‘No,’ she groaned. She pulled the pillow over her head, blocking both ears. ‘Go away.’
But it rang again, insistently. Lisa gave up. Blearily she swung her legs out of bed and felt for a robe. Failing to find one, she pulled last night’s coat round her instead.
As the bell rang for the third time she trod heavily up the stairs, muttering.
‘What is it? Don’t you know it’s Sunday?’ she growled as she flung the door open.
Nikolai Ivanov blinked. There was not much that shook him. He had a cool and generally well-justified confidence that there was nothing he had not seen before. But Lisa was a new phenomenon, even to a man of his experience.
He took an involuntary step backwards, his eyes widening in stunned silence. He would have said that he had seen all the weirder life forms, but he had never before encountered Lisa Romaine after a heavy night’s clubbing. Getting back at five in the morning she had, quite literally, taken off her clothes and tumbled into bed. As a result her hair was still full of last night’s rainbow colours, though some of the spikes had been flattened in sleep. She was also sporting panda shadows round her eyes from unstable mascara. To say nothing of her pugnacious expression.
Nikolai stared in appalled fascination. And found he could think of nothing to say.
‘Well?’ demanded Lisa.
The man on the doorstop was so tall it hurt her neck to look up at him. Squinting into the morning sun, Lisa made out high, haughty cheekbones and deep brown eyes under lazy lids. It was an arrogant face. And spectacularly handsome.
‘What do you want?’ she said, thoroughly put out.
Lisa did not like handsome men. She had learned the hard way that they tended to be more in love with themselves than any woman who happened to cross their path. It had soured her.
The handsome stranger scrutinised her for several unnerving seconds. It did nothing to mollify her.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
Lisa gave him an evil look.
‘I’m the householder. I was fast asleep.’
He looked taken aback. Then, as if in spite of himself, he looked her up and down in one comprehensive survey. His mouth twitched.
‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ he murmured.
Lisa did not like being laughed at. She ran her hand through the residual spikes and glared.
‘Either tell me what you want or go away.’
‘Well, I did want to see the householder,’ Nikolai admitted.
He should, of course, have demanded Tatiana immediately. But now the shock had worn off he found he was intrigued by this apparition. In her bare feet she came no higher than his chest. Yet she seemed quite unconscious of being at any sort of disadvantage. She might be half asleep, but she was still definitely punching her weight, he thought. He admired that.
Lisa folded her arms with exaggerated patience. It was a mistake because it made her coat gape. That revealed, if Nikolai had not already guessed it, that she was wearing nothing underneath.
He did not pretend that he hadn’t noticed. His eyes widened and he stared openly. And if he did not actually laugh aloud, he did not try to disguise his amusement.
What he did disguise—at least Nikolai hoped so—was his sudden rush of pleasure at the sight. It was unexpected, unwelcome and deeply primitive. That intrigued him, too. He was in no rush to demand Tatiana until he had explored this feeling further.
Lisa seemed oblivious. ‘You want to see me? You’re seeing me,’ she pointed out. ‘So—?’
Nikolai let his eyes drift down. ‘I am indeed,’ he agreed, in suave appreciation.
Lisa was used to being teased. You did not survive in the dealing room if you let it bother you. Normally she ignored it. Now, after a quick look down, she clutched the coat together more securely over her breasts.
‘What do you want?’ she yelled, losing patience.
‘I want to see the lady who owns this place,’ he said more sharply.
Now that he’d had time to reflect on more than that distracting cleavage, Nikolai’s amusement was abating abruptly. Where was Tatiana? Why did this gamine not mention her? Could it be that Pauli was right and his aunt had gone mad and signed over her home to some unknown waif off the street? Nikolai had been certain his grandfather was panicking unnecessarily. Now, for the first time, he wasn’t sure.
Lisa saw the suspicion darken his eyes. It made him look like a tiger, watchful and dangerous. It contrasted oddly with his beautifully cut City suit. Somehow it just made him seem all the more powerful. And who the hell wore suits on a Sunday, anyway?
Then she remembered: Rob had warned her that Sam would make sure the bank checked up on the suitability of her new address. Surely he had just been winding her up? Surely it couldn’t be true? But, with his suit and tie on a Sunday morning, what else did this man resemble but a banker at work? In fact, now she looked, she saw he even had a briefcase.
She said defiantly, ‘I live here. Lisa Romaine, as it no doubt says in your dossier. Do you want a signature, or will you now go away and leave me in peace?’
The tiger’s eyes narrowed to slits.
‘And what has happened to Madame Lepatkina?’
Whatever Lisa had expected it was not that. In the act of closing the door, she hesitated.
‘Tatiana?’ she said, bewildered. How did her employers know about Tatiana?
‘Well, at least you admit she exists,’ the man said grimly.
He shouldered his way past her into the hall and shut the door behind him. In the narrow hall he seemed even taller. She wished she were wearing heels. Or shoes. Or anything. She huddled the coat round her.
Nikolai saw her sudden uncertainty and pressed home his advantage.
‘Now, let’s start again. Where is Tatiana?’
Lisa shrugged. Then remembered and grabbed the coat tight again.
‘I haven’t a clue. Why didn’t you try knocking?’
He was disconcerted. ‘There is only one bell,’ he said, after a tiny pause.
‘I know,’ she said nastily. ‘Mine. If you want to talk to Tatiana you use the knocker. Big black thing? Gargoyle’s face? You can’t miss it.’
She made to open the door on him again, but one look at him barring the way changed her mind. In spite of the suit he gave the impression of being solidly muscled. She frowned, swung round and thumped on Tatiana’s door. There was no answer.
Lisa looked at her big Mickey Mouse watch. ‘I suppose she might have gone shopping,’ she said uncertainly.
‘On a Sunday?’
She looked at him with dislike. ‘This is cosmopolitan Notting Hill. You can shop any day you like.’
‘And any time you like as well,’ he pointed out. ‘So why would Tatiana go shopping at the exact hour she knew I was coming to see her?’
Lisa seized the opportunity to look him up and down, in just the same way as he had done.
‘You might just have answered your own question,’ she drawled with deliberate insolence.
He was clearly disconcerted. Not used to people being less than delighted to see him. Lisa thought sourly. The thought rang a faint bell in her head.
She didn’t have time to pursue it. The man was knocking at the door to Tatiana’s part of the house. There was no answer. He looked back at Lisa, all the way down that haughty nose.
‘Do you have a key to Tatiana’s place?’
‘No,’ said Lisa.
His mouth tightened. He looked very determined. The inner bell rang louder.
She said grudgingly, ‘I could go up through the garden and see if she’s there.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s an idea. All right.’
“‘Thank you very much, Miss Romaine”,’ Lisa muttered.
He did not appear to hear.
Lisa thumped her way bad-temperedly down the stairs. She was sure nothing had happened to Tatiana. She had met her in the hall last night, off to attend a ballet recital, looking stupendously glamorous and about half he
r age. She had probably just gone out to avoid this pestilential stranger. What was more, Lisa didn’t blame her.
She turned round to shout as much up to him, and found he was close on her heels.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, swaying backwards in shock.
He caught the lapels of her coat and steadied her.
And that was another shock. The backs of his fingers brushed against the softness of her upper breasts. It was only a touch, but it felt as if he had branded her. Lisa heard her own intake of breath. In the narrow space of the staircase it sounded as loud as a warning siren.
‘Whoa,’ she said, shaken.
Nikolai was shaken too. But his control was better than hers. And his recovery time was not affected by a series of late nights.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, his expression enigmatic.
‘You startled me,’ she muttered. ‘I didn’t expect you to come with me.’
‘I could hardly leave you to climb into Tatiana’s on your own.’
‘Climb in?’ said Lisa, startled.
‘If necessary.’
She glared at him for a frustrated moment. Then shrugged and led the way downstairs.
Her small kitchen diner stretched the width of the house. Tall French windows gave on to the garden. Lisa waved a hand at them.
‘Help yourself. Security key’s on the table. I’ll get some clothes on.’
He acknowledged that with the merest flicker of the opaque brown eyes. But Lisa could sense his amusement as if he had laughed out loud. Suddenly she realised what it must be like to blush. She whisked into her bedroom and closed the door between them with a decisive bang.
She returned in three minutes, in grubby jeans and a cropped shirt. She had stuffed her feet into deck shoes and tied a scarf round her hair, but she hadn’t done anything about the ravages of last night’s make-up. To tell the truth, Lisa had forgotten it. But to the man awaiting her it looked like a deliberate statement that she didn’t care how he saw her.
Once again he felt that unexpected, unwanted kick of interest. Crazy, he told himself.
‘Well?’ said Lisa.
He had opened her French windows. An ironwork spiral staircase went up from the garden to Tatiana’s balcony. There was a tray of seedlings and a watering can on the stair. He indicated them with a gesture.
‘Well, if she’s in the garden, of course she didn’t hear us,’ said Lisa, disgusted. She thought about what she had just said. She didn’t like the way she had coupled them together like that. ‘You,’ she corrected herself. ‘Of course she didn’t hear you.’ She raised her voice to the volume that could cut through the buzz of a hundred-man dealing room. ‘Tatiana! Where are you?’
Nikolai winced. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to go and look? It is Sunday morning, after all. Some people are probably still sleeping. Or—’
Or in bed making love. He did not say it. But Lisa’s eyes flew to his in shocked and instant comprehension.
And this time she did blush. She couldn’t help it. Disbelieving, she pressed her hands to her face and felt the heat there. She could never remember blushing in her life before.
And the man laughed. He looked her up and down with those cat’s eyes, suddenly lazily appreciative, and he laughed.
‘Oh, find her yourself,’ snarled Lisa.
She whipped back into her flat and banged the door.
CHAPTER TWO
NIKOLAI cornered his aunt under a silver birch and came swiftly to the point.
‘Who is she?’
Tatiana looked at her great-nephew in surprise. Nikolai could be very irritating. But he was usually much too laid-back to lose his temper in her experience. Now he was looking positively grim.
‘You sound just like your Uncle Dmitri. In fact in that ridiculous suit you even look like him.’
They both knew it was not a compliment. Dmitri Ivanov was a merchant banker in New York. Tatiana thought Dmitri was a pompous ass and frequently said so at family reunions.
Nikolai waved the irrelevance aside impatiently.
‘Who is she?’
Tatiana sighed and put down her trowel. She had been enjoying her gardening. ‘Who is who?’
‘The fierce person in the basement.’
In the middle of stripping off her gloves, Tatiana stopped, arrested. ‘Lisa? My tenant Lisa? She’s not fierce.’
Nikolai grimaced. ‘She is if you get her out of bed before she’s ready,’ he said with feeling. ‘She nearly bit my head off.’
‘Oh?’
Tatiana stared into the middle distance, suddenly thoughtful.
‘So where did she come from?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Lisa Whatever-her-name-is,’ Nikolai said impatiently. ‘Where did you find her?’
Tatiana remained distracted. ‘Oh, around,’ she said vaguely.
Nikolai curbed his irritation. Tatiana, he reminded himself, was old and eccentric, and probably worried about money.
So he said carefully, ‘Why this sudden urge to become a landlady again?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve always let out rooms when I needed to.’
‘But the point is,’ said Nikolai patiently, ‘you don’t need to. I went through the figures last year and I saw your accountant again a couple of days ago. You don’t need to do this. You can pay your way easily.’
Tatiana sniffed. Since she had given Pauli carte blanche to manage her affairs more than forty years ago, she could hardly claim that this was high-handed. But she could and did say that her decision was nothing to do with Nikolai.
‘I like Lisa. I wanted her to have the flat.’
Nikolai looked at her narrowly. ‘Is running the house getting too much for you?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Tatiana impatiently. ‘I have a cleaner twice a week. What more do I need?’
‘You are lonely, then?’
‘I do too much to be lonely.’
‘Then why—?’
Tatiana folded her lips together stubbornly. ‘I told you. I like her. She needed somewhere to live and I—’
He pounced on it. ‘Needed. Aha. She is a vagrant. From what I saw this morning, I can well believe it.’
‘Oh, Nicki, don’t be pompous. Of course she’s not a vagrant.’
‘What do you know about her? Have you taken any references?’
‘No, but—’
‘I knew it. She is exploiting you.’
‘Nikolai, will you listen to me? She has a perfectly good job.’
‘Doing what?’
Tatiana had to admit she didn’t know. She had simply not taken in what Lisa did for a living and had only the vaguest idea of where she worked.
Aware of this, she said defensively, ‘I have known her for over a year. We go to the same dance studio.’
Nikolai was not stupid enough to look triumphant. But the faint hint of scepticism about his mouth infuriated Tatiana.
‘And she is not exploiting me. In fact she’s the one who has been insisting that we have a legal agreement.’
If anything, Nikolai’s scepticism increased.
‘Protecting her position,’ he diagnosed. ‘Very shrewd.’
‘You know, it’s very unhealthy, always thinking the worst of people. It gives you ulcers,’ Tatiana informed him.
‘So do great-aunts,’ said Nikolai ruefully. He sobered. ‘Now, are you going to ask her for references? Because if you don’t I will.’
Tatiana looked infuriatingly ethereal. ‘You must learn to trust more.’
‘Right. I’ll deal with it.’
He marched off without waiting for a reply. Tatiana did not permit herself to smile until there was no chance of his turning round and seeing it. But as soon as he was out of sight she threw her gloves up in the air and gave a whoop of triumph.
‘Yes!’
Lisa heard the shout. By that time she had just about stopped dancing with rage. She had got to the point where she didn’t know if she was angrier with herself for being so stupid,
or Tatiana’s visitor for being so arrogant.
Considering it, she realised that neither was the main course of her fury. It was the way he’d looked at her! Nobody looked at her like that. Nobody dared.
Angrily she stripped off her clothes and stamped into the bathroom. The floor-to-ceiling mirror showed her a slim figure, pale and shaking with temper—and a clown’s mask of smudged paint.
Lisa was taken aback. She leaned towards the mirror, fingering the mascara experimentally. It spread.
If that was what he’d seen, maybe there was some excuse for the way he’d looked at her. It couldn’t be often that the door was opened to a man like that by the Thing from the Black Lagoon. A brief laugh shook Lisa at the thought.
But then she took a firm grip of her anger again. Somehow she needed that anger; she didn’t know why. Nobody had a right to look another person up and down as if they were a thing, she assured herself. Even if they were looking a little strange at the time. If she ever saw him again—which of course she did not want to—she would tell him so.
She stepped into the steaming shower and prepared to put him out of her mind.
Ten minutes later she was still polishing the scathing things she would never now have the opportunity of saying to him and surveying her fridge blankly. One packet of carrots, going mouldy. One carton of milk, rancid. Two bottles of mineral water. She needed coffee and she hated it black. So—
A glance out of the French windows she had locked in the hateful man’s face told Lisa that it was raining. It looked cold, too. She really did not want to go out. But her stomach rumbled threateningly.
Quiet, she told it. Black coffee won’t hurt you for once. I’ll give the man time to go and then I’ll borrow some milk from Tatiana.
She sat down to wait. But the morning stretched into lunchtime, and there was no sound of the front door closing behind him. Lisa looked at the rain, now falling in a sheet.
‘Damn,’ she said.
She fetched an umbrella.
Nikolai was angry. He was sitting in his hired car, watching his aunt’s house like a private eye. It felt seedy and faintly ludicrous. He didn’t like either sensation.
Something else that was the fault of the downstairs tenant, he thought. On top of defying him, and then making him feel as if he was holding onto his control by the thinnest of threads! It was intolerable. It had to be put right. He had told Tatiana that he would deal with it. So he would.
The Millionaire Affair Page 3
