are you staying?’ Daniil asked.
Roman told him the name of the hotel he had checked into.
‘Come and stay with us.’
Roman shook his head. They were nowhere near ready for that. ‘You have a new baby.’
‘She’s your niece. I don’t want you in a hotel when I have a home.’
‘No, I want to go back to my own apartment. I don’t really know why,’ Roman admitted. He wasn’t being rude in not accepting the invitation and he tried to let his brother know that. ‘I am just sick of the hotel, even though it is very nice. I just want...’ He couldn’t really explain that he wanted to be amongst his own things and to sleep in his own bed. ‘The hotel has everything...’ It was luxurious indeed. ‘I would just like to be amongst my own things.’
‘You’re homesick,’ Daniil said.
There was a word for those feelings, Roman found out.
He was homesick not just for his home but for Paris, because Anya was there.
They said good night and as Roman walked off he took out his phone.
He called his assistant to arrange his flight and headed straight for the airport. As he sat on the tarmac, staring out at the navy London sky, he took out his phone and called Anya.
She picked up her phone without thinking. She had assumed it was Mika to see if she was ready, or one of the others, as they had agreed to meet in the foyer and she was running a little bit late.
She almost dropped the phone when she realised it was Roman.
‘How did you get my number?’ she asked.
‘It doesn’t matter. Where are you?’
‘We’re just about to head out for supper.’
‘We?’
‘It is not your business,’ Anya coolly answered.
‘Pack up your things. I’ll be there in the next couple of hours...’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard.’ And now he used Daniil’s line. ‘You’re not staying in a hotel when I have a home...’
The difference with Anya was they were ready for that.
Roman was sure.
They were ready to explore the past together and see where that left them.
‘You wouldn’t have said that last time I was here,’ Anya retorted. ‘You were too busy being a mail-order—’
‘Anya,’ Roman broke in. ‘We shall speak about Celeste when you can manage to say her name without venom.’
‘Never,’ Anya said.
‘Then we shall speak about why I left.’
‘You left because you could not stand to see me succeed.’ That was how she had justified it in the end, but she could almost see the flick of his wrist as he dismissed the thoughts that she had built like a scaffold to protect her bruised heart.
‘Rubbish.’
‘Were you so intimidated—?’
‘You don’t intimidate me,’ he broke in.
That alone almost brought her to tears. Everyone else was intimidated by her, everyone thought her cold and unfeeling. Roman, though, saw through it. He knew the heart behind the ice. He had known her passion and her hopes and fears.
‘I would have loved to have been beside you when you soared,’ Roman said.
He wanted to be by her side now; he felt ready to be and would do whatever it took.
‘No!’ Anya shook her head. ‘You wanted to make your riches and refused to be poor with me.’
It had been such a poor life.
People assumed wealth yet dancers danced for the love of it. She had been cocooned and enclosed in a world where few made any real money. For Anya that had only happened in recent years. She was no prodigy, she had had to fight and to work harder and smarter to get to where she was. Only now had she paid off the debts she had accumulated. Before that she had lived in a tiny flat that she’d shared with her mother—her climb to the top had been rough indeed.
Now she would spend the next decade, or however long her body gave her, securing her future for when dancing was gone.
Right now she had a performance that she needed to focus on, but Roman had other ideas.
‘Pack your case, then text me the name of your hotel.’
‘No.’
‘I mean it, Anya. I shall tear up Paris tonight to find you.’
‘Good luck with the gendarmes, then. Don’t call me again, Roman.’
She ended the call and turned her phone off.
Then she thought about turning it on to delete his number but knew she could not bear to do that.
There was temptation in her bag, all the way through a late supper with the sponsors. Not just the chocolate cups but Roman’s number on her phone.
All she could think of was him and his call to take her to his home.
And she thought about the last time they had shared a bed.
Or rather a mattress.
She thought about their first time and the eventual love that they had made.
He had been so cold and oblivious to the pleasure of touch at first.
So wanting to get things over and done with.
And then they had stumbled into intense pleasure and had made memories that nothing could ever erase.
As the jet carried him closer to Anya, Roman stared out of the window...and remembered the same.
ANYA CAME OUT of the stage door and into the side alley and was ready to run home, not just to get out of the freezing snow but also because she had news for her mother. She had just been told that she would be auditioning in two weeks’ time for a part in the corps de ballet for the next performance.
It was the step up from apprenticeship and she had worked so hard for it.
And then she saw him.
Roman Zverev.
She had not seen him since he had left the orphanage a couple of years ago but she had heard about him.
He was wearing torn black jeans and a thin jacket and his black hair was long and damp as it gathered snow. He was walking towards her.
‘You lost your fight,’ Anya said by way of greeting, and looked at his bruised eye and cheek and swollen mouth.
‘Good news travels fast.’
He looked at Anya. She had always been perfection to him, so delicate and yet so strong. The only thing he had missed about the orphanage was her and now her pale green eyes met his, but this time without the scold of her mother to haul them from his gaze.
The years since Daniil had left had been hell and she had been the only balm.
Sergio had continued to attempt to channel his anger into boxing but it was as if the desire in Roman to be a boxer had left with his twin and he had won only a handful of fights.
Last night he had lost to a brute who had been a lot bigger than him.
‘You were in the wrong weight category,’ Anya said. ‘You need to lose weight before weigh-in—your opponent would have. You could have scraped in as a mid-lightweight. Instead you faced a man who just