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

‘Comfortable? Are you kidding me? It was amazing. The tub alone—I stayed in there for an hour.’ She held out her hands for his inspection. ‘My fingers are still wrinkled like prunes.’

‘I’m glad you enjoyed all the room’s amenities,’ he said smoothly, and she dropped her hands, laughing a little.

‘Definitely. Thank you. This is all so … like something out of a fairy tale. Really.’ Her eyes held a playful, teasing light. ‘Are you my fairy godmother?’

‘No,’ Sergei said, ‘Just someone assuaging his own guilty conscience.’

‘You hardly need to feel guilty,’ she said as she slid into the booth. He caught a whiff of her honeyed scent: snowdrops, the signature scent of the complementary toiletries found in every room in his hotel. The scent, he’d always thought, of sweetness and courage.

‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he asked, reaching for the bottle of red already open.

‘Oh … well. Okay.’ She smiled, trying to be sophisticated, clearly nervous. ‘Thank you.’

She was, Sergei thought, incredibly open. Those eyes, that face, every word she said … she hid nothing. Having hidden every emotion since he could remember, he was both disturbed and moved by the thought.

He handed her the glass and poured one for himself. ‘To unexpected moments,’ he said, raising his glass, and after a second’s hesitation she self-consciously clinked her glass with his own.

‘I’ve certainly had a few of those today,’ she said after she’d taken a tiny sip of wine.

‘So tell me about this trip of yours,’ Sergei said as he sat next to her. ‘This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’

‘Well …’ She paused, frowning faintly. ‘My parents died. They were elderly, and it wasn’t unexpected, but it was all kind of … intense, and I decided afterwards that this was an opportunity to take some time out for myself.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘Even if I didn’t have any savings.’

‘I’m sorry about your parents,’ he said quietly. Her admission had given him a flicker of surprised sympathy. She was an orphan, of a sort, just as he was. ‘Savings aside,’ he continued, ‘you obviously had enough money to fund the trip at least.’

‘Just,’ Hannah agreed. ‘But it was tight. I had to close the shop, of course, and scrimp quite a bit—’ She stopped suddenly, shaking her head ruefully. ‘But you don’t want to hear about that. Very boring stuff, especially to a millionaire like you.’

Billionaire, actually, but Sergei wasn’t about to correct her. He was curious about this shop of hers, and her whole life, and the way she stared at him as if she trusted him, as if she trusted everyone. Hadn’t life taught her anything? It made him want to destroy her delusions and wrap her in cotton wool all at the same time.

Desirable, he reminded himself. That was it. Simple. Easy.

‘You mentioned a shop,’ he said. He shifted in his seat and his thigh nudged hers. He saw her eyes widen and she bit the lush fullness of her lip once more.

‘Y-yes, a shop,’ she said, stammering slightly, and he knew that brief little nudge had affected her. And if that affected her—what would she be like in his arms? In his bed?

Guilt pricked him momentarily, sharp and pointed. Should he really be thinking like this? She had innocence stamped all over her. His lovers were always experienced and even jaded like him, women who understood his rules. Who never tried to get close.

Because if they did … if they ever knew …

Sergei pushed the needling sense of guilt away, hardened his heart. And pictured himself slipping that dress from her shoulders, pressing his lips to the pulse fluttering quite wildly at her throat. She wanted him. He wanted her.

Simple.

It was foolish to feel so … aware, Hannah told herself. So alive. They were just talking. Yet still she was acutely, achingly conscious of Sergei’s thigh just inches from hers, the strength and heat of him right across the table, the candlelight throwing the harsh planes of his face into half-shadow.

‘A shop,’ she repeated, knowing she must sound as brainless as he’d thought her this morning. ‘My parents started it before I was born, and I took it over when they died.’

‘What kind of shop?’

‘Crafts. Mainly knitting supplies, yarn and so forth, but also embroidery and sewing things. Whatever we—I—think will sell.’ Even six months after her mother’s death, it was still strange—and sad—to think the shop was hers. Only hers.

‘And you had to close the shop? You couldn’t have anyone running it while you were away?’

‘I can’t really afford it,’ she said. ‘It’s a small town and we don’t get a lot of business except during tourist season.’ And even then just drive-throughs.

‘Where is this small town of yours?’

‘Hadley Springs, about four hours north of New York City.’

‘It must be beautiful.’

‘It is.’ She loved the rugged beauty of the Adirondacks, the impenetrable pine forests, yet living in a small town as a twenty-something could get a bit lonely, something she thought Sergei surmised from the shrewd compassion in his narrowed eyes.

‘You have not wanted to move?’

‘No, nev—’ Hannah stopped suddenly, for she couldn’t actually say she hadn’t wanted it; it had simply never been an option. Her parents had needed her too much, the shop needed to be run, and she couldn’t imagine abandoning it all now. The shop had been everything to them, and she needed to make a go of it, for the sake of their memory at least. She knew it was what her parents would have wanted, even expected. And yet …

‘I don’t even know where I would go,’ she said after a moment, trying to shrug the question—and the sudden doubts it had made her have—away.

Sergei’s smile glinted in the candlelight. ‘Possibility can be a frightening thing.’

‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, thinking that it never had been before. She hadn’t let herself think about possibilities, yet somehow sitting in this candlelit room with this breathtakingly attractive man gazing at her so steadily made everything—and anything—seem more possible.

Sergei cocked his head. ‘You are thinking about selling this shop,’ he said softly.

‘No—’ She’d been thinking about him, but she couldn’t deny that his pointed little questions had opened up something inside her, something she wasn’t quite ready to consider. ‘It was my parents’ dream,’ she told him. ‘Their baby.’

‘Weren’t you their baby?’

She shook her head, wondering why he insisted on seeing everything in such a cynical light. ‘You know what I mean. They poured their life savings into the shop, all their energy. My father had a stroke while stacking boxes in the stock room.’ She swallowed. ‘It was everything to them.’

‘So it was their dream,’ Sergei said quietly. ‘But was it yours? You can’t make someone want the same things you do.’ He sounded as if he spoke from experience. ‘You need to have your own dream.’

‘What’s your dream, then?’

‘Success,’ he answered shortly. ‘What’s yours?’

The question felt like a challenge, one Hannah didn’t want to answer. Sergei gazed at her, his eyes glinting in the candlelight, the sharp angular planes of his face bathed in warm light. His was a harsh, stark beauty, yet she could not deny the whole of his features, cold and assessing as they were, worked together to make him a truly striking man. Hannah swallowed, wanting to say something light, something that would smooth over the sudden jagged sense of uncertainty Sergei had ripped open inside her. Perhaps he understood this, for he gave her a small smile and said, ‘Perhaps this trip has been your dream.’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘It was.’ And it was over now. Tomorrow reality would return. In a day or two she would open the door to the shop, dusty and unused, and deal with the bills and the piles of uncatalogued merchandise and the creeping realisation that her parents’ baby made very little money indeed. She had ideas, she had plans to make the shop work, and they were her plans. The shop was hers. She just didn’t know if the dream was. Hannah pushed the thought away, and the resentment she couldn’t help but feel that Sergei had opened up these uncertainties inside her. ‘So your dream is success,’ she said brightly, determined to move the focus of the conversation away from herself. ‘Success in what?’

‘Everything.’

‘That’s quite a dream.’ She felt a bit shaken by his blatant arrogance, as well as the bone-deep certainty she felt in herself that such a dream was most assuredly in the reach of a man like Sergei Kholodov. ‘Well, judging by this hotel you’re on your way to achieving it,’ she said as a waiter stepped silently into the alcove and began to serve them their starters. Sergei glanced at the young man who laid their plates on the table with a solemn concentration.

‘Spasiba, Andrei.’

The waiter gave his boss a quick, grateful smile and then withdrew with a little bow. Hannah felt a flicker of curiosity. Did Sergei know all his staff by name? The brochure in her room had said he employed a thousand people here. ‘So how did you build this empire of yours?’ she asked. ‘Is it a family business?’