‘I was with your boss. It was you who left me your business card, after all.’ He shrugged. ‘I checked. He invited me in. As I say, it was instructive.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Lisa. It was a lie. ‘Now, please will you give me my waist-pouch? I’ve got a lot to do this morning and I’d like to get on.’
Nikolai didn’t move from the mantelpiece. ‘And is it true?’
‘Of course it—’ Lisa checked. ‘Is what true?’
‘Do you really not need a man?’ he reminded her.
‘Oh, puh-lease!’ She was exasperated.
‘Because you told me that you lived with one man at a time. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone else living in Tatiana’s basement at the moment.’
He watched her closely. He was not going to tell her that he had met Alec Palmer. Not yet, anyway. He wanted her to tell him about Alec herself. He wanted there to be a reason for the break-up that was more than her upwardly mobile career. He waited.
Lisa looked at him with hot eyes. ‘My bag.’
Nikolai’s shoulders slumped.
‘Your boss is wrong, isn’t he?’ he said slowly.
‘My bag.’
‘You’re not a party girl at all. Though for your own reasons you choose to pretend you are. You’re a career woman going places. And nothing is more important than that.’
‘Well, at least it’s better than hanging around snooping on people,’ Lisa snapped, goaded. ‘You obviously don’t have any career at all.’
Nikolai was taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would turn his own arguments against him. He had no defence prepared.
Lisa was in a rage. ‘Why bother with the explorer bit?’ she said with contempt. ‘Or is it a rich man’s hobby to take you somewhere warm in winter?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you think I’m rich?’
She shrugged.
‘Did you ask?’
‘Why shouldn’t I? Are you the only one allowed to check up on other people?’ she flashed.
‘I wasn’t asking about your wealth.’
‘Yes, you were. Along with a whole load of other things.’ She gave him a nasty smile. ‘I’m just not as nosy as you. I don’t care how many girlfriends you have.’
She spied her waist-pouch. It must have fallen off when he’d carried her in. It was lying half hidden under the sofa. She caught it up with a cry of triumph.
‘Now,’ she said, running impatient fingers through her hair, ‘I’m going. I’ll keep my part of the bargain because I’m fond of Tatiana, and I think you probably are too. But that’s all. No more spying. No more little talks. Right?’
Nikolai was white with rage. ‘Right,’ he snarled.
Lisa spent an unsatisfactory weekend. She tidied the flat, read the end of week forecasts that the economists delivered on Friday afternoons, did some alternative projections, tried to relax. It was no use. Every time she looked up from her work, every time she closed the door on a newly tidied cupboard, she saw Nikolai Ivanov’s face.
‘It’s just because he made me mad,’ Lisa said to the bathroom mirror.
But it wasn’t, and she knew it. Plenty of men made her mad. She didn’t see Alec Palmer’s face every time she closed her eyes. Even Terry Long, who had done a number on her which at one time she’d thought was terminal, hadn’t haunted her like this.
But Nikolai was different. He had got under her skin, with that arrogance, that mockery—and that terrifyingly seductive attention. He had a way of listening to you as if what you were saying was the most significant thing he had ever heard.
‘Marketing,’ said Lisa loudly.
She knew about marketing. Terry had told her she was a marvel, the real thing, an original talent. And the fact that she came from a poor background with minimal education only made her instincts for business more acute. He had called her his little savage. But when he’d taken her to bed she had been his lamb.
Lisa closed her eyes, wincing. OK, she had been eighteen and in love, but there was still no excuse for being quite such an idiot. When he’d been offered the New York job she’d found out what he’d really thought.
‘Oh, come on, Lisa. You knew it was just a bit of fun,’ he had said, with that wide false smile she had come to hate.
Lisa didn’t know what to say. Her silence irritated Terry.
‘You didn’t think I was going to marry you?’ He gave a loud laugh.
‘You said we were alike,’ she said, bewildered. She still didn’t understand what was happening. ‘You said you admired me.’
Terry was impatient with this naivety.
‘Of course I did. Any man would. You didn’t have to take it as gospel.’
‘So you were just pretending?’
‘The working class is so literal-minded,’ he complained. ‘I was marketing, darling. Marketing.’
Lisa looked at him and realised that she had never seen the real man before, though she had slept in his arms night after night for months and thought she could rely on him for ever.
She said slowly, ‘Do you even like me?’
‘Not when you’re being difficult,’ Terry admitted, with unusual honesty.
That was when Lisa began to fight back. Her chin came up in a characteristic gesture.
‘So why have you been wasting your time?’
‘You’re fun,’ he said simply.
‘I see.’ Lisa’s tone was dry. ‘Trash, but fun.’
He grinned. ‘Tough, too.’ He meant it as a compliment.
Lisa determined from that moment that she would be tough indeed. It seemed the only way to survive.
It didn’t change her radically. She still liked men. She went out with them. But she made sure that her heart stayed detached.
And she had been happy with the way she ran her life. She refused to commit herself but she had her own code and honoured it. In a relationship she was tender, passionate and fun. When it was over, she was scrupulous. It had seemed a good way to live.
Until Nikolai Ivanov had stormed into her life with his unflattering assumptions and his sexy eyes. And made her question everything she’d thought she’d had sorted out for years. Not least what she wanted herself.
Do you really not need a man? The husky voice reverberated around in her memory, mocking her.
‘Damn,’ said Lisa.
And stamped out to seek comfort from her friends.
Nikolai rang his grandfather.
‘I’m staying on,’ he said curtly.
Pauli’s heart sank. He had half expected this. ‘The Borneo expedition?’
‘Good heavens, no. There’s some mystery about the woman who is living with Tatiana.’ His rage had cooled, but it had left him all the more determined. ‘I’m not leaving London until I find out what it is.’
‘Oh.’ Pauli digested this. ‘But you said yesterday that Harrison was satisfied she’d behaved properly over the tenancy agreement.’
Nikolai snorted. ‘She’s too clever to do anything illegal.’
There was a brief silence. Then Pauli said, ‘Nicki, are you sure you aren’t getting this out of proportion? I mean, in the end it’s Tatiana’s business who she takes into her house.’
‘I finish what I start,’ said Nikolai.
His grandfather said slowly, ‘This isn’t just to prove a point, is it?’
‘What point?’ said Nikolai, impatient.
‘That all women respond if you take a firm line with them.’
For a moment Nikolai was speechless. Then he remembered their conversation at the wedding.
‘You have a thoroughly inconvenient memory,’ he told his grandfather. ‘And I wouldn’t put money on the chances of any man taking a firm line with Lisa Romaine.’
‘Oh?’ His grandfather sounded a lot more cheerful all of a sudden. ‘She sounds interesting. Perhaps Tatiana would bring her to visit if we asked. Your grandmother would like to meet her.’
Nikolai was no fool. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warned h
is grandfather softly. ‘My girl. My fight. Stay out of it.’
The sun came out in a blaze of early summer. It turned the garden beyond Lisa’s window into a green tapestry. The warmth nearly lured her away from the necessary task of reviewing her wardrobe. But Lisa was firm with herself.
The situation was desperate. Consulted about the ripped jacket, even Lisa’s mother had had to admit it was beyond repair. Which left Lisa with only one business jacket of any description and no summer clothes she could wear to work at all.
Nikolai Ivanov was right. She was scruffy. Other people had said the same thing, of course. But for some reason it was Nikolai’s contempt that she remembered. And it hurt.
She climbed into frayed shorts and a tee shirt and took a mug of coffee out into the sunshine. She reviewed her options, frowning. There were other people in the gardens today, but no one disturbed her as she sat on the damp grass, her back against the trunk of a copper beech.
Or no one except Tatiana. She came up wearing ragged cotton dungarees and, if Lisa was any judge, several hundred pounds’ worth of silk headscarf to keep the twigs off her hair.
‘You look preoccupied. What’s the matter?’
Lisa told her. In detail.
‘Ah,’ said Tatiana. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Do you use charity shops?’
Lisa pulled a face. ‘I hoped I’d got past that. My mother used to get everything there when we were children.’
‘There are charities and charities,’ said Tatiana professionally. ‘Go to one in a smart area, where the cocktail party classes are throwing out things they’ve worn a couple of times, and you can get some very nice stuff indeed. Especially if you’re as slim as you are.’
‘Where do I find the smart areas, then?’
Tatiana smiled at her innocence. ‘Here. Holland Park. Kensington. Chelsea—there are several if you wander down the King’s Road.’
‘Sounds like hard work,’ said Lisa morosely.
But Tatiana refused to repress her enthusiasm. ‘It will be fun. I’ll just wash the dirt off my hands and we’ll get going.’
Lisa threw up her hands, laughing. ‘Anything you say, madame. I just need to call my family first. I may need to go home.’
But Joanne was adamant that Kit was best left alone. Mr Feldstein had telephoned and so had someone from the local self-help group. Kit had eaten some rice and a few vegetables and then gone out to a movie with a couple from the group.
‘But she still feels guilty about your presentation,’ finished Joanne. ‘Don’t come home and remind her that she let you down.’
So Lisa had no excuse not to go shopping.
In the end she found she enjoyed it. She had never really shopped with other people before.
‘You see, I never had the money to go shopping with my mates when they hit the shops on a Saturday afternoon,’ she explained to Tatiana. ‘And once I started work there was too much else to do. I used to rush out and buy my clothes in the lunch hour. You’re right. This is fun.’
Tatiana guided her through a number of purchases. When they came to a discreet grey suit, though, Lisa dug her heels in. The velvet trim was timeless, but the waisted jacket was too old-fashioned, she complained.
‘Look at me,’ she said, turning this way and that in front of the mirror. ‘It makes me look like Marilyn Monroe.’
‘And you’re complaining?’ Tatiana shook her head reprovingly. ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it.’
Lisa flushed.
‘You mustn’t mind me.’ Tatiana was amused, but slightly conscience-stricken. ‘I say what I think.’ She picked up a multi-coloured silk scarf and swirled it round Lisa’s throat. ‘Nicki and I are very alike in some ways,’ she added casually.
And Lisa went positively scarlet. In fact she was so confused by this announcement that she allowed herself to buy the suit, a linen jacket and the scarf without a murmur of protest.
They took the purchases home. Lisa was quite happy to hang them up and take tea into the garden, but Tatiana was having none of it.
‘Go and have a long smelly bath,’ she said firmly. ‘Then come up and give me a fashion show. I’ll cook supper.’
‘But—’
‘Am I the expert or am I not?’ demanded Tatiana.
‘You are. You are. I’ll do it,’ said Lisa hastily.
She went.
And when she danced upstairs, dressed in the grey suit with a drift of golden silk georgette thrown round her long throat, the first person she saw was Nikolai. She stopped dead, all the lovely confidence collapsing.
‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ she said in disarray. ‘I didn’t know. I thought Tatiana was alone. I’ll come back.’
But Nikolai, who had come to his feet with a start when she came in, said softly, ‘Don’t go.’
He was stunned. He had seen her sleepy and unwashed. He had seen her alert and firing on all cylinders at work. He had seen her hostile, and mischievous, and even vulnerable. He had never seen her like this.
The smooth lines of the suit gave her height, and an unexpected air of model-girl serenity. The drift of silk was like molten glass, reflected and reflecting the exquisite tints of ivory skin, gold hair, unexpected amber flecks in the green eyes.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, astonished.
Lisa looked away. Her heart was fluttering peculiarly.
‘You mean I look halfway respectable for once,’ she said, too loudly. ‘Tatiana—’
‘—is on the telephone. When did this metamorphosis take place?’
‘About three o’clock this afternoon.’ Lisa’s heartbeat was returning to normal. ‘On Tatiana’s advice.’ She turned away. ‘I’ll come back when she’s free.’
‘You mean when I’m not here,’ he interpreted. He took a step forward. ‘Don’t go because of me. I’m on my way out to dinner. I only stopped by for a minute.’
He didn’t say that it would not have occurred to him if Tatiana had not called and asked him round specifically. He didn’t know what game Tatiana was playing. But it was clear that it was not with Lisa’s connivance.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Tell Tatiana I was here.’
She left by the French doors through which she had entered. Nikolai went to the window and watched her go down the spiral stairs.
Why had he not noticed before how gracefully she moved? In the evening sun her hair gleamed like gold. He felt that jerk of awareness again. It was becoming familiar.
When Tatiana came back into the room he said, ‘You and I have to have a talk…’
Lisa’s new appearance was greeted with a cheer by her disrespectful staff. But they could not make her blush.
‘Grow up,’ she told them, grinning, and concentrated all her attention on the screens.
It was not until the end of the day that Sam Voss appeared at her elbow.
‘About time,’ he said, fingering the sleeve of her tawny silk shirt. ‘I hope you’ve got something long and frilly to go with it.’
Lisa removed her arm pointedly. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’ve got to take the Haraldsens to Glyndebourne on Friday.’
Lisa’s heart sank. She got on all right with Leif Haraldsen, who was a major portfolio investor, and she had met his wife a couple of times. But she had only hosted something for the bank once before, and that had been a relatively simple dinner.
‘Why me?’
Sam wasn’t pleased either. ‘No idea. Special instruction from the Management Committee.’
‘But I hate opera. And Glyndebourne is opera with knobs on, isn’t it?’ said Lisa.
She had heard stories of unbelievable glamour—and unbelievable pitfalls for the unwary party who had not been before.
Sam shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been.’ In the act of turning away he had another thought. He smiled and added maliciously, ‘Oh, and you’ll need an escort who owns a dinner jacket. What odds will the boys put on that, do you think?’
‘The same as on any other pro
ject I run,’ Lisa said calmly. ‘They just look at my track record.’
Her eyes locked with Sam’s. His were the first to fall.
Lisa was not as calm as she appeared, of course. She took the problem straight to Tatiana that night. She went up armed with a notebook and pen and sat at the dining table taking businesslike notes.
‘OK. A dress. Does it have to be long?’
‘Not if it’s a Chanel original,’ pronounced Tatiana. ‘Glyndebourne’s dressy but discreet. All the women will be trying to look as if they’re upper-crust, and lots of them will be.’
Lisa put her pen down, a look of dismay on her face.
‘It sounds like a minefield.’
‘And I’m a style mine-detector,’ said Tatiana with superb assurance. ‘Trust me.’
‘I do. But this happens on Friday. I haven’t got time to go looking for a pair of tights, let alone Cinderella’s gown for the ball,’ said poor Lisa.
‘Then let me do the looking. I know your size now. And I know more shops than you can imagine.’
That terrified Lisa even more. ‘I’m still on a budget,’ she warned Tatiana.
‘Of course. Of course. Now, what about an escort?’
Lisa gave a choke of laughter, and couldn’t stop.
‘You don’t have to find me one of those,’ she said, when she had her breath back. ‘Rob can hire a dinner jacket and come along.’
Tatiana looked dissatisfied. ‘It’s better to go with someone who’s been before—knows the ropes, that sort of thing. And are you taking a picnic?’
Lisa abruptly lost all desire to laugh. ‘Picnic?’
‘See what I mean? You need an expert,’ said Tatiana. ‘Leave it to me.’
And Lisa did.
It was just as well that Tatiana did, indeed, know what she was doing. All that the Management Committee’s superior secretary provided for Lisa was four tickets and a photocopy of a road map to Brighton.
‘Sir Philip usually gets a picnic from Top Food,’ she announced. ‘When he found he couldn’t go after all he told me to cancel it. Of course we’ll reimburse you for anything you spend. Just bring in the receipts.’
‘Great,’ said Lisa, who had just written a hefty cheque to Mr Feldstein. ‘Oh, well, I can put it on my credit card and sort it out later, I suppose.’
The Millionaire Affair Page 12
