She knew, with a certainty that she’d never felt before, about anything, that this time with him had changed everything. Had altered her, profoundly and fundamentally. She would never be the same, and there was a part of her that welcomed that.
She was in love with him.
And she was going to have to find a way to survive that, because the Korovin Foundation Benefit was coming closer by the day, and there was no reason to suppose this would ever go further than that. Nor that it should, no matter how she felt. No matter what she hoped, deep inside.
After all, they’d agreed.
EVERYTHING was perfect.
Nikolai gave his first speech as president of the Korovin Foundation, making it clear that he was fully capable of ushering the charity into its bright new future, his ruthless coldness seeming more like pure, corporate focus when he spoke. Ivan gave his own speech afterward, using a highly sterilized account of his childhood to explain why he wanted to take the gifts he’d been given from the ring and from the screen and find a way to help children in need. So they didn’t have to choose between their self-respect and their survival. So they could choose to fight because they wanted to fight, not because they had no other way. So they could avoid selling themselves, whether to fight promoters or militaries or the far more unsavory “saviors” they might encounter in their times of need.
So they could choose.
All the while Miranda stood next to him, glowing like the trophy he’d once told her she wasn’t, gleaming and unutterably beautiful. Her hair was coiled back into a complicated twist of braids and pins that looked somehow effortlessly chic. Her eyes were mysterious. And she wore very high, very delicate silver shoes that made her look tall, invincible and deeply, deeply sexy. Every inch the Greenwich, Connecticut, heiress she would have been, had her life taken a different path. Had her father been something other than a monster.
Her final dress from the Parisian couture house was one of their signature creations, understated yet proud. Ivan had loved the sketches—had, in fact, spent longer than necessary imagining her in the dress—but the reality was far better than his fantasies. The dress managed to be bold and elegant at once, a deceptively simple-looking near-silver concoction that fit so beautifully it made her look edible. A smart, sexy package he couldn’t seem to get enough of.
And it was different, somehow, that she knew the truth about him. All of his truths. The stark terror he’d lived through, the guilt he couldn’t help but feel for escaping so much sooner than Nikolai had. She knew everything, and still she looked at him in that way of hers, as if he was something miraculous, after all: a good man.
And because of that, it felt like less of a performance. Less of an act. It felt real.
Just as she did. Her hand in his, their fingers laced together.
He didn’t know how he would let her go. He couldn’t imagine it—but then, how could this go on? How many of his internal foundations would she shatter before she was done?
He realized, looking at her there on the small dais the event managers had erected in the corner of the ballroom he usually used as his dojo, that she was the only fight he didn’t think he could win.
That he didn’t want to win. He just wanted her.
He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about that. Not when he still owed his brother so much. Not when he’d promised.
“That was wonderful,” she told him when all the speeches were done, the formal pictures taken, and there was only the mingling left to do. She smiled at him, and he knew that was real. He knew her now. He could feel her inside of him, like a small, perfect light. Like hope. “I think you made the whole house cry.”
“So long as they dry their tears with their checkbooks,” he murmured, “we should be fine.”
Her smile deepened when he pulled their joined hands to his lips and placed a kiss there.
“I’m sure they will,” she said. “Especially if they get a chance to talk to you about it.” A curious sort of expression moved over her face, then disappeared behind a new smile he liked a good deal less than the one before. He wanted to know what she was hiding behind it.
“We have things to talk about,” he said, trying to see behind her dark jade gaze. He didn’t want to share her, he realized. Tonight or ever. He wanted to hide them both away from the world and fall into her, just as he’d been doing since she came to Los Angeles. He wanted that with a sudden surge of fierceness that surprised him. “Tonight.”
“Worry about your benefit,” she replied, which was completely unsatisfactory.
“Tonight,” he repeated more firmly.
“Go,” she whispered, and let go of his hand.
He shouldn’t have felt it like a loss.
But he had work to do, so he left her side, pasted on his Hollywood smile and got to it.
This is it, Miranda told herself as she fixed her lipstick in the mirror of the small powder room hidden away in the house’s impressive library. This is the end.
There was no use pretending otherwise.
Because Ivan had talked a lot. He’d talked about his childhood, about his fighting years, about the foolish things he’d done when he was newly a movie star and could no longer step foot in public without being propositioned and paparazzied. Or both. He’d talked and talked, as if some wall had broken down inside of him.
But he hadn’t said anything about this agreement of theirs. He hadn’t said that he wanted anything more than what they’d laid out in the documents they’d both signed. He hadn’t mentioned it at all—he’d only taken her with an ever-intensifying ferocity, leaving her mindless and spent.
Which said all he meant to say, she supposed. She imagined that was what he wanted to talk about later tonight. The simple mechanics of how this would end.
She would be elegant about it, she decided, pressing her lips together and ignoring the dark shadows in her own eyes. She would pretend she was as sophisticated as he undoubtedly was. She would act the way she imagined that Parisian mistress might have acted centuries ago, upon finding herself summarily dismissed in the same matter-of-fact fashion. She would handle herself with grace and maturity, and save the sobbing for when she was back in New York. Alone.
She could do this.
The clutch handbag she held vibrated, and she sighed, digging into it for her cell phone. It was her literary agent—again. He’d called almost every day for the duration of her time with Ivan, and, she reasoned, she might as well answer him now. She might as well start this terrible ball rolling.
“It’s over,” she said instead of saying hello. “I assume that’s why you’ve been calling.”
He paused for only the tiniest moment. “When you say ‘over,’” he said carefully, every inch the placating agent, “exactly what do you mean by that?”
“I mean Ivan and me. We’re finished.” She stood with the phone to her ear and played with the impossibly decadent fabric of the dress with her free hand. It was sumptuous. It felt decadent and sensual against her skin, the way Ivan did. How was she going to let go of that? “I’m coming home tomorrow without him.” She took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut. “And you should know that there isn’t going to be any book.”
“What happened? You broke up? Maybe you’ll get back together—”