“No book,” she repeated, emphasizing each word, as if maybe he hadn’t heard her the first time.
“Miranda.” She could almost see that patented expression he trotted out at moments like this, frowning and concerned. “This is your career.”
“Is my career solely dependent on gossiping about Ivan Korovin?” she asked him, and maybe her tone was sharper then than strictly necessary, not that she blamed him for the choices she’d made. That was on her. “Then it isn’t much of a career, is it? It’s time for something new. Long past time.”
“I don’t think you’ve really thought this through—”
“This isn’t a negotiation, Bob,” she said, fighting to keep the edge out of her voice this time but not sure she succeeded. “I’m not writing another word about Ivan. I’m not talking about him in public ever again. That part of my career is over.”
And then she cut off the call.
She expected to feel regret, panic. She expected she might fight the urge to call her agent back at once and tell him she was sorry, overly emotional, made silly by all of this. She thought she should have been gasping for air over a decision she hadn’t known she was going to make until she’d opened her mouth and announced it. But instead she only stood there, and she was fine.
Because the least she could do was not be one of his attackers outside the ring. She had to blink hard, then, to keep the sudden heat from spilling over. The very least you can do is that.
She squared her shoulders and wrenched open the powder room door—then gasped involuntarily when she saw the figure standing there, just outside. Tall, intimidating. Ice-cold eyes fixed on her in their usual glacial manner.
Nikolai.
She couldn’t pretend he didn’t make her nervous, but she forced a smile anyway. Elegant. Sophisticated. This might have all started with an embarrassing public scene, but it didn’t have to end that way. She wouldn’t let it.
“I didn’t see you there,” she said inanely, as if she could have spied him through the door.
His frigid gaze tracked over her face, and she marveled, not for the first time, that he and Ivan could be related. Ivan was all heat. That molten force of his, that simmering, searing power. While Nikolai was all deep frost and drifts of snow, shaped into daggers. She fought off a shiver.
“Come,” he ordered her in that unfriendly way of his. “Ivan waits for you.”
And it was just like that first night in that Georgetown hotel, she thought as she fell into obedient step behind him. Her very own fearful little symmetry to hold on to, as if it meant something. As if it was some kind of bread-crumb trail that would lead her out of these woods of her own making.
She was such a fool.
But she followed Nikolai even so, out of the kitchen and into the crowd.
And it didn’t occur to her until much later that he must have heard every single word of her phone call.
Ivan didn’t know how late it was when he felt he’d made the appropriate rounds, posed with all the key donors for more photographs and could look around for Miranda again. He’d seen her earlier, out on the lawn near the pool, shining brighter than the lanterns strung above her like she was her own constellation. It had physically hurt him not to go to her then, touch her, bask in all of that light she threw around so carelessly.
And now, of course, she was nowhere to be found. He found his way out to a secluded corner of the ground-level patio and let himself breathe for a moment near one of the dramatically high cactus arrangements that his landscaper had been so insistent on placing at intervals along the edge of the patio, creating the illusion of private nooks. He gazed out at the moon high over the dark sea, and let the mask of Ivan Korovin, Famous Actor, slip just the slightest bit.
“Has the plan changed?” Nikolai asked mildly, coming to stand next to him. “Because if not, you are running out of time.”
Ivan felt himself tense and tried to control it. He shouldn’t want to punch his own brother in the face. What did that say about him? That he wanted to pick a woman over his own blood?
But he did. And he hated himself for that, too.
“Maybe you have become so immune to any hint of pleasure that you can’t hear the sound of the band playing, even now,” Ivan said when he was certain he could speak smoothly, easily. “The party is in full swing. There is nothing but time.”
“Why didn’t you take advantage of the perfect opportunity earlier?” Nikolai asked, almost casually. Almost. If he’d been someone else. “You had a microphone in your hand.”
“That would have been an excellent idea,” Ivan said tightly, “if our goal was to overshadow the work the foundation is trying to do with some tawdry tabloid drama.”
“Ah, Vanya,” Nikolai said, something like a sigh in his voice, and that look in his cold blue eyes that suggested Ivan had let him down. Again. “You don’t have the guts to do this after all, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Your actions say it all.” Nikolai shook his head. “This should not have been hard. Seduce the professor. Then finish with her as publicly as possible tonight, making certain that no one will ever take her seriously again.”
“Nikolai.” His own voice was harsh, but he knew it was aimed at himself. For coming up with this plan in the first place. For making it happen. For making his brother—who had been let down and lied to by everyone he’d ever known, who’d been abandoned so many times he now expected it as a matter of course, who had nothing and no one in the world except Ivan—one more promise he wanted to break. “I know the damned plan.”
“You couldn’t wait for her to show up in your hotel, you were so excited to enact your revenge,” Nikolai said then, his voice something other than cold—which set off all kinds of alarms inside of Ivan. “You promised you would make her pay.”
“You’re giving me a headache,” Ivan growled. “I know all of this.”
“And it’s already worked beautifully,” Nikolai continued, unperturbed by the scowl Ivan was directing at him. “You’ve got your revenge. So why not drive it all the way home? The way you promised?”
Finally, something that should have been obvious from the start occurred to Ivan, and those alarms within grew louder. Deafening.
“Nikolai …” He searched his brother’s face. That hard face so much like his own, those cold, broken eyes he barely recognized. “Why are you talking to me in English?”
But even as he said it, he knew.
He saw that grim, painful sort of triumph in his brother’s eyes. More than that, he heard that soft sound from behind them.
He knew before he turned.
Miranda stood there, ashen. Her mouth was parted slightly, and two hectic spots of color appeared on her cheeks as she stared at him. As if he’d slapped her.
“Miranda …” he said, but she held up a hand, as if she couldn’t bear it, and for a moment her lovely face crumpled in on itself. He thought it might kill him. But he knew better than to move toward her, to hold her.
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” Her voice was small, but it didn’t shake. She looked at Nikolai briefly, then her gaze slammed into Ivan’s. “I’m not surprised, as a matter of fact. It makes perfect sense that you would do exactly this. It’s who you are, isn’t it? You decimate your opponents. You never lose.”
“Miranda,”