A fragment of something he’d once said floated back to her. ‘Did you lose your parents when you were very young…in some kind of accident?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘I just thought …’ She remembered the sudden flash of understanding in his eyes when she’d told him about her parents being killed. Hadn’t part of her thought that it might have been some sort a shared bond between them? Two people who’d been formed by tragedy. She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Nikolai took a bigger mouthful of wine, wondering why he had ever agreed to go down this road. The wine was rich, and strong—it should have been relaxing were it not for the subject which now reared up from the past, like an ugly spectre. For wasn’t there part of him which wished his parents had been killed in some tragic accident—which would have allowed him to remember them with fondness and love, instead of anger?
And shouldn’t Zara hear that? Wouldn’t it make her understand why he could never be the man he suspected she wanted him to be? A normal, rounded guy who was eager to create a family unit of his own. ‘I never knew my father,’ he said quietly. ‘But being illegitimate certainly wasn’t unusual in Moscow in those days. And neither was being hungry.’
He found himself recalling the lines of shabby washing flapping at the front of the high-rise flats. The kitchen and the bathroom shared with three other families. The food eaten at speed—as if fearful that it might be snatched from your plate. It had taken him a long time to learn how to eat slowly.
‘And your mother?’ questioned Zara tentatively.
‘Ah. My mother.’ His mouth hardened and he felt the painful lurch of his heart. ‘My mother could never quite get used to hunger. When your stomach is empty it dominates your world—and she had envisaged a life where there were greater preoccupations than where the next meal was coming from. She was beautiful, you see. Extraordinarily beautiful. I don’t think she could ever quite believe the cards that fate had dealt her. In another time and another place she probably would have risen effortlessly on looks alone. The trouble is that poverty and a fast-growing child do not tend to be great enhancers of beauty. And she was perceptive enough to see a window of opportunity she needed to take, before her looks faded.’
He shook his head as the waitress approached their table. ‘So she travelled to England.’
‘To England? You mean you were brought up in England?’
Nikolai realised that he had opened a door and invited Zara to look inside…what he hadn’t realised was how much it could still hurt. If he could have taken his preceding words back, he would have done so in an instant—but he was in too far now to slam the door shut again. ‘No. I was left behind in Moscow with my aunt and her boyfriend while my mother came here to earn what money she could to make our lives more bearable.’
There was a pause. A pause so full of raw emotion that Zara could barely breathe. She saw the pain in his eyes and flinched, but she knew that she couldn’t shy away. Not now. ‘What…what happened?’
There was another pause, but this time when he spoke his voice was flat, and Zara thought he didn’t sound like a man at all—but one of those machines which spoke people’s weight.
‘Nothing happened. Oh, there used to be a card at Christmas and every year she remembered my birthday. But she never came back to Moscow and she never sent the money she promised, either. And I found that living with a drunken aunt and her wastrel of a partner was more than I could endure.’ He gave a bitter laugh, pushed his plate away.
‘I left Russia as soon as I could earn enough money for the fare—and I went to America, where I had been told that hard work would bring its own reward. For two years I worked in construction and salted away every cent I could. Eventually, I bought a property—a complete wreck of a place, but I could see its potential. Every hour I could spare, I worked on that house and I made a killing when I sold it—so I bought another. And then another. One day I discovered that I had a talent for speculation and so I began to play the markets—and when the money started to come in I diversified my portfolio into aluminium and telecommunications. It was the very best investment I could have made and I poured the profits into revitalising a big store which was on the decline. One store led to another and the rest, as they say, is history.’
Zara stared at him. His rise from rags to riches was impressive—but surely he had missed out the most important part of the story? ‘And your mother? What happened to your mother? ‘
The temperature in the air seemed suddenly to plunge and there was a long moment before he chipped out the icy words. ‘I never saw my mother again.’
For a moment Zara felt her heart lurch in shock as she stared at him in disbelief. ‘What, never?’
A steely quality entered his voice but part of him could have shaken her for her damned persistence. ‘Once I had the wherewithal, I tracked her down. I discovered that she’d found herself a wealthy lover—and that she’d been living with him on his estate in Oxfordshire all that time. It seemed that she’d put him first all along. That her son counted for nothing.’ There was a pause. ‘Soon after that, word reached me that she’d died.’
‘Oh, Nikolai.’ She tried to imagine the poor, lonely little boy he must have been—waiting for his mother to return. Waiting for money to arrive and lift him out of poverty, and the comfort of her arms around him. But he had been bitterly disappointed on both counts. How bewildered he must have been, she thought as she reached out and laid her hand over his on the table, but he did not return her tentative caress. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘Maybe. But it is what it is. A therapist I once dated told me that my mother’s behaviour was responsible for my “careless” attitude towards women. She said it explained why I was such a cold, heartless bastard.’ He gave a short, humourless laugh. It hadn’t stopped the woman from trying to get into his bed at every available opportunity, of course—or to persuade him that she wanted to have his baby. And it had taught him a very important lesson: never date therapists.
‘Nikolai—’
But he shook his head. ‘And do you know something? She was right. I am a cold-hearted bastard,’ he said. ‘I can go only so far, but no further. I don’t do love. I don’t want to marry—and I certainly don’t want children of my own. And neither—’ his ice-blue eyes now glittered out a distinct message ‘—do I want some woman on a mission—however sweet and sexy she might be—thinking that she’s going to change my mind for me. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Zara?’
She thought that you would have needed to be completely dense not to have understood the meaning which he had just hammered home so ruthlessly. And even though her heart clenched with a terrible feeling of disappointment she tried to tell herself that it was better to know the facts. He wasn’t spinning her stories and making her build him up in her head and her heart. He was warning her. Showing her where the boundaries lay. Telling her not to fall for him because to do so would be pointless. I don’t do love, he had said unequivocally—and nothing could be clearer than that.
Staring at the question in his ice-blue eyes, she nodded. ‘Of course I do.’
&n
bsp; ‘And that if we are to carry on seeing one another, you have to realise that I mean it. That there isn’t going to be some miraculous conversion or change of heart.’
If we are to carry on seeing one another. If. Zara looked down at her hand, which still covered his. It was such a tiny word—but such a powerful one. He was laying down his terms, she realised. Just as he would do a business acquisition. ‘Yes, I can see that you do mean it,’ she said quietly.
‘I can offer you a great deal, Zara—and if you want to continue with the arrangement we have, then nothing would please me more. You make a great—if somewhat unconventional—mistress. But I’ll never marry you—and I’ll never give you a baby. I’m sorry.’ His gaze was very cool and very steady. ‘I can’t offer you long-term security, and if you want any of those things, then you’d better walk away right now and find it with someone else.’
Zara bit her lip. His words were harsh and brutal, but clearly that was his intention—just to be sure that there was no misunderstanding. She could be his mistress, yes—with all the pleasure that offered—but only if she was prepared to make the biggest sacrifice any woman could be asked to make. To kiss goodbye to the chance of having children as long as she stayed with him.