After a moment he said, ‘I’ve rented an apartment. Let me give you coffee.’
She did look at him then. A bitterly ironic look.
‘Just coffee,’ he said, smiling.
‘It’s late. I have to be at work at seven.’
‘Are you tired?’
Her shoulders lifted in a weary shrug.
‘Of course I’m tired.’
‘When you were dancing you looked as if nothing could tire you, ever.’
Lisa just looked at him.
‘I’ve never seen anyone dance like you,’ Nikolai said, to his own astonishment. This time he meant it and it wasn’t an insult. ‘You dance like a flame.’
But after what he had said earlier Lisa was not impressed. ‘I still get tired like everyone else.’
The limousine cruised through a brief, brilliant oasis of lighted shops. Lisa leaned forward, not sure where she was. Then they turned right, leaving the lights for the shadows of pale Palladian terraces. Nikolai gave crisp directions. Alfredo took them round the railings of a garden square. The trees and bushes stirred in the night breeze.
‘You have to be very rich to live with trees,’ Lisa said, half to herself.
Nikolai was not sure he’d heard her. ‘What was that?’
She didn’t answer. At a word from Nikolai, Alfredo brought the limousine to a halt outside Tatiana’s house. It was in darkness.
Lisa scrambled out onto the pavement. She reached back for her briefcase. And found that Nikolai was already out of the car, carrying it.
‘If you won’t come to me, then I’ll take a coffee from you.’
It was an order. It sounded as if he was used to giving orders, Lisa thought. She did not waver.
‘I need my sleep.’
He looked down at her. The faint breeze lifted her hair like a caress. His caress. He didn’t move but Lisa felt as if he was touching her, just by the way he looked at her.
‘And do you think you’ll sleep if you go in alone now?’ Nikolai said softly.
‘Of course I—’
Without any warning, he dropped her briefcase and hauled her against him. Under her jacket, his hands were hot on the bared skin of her waist.
For a moment Lisa froze into immobility. Then she gave a muffled scream of fury and came alive. She writhed strenuously against his hold, pushing him away.
Nikolai drew a sharp breath. Briefly, the hard arms relaxed. For a moment she thought he was going to let her go. She stopped fighting…
He kissed her. Unexpected as a summer storm—and as fierce. His tongue probed and his hands were hard. And he was not teasing.
Lisa had been kissed more times than she could remember. Sometimes when she hadn’t been expecting it. Even, once or twice, when she’d been angry. But never, never like this.
She could feel the determination in him. She pushed against him but her hands felt weak as water. Under the cotton waistcoat his chest was warm, in spite of being naked to the night air. The soft hairs were silky—another surprise—and shockingly pleasurable. The sensation made her shiver.
He felt it. Lisa heard him give a low growl of triumph. The strong hands tightened round her waist and then moved upwards, as if he were feeling for something. She felt his palm on her shoulderblade, possessive.
He moved her body so easily. It was as if she had no will or muscles of her own. As if he knew she had no ability to resist. Her head fell back, in spite of herself.
‘Take me inside,’ he murmured against her throat.
For a hectic moment she didn’t know whether he meant her home or her body. Or both. And, crazily, did not care. She almost agreed to let him in and go wherever it took her…
But then she opened her eyes. Behind his head she saw the elegant sweep of the terrace, the chauffeur-driven car. A cold thought struck: this is a rich man playing a game. A clever game, but a game none the less. She had been here before and it hurt.
Nikolai felt her turn to a block of wood in his arms. He raised his head.
‘What is it?’
Lisa didn’t say anything. She didn’t fight against his constraining hold. She simply stood there, locked in his arms, looking at him in the yellow streetlight.
He let her go. She didn’t step away from him, but she was unresponsive to her fingertips.
‘You change your mind fast,’ Nikolai said. Anger licked through the smooth tones.
Lisa picked up her briefcase.
‘No, I don’t. I’ve always said I didn’t want to have anything to do with you.’ To her own astonishment she sounded quite cool about it. Even self-possessed. She was pleased with herself.
‘Are you denying you wanted me just now?’
She looked at him levelly, not speaking.
‘Liar.’
Lisa stayed cool. ‘Sexual attraction can be a powerful drug,’ she said judicially. ‘Fortunately with me it wears off before I do anything stupid.’
Nikolai was affronted. ‘Stupid! How—convenient.’
‘A life-saver,’ Lisa agreed. She nodded to him briskly, as if they were parting after a business meeting. ‘Thanks for the lift home. Goodnight.’
‘Not yet,’ said Nikolai.
He put a hand on her arm. Her cool shattered into a thousand pieces.
‘Let—’
But her words died on her lips at his expression. She stood very still, shaking.
‘One question,’ said Nikolai. His eyes were chips of dark glass.
‘I’m not telling you one thing about Tatiana or—’
‘Forget Tatiana,’ he said curtly. ‘It’s not about her.’
‘W-well?’
Nikolai sounded furious. ‘Who was the man who didn’t turn up tonight?’
It was the last thing Lisa had expected. She stared, uncomprehending.
‘The empty chair next to you.’ He said it as if it was wrenched out of him. ‘Who should have been in it?’
Lisa’s only answer was a look of contempt. She pulled her arm out of his grip and turned away without a word.
Nikolai took an impetuous step forward. Then stopped, as if he had reined himself in with a force field.
She managed not to run up the front steps, though she wanted to. She felt his eyes on her all the way. His frustration was like a heat source at her back.
Her fingers shook as she inserted her key. She masked the tremor from Nikolai as best she could, opened the door and slipped inside. She did not look back.
Lisa did not have a good day. Sam had already heard about her behaviour at the dinner and lost no time in hitting the roof.
‘Look,’ he said, shaking a glossy photograph at her. It showed her glaring at Nikolai Ivanov as if he had just given her poison instead of a prestigious award. ‘What do you think people are going to think when they see that?’
Lisa shrugged. ‘That the man is insufferable?’
Sam almost danced with fury. ‘That Napier Kraus bond dealers are a bunch of wild animals, that’s what. Do you think clients will want to deal with us when it looks as if you’re going to bite them in the fleshy part of the leg as soon as look at them?’
Lisa was angry and tired, and Nikolai Ivanov had caused her a near sleepless night. But Sam spitting over a public relations shot was too good a joke to miss. Against all expectation, she laughed.
He glared at her evilly. ‘I’ve already had Roger Maurice from Financial Monthly on the phone, wanting to know if you were always like that. I bet he’ll put something in his Rumours column.’
Lisa gave him a cheeky grin. ‘Free publicity, Sam.’
He gave a howl. ‘Bad publicity is always free.’
She shrugged again. ‘As long as they put in my trading figures as well, it won’t be bad,’ she said cynically.
‘You’ve got to call him. Apologise.’
Lisa went very still. ‘Call who?’ she asked, deceptively mild.
‘The explorer chap. The guy who handed out the awards.’
‘No way,’ said Lisa, still m
ild.
Sam went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I got a number for him from Maurice.’
He passed a piece of paper across his desk. Lisa looked at it as if it was something disgusting. She did not pick it up.
‘I said no.’
‘You’ve got to. He was the Association’s guest. And you made him uncomfortable.’
Lisa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Has he been complaining?’
Sam became evasive. ‘Well, if he has, he has justification, doesn’t he?’
‘Justification?’ Lisa was outraged.
Sam stabbed a finger down on the unflattering photograph. ‘Picture says it all.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t say a single thing about why I looked like that.’
‘Oh, come on, Lisa. Don’t play the injured female. If the guy pinched your bottom, I bet you asked for it. Anyway, you’re quite capable of crunching him.’
‘He did not,’ said Lisa furiously, ‘pinch my bottom.’
‘Well, then—’
‘We’d met before. He was—insulting.’
‘Met before?’ Sam stared. ‘You and Count Ivanov? I don’t believe it.’
‘Believe what you want.’ Lisa was upset, not least because she had said more than she’d meant to. ‘Just get this: I’m not—ever—apologising to that man. In fact, I’m not going near him again. And there’s nothing you can do to make me. And if you think my showing my midriff to the bond traders of London is going to make one iota of difference to my profit figures, you’re more stupid than I thought you were. Now—is that all? I’d like to be back at my desk and do what I’m paid for.’
‘Count Ivanov?’ Sam was dazed. ‘And you?’
Lisa gave an elaborate sigh. ‘You are such a snob, Sam. We live on the same planet, you know.’
‘An East End kid with attitude?’
She flushed. But she managed to shrug. ‘Some guys just like slumming, I guess. Now, can I get back to work or is there something else you’d like to shout about?’
Sam choked. ‘Get out.’
Lisa sauntered to the door. It was deliberate, designer insolence. It was too much for Sam.
‘And get yourself some decent clothes,’ he shouted after her.
It followed her out into the dealing room. Several people looked up, intrigued. Lisa flung herself down in front of her screen and concentrated furiously.
She successfully blanked out Sam’s complaints. What she could not get rid of was the uncomfortable memory of Nikolai Ivanov. Or—if she was honest—not so much Nikolai as the way she had, just for a moment, responded to him.
He was exactly the sort of man she had learned to mistrust, she thought—superior, arrogant, pleased with himself. The sort of man who thought a girl with no advantages but her brain and her determination was negligible. No—worse. He was the sort of man who thought the only important thing about a girl, any girl, was the way she looked. And the way she responded to him.
So how could she have done just that? Lisa’s whole body burned with shame when she thought about it. She had melted in his arms, just as he’d expected her to. He pressed the right buttons and she turned into exactly the sort of stupid, clinging, trembling creature that she most despised. She did not know who she angrier with—Nikolai Ivanov or herself.
She made some savagely profitable deals that afternoon.
‘Hey. You drive a hard bargain,’ said Rob with admiration, as he peered over her shoulder at her latest.
Lisa showed her teeth to the dealing screen.
‘I’ll show them I’m no pussy-cat.’
‘You are so right,’ he agreed fervently.
She had a highly rewarding afternoon. It left her too high to relax. So when she got home she showered and changed, then restlessly opened the French windows and went outside.
The twilight was damp, and smelled of new leaves. A bird she didn’t recognise was singing in one of the tall trees. It was almost impossible to believe that her childhood tenement, with its peeling paint, dark, damp walls and pervading smell of the gasworks existed in the same universe. Lisa smiled wryly at the thought.
The communal garden was designed so that each house had its own private plot. These made a densely planted fringe of individual eccentricity, which then gave on to the main sweep of lawn, formal beds and trees. Tatiana had paved her plot, but it was so covered with pots and planters, to say nothing of the climbers clinging to the walls, that it looked like a jungle.
Lisa pushed aside a matted luxuriance of jasmine and thorny rose branches to reveal a stone trough, green with age. It was filled with heady-scented white hyacinths. She breathed in the scent appreciatively.
‘Lisa?’
There was a clatter on the spiral staircase that led down from Tatiana’s sitting room. Lisa looked up, peering through the tangle of climbing rose.
‘Yes.’ It sounded ungracious. She had really wanted to be alone. But this was Tatiana’s place, after all. Lisa pulled herself together and tried to be civil. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘You didn’t. Hang on.’ Tatiana ran down the iron steps, negotiating a tray of seedlings on the way. ‘How are you? I haven’t seen you for a couple of days.’
‘I’ve had a lot going on,’ said Lisa evasively.
Nikolai Ivanov had already occupied too much of her thoughts today. The last thing she wanted was a tête-à-tête with his aunt. She would not be tempted to ask her about him, Lisa told herself. Of course she wouldn’t. Still, there was no point in testing her resolution to breaking point.
Tatiana peered at her. ‘Something wrong?’
Lisa was startled. ‘What should be wrong?’
‘You look—I don’t know—jumpy.’
Lisa grinned. “‘Wired” is what we call it in the trade.’
‘Working too hard?’
‘And winning,’ amplified Lisa with satisfaction. ‘Achievement is a great buzz. I like to win.’
‘You sound like Nicki.’
Lisa tensed. ‘Oh?’
‘My nephew Nikolai,’ Tatiana said innocently. ‘The one you met on Sunday. He’s quite determined to make me do what he wants.’
‘Surprise me,’ muttered Lisa.
Tatiana looked mischievous. ‘He’s so determined to keep an eye on me, he’s even taken a flat round here somewhere.’
Lisa just managed not to say that she already knew.
‘Creep.’
‘Well, I thought it was a bit uncalled for,’ Tatiana agreed, hiding a smile. ‘I said he ought to come round one evening for a drink and meet you. Just to see that he’s making a fuss about nothing.’
Lisa looked at her with blank horror. ‘Oh I don’t think that would be a good idea at all.’
‘But he’s got all these terrible ideas about you—’
‘I know, and I’ll make him sorry.
‘What?’ said Tatiana, bewildered.
Lisa pulled herself together. ‘Tatiana, have you taken that contract I gave you to your solicitor yet?’ she said suspiciously.
Tatiana looked shifty.
‘Or banked my cheque?’
‘I’m spending a lot of time at the studio,’ she hedged.
Lisa sighed. ‘Listen, I’m with you. I think your nephew Nikolai is an interfering pig. But if you don’t get a legal agreement about my tenancy sorted out, he has got a point,’ she said with regret. ‘For Heaven’s sake, get your lawyer to deal with it.’
Tatiana gave in. ‘I’ll talk to Mr Harrison.’
‘Anything. Just get rid of him. Please.’
It was heartfelt.
CHAPTER FIVE
LISA hoped that was the end of it. But she had reckoned without the persistence that had carried Tatiana through the creation of several ballets, in spite of the contribution of some highly volatile temperaments. She turned up at the French doors later, bearing a dish of lopsided meringues and a spuriously domestic expression.
It didn’t take her long to get down to business, though. ‘I don’t thi
nk you like Nicki.’
Lisa had been going through her wardrobe. It was a depressing business. Now she put down a skirt with a ripped hem and considered her answer.
‘I think you could say our feelings are mutual,’ she said carefully.
Tatiana looked amused and wise. Lisa found herself seeking desperately for a reason that would satisfy his aunt without actually being slanderous. Rather to her surprise she came up with one. It was even genuine.
‘He said I was scruffy.’
She could still hear the tone of amused contempt in which he had said it. And last night he had implied that her appearance was even less respectable than that. But Lisa was not going to waste time thinking about that. It hadn’t stopped him wanting to put his hands all over her, had it? She couldn’t repress a little shiver at the memory.
‘Nikolai has been spoilt,’ announced Tatiana. ‘All his girlfriends have been fashion plates. He doesn’t know it, of course. Although I must say, my dear, you don’t seem very interested in clothes.’
Lisa gave a choke of laughter and pushed the sad little pile of mending away from her.
‘That’s what everyone keeps telling me.’
‘Then perhaps Nicki was not so wrong, after all. Do you—er—want to change your wardrobe at all?’
Lisa shrugged. ‘No time. No money,’ she said succinctly.
Tatiana was all understanding. ‘You do need one or the other,’ she agreed. ‘Or some first-class advice.’ She hesitated. ‘I know quite a lot about dressing ballets on a budget,’ she said tentatively.
Lisa was rueful. ‘What do you know about turning out City executives to look like they’re dressed in Versace on a budget?’
‘Mmm. Hard one. I’ll need to think about it.’
‘Do that. Let me know if you find an answer,’ Lisa said lightly.
Tatiana took the hint and left.
By now Lisa had well and truly come down from her high. There was a new science fiction serial on television and Tatiana’s ethnic cushions were designed for comfort and laziness. She stretched out luxuriously. She had her bare toes under a tapestry cushion and a plate of hot buttered toast on the inlaid coffee table beside her when the doorbell rang.
She almost didn’t answer. A shadowy monster was lumping out of the wetlands in pursuit of the inter-galactic detective and she was on tenterhooks to know what happened next. But the bell rang again, more insistently. Lisa sighed, kicked aside the cushion, and ran lightly upstairs.
The Millionaire Affair Page 9
