at Leo. ‘Come inside, little one. You must be tired.’
Automatically, Leo shook his head. ‘I’m not tired,’ he said.
‘Well, that is good!’ Svetlana smiled. ‘I wonder, do you like gingerbread, Leo? We have much famous gingerbread here in Russia and we like to eat it with hot, sweet tea. It was Dimitri’s favourite when he was a little boy. Would you like to try some?’
Expecting continued resistance, Erin glanced down at her son—but he was wearing the same expression he’d had the first time she’d taken him to meet Father Christmas. Was the child who was notoriously picky when it came to food really taking Svetlana’s outstretched hand and wandering off with her towards the back of the house as if they’d known each other all their lives? It seemed he was.
For a while she stood listening to the sound of their retreating footsteps until at last they became silent and she was left alone with Dimitri. His hands were on her shoulders as he helped her out of her coat, his fingers brushing softly across her back and making her spine tingle.
‘Come with me,’ he said and she followed him into a reception room which overlooked the sweeping gardens at the back of the house. It was a breathtakingly impressive room and she looked around it with an undeniable sense of wonder. Who would ever have guessed that such an exquisite place lay in the middle of some random forest?
Fabergé eggs stood on gilded furniture, and a bonsai tree which stood in pride of place on a lacquered Chinese table made her think of his apartment in London. She walked over and stared at the perfectly formed miniature leaves and wondered how on earth he could get experts to come and tend it—all these miles from Moscow. How many apartments and houses and bonsai trees did he actually own? Did they all merge into one, she wondered—so that sometimes he forgot which city he was in? Were the women who passed through his life just as interchangeable as his houses?
She looked up to meet the blue ice of his gaze. ‘Is this your real home?’
He gave an oblique smile. ‘I visit here maybe three or four times a year—more if the opportunity arises.’
‘You maintain a house this size just for the occasional visit?’ She looked at him incredulously. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Why not? Russians like owning bricks and mortar because they represent security. It is also Svetlana’s home,’ he added. ‘And I owe her a debt of care. Her son tends the gardens here and his wife helps maintain the house.’ His gaze drifted over her and lingered on her face. ‘But my property empire isn’t what’s uppermost on my mind at the moment.’
His voice had deepened. It seemed to whisper over her skin like velvet, but she kept her voice careless. He’s not going to play games with you, she thought fiercely. He’s just not. ‘Oh?’
His gaze was very steady. ‘You may have noticed that I have been a little cool towards you.’
She tried not to react. ‘Yeah, I’ve noticed.’
‘And you’re probably wondering why.’
‘Don’t worry, Dimitri—I’m not losing any sleep over it.’
He studied the bonsai tree for a moment, before glancing up again. ‘I thought it would be better for both of us—and for Leo—if we attempted to keep our relationship platonic. I thought that what happened in Jazratan would be better kept as a one-off. I thought the fewer complications, the better. But maybe I was wrong.’
‘Dimitri Makarov wrong?’ she questioned sarcastically. ‘Gosh. Can I have that in writing?’
‘Because despite everything that has happened,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘and despite the note of caution in my head, there is one factor which outweighs all the others...and that is that I still want you, zvezda moya. In fact, I cannot believe how badly I want you.’ He smiled. ‘And I know enough about women to realise that the feeling is mutual.’
Erin met his eyes, trying to ignore the instinctive rush of heat to her body and to concentrate instead on his arrogant words. Note of caution? Had he really said that? Of course he had. Because not only was arrogance one of his faults—he also had a complete inability to recognise it! She drew in a shaky breath. ‘Oh, I might want you,’ she agreed. ‘I’m not enough of a hypocrite to deny that.’
‘So?’ he questioned, unabashed, the hint of that smile still playing at the edges of his mouth.
Expectation was coming off him in waves which were almost tangible and Erin felt a flare of anger. She recognised that there was an element of negotiation in what he was saying, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Was she expected to grab at whatever scraps he threw her? To settle for something which sounded like a reluctant afterthought?
‘So, nothing! Do you really expect me to accommodate your see-sawing desires just like that?’ she demanded, snapping her fingers in the air. ‘To behave like an obedient puppet, just waiting for you to pull my strings one minute and then smilingly accept it when you put me back in the box the next?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Why the hell do you have to analyse everything to death?’ he gritted.
‘Because that’s what women do,’ she retorted. ‘And we file it under self-respect. I may have made mistakes in the past and perhaps I should have acknowledged them sooner, but I’m doing my best to make amends for that now. I’m sorry I excluded you from Leo’s life without giving you the opportunity to prove you’ve changed. That’s one of the reasons I’ve come to Russia with you, even though it’s...difficult. But there’s no way I’m going to be treated like a convenient plaything while I’m here, no matter how many of my buttons you press. So if you’d please show me my room, I’d like to go and unpack.’
His face was a picture, Erin thought. A mixture of disbelief and fury as he muttered something decidedly angry in Russian before turning away and stomping towards the grand staircase. But his discomfiture was small consolation for the aching in her body and the even greater aching in her heart.
IT WAS THE first time in a long time that Erin had been given a room she could call her own. She’d shared a cramped bedroom with Leo since the day she’d first brought him home from hospital and was used to tiptoeing around and condensing her stuff into the smallest possible space while fighting a losing battle against clutter. But Leo was now ensconced in his own cosy set of rooms just along the corridor and playing with every remaining toy from Dimitri’s childhood, which had been dragged down from the attic by Svetlana’s son.
Following her explosive row with Dimitri, he had taken himself off to his study and shut the door very firmly behind him. It had been left to Svetlana to take her and Leo on a guided tour of the house, showing them the countless rooms, the beautiful gardens and finally the indoor swimming pool, which gleamed invitingly and made Leo squeal with delight. Erin felt her heart plummet. She hated swimming at the best of times and was dreading her son’s next inevitable demand, when Dimitri walked into the pool complex.
‘Do you like swimming, Leo?’
Erin’s heart pounded as she looked up to meet the cool blue gaze, but there was no mockery or flirtation there. The briefest of smiles and a cursory nod were his only acknowledgement to her, before he crouched down to his son’s level.
‘He doesn’t swim,’ she said quickly.
‘In that case, I can teach him.’
She didn’t even get a chance to say that Leo had brought nothing suitable to wear in the water, because it seemed that swimming trunks and armbands were readily available and had already been purchased from a nearby department store. It made Erin realise that, behind the scenes, Dimitri must have been making plans for his son’s arrival before she’d even agreed to the trip and that made her feel odd. Manipulated, almost. But she didn’t have the heart to spoil Leo’s fun and her guilty