Zara swallowed. ‘If that remark was designed to placate me then I have to tell you that it has failed dismally.’
‘I am not trying to placate you!’ he bit out. ‘Just to ask whether you are intending to be sensible and to come back?’
Sensible? Now he was making her sound like some overexcited schoolgirl who had thrown an unreasonable hissy-fit! ‘And then what?’
Nikolai gave a long sigh. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is, he urged her silently. Didn’t she realise that even asking her to come back had been hard enough and that part of him still couldn’t believe he was doing it? ‘Then we carry on as we are, Zara—just as we’ve been doing. We have a good time together. We’re good for each other.’ His voice dipped. ‘You know we are.’
‘But that’s where you’re wrong,’ she whispered, steeling herself against the sultry caress in his voice. ‘We’re good at all the externals and we’re good in bed—but it’s not enough. Relationships are supposed to grow, Nikolai—not stay packed in ice.’
His voice was silky-soft. ‘I thought I told you that I would not tolerate any kind of ultimatum.’
‘And I’m not making one! I’m just telling you that I don’t want to live your life any more.’
‘Really? And just what kind of life is that?’ he demanded dangerously.
‘One which is superficial. One where things get replaced when the novelty and the gloss has worn off them.’
‘Perhaps you’d care to elaborate since I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re accusing me of?’ he demanded even as the knuckles of his clenched fist whitened with anger.
‘What about your friend Sergei with his decades-younger girlfriend?’ she questioned shakily. ‘Is that how you see yourself in the future? Thinking that once my appeal has faded you’ll replace me with a newer, shinier version and then eventually you’ll replace my replacement. Until one day you wake up as a fifty-something man in bed with a woman who’s young enough to be his daughter?’
‘How dare you speak to me this way?’
‘The fact that you feel you have the right to ask that question is answer enough! I dare because I’ve realised that I am your equal, Nikolai! Oh, not in money or in material things or anything like that, but under the skin we’re exactly the same—two human beings with the right to an honest, decent life. You’ve decided that you don’t want to find out more about your mother—well, that’s your choice. But that decision has impacted on everything else in your life. You’re never going to be able to trust a woman and I’m not going to pussyfoot around your feelings any more—simply because you got lucky and made yourself a fortune!’
‘Got lucky?’ he stormed. ‘Got lucky! I worked damned hard to get to where I am today!’
‘Lots of us work hard, darling—but we don’t all end up as billionaires!’
He said something furious in Russian and cut the connection, hurling the phone down so that it skidded like a novice ice-skater across the desk, before pacing over to the window of his vast office. Who the hell did she think she was, talking to him like that? Some little nobody of a waitress whom he’d picked out and offered the opportunity of a lifetime. Yet what had she done to thank him? Nothing! Only thrown everything back in his face and added a few choice insults into the bargain. He glowered out at the London skyline, telling himself he was well rid of her.
That evening he attended a party he’d been intending to miss—after deciding it might be good for him. It was held in a lavish six-storey town house in Notting Hill and was attended by politicians and media people, with a large smattering of stars from the world of showbiz and the accompanying bank of paparazzi waiting outside.
The music was achingly trendy, the wine superb and the air buzzed with the indefinable sound of success. A beautiful French actress made a beeline for him and he found himself assessing her dispassionately as she smiled up at him. He admired her petite figure in the sleek Chanel dress and the towering black patent shoes which complemented it. He thought she was rather beautiful—with her glossy twist of raven hair and full lips and that way which actresses had of making you feel as if you were the only man in their universe when they fixed you in the spotlight of their gaze.
But he drank barely a single glass of champagne as he listened to her. When he turned to leave, she asked whether he might drop her home and it seemed churlish to refuse—even though they had to dodge the battery of photographers on the way to the car. But he turned down her invitation to join her for a nightcap—despite her promises of a wonderful night-time view from her balcony. He bit back a wry smile. He’d been offered views like that in the past—and rarely did they involve any kind of sky-watching. Instead, he said goodnight and leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed as his car took him home to Kensington.
At least work had always been his saviour and he began to devote more time to projects already in the pipeline. He tackled new mergers with alacrity and injected more funds into his long-running research to find greener energy supplies. A plot of land he’d acquired in Moscow was being developed as a day-centre and crèche for single mothers and he promised them he would pay it another visit soon.
But through it all he felt a strange kind of empti-ness—as if someone had punched a big gaping hole inside him—and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Angrily, he told himself that he wasn’t going to let any woman get underneath his skin, particularly the kind of woman who hadn’t learnt when to keep silent and be grateful for what she’d got. Was that what significant women always did? he wondered bitterly. Made themselves important in your life so that it hurt like hell when they left you?
He spent two weeks with his head pounding with questions he had no desire to answer and he pushed them away with a ruthless certainty which made him furious when they kept coming back. Every morning he awoke with an aching body and cursed the day he had ever set eyes on Zara Evans with her come-to-bed eyes and a distinctive brand of honesty which should have sent him running in the opposite direction. Damn her sweet seductive body, he thought—and the way that a man could lose himself inside all its slick, secret places.
Until one day he realised that he simply couldn’t go on like this any more.
And that was the day he picked up the telephone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SUNLIGHT caught the sparkling stream of water which Zara directed onto the parched earth from the metal watering can. There had been no rain for days now, and the neglected vegetables had taken much more effort than she’d anticipated. Morning and evening she’d been outside whenever work had allowed—trimming and snipping, and pinching side shoots from the tomato plants so that the fruits could grow bigger. The tangled jungle had retreated and daily routine had restored some sort of order to the little plot. Now it looked more like the place she used to come home to—where she and her godmother would sit outside in deckchairs on warm summer evenings and eat newly picked strawberries and raspberries still warm from the cane. What a long time ago those distant days of childhood seemed.
But she was grateful for the garden. Warm earth and encroaching weeds were a great distraction from thinking about Nikolai. Sometimes she even managed to go for a whole half-hour without him being on her mind. And it was at times like this that she wished she had a more demanding job—something that would require all her attention instead of only part of it—because it was all too easy to daydream when you were standing around, waiting for people to finish their pudding.
It was going to bed she dreaded most of all—because it was there that she rem
embered the way he’d held her and stroked her hair. In the silent, empty hours of the night it was bittersweet to recall his slow kisses and the powerful physical intimacy which had existed between them.
Sometimes she wondered if she had been too hasty in walking away from him—but the pain of missing him was quickly replaced with the realisation that the price of being with Nikolai was too high. For a man to warn a woman that she could never carry his child nor wear his ring. To tell her that his heart would always be empty and cold—how could any woman bear that?