Finally, he let himself look at her again.
She was hugging herself, her arms bare and tight over her body. There was misery in her dark eyes, her full lips trembled, and he’d done this. He’d hurt her. Veronika had hurt him, and he’d been well nigh indestructible. Why had he imagined she wouldn’t do her damage to something as bright and clean as Alicia, simply to prove she could? She’d probably been sharpening her talons since the first picture hit the tabloids.
This was entirely his fault.
“Your ex-wife is an interesting woman,” Alicia said.
“She’s malicious and cruel, and those are her better qualities,” Nikolai bit out. “What did she say to you?”
“It doesn’t matter what she said.” There was a torn, thick sound in her voice, and she tilted back her chin as if she was trying to be brave. He hated himself. “Everyone has secrets. God knows, I kept mine for long enough.”
“Alicia—”
“I know what it’s like to disappoint people, Nikolai,” she said fiercely. “I know what it’s like to become someone the people you love won’t look at anymore, whether you’ve earned it or not.”
He almost laughed. “You can’t possibly understand the kind of life I’ve led. I dreamed about a father who would care about me at all, even one who shunned me for imagined sins.”
“Congratulations,” she threw at him. “Your pain wins. But a secret is still a—”
“Secrets?” He frowned at her, but then he understood, and the sound he let out then was far too painful to be a laugh. “She told you about Stefan.”
And it killed him that Alicia smiled then, for all it was a pale shadow of her usual brightness. That she gave him that kind of gift when he could see how much she hurt.
“Is that his name?”
“He’s not mine,” he said harshly. “That’s what she told me back there. And it’s not a surprise. I wanted to be sure.”
“But you wanted him to be yours,” Alicia said, reading him as she always did, and he felt that band around his chest pull so tight it hurt to breathe, nearly cutting him in half.
“You want to make me a better man than I am,” he told her then, losing his grip on that darkness inside of him. “And I want to believe it more than you can imagine. But it’s a lie.”
“Nikolai—”
“The truth is, even if Stefan was my son, he’d be better off without me.” It was almost as if he was angry—as if this was his temper. But he knew it was worse than that. It was that twisted, charred, leftover thing she’d coaxed out of its cave. It was what remained of his heart, and she had to see. She had to know. “I was drunk most of the five years I thought I was his father. And now I’m—” He shook his head. “This.”
“You’re what?” Her dark eyes were glassy. “Sober?”
He felt that hard and low, like a kick to the gut. He didn’t know what was happening to him, what she’d done. He only knew he had to remove her from this—get her to a minimum safe distance where he could never hurt her again, not even by mistake.
“Seeing Veronika made things perfectly clear to me,” he told her. “All I will ever do is drag you down until I’ve stolen everything. Until I’ve ruined you. I can promise you that.” He wanted to touch her, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t risk it. “I would rather be without you than subject you to this—this sick, twisted horror show.”
He was too close to her, so close he could hear that quick, indrawn breath, so close he could smell that scent of hers that drove him wild, even now.
He was no better than an animal.
Alicia looked at him for a long moment. “Are you still in love with her?” she asked.
“Do I love her?” Nikolai echoed in disbelief. “What the hell is love, Alicia?”
His voice was too loud. He heard it bouncing back at him from the polished marble floors, saw Alicia straighten her back as if she needed to stand tall against it. He hated public scenes and yet he couldn’t stop. He rubbed his hands over his face to keep himself from punching the hard stone wall. It would only be pain, and it would fade. And he would still be right here. He would still be him.
“Veronika made me feel numb,” he said instead, not realizing the truth of it until he said it out loud. Something seemed to break open in him then, some kind of painful knotted box he’d been holding on to for much too long. “She was an anesthetic. And I thought that was better than being alone.” He glared at her. “And she didn’t love me either, if that’s your next question. I was her way out of a dead-end life, and she took it.”
“I think that however she’s capable of it, she does love you,” Alicia argued softly. “Or she wouldn’t want so badly to hurt you.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice grim. “Exactly. That is the kind of love I inspire. A vile loathing that time only exacerbates. A hatred so great she needed to hunt you down and take it out on you. Such are my gifts.” He prowled toward Alicia then, not even knowing what he did until she’d backed up against one of the marble columns.
But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
“I was told I loved my parents,” he said, the words flooding from him, as dark and harsh as the place they’d lived inside him all this time. “But I can’t remember them, so how would I know? And I love my brother, if that’s what it’s called.” He looked around, but he didn’t see anything but the past. And the demons who jeered at him from all of those old, familiar shadows. “Ivan feels a sense of guilt and obligation to me because he got out first, and I let him feel it because I envy him for escaping so quickly while I stayed there and rotted. And then I made it my singular goal to ruin the only happiness he’d ever known.”
He’d thought he was empty before, but now he knew. This was even worse. This was unbearable, and yet he had no choice but to bear it.
“That’s a great brotherly love, isn’t it?”
“Nikolai,” she said thickly, and she’d lost the battle with her tears. They streaked down her pretty face, each one an accusation, each one another knife in his side. “You aren’t responsible for what happened to you as a child. With all the work you do, you can’t truly believe otherwise. You survived, Nikolai. That’s what matters.”
And once again, he wanted to believe her. He wanted to be that man she was called to defend. He wanted to be anything other than this.
“I’ve never felt anything like these things I feel for you,” he told her then, raw and harsh, so harsh it hurt him, too, and then she started to shake, and that hurt him even more. “That light of yours. The way you look at me—the way you see me.” He reached out as if to touch her face, but dropped his hand back to his side. “I knew it that first night. I was happy when you walked into that conference room, and it terrified me, because do you know what I do with happy?”
“You do not kill it,” she told him fiercely. “You try, and you fail. Happiness isn’t an enemy, Nikolai. You can’t beat it up. It won’t fight back, and eventually, if you let it, it wins.”
“I will suck you dry, tear you down, take everything until nothing remains.” He moved closer, so outside himself that he was almost glad that he was so loud, that he was acting like this so she could see with her own eyes what kind of man he was. “Do I love you, Alicia? Is that what this is? This charred and twisted thing that will only bring you pain?”
“I love you,” she said quietly. Clearly and distinctly, her eyes on his. Without a single quaver in her voice. Without so much as a blink. Then she shifted, moved closer. “I love you, Nikolai.”
Nikolai stilled. Inside and out. And those words hung in him like stained glass, that light of hers making them glow and shine in a cascade of colors he’d never known existed before.
He thought he almost hated her for that. He told himself he’d rather not know.
He leaned in until her mouth was close enough to k
iss, and his voice dropped low. Savage. “Why would you do something so appallingly self-destructive?”
“Because, you idiot,” she said calmly, not backing away from him, not looking even slightly intimidated. “I love you. There’s always a risk when you give someone your heart. They might crush it. But that’s no reason not to do it.”
He felt as if he was falling, though he wasn’t. He only wished he was. He leaned toward her, propping his hands on either side of her head as he had once before, then lowering his forehead until he rested it against hers.
And for a moment he simply breathed her in, letting his eyes fall shut, letting her scent and her warmth surround him.
He felt her hands come up to hold on to him, digging in at his hips with that strong grip that had already undone him once before, and he felt a long shudder work through him.
“This is the part where you run for cover, Alicia,” he whispered fiercely. “I told you why I couldn’t lose control. Now you know.”
He heard her sigh. She tipped back her head, then lifted her hands up to take his face between them. When he opened his eyes, what he saw in her gaze made him shake.
“This is where you save yourself,” he ground out at her.
She smiled at him, though more tears spilled from her eyes. She held him as if she had no intention of letting him go. She looked at him as if he was precious. Even now. “And then who saves you?”
CHAPTER TEN
NIKOLAI’S HANDS SLIPPED from the marble column behind her, his arms came around her, and he held her so tightly, so closely, that Alicia wasn’t sure she could breathe.
And she didn’t care.
He held her like that for a long time.
A member of the hotel staff came over to quietly inquire if all was well, and she waved him away. A trio of black-suited people who could only be part of Nikolai’s pack of assistants appeared, and she frowned at them until they backed off.
And outside, in the courtyard of the former palace, it began to snow.
Nikolai let out a long, shaky breath and lifted his head. He kissed her, so soft and so sweet it made her smile.
“If I had a heart, I would give it to you,” he said then, very seriously. “But I don’t.”
She shook her head at him, and kissed him back, losing herself in that for a long time. His eyes were haunted, and she loved him so much she didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry or scream—it seemed too big to contain.
And he loved her, too. He’d as much as said so. He just didn’t know what that meant.
So Alicia would have to show him. Step by step, smile by smile, laugh by laugh, until he got it. Starting now.
“You have a heart, Nikolai,” she told him gently, smiling up at that beautifully hard face, that perfectly austere mouth, her would-be Tin Man. “It’s just been broken into so many pieces, and so long ago, you never learned how to use it properly.”
“You’re the only one who thinks so,” he said softly.
She reached out and laid her hand on his chest, never looking away from him.
“I can feel it. It’s right here. I promise.”
“And I suppose you happen to know how one goes about putting back together a critically underused heart, no doubt fallen into disrepair after all these years,” he muttered, but his hands were moving slow and sweet up her back and then down her arms to take her hands in his.
“I have a few ideas,” she agreed. “And your heart is not a junked-out car left by the side of a road somewhere, Nikolai. It’s real and it’s beating and you’ve been using it all along.”
He looked over his shoulder then, as if he’d only then remembered where they were. One of his assistants appeared from around the corner as if she’d been watching all along, and he nodded at her, but didn’t move. Then he looked out the glass doors, at the snow falling into the golden-lit courtyard and starting to gather on the ground.
“I hate snow,” he said.
“Merry Christmas to you, too, Ebenezer Scrooge,” Alicia said dryly. She slid an arm around his waist and looked outside. “It’s beautiful. A fairy tale,” she said, smiling at him, “just as you promised me in the beginning.”
“I think you’re confused.” But she saw that smile of his. It started in his eyes, made them gleam. “I promised you fangs. And tears. Both of which I’ve delivered, in spades.”
“There are no wolves in a story involving ball gowns, Nikolai. I believe that’s a rule.”
“Which fairy tale is this again? The ones I remember involved very few ball gowns, and far more darkness.” His mouth moved into that crooked curve she adored, but his eyes were serious when they met hers. “I don’t know how to be a normal man, Alicia. Much less a good one.” His smile faded. “And I certainly don’t know how to be anything like good for you.”
Alicia smiled at him again, wondering how she’d never known that the point of a heart was to break. Because only then could it grow. And swell big enough to hold the things she felt for Nikolai.
“Let’s start with normal and work from there,” she managed to say. “Come to Christmas at my parents’ house. Sit down. Eat a huge Christmas dinner. Make small talk with my family.” She grinned. “I think you’ll do fine.”
He looked at her, that fine mouth of his close again to grim.
“I don’t know if I can be what you want,” he said. “I don’t know—”
“I want you,” she said. She shook her head when he started to speak. “And all you have to do is love me. As best you can, Nikolai. For as long as you’re able. And I’ll promise to do the same.”
It was like a vow. It hung there between them, hushed and huge, with only the falling snow and the dark Prague night as witness.
He looked at her for a long time, and then he leaned down and kissed her the way he had on that London street. Hard and demanding, hot and sure, making her his.
“I can do that,” he said, when he lifted his head, a thousand brand-new promises in his eyes, and she believed every one. “I can try.”
* * *
Nikolai stood facing his brother on a deep blue July afternoon. The California sky arched above them, cloudless and clear, while out beyond them the Pacific Ocean rolled smooth and gleaming all the way to the horizon.
“Are you ready?” Ivan barked in gruff Russian. He wore his game face, the one he’d used in the ring, fierce and focused and meant to be terrifying.
Nikolai only smiled.
“Is this the intimidating trash talk portion of the afternoon?” he asked coolly. “Because I didn’t sign up to be bored to death, Vanya. I thought this was a fight.”
Ivan eyed him.
“You insist on writing checks you can’t cash, little brother,” he said. “And sadly for you, I am the bank.”
They both crouched down into position, studying each other, looking for tells—
Until a sharp wail cut through the air, and Ivan broke his stance to look back toward his Malibu house and the figures who’d walked out from the great glass doors and were heading their way.
Nikolai did a leg sweep without pausing to think about it, and had the great satisfaction of taking Ivan down to the ground.
“You must never break your concentration, brother,” he drawled, patronizingly, while Ivan lay sprawled out before him. “Surely, as an undefeated world champion, you should know this.”
Ivan’s dark eyes promised retribution even as he jackknifed up and onto his feet.
“Enjoy that, Kolya. It will be your last and only victory.”
And then he grinned and slapped Nikolai on the back, throwing an arm over his shoulders as they started toward the house and the two women who walked to meet them.
Nikolai watched Alicia, that smile of hers brighter even than a California summer and her lovely voice on
the wind, that kick of laughter and cleverness audible even when he couldn’t hear the words.
“You owe him an apology,” she’d told him. It had been January, and they’d been tucked up in that frilly pink bedroom of hers that he found equal parts absurd and endearing. Though he did enjoy her four-poster bed. “He’s your brother. Miranda is afraid of you, and she still risked telling you how hurt he was.”
He’d taken her advice, stilted and uncertain.
And now, Nikolai thought as he drew close to her with his brother at his side, he was learning how to build things, not destroy them. He was learning how to trust.
The baby in Miranda’s arm wailed again, and both women immediately made a cooing sort of sound that Nikolai had never heard Alicia make before his plane had landed in Los Angeles. Beside him, Ivan shook his head. And then reached over to pluck the baby from his wife’s arms.
“Naturally, Ivan has the magic touch,” Miranda said to Alicia with a roll of her eyes, as the crying miraculously stopped.
“How annoying,” Alicia replied, her lips twitching.
Nikolai stared down at the tiny pink thing that looked even smaller and more delicate in Ivan’s big grip.
“Another generation of Korovins,” he said. He caught Miranda looking at him as he spoke, and thought her smile was slightly warmer than the last time. Progress. He returned his attention to Ivan and the baby. “I don’t think you thought this through, brother.”
“It’s terrible, I know,” Ivan agreed. He leaned close and kissed his daughter’s soft forehead, contentment radiating from him. “A disaster waiting to happen.”
Nikolai smiled. “Only if she fights like you.”
Later, after he and Ivan spent a happy few hours throwing each other around and each claiming victory, he found Alicia out on the balcony that wrapped around their suite of rooms. He walked up behind her silently, watching the breeze dance through the cloud of her black curls, admiring the short and flirty dress she wore in a bright shade of canary yellow, showing off all of those toned brown limbs he wanted wrapped around him.
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