And, in a sad, wistful voice, he proceeded to tell Austin the one fact that destroyed the very last remaining shred of tenderness he felt for Tarini.
TARINI FOLLOWED Mrs. Smith to the upstairs guest suite, which consisted of a cozy sitting room lined with bookcases, a bedroom done in pink and yellow chintz and a bathroom that was bigger than the living room in Tarini’s mother’s apartment.
Tarini had been in fancier, more ostentatious places in her role as a special agent and in the brief time she had spent as Vlad’s fiancée. But no place had ever thrilled her so much.
Maybe because no place had ever felt quite so much like a home. The home of her dreams, the silly dreams she wouldn’t have admitted to anyone.
She’d furtively bought decorating magazines at airports when flying in and out of Chicago when she was working for the U.S. government. She’d always left the magazines on the plane but kept in her head the pictures of a home that could be called a sanctuary.
The suite was very much like the home of her friend Toria Tryon, who had married a Byleukrainian hero, Nicky Sankovitch. Tarini felt a quick pang as she thought of the happy couple and their soon-to-be-born baby. And Nicky’s little Anya, who wasn’t so little anymore—nearly nine years old and as sophisticated as someone twice her age.
While Mrs. Smith talked about the house, Tarini looked around the welcoming room. Memorizing the arrangement of the glass-paperweight collection on the console table in the sitting room. Admiring the colors of the painting hanging over the sittingroom mantel. Sniffing the vanilla and sandalwood potpourri.
To a girl who had spent her childhood on the refugee trail with her mother and baby sister, this suite was heaven.
Someday, she’d have a home like this.
She promised herself that.
She closed her eyes as she snuggled into the stuffed chaise longue by the bed. At her fingertips, on a bamboo nightstand, were scholarly magazines, the latest bestseller, a vase of fresh tulips and a carafe of water. She breathed in the atmosphere of peace and serenity, barely listening as her hostess chatted on about the routine of the house. Her eyes started to close. Austin’s mother was saying something…about dinner at seven, and Tarini taking a much-needed nap beforehand.
“I’ve got some towels for you in case you want to take a shower,” Mrs. Smith said as she came back into the bedroom. “And there’s extra blankets in the armoire over…oh, dear.”
Tarini’s eyes flew open as she caught the tone of alarm in Mrs. Smith’s voice.
Austin stood at the doorway, his face flushed and his jaw set hard.
His glare at Tarini was murderous.
“Mom, please go downstairs,” he said softly but with enough of an edge that Mrs. Smith set the towels on the bed and walked out of the room without another word.
Austin waited until his mother had closed the door behind her. Then he sat on the bed in front of Tarini.
She felt fear uncoil within her. While Austin wasn’t the kind of man who would ever physically harm a woman, Tarini gulped back the sudden panic that he might be about to make an exception.
“Austin, what…what is it?” she asked, pulling her knees up to her chest.
He lunged, slamming both hands down on either arm of the chaise. He had her pinned in before she could react, and he hadn’t even laid a hand on her.
Tarini squirmed as he glowered at her with a mixture of revulsion and rage.
“What…what did I do?” she asked, looking for a means of escape and finding none.
She blinked at him. “Austin, what is it?”
“Measles,” he said.
Tarini gasped. And with that one word, she knew that all that was or could be good and true and loving about her life had been destroyed.
Chapter Eight
“How did you find out?” she asked cautiously, stubbornly refusing to give in to her panic. Yet.
Vlad had told her his problem in strictest confidence—the most explosive secret of the Romanov dynasty.
And clearly all Austin could think of was his own fury.
There had to be some way to defuse the situation, she thought, wondering if he already knew whose child was in her womb. Was the truth, if he knew, what made him so angry?
Or was it her deception? Or that his closest friend had not taken him into his confidence about a matter of such importance?
“My father told me everything,” he snapped. “How did you find out?”
She shrugged but her shoulders wobbled so much that the movement only highlighted her fear. Besides, Austin had her cornered so well there wasn’t a lot of room for playing it cool.
“Vlad told me when he asked me to marry him. You never knew?”
But of course she knew that Austin didn’t know. If he had, he never would have believed her claim to be carrying Vlad’s child.
“I knew he had measles. We had it at the same time,” Austin said. “We shared a room at the boarding school’s infirmary. I had a mild case and was out for a week. His was worse. Far worse. But he recovered. I never knew it…never knew it made him sterile.”
He said the last with a still shock on his face.
“Not many people did,” Tarini said softly. “Can you imagine the scandal, the upheaval in the country? The last of the Romanovs unable to continue the line?”
“That sounds like something out of the Middle Ages.”
“But Austin, in our country it would have destroyed the fragile stability we created after the Communists were thrown out of power.”
Austin shook his head dismally.
“He was being groomed here in the U.N. eventually to take his place as leader of our country.”
“I know, but…”
“He never would have been accepted by the people if he could not bring forth an heir. When I came to him, pregnant, he saw the solution to so many problems. His. Mine. Our country.”
He looked down at his arms straddling her and backed away. He sat on the bed and stared narrow-eyed at her.
The hours on the run showed on his face. Featherlight lines on the corners of his eyes. Mouth tightened and jaw muscles rippling beneath the flesh.
She wished she could put her arms around him and hold him as he slept. She wished she could comfort him because he felt betrayed. In so many ways.
But she wouldn’t reach out to him. That kind of tenderness had gotten her nothing but trouble.
And she didn’t know how much more he had figured out. How much of the truth did he know? she wondered. And how much could he guess?
As he stared at her, she still could feel the heat of his morning kiss on her lips. She knew the kiss on the Manhattan sidewalk had been more savage than love-struck—and it shamed her that she had responded. Had wanted more. Had been ready to fling away dignity for another. Right there on the crowded sidewalk.
She tilted her chin up defiantly and braced herself. He didn’t know yet. But he was going to figure it all out soon. Very soon. And she knew he wasn’t going to be happy.
For now he was only concerned about his friendship with Vlad.
“I don’t know why he never told me,” he said wearily. “We were so close. I mean, did he think I would betray his secret?”
“No, of course not. He didn’t tell you because he was embarrassed,” Tarini said gently.
But Vlad had been forced to keep the secret. For his own reasons, for the preservation of his country—and for other reasons.
“Even aside from the political problem of being a Romanov who is the last of his line,” Tarini explained, “he thought sterility made him seem less of a man. And you were always his ideal man. He didn’t want to feel like he was less of a man than you.”
Austin looked up sharply. “What do you mean—ideal man?”
“Oh, Austin, you have to know he thought of you as the perfect man. Handsome. Strong. Virile. Confident. Sure of himself. Attractive to women.”
She had said the words without thinking—it was the truth, after all. But as th
eir eyes met, his flashing a gray, merciless blue, Tarini knew she had made a mistake. He thought she was manipulating him again, flattering him to sidetrack the coming storm of anger at her lies.
“Who is this child’s father?” Austin snarled.
“Who do you think?” she countered, offended by the implied slur he was making upon her character.
“I’m asking you,” Austin persisted. “Who’s the father?”
“And I’m telling you that the answer is pretty plain,” Tarini said just as stubbornly. “But I’ll spell it out for you. You’re this baby’s father. I was with you and no one else.”
“Yeah, right It wasn’t Karinolov?”
Suddenly she felt a blinding fury, coloring everything in her sight bloodred. “Karinolov? How could you even say that?”
“Before I lost consciousness, in the mission that night, I saw how he touched you. Maybe you returned the feelings…”
“I’d never met the man before.”
“Then who is it?”
“Austin, I’ve never made love to another man besides you,” and when she saw the disbelief, she blurted out, “I was a virgin!”
His steel-blue eyes flashed with an unspeakable combination of rage and disgust and—could she be seeing things?—pity.
Tarini’s heart leaped into her throat. She hadn’t meant to tell him about being a virgin. Had never meant for him to know. When they’d been together, she hadn’t told him because she didn’t want him to feel obligation to her beyond love and didn’t want to lose him if he knew she wasn’t as sophisticated as she seemed.
Now she didn’t want him to know such a personal thing about her, didn’t want him to know he’d had any influence in her life. But she had said it impulsively, defending herself against his obvious conviction that she was promiscuous.
He stared at her long and hard. And then laughed. Laughed as if she had just told him the most amusing story he had heard in years.
“I was a virgin!” she said in a raised voice.
He sobered. “Tarini, I won’t even call you a liar because I think you can’t tell the difference between the truth and your lies anymore.”
She slapped him, catching his cheek with the full flatness of her hand. She gasped in horror as the skin broke on a cut to his cheek he had taken in this morning’s explosion.
He caught her wrist and narrowed his gaze. She knew he could hurt her if he wanted, could squeeze her wrist until the bone snapped. She knew it was only his sense of honor that stopped him, that held him in check. Because right then, the animal core of him wanted to pay back her assault.
She prayed for his mercy, but kept her eyes defiantly wide open.
“I’ll warn you once, Tarini. You might be a woman but I’m reaching my limit”
He shoved her away as if she were a snake.
She slumped back into her chair, rubbing the red welt he had left on her wrist.
“I can’t believe you were a virgin, but I’m willing to concede this child is mine,” Austin said. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was scared.”
“Scared be damned! This is the deepest betrayal a woman can commit against a man. Two-timing me was nothing compared to this,” he said, rubbing the wound she had inflicted on his face. “Wait a minute—you weren’t two-timing me at all. You were never with Vlad, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t”
“But you went to him with my child instead of coming to me,” Austin said.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“Wrong? Wrong is hardly a strong enough word.”
“I said I was sorry. I thought you would react badly. There was one time, one time only that I didn’t…that we were so urgent that I didn’t take the precautions I should have. I thought you would blame me, think I was trying to trap you.”
“Why didn’t Vlad tell me or make you tell me?”
“Because I told him that if he breathed a word to you, I’d run, I’d leave, I’d disappear. And he hoped that one day I would agree to tell you. And that someday I would also…come to love him. Love him in a romantic way, that is.”
“And until you got around to making that decision, you two would raise my child as your own in a sham marriage?” he demanded, disbelief washing over his face.
“Yes, that was our plan.”
“Austin Smith’s child raised as a Romanov? I mean, I’d expect Vlad to raise a child of mine if I were dead—but I’m still alive, Tarini, very much alive.”
She could feel his hurt and fury radiating from him, and without meaning to, she sympathized. “He never liked the idea of lying to you,” she explained. “I never did, either. But I knew you didn’t want kids and you never talked about a future for the two of us. You made clear you weren’t that kind of guy. You didn’t want a wife and you certainly didn’t want kids.”
Austin slammed his fist against the headboard. “Of course I didn’t want kids,” he shouted. “Not many men have that longing the way women seem to. And if you had come to me, I would have been upset. No doubt about it.”
“See? You prove my point”
“No, I don’t prove anything. I would have complained and ranted and raved for the first twenty minutes. I don’t have the kind of job, the kind of life, the kind of personality that makes allowances for a child. I might have said things in anger that you wouldn’t have liked. I might have sounded like I didn’t want this child. And then—damn it. Then, Tarini, I would feel exactly like I feel now.”
“Which is?”
He slumped his shoulders and shook his head. “I’m a father,” he said with a touch of wonder. “You’re going to have my baby. And I’m going to be a father. That’s how I feel, Tarini. Can’t you have any sympathy for a man who’s just found out he’s going to be a dad?”
For one blinding instant, she thought he would forgive her. He leaned forward with just the briefest flash of tenderness but then, just as his hand touched hers, he backed off to stare at her with undisguised suspicion.
“Why did you let me believe this is Vlad’s baby when Karinolov went after you? I mean, it’s a very simple matter, Tarini. If you’re carrying my baby, Karinolov doesn’t care about you. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I want to find Vlad,” Tarini said, lifting her chin defiantly.
“Using my child as bait?”
“I never meant to tell you about the baby.”
Austin growled in frustration.
“I…don’t want you taking over my life,” Tarini continued haltingly. “You’re the kind of man who doesn’t let a woman make her own decisions.”
“You’re not going to make your own decisions as long as you’re carrying my baby,” Austin announced. “Because your decisions are utterly wrong.”
“That’s exactly the kind of…”
“Tarini, admit it. You’re wrong.”
“…pigheaded…”
“You’ve screwed up—”
“…chauvinistic…”
“Screwed up big time, Tarini.”
She looked down at the carpet. He was right, but it was so hard to confess to him. Besides, hadn’t he made some mistakes, too?
“Now I’ve got to persuade Karinolov to call off his dogs because you’re carrying my baby,” Austin said in that infuriatingly take-charge way.
“And what about me?”
“You’re staying right here. Knit some booties. Crochet a baby blanket. Have my mom teach you to cook. Do something useful. And Tarini?”
“Yes?”
“Try, really try, not to make matters worse.”
“I won’t put up with this,” she said, rising.
He pushed her back into the chaise.
“You’ve probably made it ten times more difficult to find Vlad by lying about the father of this baby.”
Tarini shook her head as she recognized the truth.
“You’ve screwed up,” he repeated. “Don’t make it worse by disobeying me.”
“I’m not yours
to order around.”
“Wrong, Tarini. You’re mine now and you’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do until after the baby’s born…”
He stared at her.
“And after the baby’s born?” Tarini challenged.
“You’ll still do what I tell you to do,” Austin said. “For at least the next twenty years.”
“And if I don’t agree to this?”
“There’s no agreeing or disagreeing. There’s just doing it.”
Chapter Nine
Austin, exhausted and defeated, took another blindingly hot shower to ease the pain in his shoulder and then he rebandaged the worst of his cuts. He settled his injured body on the bed.
He forced himself to sleep, packing into an hour’s rest the rejuvenation that would have to carry him through the next critical hours.
He didn’t speak to Tarini, but was aware of her sitting in the next room. He could only hope that she understood that he was a man with a mission to complete and then he was hers.
Reluctantly hers.
He wasn’t happy about having a child. It wasn’t something he had wanted, planned on or had ever cared about.
But in the time it took him to drive from New York to the Connecticut farm, he had become as sure of his allegiance to this child as to his family, Vlad and his country. The only difference now was that he had found out the child he had pledged his life to was his own.
And he would protect Tarini’s life, because her life meant his child’s life. He would do whatever it took to ensure her safety, the safety of his child. If he had to go down on his knees before Karinolov, he would. But that didn’t mean he had to like her.
He made that point to Tarini when he was ready to leave. He gave her a few instructions, as well. “Remember. You’re staying here. When I get back from New York, I want to find you here. Right in this room. Preferably in this exact chair. Do you understand me, Tarini?”
She made a tiny pout with her mouth, the same pout that once would have made him hard with animal lust Now it annoyed him. She looked up from the letter she was writing to her friend Toria.
His Kind Of Trouble Page 9
