‘Yes,’ Roman said. ‘Josie and her husband are coming back tonight. I’ve sent my driver to pick them up this time. You can have a nice bath and then something to eat, then sleep.’
He calmed her—he always had.
Oh, he enthralled her and made her burn but he was so strong and so measured that with him she felt safe with her wild emotions.
They arrived back at the apartment and again Anya felt soothed as she stood in the entrance hall.
It felt good to be home.
‘Why don’t you go and have a bath?’ Roman suggested.
‘Do I smell?’ Anya asked.
‘Just a bit.’ He smiled and he made her smile.
She ran the deepest bath and peeled off her clothes and the scented, oily water was relaxing to her aching limbs so she lay there for a generous while.
And then she felt the pull of her body to be with him. She put on her robe and walked through to the kitchen.
His back was to her and he was wearing black jeans and no top and his scars were becoming familiar to her now.
She went up behind him and kissed his shoulder and then looked at what he was making.
He was turning out a crab tartare, one of several, and she dipped her finger in a dish filled with red and tasted that it was hren, a horseradish relish, and one of her favourite foods from home.
It was what she had ordered at the restaurant that terrible time.
Yet now he had made it.
‘I love hren,’ she said.
‘I remember.’
She watched as he sautéed wild chanterelles, and the scent of the mushrooms made her stomach growl.
It really was the perfect supper for the night before such a performance and, had she eaten out tonight, this was what she might well have chosen.
And it was also the perfect company to be in when your nerves were in shreds.
Some considered Roman to be lacking in emotion.
Anya had always known different.
The emotions were there, and she felt them. His calm presence tonight was for her.
‘Did you learn to cook in the legion?’ she asked him.
‘The only thing I learnt about cooking there was to open cans.’
‘Was the food awful?’
‘It did its job.’
‘So, when did you learn to cook like this?’
‘Anya,’ Roman said ‘let’s not do this tonight.’
‘Celeste?’ Anya asked, and said her name without venom.
Roman nodded. ‘Let’s go through.’
There were so many parts of his life still missing. Her dancing had suffered since his return, not because of Roman, she was starting to realise, but because of her own dark thoughts and fears.
They ate at the table, and it had been beautifully laid, with silver and candles, which Roman lit.
And Celeste must have taught him this also, Anya thought, for there was no silver service at the orphanage, she knew for sure, and she guessed it was the same at the foreign legion.
There was a burn of jealousy, but she breathed through it.
Roman drank wine, Anya water, and she looked over as he loaded his plate.
And she tasted the crab, so fresh that she knew it must have been prepared from scratch after she had called him.
And all this would not be possible without Celeste, Anya knew.
They would not be sitting having such a romantic meal, Roman, his top half naked, she in a robe, and eating this sumptuous dinner that he had prepared for her, without the years they could not speak of.
Celeste was a part of his complex journey and not knowing a part of his life felt worse than the jealousy that choked her.
‘Tell me about her,’ Anya said.
‘No,’ Roman said. ‘Tonight you need calm.’
‘I’m ready to hear. I need to know, Roman, I know I get jealous...’
‘I don’t want to hurt you Anya,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you speaking badly of her.’
‘I will try not to.’
Roman nodded. He did not want to upset her further tonight, but maybe the decks needed to be cleared.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘All of it,’ she said. ‘I want to know why you were looking for a wife.’
‘Just as I was about to leave, some friends showed me an advert. It was a joke at first...’
‘What did the advert say?’
‘Just that she wanted company—someone to go to the theatre with and things like that.’
‘And to share her bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to know what the advert said.’
‘She said that her father was dying and he had wanted to see her married. Celeste had given up on love but she wanted to make her father happy. She hoped the marriage would last for two years. She spoke of the ballet and theatre, and that she liked to cook but preferred to eat out.’
‘Roman?’ Anya pushed.
‘She wanted someone good looking, preferably younger than her...’
‘Roman?’ Anya pushed again. ‘Did the advert imply sex?’
He told her but he was not cruel.
She had a performance tomorrow and to mention adventurous would provoke the screams of Firebird being plucked alive.
‘She said that as well as all that, she wanted a sexual partner.’
‘So you were just a sex toy.’
‘Yes,’ Roman said, and he could leave it there but it would be a lie and a cop-out and Celeste deserved better than that. So too did Anya. They needed the truth if they were to survive so he amended, ‘At first.’
His words cut like a knife, because him as a sex toy she could almost, almost, deal with, but never his affection for another woman, never that it might have turned to love.
‘Do you want to hear this?’ he checked. ‘Are you sure you need to hear this tonight?’
Anya nodded and then shook her head. ‘You could have come to Saint Petersburg and been with me,’ she said. ‘You say you were rich by then, whereas I was barely making ends meet...’
‘Anya, if you want to hear this then you need to listen properly. I never intended to come and find you.’
‘But why not?’
‘Pride,’ he said.
‘Foolish pride.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I would do it all again because the man I was would not have sat back and let you do what you had to to get by in the dance world. Celeste taught me patience.’
‘No, that was me,’ Anya said, and she remembered the burn of their first time, how he would have had her in a moment and that she had slowed him down.
‘She taught me manners,’ Roman said.
‘No,’ Anya refuted. ‘That was also me.’
‘I’m not talking about please