he was a good man. He had been dreadfully upset about what had happened, though Laura suspected that a part of him had also been secretly rather flattered that his fiancée felt so possessive about him.
The contract signed, Laura replaced it on the coffee table and then gathered up all the other papers.
‘You said you wanted me here for eleven-thirty tomorrow morning?’ she double-checked.
‘Yes. We’ll be flying out by private jet. I’ll discuss your grasp on the negotiations so far with you during the flight.’
There was nothing else to be said. Putting the papers into her bag, Laura headed for the door.
She had a lot of very intense work ahead of her now, if she was to be able to answer any question Vasilii chose to throw at her tomorrow, but irrationally, as she walked back down Sloane Street towards the tube station, it wasn’t concern about the work that filled her mind. Instead what was preoccupying her thoughts and her emotions was her own ridiculous and dangerous reaction to that heart-stopping moment back in the apartment when, unbelievably, it had seemed as though Vasilii was going to touch her.
The thrill of horrified revulsion she had felt then echoed through her again now. She went hot and then cold at the knowledge of just how foolishly and instinctively she had been on the point of going to him, reaching out to him herself, as though … as though she’d wanted him to hold her. Which of course she most certainly had not. She wasn’t fourteen any more, and he certainly wasn’t the white knight in shining armour she had imagined him to be in her girlish fantasies. He was autocratic, disdainful, sardonic and utterly without a single aspect of shining knighthood to his personality. But somehow her body had thrilled recklessly at the prospect of his touch. No wonder she had felt so horrified and revolted by her self-betrayal.
As she started down the steps to the tube station Laura couldn’t help wishing that she hadn’t had to accept his job offer. The reality was, though, that she hadn’t had any other choice.
Once Laura had gone Vasilii gathered up the signed contract—her signature, he noted, was well formed and elegant, rather like Laura herself. That acknowledgement brought a swift cold frown to his eyes as he filed the contract. He had no wish to have any kind of personal thoughts about Laura Westcotte intruding into his private mental and emotional space.
As he straightened up from locking away the contract in his desk the group of silver-framed family photographs on the sideboard opposite caught his eye. The photographs had originally been placed there by his half-sister, when she had shared the apartment with him prior to her marriage.
He walked over to the sideboard and looked at them, reaching for the photograph that was almost tucked away behind the others—a photograph of his parents on their wedding day. His stepmother had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday, having gone to what he knew must have been an enormous amount of trouble to find it. After his mother’s death Vasilii himself had burned all the photographs he could find of his mother, because he hadn’t been able to endure seeing her image when he couldn’t see her any more in the flesh. He had only been a child then, and of course—although he could never have admitted it to anyone—later he had regretted his emotional reaction.
His stepmother had guessed how he felt, though, although she had never said so. Her choice of that special gift to him had told him that. She had somehow known of the pain of his loss, and she had tried to offer him some comfort. Vasilii could still remember how torn his feelings had been when he had opened his gift—the sharpness of his sense of humiliation that his guard had been pierced by a woman’s knowledge of what he believed to be a weakness he had successfully concealed from everyone but himself battling against the deep well of emotion looking at his mother’s youthful features had brought him. Allowing oneself to need another person in one’s life was dangerous. He had needed his mother but she had been taken from him. He’d had to learn to go on alone without her. That experience had taught him never to take the risk of loving anyone in a dependent way ever again.
Vasilii had never resented his father remarrying. He had grown up knowing that his parents’ marriage had been in part a business marriage. That was the way things had been for the women of his mother’s people. She had often told him that she had been proud to be chosen by his father. His father in turn had respected her and valued her. They had been happy together, and they had both loved him and shown him that love. That his mother’s kidnapping and death had left his father devastated had been more than plain. If there had been other women in those years between her death and him falling in love with Alena’s mother he had made sure that Vasilii had never known about them. He had been a man of strong principles and honour.
Vasilii had been pleased for him when he had met and married Alena’s mother. Again, though, he had been caught off guard by the depth of brotherly love he had felt at the birth of their child, his half-sister. Of course he had tried to keep that emotion hidden—especially from Alena as she grew up. She had been so adept at winding their father round her little finger that Vasilii had been determined not to let her see that he was also putty in her small hands.
He had grieved for her and worried over her when his father and stepmother had lost their lives in an accident, and yet at the same time he had, he knew, built up a wall between them. For Alena’s sake. It would have done her no good at all if she had seen him devastated, lost and made helpless, unable to protect her from her own loss. He had had to be strong for her. He had after all known the savage pain of that kind of loss. If he had been stern with her at times then it had been for her own sake, and now that she was happily married to the man she loved that wall had been justified.
Because she had her own life now, with her husband and the children they would have together, and he was once again alone.
He had known from his own experience just how intense was the longing to cling to anything or anyone connected with the memory and the lost love of the one who had gone, so it had been for her own sake that he had encouraged Alena not to become emotionally dependent on him, whilst at the same time doing everything he could to protect her from further hurt.
It was because of the pain the loss of his mother had caused him that he had vowed never to allow himself to be so vulnerable again—not to a woman, not to any children that woman might give him, not to anyone. Some people might be driven to pursue love after such an experience, desperate to replace what they had lost, but he was not like that. The pain had been too intense, too much of an affront to his youthful male dignity. He had decided that he would rather not have love at all.
Unwillingly Vasilii was obliged to acknowledge that he and Laura Westcotte had something in common, in that she had lost her parents, too—and at a similar age to the age he had been when he had lost his mother. He at least had had his father. She, on the other hand, had had only an elderly aunt. If there was one saving grace within her make-up it was her financial support of her aunt. What? Did he actually want to find some good in her?
Vasilii put down his mother’s photograph and turned back towards his desk. No, he did not. He thoroughly disapproved of and wanted to reject the way in which Laura Westcotte was managing to invade his private thoughts. Because whilst he knew that he had every logical reason to disapprove of and to reject Laura herself as well, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to do so.
If that was true—and he was by no means prepared to admit that it was—then he must make sure that he found a way, Vasilii warned himself.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS time for her to leave for Vasilii’s apartment. Quickly Laura checked her appearance in her bedroom mirror. After doing a brief check on Montenegro and its climate via the internet, she had decided to dress for the flight and their arrival there in a softly structured cap-sleeved tan silk jersey wrap dress that wouldn’t crease, looked smart, but was not too businesslike, given that their destination was, from what Vasilii had told her, an upmarket exclusive resort. Pulling on a three-quarter-sleeved cream cotton jacket, Laura checked that she had put all the documentation Vasilii had given her to study in her laptop bag.
Just as she was about to reach for her trolley case, she stopped and turned round, going back to her