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

‘Isn’t it all true? Isn’t this what we agreed on?’ Hannah demanded. She felt tears sting her eyes and she blinked them away furiously. ‘Isn’t this what you want?’

Sergei crossed to stand in front of her. He withdrew a perfectly starched handkerchief from his breast pocket and gently dabbed at the scratches on her throat. ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘it isn’t what I want.’

Hannah closed her eyes. Tears leaked out from under her lids, and she brushed them away, impatient, embarrassed.

‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ Sergei touched his thumb to her eye, her cheek, wiping away the traces of her tears. ‘Please don’t cry, Hannah.’ His voice sounded choked. ‘I cannot bear it.’

She opened her eyes, surprised and moved to see his harshly handsome face contorted in anguish. ‘I’m sorry.’ She drew in a ragged breath and blinked hard, forcing the lump that had risen into her throat back down. She could still feel it, hot and heavy in her chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, more composed now. She took a step away from him. ‘I don’t understand you, Sergei. You made it quite clear what you wanted back in New York. This was meant to be fun, a fling, and I accepted that. I’m trying to accept it, anyway. But even when I do you still get angry. Back at the hotel—you treated me like a—a possession! Something you can just drag around.’

The anguish had left Sergei’s face, his expression wiped as clean as a slate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said, his voice neutral. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘Why were you so angry?’ Hannah demanded rawly. ‘When I was just stating facts? Because I am your mistress, aren’t I? That’s how all those people at the charity event tonight think of me. The ornament on your arm.’ It hurt to say it, but she wanted to be clear. She wanted Sergei to know she wasn’t fooled.

Sergei pressed his lips together. So much for anguish; now he just looked annoyed. ‘I don’t know how they think of you—’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Fine.’ He rubbed a hand over his face, then dropped it abruptly. ‘Fine. Yes. They think of you as my mistress. I’ve never—I’ve never been with the same woman for very long. No one would think now that I was in a—a proper relationship.’

‘And we’re not in a proper relationship,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘We’re not equals in this. You dress me up like a doll and parade me around and sleep with me and when you’ve had enough you’ll send me back where I came from.’ It hurt so much to say it, but she knew she had to. For her own sake as much as Sergei’s. She needed the reminder of just what it was they were doing here.

‘Don’t,’ Sergei said sharply. ‘Don’t make what is between us sound so—so sordid.’

‘But it is sordid, Sergei.’ It was to her, anyway. ‘Like I said before, I’m just stating facts.’

His jaw tightened and he folded his arms. ‘I don’t like those facts.’

‘Don’t you?’ She let out a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘Because those are your facts. The rules you set down—’

‘I don’t remember making any rules.’

Hannah stared at him, genuinely confused. What was Sergei trying to tell her? That he didn’t want this? The thought was surely laughable. ‘Why are you arguing the point?’ she asked quietly. ‘Do you just not like someone spelling it out to you? Because if you’ve never even been in a proper relationship before, somehow I don’t think you’re looking to start.’

Sergei stared at her, his gaze level and yet fathomless, his mouth a hard line. ‘Maybe I am,’ he said at last, and despite the fierce thrill of hope that rippled through her Hannah shook her head.

‘No, you’re not.’

Sergei’s lips curved in a grim smile. ‘You’re so sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And here I thought you believed the best in everyone,’ he drawled softly.

She swallowed and then hardened her resolve. ‘Not any more.’

He shook his head. ‘What happened to your optimism, Hannah? Because a year ago—’

‘I’m not the same person I was a year ago, Sergei. And you probably aren’t either.’

‘No,’ he agreed quietly, ‘I’m not.’

She nodded, even though her insides felt leaden, weighed down with sorrow. ‘People change.’

‘Why did you change? What happened?’ He paused, his mouth twisting before resuming its familiar flat line. ‘Was it my fault?’

‘Your fault?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘No … although our—our evening together probably started it. I was so naive, I realise that now, and when I saw you with—with Varya—’

‘It wasn’t what it looked like.’

‘Really?’ Hannah raised her eyebrows, not understanding why Sergei felt the need to rewrite their history now. ‘You certainly went to some lengths to convince me it was just what it looked like then. I remember how insistent I was that you weren’t being truthful, that you—you—’

‘Were a better man than I thought?’ Sergei finished softly, and Hannah blinked.

‘Why are you bringing this all up now?’

‘Because you changed me, Hannah. In a different way than I changed you.’

‘It wasn’t all about you,’ Hannah said quickly. ‘All right, your—your rejection hurt. Obviously. But other things happened.’

‘Like what?’

She shrugged. ‘I came back to New York and I felt pretty low. I rushed into a relationship—and it wasn’t so great.’ She shrugged again, not wanting to tell him about Matthew, about the humiliation and heartache. How dirty and used it had all made her feel. By the darkening of his features she didn’t think Sergei wanted to hear. ‘And—and the shop had been struggling for so long,’ she continued, ‘and I really wanted to try to make a success of it, for my parents’ sake. But …’ She pressed her lips together, reluctant to reveal any more.

‘But?’ Sergei prompted softly.

‘I started going through their things—I’d been putting it off since my mom died, but I figured it was time—anyway,’ she continued hurriedly, wanting to get through it all, ‘I found out some things. They weren’t really honest with me.’ She folded her arms, stared at the floor. ‘I thought my mother was giving me a choice, to come back from college and help out, but I found some paperwork and I saw that she’d had me withdrawn even before she telephoned me. She’d already decided I wasn’t coming back for the second semester, but she pretended it was my decision.’ The realisation had felt like a betrayal, and it had made her angry. Uselessly so, for how could you stay angry with someone who was dead?

‘Maybe,’ Sergei said quietly, ‘she thought she was being kind. She wanted you to feel like you had more control—’

‘But it was a lie,’ Hannah cut him off. ‘And there were other things. Other lies. Credit card bills I didn’t know about until after her death. I thought she’d hidden them away because of her dementia and didn’t realise what she was doing. But they went back farther than I thought.’ She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I think both my parents were hiding from me how badly the shop had been doing because they wanted me to take it on.’

‘Obviously it was important to them.’ ‘More important than me.’ She sighed. ‘I sound like a child having a tantrum, I know.’

‘It never feels good to have your illusions ripped away.’ ‘And that’s what they were,’ Hannah agreed. ‘Illusions.’ ‘Perhaps your parents were just trying to protect you.’ ‘Who’s the optimist now?’ Hannah shook her head. ‘No, they were trying to trap me. Trap me into staying and running their stupid little shop when they couldn’t any longer because it meant more to them than I ever did.’ The words tumbled out of her, savage and surprising. Until that moment she hadn’t realised she had them inside her. She felt her lips tremble, her body shake.

The words sounded so ugly, and yet she meant them. And she never would have said them or even thought them if that first evening with Sergei hadn’t started her thinking.

Doubting. Yet she could hardly blame him for her parents’ actions, or for the disaster of her relationship with Matthew, or her own blind naiveté.

‘Come here.’

‘What—?’

‘Come here,’ Sergei said again, gently, and then before she could move he came towards her, enfolding her in his arms. Hannah resisted at first, because Sergei had never hugged her before. Not as gently as this. An embrace of comfort, of compassion. Her throat closed up and her eyes welled yet again with tears and this time she did not blink them away. She let them slide down her face as she laid her cheek against Sergei’s shoulder and breathed in the scent of his aftershave, the scent that was just him. She wept for all the loss she had felt over the years: the loss of her parents, and the loss of herself, or at least the self she had been. Standing there in the circle of his arms, she felt both safe and cared for, and it made her realise she hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time.

‘It can’t have been easy,’ Sergei said after a moment, his hands stroking her back, ‘to have carried all that alone.’

‘I wasn’t completely alone,’ Hannah protested, her voice muffled against his shoulder. ‘I do have some friends, you know—’