the people connected to them, one group more impressive and luminous than the next. Another night they ate by romantic candlelight at the world-renowned La Palme d’Or restaurant overlooking the Bay of Cannes in the art deco landmark Hôtel Martinez, Ivan feeding her bites of a crème brûlée so decadent, so intense, that she thought she might black out from the sheer pleasure of it.
Or maybe, more terrifyingly, that was him. Maybe it was the way he looked at her, that famous smile on his hard face. Maybe it was the memory of those too-confident words, that pure masculine promise, emblazoned across her like the dangerously seductive serpent that was inked into his skin.
Maybe he was much too good at his job.
He held her against him near the water in Antibes, tucking her under his chin as they stared out at the yachts and other boats dotting the azure expanse of sea before them, looking, no doubt, as if they’d been having a blissful moment instead of a whispered argument about where he’d chosen to put his hands. He kissed her temple, her forehead, as they browsed an open-air market in the old part of Nice, then he threaded their fingers together as they walked, gazing down at her as if utterly besotted.
“This is what love is supposed to look like,” he told her when she rolled her eyes at one of his particularly love-struck expressions.
“In the movies, maybe,” she replied. “Real love rarely comes with so many handy photo opportunities.” She shook her head. “But then, you only date women who crave publicity, don’t you? Maybe that’s what love is in your world.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said with a kind of matter-of-factness that made Miranda’s breath catch.
Everything froze. The whole of Nice seemed to fade into a bright blur around him, as both of them recognized that he’d shared something with her. Of his own volition. His black eyes looked bleak.
“Wouldn’t you?” she asked softly.
“There were not a lot of luxuries where I grew up,” he said gruffly. “We learned to do without.”
And she was too thrown by the fact he’d told her anything at all to protest when he indicated the subject was closed by pulling out his phone and calling for his driver.
They attended parties on the luxury yachts that clogged the harbors, gatherings in the splendid, glittering hotels that commanded so much attention along the sparkling coastlines, all of them filled to capacity with the gorgeous and the gleaming, all of whom knew Ivan and in front of whom he seemed to have no problem whatsoever acting the lovesick fool. The most famous Bollywood actress to the right, the newest French sex symbol to the left, and yet Ivan looked only at a professor known primarily for her well-publicized disdain of him.
And he was so good at it, she almost believed it herself.
Almost, but not quite. That would be more foolish than she could bear, the most foolish thing imaginable. It might actually kill her.
Tonight he held her in his arms on the crowded dance floor of the opulent yacht of a revered Italian director, bursting with celebrities and press from all over the globe. Miranda reminded herself that this was not a fairy tale as they glided across the floor, as he gazed down at her as if he was madly in love with her—it only needed to look like one. He wasn’t particularly charming despite his smile and she wasn’t under any kind of enchantment, so there was no reason to feel as if this was magical. It wasn’t.
It wasn’t. It was only a dance, a performance. It wasn’t by choice. It wasn’t real.
And still she felt his hands like brands, one at the small of her back, one holding hers tight, both searing into her. She was afraid to move—afraid to find he’d left marks on her skin. Her other hand rested uneasily on his wide, wide shoulder, and she told herself it was only logical that he should have a shoulder like that, like molded steel. That he’d fought in all of those rings across the planet to earn a shoulder like that. And it made sense that he should wear a light-colored jacket over a crisp white shirt with so much careless elegance, as if he’d tossed it on without thought and his insouciance was effortless. He looked every inch the movie star he was, sleek and beautiful in his particularly bold and undeniably physical way, turning heads even in a crowd like this one, packed full as it was of impossibly gorgeous people.
No doubt it was even reasonable that he should hold her so close that she almost brushed against him—that every step, every movement, was this close to pressing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest, until it was all she could think about, all she wanted, all she could imagine ever wanting—
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Ivan asked. But there were whole other worlds in his gaze then. The heat between them, the dark night all around them, and so many speculative eyes on them. She could feel all of that, and his hands on her body, and the near miss of his chest a whisper away from hers.
For a moment she didn’t know what he meant.
“The red carpet,” she said finally, hoping he hadn’t noticed her hesitation. Hoping even more he didn’t think she’d been so distracted by him that she’d forgotten herself. Even if she had.
“Are you ready?” he asked again, his dark eyes cool and distant as he scanned the crowd around them. Always in character, save that one moment in Nice. Always seeking out the cameras, as if he could sense them.
It was all too much. The music, the crowd. Ivan. The carelessly commanding way he held her to him, making her body act in ways she didn’t understand or want. All of this was too much, and she couldn’t seem to think her way out of it the way she wanted to do. The way she needed to do.
“I don’t care about the red carpet,” she said quietly. “You do. What I care about is finding out about you, and despite our bargain you’ve deliberately kept me at arm’s length. Mostly.”
“My parents died in a factory fire when I was seven and Nikolai was five,” Ivan said abruptly, turning his head to look directly at her, his steps slowing, though he still moved to the music. And he still held her in that impossible grip of his, as if he had no intention of ever letting go. “We went to live with our uncle. He liked nothing but vodka and sambo. Nikolai eventually took up the vodka. I preferred sambo.” His gaze was so hard. So pitiless. She could feel it drilling into her, through her. Hurting her. “And I quickly learned to hate my uncle, so I got very good at it. I wanted to make sure that one of those drunken nights, when he thought he could beat us both into a pulp simply because we were there, he’d be wrong. And, eventually, he was.”
Miranda was afraid to move, to breathe. He looked away for a moment, pulling her with him as he wove in and out of the nearby couples. If anything, he looked colder and more forbidding, more remote, and Miranda didn’t know why that made her ache for him. As if she of all people, his enemy, could give him solace even if he’d allowed it.
“That’s why I started fighting,” he said after a long moment. He looked back at her, and made no particular attempt to conceal the bleakness in his gaze. “Are you happy to know this, Miranda? Does it change me in your eyes? Make me something less than a caveman?”
“It makes you human,” she replied without thinking, and his smile then was sharper than that look in his eyes, and as desolate.
“Exactly what you want least, I imagine,” he taunted her, and that hurt, too. It all hurt, and she wondered where this was going—and what would be left of her when it ended.
Worse, for one long breath and then the next, she didn’t even know what he meant.
And then she did, and that was the worst part of all. That he knew exactly how invested she was in maintaining her negative opinion of him.
And that he was right.
Miranda’s team of stylists descended on her the next morning, not unlike a plague of locusts, while last night’s nightmare still pulsed in her and her throat was still raw from waking up crying out loud.
“It can’t possibly take all day to get ready to walk a few feet across a sidewalk!” she’d protested