rson. Instead of using her fears against her, he had listened to them, comforted them and her. She looked around the room, seeing with hope what her future could be. And for the first time in a long time she felt strong enough to reach for it.
But within that strength was a deep knowledge, a belief. She might be able to trust her husband with this, but she would never trust him with her heart. Could never. Because that hurt would be too much to bear.
As she left the house she saw Roman sitting on the steps leading down to the driveway, Dorcas lifting her head from her master’s touch in happy expectation. The tableau was oddly moving. Her dog, her husband, her home.
‘So what else does our lovely new estate have to offer?’ she asked him, the ache in her chest easing just a little as she saw the answering smile in his gaze.
CHAPTER EIGHT
And now every bite, every snarl, every gnashing of his teeth was about to be heaped on the wolf tenfold. For the one thing he had not learned yet was that you can never escape the actions of the past.
The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood
—Roz Fayrer
ELLA FINISHED THE phone call to Célia with a smile on her face, having gone over the details ahead of the meeting with Ivan Mozorov. In the last few weeks they’d found more interested parties and Ella could now sense the way their business would begin to take off. Célia had sent photos of the office in Paris that was a few days away from being not only fully functioning but very beautiful.
She and Roman had settled into a routine of sorts. Roman would spend the middle three days of the week in Russia, Monday and Friday commuting, and would stay in France with her at the weekend. And, despite what he’d said about sharing his bed, he hadn’t enforced the decree, which had—at first—made Ella feel a sense of relief. But as the days wore on...she became dissatisfied. She rolled her shoulders at the thought of it, as if shaking off some inner sense of frustration. She couldn’t help the feeling that she was waiting for the other shoe to drop, only it felt less like a shoe and more like the sword of Damocles.
Her body, thankfully having moved past the morning sickness stage, had begun to blossom. She’d never thought she’d enjoy pregnancy but at the moment she was relishing the new freedom in her body. Their child was now about the size of a pea pod, the doctor had explained, which had caused her to refer to her baby as Sweetpea. And each day she marvelled at the subtle changes happening, the new gentle curves of her body. A body that Roman seemed intent on ignoring for the most part.
It was as if now that Roman had given her the space to relax, to ease into the situation and the house, she couldn’t escape him, her thoughts of him and the ecstasy of what they had shared that night. It made her feel...wanton, and slightly obsessed. She had begun to dress each day with Roman in mind, trying to tempt him into something he suddenly seemed to think was inappropriate.
When she wasn’t lusting after her husband she was delighting in the house he had found for them. It was close enough to visit her grandmother and a short flight to Paris for when the offices were up and running. And although she had visited her grandmother several times, Ella found herself not quite wanting to leave the beautiful home.
There was simply too much to see and discover about this place. After breakfast in the morning she and Dorcas would roam the sprawling acreage down to the freshwater spring that wound across the border of their lands and she couldn’t have stopped Dorcas diving into it for a moment because the pure joy in the dog’s eyes made her laugh, and soothed some of the past hurts.
But her favourite part of the estate was the stone gazebo with the copper domed roof. Every day she reached for the almost grey pillars, placing her hands against the cool stone, wondering who might have done so in the years before. She enjoyed imagining the different women who might have stood there looking out over the same view, generation after generation, feeling a strange kinship with them.
She wondered what they might think of her choices in the house, the few small personal touches she had brought to the already incredible spaces. She had claimed an office from one of the bedrooms, which Roman had insisted on filling with state-of-the-art technology, eager to provide whatever material need she could think of. But it had left the stark difference between the material and the emotional even clearer to Ella. For while on paper everything Roman did was perfect, was the epitome of the doting husband, it didn’t quite feel like him.
Ella left her office and made her way to the bedroom she had been using. Because that was how she found herself thinking of it. A room that she was using until she finally took up residence with her husband in his room. She opened the wardrobe, scanning her eyes over the new dresses she had bought, picking out the one that she had chosen for tonight’s meeting with Ivan Mozorov in Paris. And her eye caught on the red cloak her fiancé had bought just over a year ago.
And while Ella had been too fearful of shaking the still fragile foundations of what they were building together, could not quite bring herself to question it, to question him, she couldn’t help but wonder whether this might be the jolt they needed. The memory, reminder of what they had been, and hope for what they could be.
* * *
As the small private jet banked to the left to come in to land at the small private airfield just outside of Toulouse, Roman rubbed a hand over his face, trying to erase the exhaustion he was sure was now visible. It had to be, because he felt it in every single inch of his body.
Maintaining two fully functioning businesses was surprisingly difficult as, despite the efficient team he had brought into Kolikov Holdings to do a full audit, his grandfather’s business had accrued a little more than its sterling reputation over the years. It had accrued debts. And the steel fortress around his heart tightened at the thought that the old bastard really had had the last laugh.
Roman wanted nothing more than to tear it to shreds, but the promise he’d made to Ella... It had him warring with an instinct that had been honed over nearly eighteen years, and a desire to be better, to do better, to give her what it was she wanted. And if that came at the cost of what he wanted? That was why he’d had two proposals drawn up by his team. One for liquidation and one for a complete overhaul.
But, he ruefully admitted to himself, it wasn’t just that. His exhaustion stemmed mostly from the fact that he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for even one night in the estate he shared with Ella. Knowing that she was along the hall, knowing that he hadn’t enforced the sleeping arrangements he’d crassly thrown at her in a fit of pique, was undoing him.
And when he wasn’t thinking about the ecstasy that only his wife had brought him he was wondering what kind of father he would be. His own father had abandoned him, Vladimir had been a cruel, manipulative piece of work and the foster homes afterwards not much better. Until now, he’d embraced a solitary path, a ruthless pursuit of single-minded vengeance. What if he betrayed his child? What if he betrayed Ella? All these thoughts were sneaking in under the defences of a certainty that usually protected his conscience. The certainty that he was doing the right thing. Though he knew that generating two plans for two different futures was not ‘doing the right thing’. Not for Ella, anyway.
Slamming the door on the car that had brought him home, he closed the door on the fears he refused to expose to his wife. Dorcas was standing guard at the door, wagging her tail furiously but clearly knowing better than to pounce on him. Unaccountably, something in his chest eased to see the animal so happy at his arrival.
As he entered the hallway he ground to a halt at the sight of his wife, at the large mirror by the side table, putting in her earrings. It was such a simple gesture, so simply domestic, that it took him a moment to realise that she was dressed in a stunning creation that shone beneath the lights in the hall.
The bodice that encased her chest was made up of thousands of folds of pale pink chiffon, all meeting to twist in the centre of her breasts, drawing his
hungry gaze to the perfection they hid. The cap sleeves, dotted with crystals, perched on her shoulders as if almost about to fall, illuminating the length of her collarbone and the beautiful curve of her neck. The material gathered beneath a band at her waist, and plunged to the floor in swathes of silk.
The beauty of his wife undid him completely, robbing him of speech or thought—at least any thought other than mine.
She turned to him then, head still bent, fiddling with an earring, and frowned. A look of hurt passed across her features, which she vainly tried to hide. Turning back to the mirror, she said, ‘You have forgotten.’