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

Sergei scrawled his signatures on half a dozen forms, his mind still on the city skyline.

Hadley Springs … about four hours north of New York City.

Even now, a year later, he hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t forgotten a single thing about that evening. About Hannah Pearl.

He pushed the papers away, barely listening to the babble of voices as they went over the transferring of assets. What was one more company when he already had a dozen? Too restless to sit any longer, he rose from the table and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over midtown, Central Park a green haze in the distance.

‘Keep talking,’ he said tersely, his back to the table. ‘I’m listening.’ He wasn’t.

Was she the same? he wondered. As naive and optimistic and unspoiled as she’d been that night?

You’re a better man than you think you are.

Or maybe life had finally taught her something, helped her to grow a necessarily calloused and cynical hide. Maybe he had. The thought gave him a little pang of loss, as absurd an emotion as that was. Everyone needed to toughen up. How else did you survive?

‘Mr Kholodov …’

Did she still have her shop? It had seemed a lonely life, toiling away in a little shop she didn’t seem to really like all by herself. She didn’t even like knitting. Yet she’d kept at it, out of loyalty to her parents, and maybe a misplaced optimism that she could make it work. He knew enough about business to have assessed in a second that struggling little shops in the middle of nowhere didn’t last long.

Had she moved, then? Found a life for herself somewhere else? Who knew, maybe she’d gone back to school. Maybe she was married.

I wouldn’t even know where to go.

Amazing, Sergei thought distantly, how much he remembered. How much he still thought about her, even when he tried not to. Amazing how one night had made such a difference.

Several months after Hannah had left—Grigori had made sure she had her documents and a first-class plane ticket—Sergei had done something he’d never, ever considered doing before.

He’d contacted a private investigator, and issued instructions for the man to make initial inquiries about Alyona. About finally finding her. He hadn’t seen her in over twenty years … since she was four years old, and he fourteen, both of them already weary of life.

Now the investigator was still trying to follow up various leads. The records at the orphanage had been spotty and sometimes plain wrong. And twice Sergei had told him to stop, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Then he’d thought of Hannah, of her guileless smile.

Tell me one really good thing that’s happened to you. Or, better yet, one really good person …

Someone who made a difference.

And he’d ordered the man to start his inquiries again. Maybe he did, after all these years, want to believe. Believe as Hannah did, in something—someone—good.

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

It was annoying, Sergei reflected, that he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head. Even now it made him angry.

‘Mr Kholodov …’

Finally Sergei turned from the window, focused on the dozen executives waiting for him. He hadn’t been listening at all.

‘Fine,’ he said brusquely, and they all nodded in relief. He had no idea what he’d just agreed to, but it hardly mattered. He’d signed the papers.

He turned back to the window. Hadley Springs was just four hours away. It would only be a matter of minutes on the internet to determine if she still lived there, and what her address was. And if she did … he could hire a car and be there this afternoon.

The thought shocked him, even though it felt right. Amazingly right. He could see her again, finally satisfy his curiosity—and more than that. The attraction that had exploded between them was real, and if it was finally satisfied he could get her out of his head. Forget her completely.

Wasn’t that what he wanted?

Or did he just want to see her again, and never mind the reason?

It didn’t matter. He’d always been a man of action, and now he knew his course. He turned back to the men assembled at the table, waiting on his word.

‘I believe we’re finished here, gentlemen.’

The bell on the front door to Knit & Pearl jingled merrily and Hannah looked up from her rather grim perusal of the account books. ‘Hi, Lisa.’

The older woman smiled in return and placed a carrier bag of hand-knit sweaters on the counter. ‘How’s it looking?’ she said with a nod to the books.

Hannah grimaced. ‘Not good.’ Lisa nodded in sympathy and, smiling, Hannah closed the book and nodded towards the bag. ‘You brought some more sweaters?’

‘And some hat and mitten sets. I know it’s nearly spring, but it’s still chilly and some people like to do their Christmas shopping early.’

‘Great.’ Hannah rose to look through the merchandise. Lisa Leyland had become a great friend over the last year. She’d sailed into the empty shop one chilly spring morning, several weeks after Hannah had returned from Moscow and had been feeling particularly low. After her husband had been made redundant, Lisa had needed some creative sources of income, and she’d suggested to Hannah that she sell her hand-knit sweaters through the shop and take a fifty-per-cent cut; they were some of the most popular items that Hannah had ever sold. A few months after that Lisa offered to run knitting classes in the evenings, which had brought in a little more business.

Still, none of it was enough to keep the shop afloat, a conclusion Hannah had been drawing steadily over the last few months. No wonder her parents had racked up such huge bills, she’d realised dismally. The shop had never been a going concern, and her little improvements—the ones she could afford—weren’t making much of a difference.

She refolded the last of the sweaters and put them to one side for pricing. ‘These are beautiful, Lisa.’

Lisa nodded her thanks before gesturing once again to the account books lying on the counter. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked quietly.

Hannah sighed and rubbed her forehead. She felt the beginnings of a headache and an incredible weariness in every joint and muscle. She’d been trying to make this shop work for so long—certainly the last year, and sometimes it felt like her whole life. And she wasn’t sure she could do it any more. She knew she didn’t want to.

‘Keep going as long as I can, I suppose,’ she said to Lisa. ‘I don’t know what else I can do.’

‘You could sell it.’

Hannah stilled. This wasn’t the first time they’d talked about this issue, but it was the first time Lisa had said it so directly. Sell the shop. Give up on everything her parents had done, had believed in … or at least she’d thought they believed in.

Since returning from Russia, she’d sometimes wondered. The things Sergei Kholodov had made her question, the discovery of their deceit she’d made upon her return … they’d changed her. Perhaps for ever.

‘I’m not ready to sell it,’ she told Lisa. ‘I’m not even sure there’s a buyer.’

‘You don’t know until you try.’

Hannah shook her head. She wasn’t ready to think like that. This shop—just as she’d once told Sergei—had been everything to her parents, and it was all she had left of them now. Letting it go made her feel both sad and scared—and guilty, because part of her desperately wanted to do it.

I don’t even know where I would go.

Funny, and strange, that it had all started with Sergei. Even now she tried not to think of him, but she just couldn’t help herself. He slipped into her thoughts, under her defences. With a few pointed observations—and a devastating kiss—he’d set her doubts in motion. They’d toppled her certainties like dominoes, one after the other, creating an inevitable and depressing chain reaction until her whole world felt flattened and empty.

Now she wasn’t certain of anything any more. She wasn’t annoyingly optimistic either. Not that he would care. Not that he’d ever given her a thought this last year.

I don’t do virgins … especially not ones who barely know how to kiss.