Change the meeting, I quickly type out, sending the missive to Sergei before I’ve finished, the plan unspooling like a reel of film in my head. Tell Fedorov I want him at the house in one hour.
I won’t have golf club, Sergei replies.
I’ll bring you a better gift from Scotland next time. Want a mace or a spike?
We first met on her and Alexander’s birthday.
We rekindled that flame again on the same day another year.
On the first day of her brother’s new marriage, I’ve decided to take another path.
By any foul means, not fair, this woman will be mine.
16
Van
THE BEGINNING – FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
“Excuse me for a moment.” Dropping my napkin to the table, I push my chair back and stride out of the private dining room, following the now familiar swish of blond hair. “Isla.” Madness makes me reach for her before I even say her name, and she swings around, her blue eyes wide. “Sorry. I thought you heard me.”
“Van!” I’m enveloped in the scent of orange blossoms as her arms fold around me with a squeeze. She seems relieved, and I’m sure I felt her heart beating against my chest. I frightened her. No, he frightened her. He won’t do so again. “Where did you spring from?” she asks, pulling back, her smile wide and genuine.
“Back there.” I flick a careless gesture to the latticework screen of a private dining suite. No doubt, my uncle and his cronies are squinting through it right now. At the thought, I straighten, ostensibly to fasten the button of my suit jacket. In reality, I hope to shield her from their view. Nosy bastards are worse than old women.
“Oh, very posh,” she says, craning to see over my shoulder.
“It’s more like sitting in purdah with a load of old crusty suits.” Crazy suits who’d slit a man’s throat for just one wrong look.
Call me hopeful, but she seems to relax at the news of my company. “A business dinner in T’zuma,” she teases, lightly touching my chest. “Poor Niko. I feel for you.”
I wish she would. Right here in the passageway. A man can dream.
“I don’t feel poor right now.” I let my eyes roam over her so she can’t mistake my intentions. She’s so fucking delectable, her black dress clinging to her every curve. Curves I’m familiar with. Curves I want to taste. And those shoes, so high and pointed and very fucking dangerous. “You look gorgeous. Is this one of your designs?”
“No, not this one.” She looks pleased I remember. If only she knew.
“So, how are you? What are you doing here?”
“Oh. I—” Have a hankering for overpriced Japanese is what I hope she’d say. I surmise it won’t be that by virtue of her pause and the way she nervously slides her hair behind her ear. “I’m actually meeting someone.”
“Anyone I know?” I answer easily, over the pinch in my chest. With all my might, I will her to reply with the name of some female friend. As she shakes her head in answer, my mouth spins on. “How’s floppy?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she answers far too breezily. She hesitates before adding, “Alistair dumped me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lie, “but I was talking about the puppy.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry!” Pressing her hand over her mouth, she laughs. “How stupid of me.”
“No, it’s not you. I just assumed.”
“Assumed?” Her smile is a jaunty, quirking thing.
“That he wasn’t an idiot.”
Isla cants her head as her cheeks turn pink. “Idiotic and floppy,” she murmurs almost to her toes. “And now living in Geneva,” she adds as her gaze rises again. “I seem to have the worst taste in men.”
My lips twitch. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
“I also don’t remember any complaints… just cries,” I add softly, remembering how she’d thrown her head back as my fingers thrust inside her.
“We agreed it was a one-off. We were supposed to work it out of our systems.”
“It hasn’t gone anywhere,” I reply, tapping a forefinger to my temple. If anything, that night just made matters worse. That night, after I’d helped her down from the desk and handed over her discarded clothes, we’d left the club hand in hand, heading for my place by some silent agreement.
In the car, I couldn’t keep my hands off her and though she’d tried to stay quiet, she just couldn’t manage it. One night we’d said, but I’d known it wouldn’t be enough, even as I’d pushed her into the rickety old elevator and dropped to my knees. Her fingers clung to the scrolled ironwork door as I’d gone down on her, her cries carrying through the house.
Yes, it’s all there in my head. But it’s not enough.
“I suppose my taste isn’t all bad.” Her denim-blue eyes shine in the corridor’s lights. “Because there was this one man who recently gave me the eternal gift of love.” She grins, no doubt thinking she has me worried. “Don’t look so concerned. That time I was talking about the puppy.”