irritated by the intrusion into her life at the worst possible moment. ‘It was a very long train journey from Vladimir. It took me all night.’
‘I hope I didn’t spoil anything for you,’ said Jess, looking a little subdued suddenly, and Emma wondered if there was more to this.
‘There wasn’t anything to spoil.’ Nikolai had already done that, accusing her of all but seducing the story out of him. Well, she’d show him. Nothing he’d said to her in his room would find its way into her article, although it did go some way to explaining his shock at seeing his family home again.
‘That’s all right, then,’ began Jess, sounding brighter already. ‘I only have the rest of today off class, then it’s back to it.’
‘Then we need to do something really good.’
Later that night, lying alone in a different hotel room, having spent the entire day with Jess, Emma’s doubts crept back in. She remembered Nikolai standing at the window, the light shadowing his body, and wished she could turn back time. The only thing she wanted to change was the doubt on his face, the worry in his eyes.
Several times this evening she’d wanted to call him, wanted to reassure him that all he’d told her about his childhood would stay with her. She knew what it was to feel unloved and out of place. Was that why he’d gone to great lengths to put off the meeting with his grandmother? Was there another side to the story? Had she been fooled by his heart-wrenching admission of his past?
She had spent time on the train drafting out what she wanted to write and none of it would include the torture of the man who’d shown her what being loved could be like, even for a few brief hours. If she told him that, would he believe her? She relived the moment he’d accused her of seducing him for information and knew he would never believe her.
Tomorrow she would be taking the train back to Moscow and from there a flight home to London. There wouldn’t be an opportunity to see him; maybe fate was trying to tell her that what she’d shared with Nikolai that night was nothing more than a moment out of time.
NIKOLAI STOOD AT a window of his apartment, looking at, but not seeing, Central Park bathed in spring sunshine. All he could think about was Emma. It had been almost two months since that night but the only communication had been from World in Photographs, thanking him, although he was yet to see a copy of what Emma had submitted. That, however, was the least of his worries.
He’d replayed their night together many times in his mind and, once the anger that she’d slept with him to get her story had cooled, a new worry grew from an inkling of doubt. The more he thought of it, the more his gut was telling him they might have had an accident after she’d coaxed him back to bed...the hurried and last-minute use of the condom playing heavily on his mind.
As he stood looking out of the window early that morning, he kept telling himself that no news from Emma was good, that their night of passion hadn’t had the consequences he’d dreaded despite the ever-increasing doubt in his mind.
It had been many weeks since he’d marched from the hotel room and braced the snow to cool his mind and body with a walk. When he’d returned to the room, Emma had gone, and that had told him all he needed to know: he’d been used. The only good thing to come out of the night was that he hadn’t had to face his grandmother.
Angry that he’d put himself in such a position, he’d checked out and headed straight back to New York, but he hadn’t stopped thinking about Emma. She had haunted his every waking hour and made sleep almost impossible. Something had happened to him that night, maybe even from the first moment he’d met her. She had changed him, made him think of things he couldn’t have.
He’d done what he always did where emotions were concerned and avoided them. He still couldn’t believe he’d almost told her all about his childhood. Those hours spent in bed with her must have muddled his mind. It should have just been a night of passion to divert her from the horrible truth of who he really was, but he’d almost told her exactly what he’d wanted to remain a secret.
He’d gone to Vladimir and confronted the ghosts of his past in order to save his mother the heartache of seeing her story all over the newspapers, exactly where it would end up once it was published by World in Photographs. What he’d found in Vladimir with Emma was something different.
Yes, he had been guilty of wanting to distract her from the truth, but somewhere along the way things had changed. She’d reached into the cold darkness of his heart and unlocked emotions he’d thought impossible to feel. Even the woman he’d once proposed to had failed to do that, but Emma had been different.
‘What