The Ruthless Magnate’s Virgin Mistress

CHAPTER SIX

THE cameras went wild when Abbey climbed out of the car and rested her hand on Nikolai’s arm. For an instant she froze, almost blinded by the flashes and startled by the questions flying at her from all directions.

While Nikolai’s PR consultant discreetly ensured that everyone knew exactly who Abbey was, he escorted her up the red carpet into the cinema. He was proud to be with her. He thought she looked extraordinarily like a queen in the peacock-blue dress with the sapphire-and-diamond necklace and earrings flashing against the rippling mane of red-gold tresses spilling across her pale shoulders. But the very first thing he had noticed when he picked her up was that she had removed her wedding ring from her finger.

Abbey found that she was grateful for the arm that Nikolai kept at her back and the ease with which he chatted to the milling crowd of celebrities in the foyer. His assurance increased hers and, although she was madly conscious of being the centre of much curious attention and her jewellery was very much admired, she was soon laughing and smiling by his side. The film was the sort that she never went to see: a horror movie that had her sitting taut on the edge of her seat. To her embarrassment she let out a stifled shriek of fright at one point and Nikolai closed a supportive hand over hers. She glanced at him and caught the look of unholy amusement in his brilliant eyes as well as the charismatic smile that made her heartbeat perform a ridiculous somersault.

After the premiere they exchanged views on favourite films and enjoyed a lively discussion. ‘You are a very entertaining companion,’ Nikolai murmured levelly.

Abbey realised how much she had been talking and could hardly credit that she had relaxed to such an extent with him. ‘I never go to see horror films.’

‘But admit it-you enjoyed it,’ Nikolai teased, curving her closer to his tall, powerful body.

‘I suppose I did, in an odd way,’ Abbey conceded and suddenly a smile curved her full pink mouth.

‘When you smile like that I want to kiss you, milaya.’

Abbey froze, conscious of the number of eyes on them. ‘Don’t!’ she urged him. ‘I’m not a fan of public displays of affection.’

‘What do you like in a man?’

Abbey almost told him that she had never thought about that, but then Jeffrey’s image came immediately to mind. ‘Someone intelligent and confident-’

‘Honest?’

‘Of course,’ she answered loftily.

‘Faithful?’

Abbey raised a fine dark brow. ‘Naturally. And of course he would have to love me.’

‘You don’t mention passion.’

‘I’m sure, if all the other things were there, that would come, too,’ Abbey countered in a dismissive tone.

‘Speaking as an authority in that field, I would have to say that passion is not that easily found, milaya. But no relationship could be considered complete without it.’

Hot colour warming her cheeks, Abbey refused to look at him as he helped her back into the limousine, cameras flashing all around them. For that brief instant before he joined her, she felt curiously bereft. Away from his powerful presence and the aura of his high-voltage energy, everything felt flat and empty, an acknowledgement that disturbed her. She reminded herself that she could not afford to forget that she was engaging in a high-profile pretence for which he was paying Support Systems a very handsome price.

‘You inspire me with immense passion,’ Nikolai intoned in a roughened undertone, smouldering dark eyes as hot on her face as flames.

‘It’s not enough,’ she told him flatly, keen to head him off before he said anything more on that controversial issue.

Nikolai bent his handsome dark head, his breath warm and moist against her temples, and she trembled. The very scent of his skin was dangerously familiar and in the space of a moment her mind was taken over by treacherous images of Nikolai in bed with her. Over her, in her. And, whoosh, all the passion she would have denied, given half a chance, roared up inside her in an uncontrollable burst of anticipation and craving. Her fingers delved into his thick black hair and she dragged his mouth down to hers because she couldn’t wait one second longer to make that connection. And the instant of impact did not disappoint: the ravishing plunder of his tongue was what she wanted and needed, only it was not enough to satisfy her. The fiery urgency already pulsing through her quivering body shocked her and made her pull back from him.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she breathed in an awkward rush. ‘I don’t want this with you-’

Lean bronzed features clenched taut, Nikolai stared down at her, his stunning eyes bright with the passion she denied. ‘Yes, you do. Stop lying to yourself and to me.’

Abbey tilted her chin, violet eyes cool as ice water, her pride fired up in self-defence. ‘I’m not lying. But I once had something a lot more worthwhile-’

‘Did you?’ Nikolai was looking at her with raw intensity and gooseflesh prickled at the nape of her neck, for there was something strangely chilling about both his look and his tone. ‘Are you referring to your marriage?’

Her slender fingers coiled into angry fists, for she did not like his tone of derision. ‘Don’t try to make me ashamed that I still value what I had and lost!’ she countered.

His hard-boned profile might have been carved from stone. He could not believe that once again she was making a comparison between him and her worthless, lying husband! It was a colossal insult and wholly eloquent of her closed state of mind. The day her husband died Abbey Carmichael had suspended all critical judgement. Surely it would be a good deed to help her to move on from the past by giving her access to the truth?

‘Perhaps you didn’t lose a fairy tale,’ Nikolai remarked.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Abbey hissed back at him.

‘That we’ll finish this discussion at my apartment.’

‘I would like to know now what you are implying.’

‘I think you have a very good idea, but I’ll give you the proof of my words once we get there. I don’t play mind games, lubimaya.’

Her smooth brow had furrowed. ‘The…proof?’

In the private lift on the way up to his penthouse, he said, ‘I had your late husband investigated by a private detective agency.’

Unable to credit that shocking announcement, Abbey pinned wide, startled eyes to his lean, dark, devastating face. ‘Why the heck would you have done that?’

‘A whim? You talked so much about Jeffrey that you made me curious about him as well,’ Nikolai admitted.

‘I can’t believe that you invaded my personal life and violated my privacy like that!’ Abbey gasped in outrage. ‘It was a disgusting thing to do!’

‘In this case it was more illuminating.’ The forceful dark gaze that met hers contained not an ounce of remorse or apology. In the opulent hall of his apartment he left her standing and strode through a doorway. She followed him at a slower pace, her mind buzzing with conjecture and uncertainty.

Nikolai withdrew the file from the safe. Had she not challenged him again he might have retained it while he considered both his timing and his options, but he felt that she had a real right and need to know what he had discovered.

‘Jeffrey was a wonderful man!’ Abbey told him stridently. ‘I don’t care what is in that file. It won’t change my mind about my husband! I loved him and he loved me. Nothing can alter those facts.’

Nikolai extended the file. ‘Don’t be so sure.’

Abbey snatched it off him. ‘I hate you-I’ll never forgive you for this! Don’t you have any morals?’

‘More than your husband had when he picked a naïve little schoolgirl to be his bride.’

Abbey sank down in an armchair by the door and began to scan the close lines of print. There was nothing untoward or new to her in the facts of Jeffrey’s childhood and education. Then a female name that Abbey recognised leapt out at her-Jane Morrell, who had read law at Oxford with Jeffrey and who had worked in the same close circle of leading barristers. According to the enquiry agent, Jeffrey and Jane had been lovers at university, something which Abbey had not known for sure but had once suspected from the tenor of the older woman’s rather acidic comments at her wedding.

Jane had married a judge, given birth to a couple of children and become Lady Jane Dalkeith long before Abbey even met Jeffrey. But what appalled Abbey as she read was the bald declaration that Jeffrey had restarted his affair with Jane while he was still in his twenties and that the couple had then continued as secret lovers for almost fifteen years. She flipped the page to be greeted with the staggering statement that Jeffrey had spent the weekend before his wedding to Abbey holed up in a Paris hotel with Jane.

‘This is vile stuff and nothing but filthy lies!’ Abbey spat in disgust, leaping upright. ‘I don’t believe any of this rubbish for one moment. I have total faith in Jeffrey.’

‘Their liaison was widely known among their peers,’ Nikolai informed her. ‘It’s a shame that nobody had the decency to tell you what was going on. Silence was cruel in the circumstances, particularly after his death.’

Abbey was shaking with rage and barely able to vocalise or think. ‘How dare you hand me this filth and try to destroy Jeffrey’s reputation? How low can you sink?’

‘I’ve never sunk as low as he did with a woman. I am always honest about what I offer and I don’t cheat,’ Nikolai countered drily.

‘I’m not staying here discussing this with you,’ Abbey told him furiously, her eyes blazing above her flushed cheeks as though someone had lit a fire inside her. ‘I’m going home.’

Nikolai noticed how pale she was behind the anger. She was very loyal to her husband’s memory. He thought it a great shame that the man who had inspired that deep love and loyalty had been in no way her equal. He wondered how she would feel when she was finally forced to accept the truth. Concern, a most unfamiliar sensation, gripped him on her behalf.

With trembling hands, Abbey unhooked the diamond earrings and set them down on the marble hall table. She couldn’t manage the clasp on the necklace and Nikolai moved forward to help her and undid the fastening for her. ‘Why are you taking them off? They’re yours now.’

‘You must be joking. I’m not going to accept a king’s ransom in diamonds from you. I’m not one of your kiss ’n’ tell girls out for everything I can get. I may hate your guts at this moment but I won’t take anything from you that I’m not entitled to,’ Abbey declared feverishly. ‘Pay your bills to Support Systems on time and you owe me nothing.’

Nikolai surveyed her with glinting appreciation and lifted the phone. ‘My driver will take you home.’

Abbey got back into the limousine like a woman sleepwalking. She studied the file afresh, fear and doubt touching her in private as she had not allowed them to touch her in Nikolai’s presence. In a sudden decision she dug out her mobile phone and rang Caroline.

‘Can I come and see you? I know it’s late and I’m sorry but I could really do with someone to talk to,’ she admitted when her friend answered her call.

‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ll tell you about it when I get there.’ She opened the partition to ask the driver to take her to Caroline and Drew’s home instead of her own.

‘I watched you arriving at the premiere on television!’ Caroline gushed as Abbey entered the lounge. ‘You were in the same shot as the movie star leads. You looked amazing. But what happened to the fantastic jewellery?’

‘It was only on loan and I gave it back to Nikolai.’ Abbey held out the file to Caroline. ‘Take a look at this and tell me what you think.’

‘What on earth is it?’ Jeffrey’s sister questioned in lively surprise, and then when she opened it and saw the first paragraph, she exclaimed shrilly, ‘Oh, my goodness! Where did you get this from?’

‘Nikolai.’ In the silence that followed, Abbey was so tense she could hardly breathe. She had total trust in Caroline and it was inconceivable that Caroline would not have known if her older brother was having an affair for so many years, for the siblings had always been close.

‘Good heavens!’ The slim blond woman in the wheelchair gasped as she read. ‘How could anyone give this to you?’

Abbey’s throat was so tight she didn’t think she could extract a voice from it. Her entire concentration was focused on her friend and she was so tense that her knotted muscles were actually hurting her. She could not credit that doubt had entered her mind so quickly and she was ashamed that she had given way to it. She was desperate for Jeffrey’s sister to tell her that the claims in the file were a pack of contemptible lies.

But as Caroline looked up, her expression appalled, Abbey felt sick and her knees gave way, forcing her to drop heavily down onto the sofa behind her. ‘Tell me it’s not true,’ she begged.

‘I only wish I could,’ her friend whispered with unconcealed regret.

The silence lay thick and heavy, and Abbey felt as if she had been catapulted into a living nightmare in which everything familiar became threatening, because even her best friend could no longer look her in the eye.

‘Jeffrey was having an affair…for all those years? The whole time he was with me as well?’ Abbey cried.

Caroline nodded confirmation, her shrinking discomfiture with the topic painfully apparent.

Abbey felt as though a car had run over her and her very bones were being smashed to pieces inside her skin. The shock of the other woman’s corroborative nod and her silence tore her apart. Caroline was her best friend and Jeffrey’s sister: denial of the facts was no longer possible.

‘But why did he want to marry me then?’ Abbey whispered shakily. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Jane wouldn’t leave her husband and the affair was ruining Jeffrey’s life. Jeffrey wanted a wife and family of his own and he could see no prospect of a future with Jane.’

A shuddering breath raked through Abbey’s rigid frame; all her romantic illusions were falling apart at once. Suddenly the whole history of her love for Jeffrey was shattering before her eyes: Jane, not she, must have been the love of Jeffrey’s life. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t I deserve a warning?’

Caroline gave her a look of anguish. ‘Jeffrey swore the affair would end before he married you and that he would be faithful-’

‘Their dirty weekend in Paris only a couple of days before the wedding doesn’t make the end of the affair look like it would have been a very likely development,’ Abbey breathed tartly. ‘Obviously Jeffrey couldn’t stay away from her, so I doubt if he’d have been able to give her up entirely for my benefit.’

‘You loved him so much. That drew him to you-’

‘No, let’s be blunt about what drew Jeffrey. I was young and foolish and I didn’t know his friends or colleagues, so there was no chance that I might have heard rumours about him and Jane. I didn’t ask awkward questions or expect much attention so that suited him as well. Our whole relationship was a lie, a nasty, sordid fraud, and I was the victim-’

‘No…Jeffrey cared about you!’ her friend protested vehemently.

‘I was just the means to an end. I was to be the little housewife and mother to his children while he got his excitement, his passion with Jane!’ Abbey snapped bitterly. ‘He was using me. Does my brother know as well?’

‘No. Drew had no idea, but I think your father suspected something,’ Caroline admitted ruefully. ‘You asked me why I didn’t tell you. You were crazy about my brother and he was offering you what you appeared to want. I thought you’d be good for him and give him a chance of happiness. I honestly believed that he would make you happy as well.’

‘I suppose I’d never have got him any other way,’ Abbey muttered heavily, thinking of the gauche teenager she had been, easily impressed and duped by a male of Jeffrey’s intelligence and sophistication.

‘Stay here with us tonight,’ Caroline pleaded. ‘You’re devastated by all this. Nikolai Arlov is a total bastard for giving you this file!’

‘I don’t think so. Whatever Nikolai’s motives, it was past time that I knew the truth and I wish you had at least had the courage to tell me after Jeffrey died.’ Averting her gaze from Caroline’s discomfited face, Abbey stood up. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I want to go home and come to terms with this in private.’

Abbey started trembling violently when she got back into the limo. She was hanging on to her composure by a slender thread. Tears were clogging her throat. The man she had loved had not returned her love. Jeffrey had lied to her and cheated on her and had played her for a fool. Their relationship had been an unpleasant charade that a more experienced woman might have questioned. Jeffrey had had no desire to sleep with Abbey while he still had Jane in his life. She remembered the day he had touched her red hair and asked her if she had ever thought of tinting it blond. Anguish exploded inside her like a grenade going off in a confined space. Guess who had blond hair? She remembered Lady Jane on her husband’s arm at Jeffrey’s funeral, long golden blond hair streaming across the shoulders of her elegant black coat, her beautiful face frozen as ice.

Abbey pressed clammy hands to her quivering cheeks. Her best friend had stood by and watched her marry a man who was besotted with another man’s wife. That awareness had ensured that Abbey had felt unable to share her innermost feelings with Caroline as she once would have done. She felt utterly betrayed. The passenger door beside her opened and only then did she realise that the journey was over and she was home.

She saw her face in her hall mirror and it scared her. Tears had smeared her eye shadow and mascara and she bore a close resemblance to a corpse in the horror film she had watched earlier. Her attention fell on the photo of her and Jeffrey on that long-ago wedding day and she snatched the frame from the wall and smashed it down on the tiled hall floor. That surge of violence shocked her to the core and she was staring down in surprise at the broken glass when the doorbell sounded.

Nikolai hammered the knocker when Abbey didn’t immediately answer the bell. Relief swept him when the door finally opened and she peered out.

‘I was worried about you,’ he confessed in a driven undertone. ‘How are you?’

‘How did you think I would be?’ Abbey demanded, animation and energy entering her again when she saw him. He might be the author of her evening of disillusionment, but at least she didn’t have to watch her words with him. ‘Happy?’

Nikolai pressed the door back and strode in, his feet crunching across broken glass. Even though the photo frame was lying face down, he recognised it and felt almost jubilant at such a demonstration of disrespect. His ambivalence towards her gnawed at him. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you.’

‘I’m not hurt,’ Abbey proclaimed.

But Nikolai could see the shock still etched in her dilated pupils and rigid bone structure. ‘You need a shot of vodka.’

‘No. I’m fine.’ A discordant laugh fell from her lips to punctuate the strained silence. ‘It’ll just be a long time before I play the grieving widow again!’

Nikolai reached out in a sudden movement and gathered her into his arms.

‘The bastard!’ she sobbed suddenly. ‘I really, really loved him. I thought he was the most wonderful guy in the world!’

‘He didn’t deserve your love.’

‘He didn’t want or need it!’ Abbey gasped in stricken disagreement. ‘He didn’t even really want or need me! I was just a substitute for the woman he loved and couldn’t have.’

Nikolai, who avoided emotional scenes with women like the plague, could not believe that he had got himself into such a situation. But he had found it impossible to stay away from her when he was concerned about her state of mind. Once it had entered his thoughts that she might do something foolish in her distress, he had had to seek her out and he had no intention of leaving her until he was convinced that she was all right. Right now, she was very far from being all right. She was sobbing into his chest with the abandon of a distraught child, her slim body shaking and shuddering with emotion. He smoothed her tumbled curls back from her damp brow and dug out his mobile to make a call with one hand.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking you home with me. I’m not leaving you here alone.’

‘I’m used to being alone,’ Abbey argued.

‘So am I. It doesn’t mean we have to like it,’ Nikolai quipped, hauling open the door again and guiding her out towards the lift.

‘I look a total mess and I am not sleeping with you again-’

‘You’re so forward,’ Nikolai breathed. ‘At least wait until you’re asked.’

She almost laughed, and then she remembered Jeffrey again and the urge evaporated, for life as she knew it was over. She no longer had the comfort and security of looking back and wrapping herself in her fond memories of Jeffrey’s love. ‘I was always second best to Jeffrey,’ she whispered. ‘According to what his sister told me, he only settled for me because Jane wouldn’t leave her husband. Everything I thought I knew about him was wrong. He even invited her to our wedding with her husband. He always talked as if he was so moral and there he was carrying on with someone else’s wife and cheating on me throughout our engagement!’

‘You’re as close to being someone else’s wife as I’ve ever got,’ Nikolai remarked wryly. ‘Stop torturing yourself. That affair and your marriage all ended a long time ago.’

‘But I believed that he loved me.’ Until that moment, Abbey had not appreciated just how good that belief had made her feel about herself. ‘That meant so much to me. I was a lanky beanpole at school-none of the boys were interested-’

‘They’d be kicking themselves if they saw you now,’ Nikolai told her, pressing her head into his shoulder in a protective move when he saw the paparazzi on the pavement outside, a sharp jerk of his head telling his bodyguards to be as aggressive as they liked in shielding them from the cameras.

‘I bet you were one of the popular ones at school,’ Abbey commented when they had got through the crush and were safe inside his limo.

Nikolai was pouring drinks from the well-stocked bar. He handed her a shot glass of perfectly chilled vodka. ‘No. My father was a crooked loan shark despised by most people. My grandfather was ashamed of him and so was I,’ he admitted, only to wonder why he was telling her something that until that moment he had not even admitted to himself. His little nasty weasel of a parent had been a chronic embarrassment to him while he was growing up.

Abbey knocked back the vodka and then almost choked as it burned a liquid passage of icy fire down her throat and brought tears to her eyes. ‘My word!’ she spluttered as he banged her between the shoulder blades so that she could breathe again.

‘Full marks for not sipping, but you didn’t even give me time to make a traditional toast.’

Abbey was still thinking about what he had said. ‘Why were you closer to your grandfather?’

‘I lived with him until he died when I was nine years old. My father wanted nothing to do with me.’

‘Why?’ Abbey fixed expectant eyes on his lean dark face, her curiosity raised to a height.

‘He was already married with three children when he got my mother pregnant. My grandfather took me in and raised me against my father’s wishes. I think my grandfather saw it as a second chance to be a father.’

‘My mother died of a heart attack a day after I was born,’ Abbey confided, accepting a refill and holding it high to say. ‘To a new and better understanding between us! My father never warmed to me after my mother died. He hadn’t the slightest interest in me or my achievements. I was surplus. My brother was important to him because he was a boy-’

‘That may be why you married an older man.’

‘Nothing’s that simple. I fell in love with Jeffrey.’

‘But now you’re going to get over that,’ Nikolai intoned with cool conviction.

Shivering in the cool night air, Abbey allowed Nikolai to assist her out of the limousine and wrap her in his dinner jacket. His unexpected gallantry made her smile while his protectiveness surprised and pleased her. ‘Thank you.’ A car screeched to a halt a few feet away, doors flying open noisily as more men with cameras leapt out. ‘Why are they still following us?’

‘Press hounds have an infallible nose for a drama.’

The two shots of vodka she had had in the car made Abbey feel rather dizzy in the lift. She knew she shouldn’t be with Nikolai. If ever there was a case of leaping from the frying pan straight into the fire, this had to be it, she conceded ruefully. But she was amazed that he wanted to be with her when she was in such a mood and she was equally keen not to be left alone with her depressing thoughts.

‘I want a tour of your apartment,’ she told him, determined to concentrate on work to protect herself from temptation. She cast his jacket down on a chair. ‘It’ll help me in my property search on your behalf.’

‘Go where you like.’ Nikolai watched her thrust off her high heels in the hall and turn in a clumsy circle that almost sent her cannoning into a sculpture. ‘Vodka packs quite a kick. You should have something to eat now.’

Pangs of memory were still attacking Abbey. She was recalling how Jeffrey had pushed her away and shrinking from the cruel reason why her approaches had been unwelcome. ‘You know, if a man doesn’t want to sleep with you, he’s either gay or he’s got another woman,’ she announced with the air of someone who had made an amazing deduction. ‘Why didn’t I get suspicious?’

Nikolai groaned out loud. ‘Stop thinking about Jeffrey-you’re with me!’

Abbey flipped round with something less than her usual grace. ‘Well, it’s not a problem you have. You never stop trying to get me into bed.’

‘You need food,’ Nikolai told her, directing her into the superb drawing room where an impressive selection of hot and cold snacks was laid out in readiness for them. He settled a plate into her hand and told her what everything was, for all the dishes were Russian. She settled for warm blini pancakes and caviar which she was determined to taste just once in her life.

‘I need another vodka,’ she announced.

‘Just this once my primary objective is not to get you flat on your back,’ Nikolai imparted softly. ‘I think you’ve had enough alcohol.’

Hot pink climbed her face as she collided with his stunning dark gaze. ‘I never had you picked as a nice guy,’ she confided, surprised by how scrupulous he was being all of a sudden.

‘I’m not, but I’m the guy who gave you that file.’

She couldn’t tell him she was grateful because every time she thought about what she had found out it was as if someone had slashed her with a knife and another whole slew of fond memories would be destroyed. Even worse were the vague memories of inconsistencies that now fitted her new awareness of Jeffrey as a deceiver, who had lied about loving her and hurt her self-image by making her feel insecure about her ability to attract him.

While she wandered aimlessly round the room admiring Nikolai’s spectacular views over London, she saw her face in a mirror and almost died with embarrassment on the spot. How on earth had she contrived to forget her messy make-up? ‘I need to clean up-I look awful!’ she exclaimed.

Nikolai directed her to the cloakroom, which was roughly the size of her whole apartment and equipped to fulfil a woman’s every need. She wiped her eyes clean and washed her hands free of crumbs before lingering to touch up her make-up, reasoning that feeling down didn’t mean she had to give up her pride in her appearance, particularly not with a male as gorgeous as Nikolai around…