* * *
Viveka knew he was listening intently, thought about leaving it there, where she had stopped with the doctors and the intake staff and with Trina during their video chats. But the mass on her conscience was too great. She’d already told Mikolas about Grigor’s abuse. He might actually understand the rest and she really needed it off her chest.
“I feel like I’m stealing from her. She worked really hard for her home and deserves to live in it, but she can’t take care of herself. I have to run home from work every few hours to make sure she hasn’t started a fire or caught a bus to who knows where. I can’t afford to stay home with her all day and even if I could...”
She swallowed, reminding herself not to feel resentful, but it still hurt. Not just physically, either. She had tried from Day One to have a familial relationship with her aunt and it had all been for naught.
“She started hitting me. I know she doesn’t mean it to be cruel. She’s scared. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her. But I can’t take it.”
She couldn’t look at him. She already felt like the lowest form of life and he wasn’t saying anything. Maybe he was letting her pour out her heart and having a laugh at her for getting smacked by an old lady.
“Living with her was never great. She’s always been a difficult, demanding person. I was planning to move out the minute I finished school, but she started to go downhill. I stayed to keep house and make meals and it’s come to this.”
The little food she’d eaten felt like glue in her stomach. She finished up with the best argument she could muster.
“You said you’re loyal to your grandfather for what he gave you. That’s how I feel toward her. The only way I can live with removing her from her home is by making sure she goes to a good place. So I have to go back to London and oversee that.”
Setting aside her coffee, she hugged herself, staring sightlessly at the horizon, not sure if it was guilt churning her stomach or angst at revealing herself this way.
“Now who is beating you up?” Mikolas challenged.
She swung her head to look at him. “You don’t think I owe her? Someone needs to advocate for her.”
“Where is she now?”
“I was coming away so I made arrangements with her doctor for her to go into an extended-care facility. It’s just for assessment and referral, though. The formal arrangements have to be completed. She can’t stay where she is and she can’t go home if I’m not there. Her doctor is expecting me for a consult this week.”
Mikolas reached for his tablet and tapped to place a call. A moment later, the tablet chimed. Someone answered in German. They had a lengthy conversation that she didn’t understand. Mikolas ended with, “Dankeschön.”
“Who was that?” she asked as he set aside the tablet.
“My grandfather’s doctor. He’s Swiss. He has excellent connections with private clinics all over Europe. He’ll ensure Hildy is taken into a good one.”
She snorted. “Neither of us has the kind of funds that will underwrite a private clinic arranged by a posh specialist from Switzerland. I can barely afford the extra fees for the one I’m hoping will take her.”
“I’ll do this for you, to put your mind at ease.”
Her mind blanked for a full ten seconds.
“Mikolas,” she finally sputtered. “I want to do it. I definitely don’t want to be in your debt over it!” She ignored the fact that he had already decided she owed him.
Men expect things when they do you a favor, she heard Hildy saying.
A lurching sensation yanked at her heart, like a curtain being pulled aside on its rungs, exposing her at her deepest level. “What kind of sex do you think you’re going to get out of me that would possibly compensate you for something like that? Because I can assure you, I’m not that good! You’ll be disappointed.”
So disappointed.
Had she just said “you’ll”? Like she was a sure thing?
She tightened her arms across herself, refusing to look at him as this confrontation took the direction she had hoped it wouldn’t: right into the red-light district of Sexville.
* * *
“If that sounds like I just agreed to have sex with you, that’s not what I meant,” Viveka bit out, voice less strident, but still filled with ire.
Mikolas couldn’t think of another woman he’d encountered with such an easily tortured conscience or with such a valiant determination to protect people she cared about while completely disregarding the cost to herself.
She barely seemed real. He was in danger of being moved by her depth of loyalty toward her aunt. A jaded part of him had to question whether she was doing exactly what she claimed she wasn’t: trying to manipulate him into underwriting the old woman’s care, but unlike most women in his sphere, she wasn’t offering sex as compensation for making her problems go away.
While he was finding the idea of her coming to his bed motivated by anything other than the same passion that gripped him more intolerable by the second.
“Let us be clear,” he said with abrupt decision. “The debt you owe me is the loss of a wife.”
She didn’t move, but her blue eyes lifted to fix on him, watchful and limitless as the sky.
“My intention was to marry, honeymoon this week, then throw a reception for my new bride, introducing her to a social circle that has been less than welcoming to someone with my pedigree when I only ever had a mistress du jour on my arm.”
Being an outsider didn’t bother him. He had conditioned himself not to need approval or acceptance from anyone. He preferred his own company and had his grandfather to talk to if he grew bored with himself.
But ostracism didn’t sit well with a nature that demanded to overcome any circumstance. The more he worked at growing the corporation, the more he recognized the importance of networking with the mainstream. Socializing was an annoying way to spend his valuable time, but necessary.
“Curiosity, if nothing else, would have brought people to the party,” he continued. “The permanence of my marriage would have set the stage for developing other relationships. You understand? Wives don’t form friendships with women they never see again. Husbands don’t encourage their wives to invite other men’s temporary liaisons for drinks or dinner.”
“Because they’re afraid their wives will hear about their own liaisons?” she hazarded with an ingenuous blink.
Really, no sense of self-preservation.
“It’s a question of investment. No one wants to put time or money into something that lacks a stable future. I was gaining more than Grigor’s company by marrying. It was a necessary shift in my image.”
Viveka shook her head. “Trina would have been hopeless at what you’re talking about. She’s sweet and funny, loves to cook and pick flowers for arrangements. You couldn’t ask for a kinder ear if you need to vent, but playing the society wife? Making small talk about haute couture and trips to the Maldives? You, with your sledgehammer personality, would have crushed her before she was dressed, let alone an evening trying to find her place in the pecking order of upper-crust hens.”
“Sledgehammer,” he repeated, then accused facetiously, “Flirt.”
She