The Millionaire Affair Read online

  Lisa made a cup of tea. ‘Which man?’ she said patiently. ‘Are we talking about the college stud again?’

  Joanne lifted her head and glared. ‘That man you brought into our lives. Nick Ivanov, or whatever he calls himself.’

  ‘Nikolai?’ Lisa’s head was beginning to spin. ‘How do you know Nikolai Ivanov?’

  ‘He came here, saying he knew someone who was doing research on Kit’s problem. I didn’t want her to talk to him. I said it could be dangerous. But the self-help group said they had heard of him and he was respectable, there weren’t any drugs or anything involved. And all the time he was trying to take her away from us—’ Her voice became suspended.

  Lisa was very pale. ‘Who was trying to take her away from us? Nikolai?’

  ‘No, this friend of his. Professor Something-or-other. He says all she needs is to be independent. When you know—’

  And Joanne burst into a flood of tears.

  ‘All right. All right.’ Lisa patted her mother’s back. ‘Are you saying that Kit has run off with this Professor?’

  ‘No. She’s got a job,’ said Joanne, in tones of despair. ‘She left me a note.’

  She brought it out of her pocket. Judging by the folds and stains, it had been read many times. Lisa scanned it rapidly.

  ‘This sounds OK,’ she said at last. ‘She’s staying with a friend. She’ll get in touch when she has somewhere permanent.’ She looked at the date. ‘Mum, she only went three days ago. Has she called?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Then stop worrying,’ Lisa said firmly. ‘She’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’ll look for her, won’t you? Find her. Make her come home.’ Joanne was frantic.

  Lisa looked at her mother and had a revelation. Kit had been living with the pressure of this suffocating love for years. No wonder she had withdrawn. Why had Lisa not seen it?

  ‘I’ll go home first,’ she hedged. ‘She’s probably left me a message.’ Lisa helped her mother to her feet and guided her towards the stairs. ‘Why don’t you have a bath while I get this cleared up? You’ll feel better afterwards.’

  Joanne did.

  By the time Lisa had returned the dining room and kitchen to its normal order she was exhausted. She fell asleep in the minicab taking her home. Which was why she didn’t notice the car and its occupant sitting outside Tatiana’s house.

  Nikolai was nearly asleep himself. He had been relaxing his muscles with practised care for some hours. He knew the dangers of cramp during a long wait. He often had to wait for hours in the jungle before the animal he was studying came into view. He knew how to do it only too well: stillness and patience were the key.

  So he remained still and patient when he saw Lisa haul her suitcase up the front steps. He didn’t get out of the car until his quarry had committed herself and the front door was open. Then he ran, silent as a shadow.

  She swung round, alarmed. But jet lag and extended housework had taken their toll. She was too slow. Nikolai shut the door behind him.

  ‘You and I,’ he said, ‘need to talk.’

  Lisa’s temper was already frayed. Now it snapped.

  ‘Are you a control freak, or what?’ she yelled. ‘Get out of my house.’

  ‘This is where I came in,’ he murmured. ‘Tatiana’s house. I have a key now, if necessary.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ said Lisa, near to inexplicable tears. ‘I can’t bear men who patronise me.’

  He shook his head. ‘How can you possibly say I’m patronising you?’

  ‘You see. There you go again.’ She was so angry she could hardly get the words out. ‘I suppose it’s culture shock. You can’t have met too many people as far removed from your social sphere as me.’

  Nikolai’s eyes sharpened. ‘You mean I’d do better with you if I put you down, like that thug we met at Glyndebourne?’ he whipped back. ‘Or the boss who is so jealous of you he can’t see straight? Yet you keep eating your heart out for him, don’t you? Is that it? You like men who treat you badly?’

  ‘No one,’ said Lisa, shaking with temper, ‘has ever treated me as badly as you have.’

  She advanced on him, tears streaming down her face. She was quite unaware of it.

  ‘You manipulated me from the start. You spied on me. You tricked me into wearing your damned dress. All because you had this plan to get me into bed.’

  Nikolai was blank. ‘Plan—? What are you talking about?’

  Lisa gave a scream. ‘You told me. You said you’d been promising it to yourself for weeks, you bastard.’

  ‘Oh, good God—is that what this nonsense is all about? I only meant—’

  But Lisa wasn’t giving him any more time.

  ‘Get out,’ she said pantingly. ‘Get out now. You’re a cheat and a liar and I don’t want to see you ever again.’

  Nikolai was now as angry as she was.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m going. No wonder you don’t respect men if they let you get away with tantrums like this.’

  He slammed the front door behind him.

  Lisa sagged against it and cried until she had no tears left.

  In the morning she found that the answering machine was full. Most of the messages were from Nikolai, increasing in urgency. She wiped them all. And one message was from Kit.

  If Kit hadn’t left her name, Lisa thought, she wouldn’t have recognised her. Her sister’s voice bubbled with vitality. Everything was great and she was going to come round on Sunday morning and take Lisa out for lunch to celebrate.

  ‘Sunday?’ Lisa looked wildly at the calendar. ‘Today! Oh, help.’

  She hadn’t even unpacked her case, or touched the washing she had brought back. Already it was too late. The doorbell was ringing.

  Kit took one horrified look at Lisa’s wretched expression and caught her in a bear hug.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Lisa told her. There didn’t seem much point in keeping it a secret. It was going to scar her life after all.

  But Kit didn’t seem to enter into her feelings with the unquestioning sisterly support she’d expected.

  ‘I thought he was nice.’

  Lisa glared. Then the fight went out of her and she blew her nose. ‘He’s wonderful,’ she muttered.

  ‘Well, then, see him. Talk to him. Explain. He’s not unreasonable.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he is,’ said Lisa, firing up. She blew her nose again. ‘Anyway, that’s not the point. He doesn’t love me. That’s the bottom line, Kit. He’s the most sophisticated man in Europe. I just don’t begin to measure up. There’s no way round that.’

  Kit couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Still jet lagged, Lisa went to bed early. Concerned, Kit offered to stay the night.

  ‘At least I can do your washing for you,’ she said. ‘And bring you breakfast in bed tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lisa, touched.

  She was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. So she didn’t hear the bell ring. Or Kit answer it. Or any of the low-voiced conversation that followed.

  Kit found herself torn. On the one hand her first loyalty was, inevitably, to Lisa. On the other she didn’t think Nikolai was the manipulative snob that Lisa had painted. And, strongest of all, she had the nasty feeling that it was Lisa’s financial support of herself and her mother which had caused much of the original misunderstanding. Nikolai would never have been so suspicious if Lisa hadn’t seemed to be unaccountably penniless.

  So Kit compromised. She would not let him into the flat. And she certainly would not wake Lisa. But she followed him through Tatiana’s sitting room into the garden and listened.

  ‘The trouble is, she doesn’t believe you’re really interested in her,’ she said, when Nikolai had finished.

  He stared. ‘How can she not believe it?’

  ‘Well, you see, there was someone else once,’ said Kit uncomfortably. ‘He didn’t think she was good enough for him.’

  Nikolai swore. Then the most sop
histicated man in Europe, the jet set’s most eligible bachelor, turned to Kit Romaine with a look bordering on despair.

  ‘Help me, Kit.’

  Lisa couldn’t understand why Kit insisted on going to the Carnival. It didn’t seem like her retiring sister at all.

  But— ‘I want to see the floats,’ said Kit with determination.

  It was afternoon when they made their way towards the party. Lisa wore one of her short flared skirts and a backless black jersey that clung. Kit borrowed a tee shirt and shorts and tried to look as relaxed as Lisa.

  The first thing they heard were the whistles, dozens of them, all on different notes. Then, as they got closer to the Carnival route, there were the sound systems, heavy with bass, playing everything from reggae to heavy metal, with more than a seasoning of salsa. In spite of the fact that her heart was broken, Lisa’s hips began to rotate to the rhythm.

  Kit was wide-eyed. She danced a little, ate a lot of Caribbean specialities— ‘I think callaloo must be some sort of spinach,’ she announced, wiping hot chili sauce off her chin with only moderate success—and finally forgot that she had no confidence and disappeared with a party of steel band groupies.

  Lisa grinned, and picked up a can of cola. The shadows were lengthening and the press of people made the streets stuffy. Five guys in fringed trousers waved to her from a slow-rolling float. They shook their maracas in a naughty salute. Lisa waggled her hips in friendly acknowledgement, but her heart wasn’t in it. She began to drift homeward.

  She was away from the crowd, in the diamond-hard heat of an empty terrace, when she heard a voice behind her, low, sexy and husky with laughter. She knew that voice.

  ‘I’d know that butterfly tattoo anywhere.’

  She stopped dead, not turning round. She had, she realised, been half waiting for this all day. She straightened her spine and began to march—there was no other word for it—up the road.

  Nikolai caught up easily. ‘Come and dance with me?’

  He was, Lisa saw with indignation, wearing ragged denim shorts and no shirt at all. She averted her eyes hurriedly and didn’t answer. He side-slipped beside her, chuckling.

  ‘All right. Then marry me?’

  Lisa glared. ‘Go away and find someone else to laugh at.’

  She saw the gate to the gardens ahead. Tatiana had given her a key which she had never used. Well, this was where she found out whether it worked. She twisted the thong round her wrist and fished out her keyring.

  The key worked. She was not, however, fast enough to stop Nikolai following her in.

  The perimeter of white terraces, embroidered with lacy ironwork balconies, gleamed. The garden they enclosed was silent in the dusty sun. Headily scented roses blew among ivy and jasmine and the first goldening of wisteria leaves. Out on the green velvet lawn, trees were filled with the last surge of summer foliage: fire-dark copper beech, sturdy sycamores and slim silver birch. And in the hot afternoon not a leaf moved.

  ‘No one about,’ he said approvingly. ‘Everyone fled to the country?’

  Lisa didn’t answer him. He kept pace with her.

  ‘Lisa.’ He wasn’t laughing any more. ‘Where did I go wrong?’

  She swung round on him. ‘The first day we met,’ she said intensely. ‘Stop pretending. Please.’

  Nikolai frowned. ‘Pretending what?’

  ‘I’m not your class and we both know it. Hell, you even said it.’

  He was outraged. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You said I wasn’t feminine,’ Lisa shouted at him.

  It cost him a moment’s thought, but he did, eventually, remember. ‘But that was ages ago. Right at the start. Did it seem to you that I thought you were unfeminine when we went to Glyndebourne?’

  Lisa flushed, and began to walk rapidly towards Tatiana’s house.

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘I’m glad you noticed,’ said Nikolai grimly

  ‘But you didn’t want me in France. By the lake—’ Lisa choked and folded her lips together, frowning mightily. She did not abate her pace.

  Nikolai put a hand on her shoulder and swung her round to face him.

  ‘In France you were half out of your head with dehydration. Did you think I would jump on you when you weren’t yourself? Even if you wanted me to?’

  Colour flooded into Lisa’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. I—’

  But he caught her so her feet were off the ground by a few inches, holding her against his naked chest so that she could feel the way his heart galloped.

  ‘Be very careful,’ he said harshly. ‘I’m coming to the end of my stock of chivalrous restraint.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be restrained if you loved me,’ Lisa yelled, struggling.

  ‘Oh?’ He held her for a moment. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he picked her up.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Losing my head,’ said Nikolai calmly.

  He was making his way purposefully towards a small clearing. It was protected by a tall hedge of old roses, overblown in their pink and gold luxuriance and heavy with fragrance. Lisa beat at his chest.

  ‘Oh, you think everything is a joke. I hate you. I hate you.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he said, slipping into the clearing and taking her down with him onto the secluded bank of moss and grasses. His hands were passionate, his voice thickening. ‘You fancy me something rotten.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘And it’s entirely mutual. Time we stopped fighting it,’ said Nikolai, suddenly no longer calm.

  His tongue probed her mouth ruthlessly. Lisa fought him even as her head reeled with excitement. Nikolai’s hands slid under the cotton top, finding her nipples with precision. Ignoring her furious protest, he brought them to insistent, stinging life. Lisa moaned.

  Neither could have said at what point they stopped fighting. But they were not fighting when Lisa contorted herself round him, when she tried to cover every inch of warm tanned skin with kisses, plucking at his shorts, her hand restlessly seeking his pulsing hardness. Or when Nikolai held her away from him and said fiercely, ‘Marry me!’

  ‘Nikolai,’ she moaned, tortured.

  He said between his teeth, ‘Marriage, or I take you home this minute.’

  Lisa wriggled against him challengingly. ‘Oh yeah?’

  His eyes closed in near anguish at the temptation. But his resolution did not waver.

  ‘Marriage or nothing.’

  She paused, wicked hands still for a moment.

  ‘But marriage is for life,’ she said uncertainly.

  He opened his eyes. They were golden and full of tender laughter. More than laughter. Love. Or something like love. And she had seen that look before, Lisa realised blankly.

  ‘It is indeed,’ he said gently.

  ‘But I’m not your type. I don’t belong in your world,’ Lisa said, shocked into revealing her deepest fears. ‘You think I’m loud and rude and I get up your nose.’

  He moved against her in silent, explicit answer.

  Lisa’s eyes flared. But she said with bitter honesty, ‘Terry Long wasn’t a count with ancestors, and even he knew I was trash.’

  Nikolai’s expression grew violent.

  ‘Never,’ he said between rigid lips, ‘say anything like that again.’

  Lisa met his eyes.

  ‘I have wanted you since the first day I saw you,’ Nikolai said raggedly.

  Holding his eyes, Lisa began to wriggle her way out of clothes that were suddenly too confining, in spite of their summer lightness. Nikolai watched. Then pushed aside her skirt, gently but purposefully, and pulled her on top of him, flesh to demanding flesh.

  ‘And I want you now so badly it hurts,’ he told her, racked.

  They held off no longer. They drove each other, wilder and harder, demanding and responding until Lisa sobbed aloud. But what shook her was Nikolai’s total surrender to the tempest. He shouted aloud. Trembling, triumphant, Lisa strained him to her. The tempest went nucle
ar.

  Later—a long time later—he tidied her clothes, kissed her hair and told her she had now burned her boats.

  ‘But—’

  ‘And no more nonsense about not being feminine,’ said Nikolai commandingly. ‘Any more feminine and I’d die.’

  EPILOGUE

  IT WAS a brilliant wedding, everyone agreed. There were roses instead of lilies, a salsa combo instead of an orchestra, and nobody went home when the beat hotted up. The bride wore a simple medieval dress that had come straight out of a family Book of Hours and was, it was said, the personal choice of the bridegroom.

  It was quite possible. All brides looked beautiful, by definition. But this one looked as if someone had lit a light inside her. Well, it was understandable. The former most eligible bachelor in Europe never left her side, not even to dance with his grandmother.

  The photographers went home well satisfied.

  Countess Ivanova whispered in her husband’s ear, ‘I told you the Repiquet wedding was good practice. I’d never have got it done if I hadn’t had all those names and numbers.’

  Her husband could have said, but did not, that he didn’t think either Nikolai or Lisa would have cared an iota. He patted her hand.

  As the September shadows lengthened over the vineyard, Lisa let her head drop onto Nikolai’s shoulder. A scented breeze stirred her hair. The first stars were out.

  ‘I feel as if I belong now,’ she said softly.

  His arm tightened. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t before. Not at home. Not at work. It was sort of lonely.’

  ‘I know.’

  She looked up at that. There was something in his voice. ‘You too?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So…’ unbelievably, she was still shy ‘…do you belong with me, then?’

  His arm tightened so hard it hurt. ‘For as long as I live,’ he said in a low voice.

  Lisa sighed contentedly. She knew him now. She could, she thought, trust him for the rest of her life. What did it matter if Nikolai couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud?

  Nikolai cleared his throat like an unpractised public speaker.

  He said, as he had said once before, though she hadn’t heard him, ‘Lisa, darling.’