One Kiss in... Moscow: Kholodov's Last Mistress / The Man She Shouldn't Crave / Strangers When We Meet

The words fell into the stillness, created ripples in the silence like wind on the surface of a pond. The intimacy of the verse seemed to reverberate between them as Sergei’s heavy-lidded gaze rested thoughtfully on her and he slowly reached for his wine glass. ‘Emily Dickinson?’ he surmised softly, and Hannah nodded, too affected by the lazy, languorous look in his eyes to speak. Obviously she’d had too much wine if she’d started quoting poetry. Slowly, his gaze still heavy on her, Sergei raised his glass and drank. Unable—and unwilling—to look away, Hannah drank too.

It wasn’t a toast, it wasn’t anything, and yet Hannah felt as if something inexplicably important had just passed between them, as if they’d both silently agreed … yet to what?

‘How old are you now?’ Sergei asked abruptly, breaking the moment, and Hannah set her wine glass down with a little clatter.

‘Twenty-six. I know it’s been a while since college but I will go back,’ she told him with a sudden, unexpected fierceness. ‘When I have the money—’

‘Saved?’ Sergei slotted in and she gave a little laugh.

‘I know what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t have blown all my money on this trip if I really wanted to go back to college.’ And that was probably true, but she’d needed this trip. After her mother had died and her closest friend Ashley had moved to California, Hannah had felt more alone than ever. She couldn’t have faced continuing on, alone in the shop, struggling to make ends, if not meet, then at least see each other. She’d needed to get away, to experience things. Still, she knew it had been impulsive, imprudent, maybe even just plain stupid. Something a man like Sergei Kholodov never would have done.

‘You probably shouldn’t have,’ Sergei agreed dryly. ‘But sometimes a little impulsive action can be a good thing.’

Like now? For surely having dinner alone with this man was the most impulsive and maybe even imprudent thing she’d ever done. Yet Hannah knew she wouldn’t trade this evening for anything. She was having too much fun.

She gave him an impish look from under her lashes. ‘I’m surprised to hear you say that,’ she told him, ‘considering how you chewed me out this morning for leaving my passport in my pocket.’

‘There’s impulsive and then there’s insane,’ Sergei returned dryly.

‘I suppose it is a fine line.’

‘Very fine,’ he agreed softly, and she felt the thrill of his gaze through her bones.

‘So,’ she said, her voice only a little bit unsteady, ‘have you done anything impulsive like that? Imprudent?’ She took a sip of wine, savouring the rich, velvety liquid. ‘Let me guess,’ she joked. ‘You probably ate shoe leather and slept on the street in order to save to start your own business.’

Sergei’s face darkened in an eclipse of expression, his features twisting with sudden cruel savagery, and Hannah stilled. For a second, no more, it was as if she’d had a view of the true man underneath the hard, handsome exterior, and it was someone who held darker secrets and deeper pain than she’d ever imagined. Then his face cleared and he smiled. ‘You’re not that far off,’ he said lightly, and whatever had passed a moment before was hidden away again.

‘Well, this trip was important to me,’ she told him, matching his light tone. ‘Whether it made sense or not.’

‘So your mother called you back from university to help out. She couldn’t have got someone else to help, and let you finish?’

‘She gave me a choice.’ She still remembered the phone call, how her mother hadn’t wanted to tell her the truth about her father’s condition, insisted she stay at university.

‘Did she?’ Sergei asked softly and Hannah stared at him. What was he suggesting? And why? He’d never even met her mother.

‘She wanted me to finish, but I insisted on coming home,’ Hannah explained. She lifted her chin and met his thoughtful gaze squarely. ‘I wanted to be there.’

Sergei simply nodded, and Hannah knew he didn’t believe her. She laid down her fork, her appetite—and her excitement—gone for the moment. ‘What on earth has made you so cynical?’ she asked. ‘Everything is so suspect to you. Everyone.’ From the boys on the street to the woman at the embassy to her very own mother. ‘Why are you so—’

‘Experience,’ Sergei cut in succinctly.

Hannah shook her head and flung one arm out to take in their opulent surroundings. ‘You’re a millionaire so your life can’t be all bad.’

‘Don’t they say money can’t buy happiness?’

‘Still, some things must have gone right in your life,’ she insisted. ‘Can’t you think of one thing that’s good?’

He let out a short laugh. ‘You’re quite the Pollyanna.’

Hannah made a face. ‘That sounds kind of sappy. But if you mean am I an optimist as you said before, then yes, I’d say I am. I don’t intend on going through life with a doom and gloom attitude. What good does that do you?’

Sergei stared at her for a moment. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘at least it keeps you from disappointment.’

‘And it keeps you from properly living as well,’ Hannah returned. That was what this trip had been about: jumping in and just doing it, living life to the full. After six years of staying home, caring first for her father and then for her mother in the onset of dementia, she had been ready. She propped her elbows on the table and gave him a challenging look, eyebrows arched, lips parted. ‘Tell me one really good thing that’s happened to you. Or, better yet, one really good person you’ve known. A friend or family member. Someone who made a difference. Someone you could never be cynical about.’

‘Why?’ he asked and she rolled her eyes.

‘Because I said so. Because I want to show you that some things—some people—are actually through-and-through good.’

He leaned forward, and Hannah saw a steely glitter in those light blue eyes that sent a shiver stealing straight down her spine. ‘I could just lie.’

‘Where’s the fun in that?’

‘Are we having fun?’ he drawled softly, and Hannah gave him a playfully flirtatious look.

‘Aren’t we?’ she said, and saw gold flare in his irises.

He held her gaze, trapped her with it, and Hannah felt her body hum with awareness, an excitement uncoiling in her middle and sending its sensual tendrils throughout her body, taking it over. It was heady, thrilling, addictive. This was really living … and it was something she’d never really done before. She wanted more.

‘I suppose we are,’ Sergei said slowly and Hannah did not look away. ‘Alyona,’ he finally said, abruptly, and Hannah blinked, struggling to catch up. Just gazing at him had sent her mind—and body—into a kind of hyper-aware overdrive.

‘Alyona?’

‘Alyona.’ His neutral tone gave nothing away. ‘She was one good person I knew.’ And by the way he said it Hannah didn’t think Alyona—whoever she was—was in his life any more.

‘Well,’ she said, sitting back, the heady excitement leaking out from her like air from a balloon a week after the party, ‘there you go. There is someone good in your life. Someone you don’t need to be cynical about. Tell me about her.’

‘No,’ he said, flatly, and Hannah stiffened a little at the rebuke, strangely hurt. She had no right to demand his secrets, even if she’d been halfway to giving him hers … the ones she hadn’t even realised she had.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least you have one.’

‘Had.’ His forbidding expression kept her from asking any more questions. She was intensely curious about this Alyona, even though Hannah knew she had no right to know. Had she been a girlfriend, a wife? Had Sergei loved her? Was that why he seemed so closed, so cynical now? Maybe he was hiding a broken heart. Or maybe she’d just watched too many soap operas.

‘So why are you so suspicious of people?’ she asked, trying to sound light even though she really wanted to know. ‘Trusting no one?’

‘I told you, experience. Most people have a reason for what they do, and it usually isn’t a very nice one.’ His mouth curved once more in a sensual smile. ‘Except maybe you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. You have to be the most refreshingly—and annoyingly—optimistic person I’ve ever met.’

Hannah nearly sputtered in outrage. ‘Annoyingly?’

‘Optimism tends to irritate us cynics.’

‘Maybe you need a little more optimism in your life, then.’ Sergei considered her from heavy-lidded eyes, his gaze sweeping slowly, so slowly over her, and excitement exploded inside her. Did he know how sensual he looked when he gazed at her like that? Almost as if he were undressing her with his eyes. And Hannah felt awareness and desire race along her veins and nerve-endings, set her whole body to liquid flame. She wanted this. Whatever it was, whatever was going to happen, she wanted this.

His gaze flicked upwards to her face and rested there, assured, assessing. ‘Maybe I do,’ he murmured.