by Nic Saint
Yulian frowned, this new aspect of the matter eluding him. “Her mother?” He was starting to see the whole picture now. The girl’s mother had probably paid for this ludicrous trip. “Oh, for God’s sakes!” He knew when he was being hustled. Still, if you’re one of the richest men in the country, hustling was part and parcel of doing business. He took out his wallet again, prepared to go to some length to get this woman out of his life. “Look, I’ll reimburse her ticket, all right? I’ll pay for everything, as long as you get her out of my hair!”
The captain tut-tutted, and whispered conspiratorially, “She has that effect on me as well, Mr. Gornakov.” Then he turned to Julia. “Run along now, dear. Report to the purser. You’re late as it is.”
Before Yulian’s surprised gaze, the young reporter stalked off, muttering some curses he didn’t comprehend.
“Look here, sir!” he began heatedly, but then the captain placed a hand on his shoulder and led him inside the spacious and charmingly decorated cabin.
“Please forgive Julia,” he implored with a charming smile. “She was raised practically an orphan, what with me being at sea nine months of the year, and her mother being an opera diva and dragging her along the stages of Europe.”
Yulian’s jaw dropped. “Julia Stern is your daughter?”
The captain heaved a weary sigh. “Afraid so, Mr. Gornakov. My own personal ball and chain.” He gestured to Yulian. “And yours, too, so it seems.”
Yulian sank in an offered armchair, his mind momentarily a blank.
The captain shook his head as he eyed him with a sympathetic eye. “That’s my Julia. Only she can produce that effect on a man. Brandy, sir?”
CHAPTER 4
Julia rummaged in her closet for a suitable dress to wear at dinner. She’d put in her grueling ten hours of labor, and now it was time to let her hair down and have some R and R. Though life hadn’t been much fun since she’d been relieved from her dream job, she was a woman not inclined to sit around and mope. She was a can-do girl who liked to grab life by the horns and wrestle it to the ground rather than let it get her down. Lately, life had offered her nothing but lemons, and she’d been squeezing lemonade like there was no tomorrow.
She was now a freelance reporter who had to make do with the jobs that were offered her, and those were few and far between. In the meantime, she needed to make a living, and her mother’s suggestion to work on Daddy’s boat had seemed like a good idea. The money was good, and Captain Stern was as decent an employer to his sailors as they came.
She picked up the electric blue asymmetrical jersey dress with the cinched waist and held it out before her, gazing into the full-length mirror attached to the back of her closet door. Her large eyes were weary, she noticed, and in spite of her little speech about lemons and lemonade, she heaved a deep sigh, then sank onto the bed, and placed the dress beside her. Who was she kidding? She was never going to make a living as a reporter again.
When she was fired from BSS, Jack Curtis had made sure word about her termination spread quickly. All the stations she’d applied to had turned a deaf ear, and even newspaper editors hadn’t returned her calls. Finally, the editor of the Pleasant Springs Chronicle, a small-town newspaper, had told her she was being blacklisted, Curtis having pulled some strings to make sure her name was mud in the small world of journalism.
The man had advised her to lay low for a while, until this all blew over, and then start over, using a different name. “A good story is a good story,” he’d told her, “and you’ll always find someone who’ll run it, even if it is under a different byline.”
The words had revolted her. She wanted her own byline, her own place in the spotlights. She was ambitious, and wanted to shine, not hide her light under a bushel.
She’d watched the Gornakov interview over and over again, wondering what she’d done wrong. Why she had incurred the man’s wrath to such an extent. It puzzled her. A few innocuous questions about his past, about his family, and about his love life had set him off, and then he’d huffily walked out.
Perhaps posting the interview on YouTube had been a boneheaded move, but that was Wilbert for you. It had garnered millions of hits in the space of a few days, which just went to show her journalistic instincts had been right on the money. People wanted to know what made Yulian Gornakov tick. They wanted to know who he was, and where he came from.
A tap on the door had her look up. With a sigh, she rose, certain it was one of the purser’s minions, with yet another task to squeeze in before dinner.
When she opened the door, however, she jerked back in surprise. The man was dark, with multiple scars lacerating a hideous face, his eyes black and hooded. But that wasn’t what terrified her. It was the gun he was casually holding up that chilled her to the marrow.
“Hey, what—”
“Miss Stern?” he asked with a vicious smile. “Miss Julia Stern?”
“Yes, but—”
“I have a few questions for you.”
“Questions?” she asked, staring from the man to the gun. “What questions?”
He grinned. “Questions about Yulian Gornakov, of course. Who else?”
CHAPTER 5
Yulian wasn’t easy in his mind about the events of the past hour. He’d sat in the captain’s lounge, drinking from the man’s brandy, and puffing the man’s Cuban, and had accepted an invitation to join the man’s table for dinner. Now he was heading back to his own cabin, thinking things through.
Captain Stern had made it clear he couldn’t bring himself to arrest his own daughter, no matter what she’d done to disturb Yulian. He’d waved aside the restraining order, claiming his daughter might be a pain in the butt, but she’d never hurt a soul. She was a nuisance, granted, but not dangerous. And that was the end of that, as far as the bearded commander was concerned. If Yulian wanted to talk to the police, he would have to do so on his own time and dime.
Besides, Julia wasn’t a reporter anymore. She was now a member of his crew, and deserved the same respect awarded any of the other one thousand, and Yulian would do well to remember that.
All in all, the conversation had left him wondering about his next course of action. He could insist, and have Julia escorted from the ship, but this would mean antagonizing the captain and his crew, which would turn him into the most hated man on this vessel and seriously screw up his vacation.
He had to admit the young wench had him at a disadvantage, and he had the strong suspicion that’s exactly how she had planned it.
He could, of course, cut his vacation short, and return home, but he’d really had his heart set on this cruise, and he was going to make the most of it, the Julia Sterns of this world be damned.
And he was pacing the length of the corridor, on his way back from the captain’s cabin to the first class cabins on the upper floor, when he heard a noise coming from one of the smaller cabins housing the ship’s personnel.
Pressing his ear to the metal door, he thought he heard screaming, and though he habitually didn’t like to interfere in other people’s private affairs, this sounded suspiciously like a damsel in distress. Without thinking, he put his hand on the handle, and yanked the door wide.
The sight that met his eye was one that had to be seen to be believed. On the bed lay a man of sinister aspect, Julia Stern on top of him, pounding his face with her fists, while the man desperately tried to wrestle her.
For a moment, the three of them froze, then he gave Julia a deferential nod. “Miss Stern. Sir. So sorry to intrude.” And he was about to close the door on the eccentric couple, when Julia cried out, “He tried to kill me!”
Though his first thought was that this seemed hardly an accurate account of affairs, he still cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?” When she gestured to the gun that had skittered to the floor, he raised his other eyebrow. “Oh.”
Stooping to pick it up, he eyed it with distaste. Though he’d become quite used to violence since assuming the throne of the Gornakov empire, he still abho
rred it.
“He wanted information about you!” panted Julia, still grappling with the man.
This interested him, and he subjected her adversary to a closer scrutiny. Something about him seemed familiar, and he frowned. “Gorev,” he grunted.
The man’s grin told him all he needed to know.
“You killed my brother,” Gorev intoned with a vicious glint in his eye.
“I did no such thing,” riposted Yulian, now casually training the gun on him.
“You killed my brother, now we destroy you,” insisted the man.
Yulian sighed. He remembered the fate that had befallen Gorev’s brother, though felt ill-disposed to enlighten him. “I can assure you I had nothing to do with your brother’s untimely demise,” he repeated. “Whatever fate befell him, he only had himself to blame, I’m afraid.”
Which was true, in a sense. Semyon Gorev had tried to abduct a young woman in a bid to ingratiate himself and his clan of enforcers with Yulian. Unfortunately, the woman’s boyfriend hadn’t taken kindly to the fact and had knocked Semyon’s block off. All Yulian had done was dispose of the body by dumping it into Lake Champlain. Not that this was of concern to anyone. Just another day in the life of the head of a major crime family.
He twiddled the gun. “Julia, if you could please release Mr. Gorev?”
The man seemed embarrassed that he’d allowed himself to be bested by a mere slip of a girl. He sat up and rubbed his chest where Julia’s fists had connected. “I will get you for this, Gornakov,” he growled furiously.
“I doubt it,” returned Yulian pleasantly.
A soft knock on the door alerted him of the presence of his man. For some reason, the moment Yulian found himself in danger of any kind, his personal assistant Ruslan invariably arrived on the scene to save his skin.
“Oh, Ruslan?”
“Yes, sir,” barked his dour-faced assistant.
“Could you take care of this creature for me, please?”
“Of course, sir,” confirmed Ruslan, his fingers twitching when he caught sight of Gorev. Without further ado, he took a firm grip on Gorev’s collar, then pressed his other hand against the man’s neck, applying his thumb to a place behind his ear. Gorev’s eyes turned up in his head, and the next moment it was lights out for the hood. Without breaking stride, Ruslan hefted the man onto his shoulders, then carried him out without so much as a glance at Julia.
“Sorry you had to see that,” murmured Yulian.
Julia stared after them, mouth agape. “What will happen to him?”
“Gorev?” He shrugged. “Exactly what he deserves.”
Julia gulped, then plunked down on the bed. “So it is true?”
“What is?” he asked, taking a seat next to her.
“You’re Mafia, aren’t you? Don Gornakov?”
He let out an easy laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Stern. Do I look like a Mafia Don to you?”
She eyed him intently for a moment, then gulped, “Yes, you do.”
CHAPTER 6
Fear crept into Julia’s heart at Yulian’s words. He seemed different than during their infamous interview. More relaxed now that the cameras weren’t rolling and they were alone. He could easily have his man take her out as well, she suddenly thought. Give her a seaman’s grave. No one would ever be the wiser. For the first time since making Yulian Gornakovs’s acquaintance, she realized she was dancing with the devil, and perhaps had bitten off more than she could chew.
“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, suddenly keenly aware of his cool gray eyes boring into her soul, his presence seeming to take up every inch of space in her small cabin. A singularly handsome face with the eyes of a killer, she thought. And if he didn’t kill her now, it was merely because for some reason he’d decided that it wasn’t in his best interest.
“Sorry about what, Miss Stern? For trying to ruin my business? Or my life?” His voice was soft, but the words were dripping with sarcasm.
Her temper suddenly flared. Mafia Don or not, she couldn’t let him ride roughshod over her career and get away with it. “I never intended any of those things. All I wanted was a candid interview with an interesting man.”
“You knew I wasn’t prepared to talk about my personal life. Those were the stipulations you agreed to before we set up the interview.”
She ignored the telltale signs of his rising temper, and raised her chin defiantly. “I’m a reporter, not a puppet. You can’t tell me what questions to ask.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” he challenged. “You should have remembered that I own your company, and, as a consequence, I own you.”
“Owned,” she corrected. “You had me fired, remember?”
“I do remember, and I also remember that didn’t stop you from continuing your slanderous campaign.”
“It’s not slander when it’s the truth,” she shot back. “You’re fast becoming one of America’s leading businessmen. The people have a right to know who you are.”
His lips tightened. “I disagree. My personal life is my own. Whether I’m successful in business or not, my private affairs remain private.”
“You can’t expect to rise to fame and not have your private affairs come under public scrutiny. You are news!”
A sudden flash of anger lit up his features, and she remembered with a pang of fear what her attacker had told her about his brother. She gulped, and told herself to keep her big trap shut from now on.
As if reading her mind, he lowered his gaze. “What did Gorev want?”
“He said he needed information about you. Incriminating information.”
He frowned, and nodded once. “Did you give it to him?”
“Of course not!” she bit. “Who do you think I am?”
Suddenly, his hand was on her cheek, his eyes flashing dangerously. “I know exactly who you are,” he growled, then lowered his mouth to hers, and took her lips, stifling her retort in a furious kiss.
Plundering her mouth, his hands descended on her shoulders, pinning her against him, and when the tip of his tongue demanded entrance, she found herself granting it, her blood rushing in her ears, her cheeks coloring with the rising heat, and her pulse quickening in a surprising response.
Then she was opening her lips, and slashing her tongue against his, stab for stab, and when his fingers circled her neck and pulled her in, she found herself pressing her soft breasts against the unyielding hardness of his chest, a sudden and inexplicable passion taking possession of her. He was unrelenting in his kiss, punishing her while simultaneously exploring her softness with an abandon that spoke more of lust than revenge.
If he’d wanted to strike out and put her in her place, he could have done so with a few well-chosen words, but his mouth betrayed a need that took her by surprise, a desperate longing that overpowered her. Her fists, poised to strike his chest, to push him away, clawed at his shirt, and pulled him in, not wanting the kiss to end. Even while she hated him, she was powerless against the sudden desire that flooded her body at his touch, the electrical current that sizzled and arced between them, as if set off by a lightning strike.
The fire that erupted between them like a volcano clearly surprised him as much as it did her. When his hands descended upon her breasts, she whimpered, a soft sound at the back of her throat, and then he was tearing at her blouse, the buttons springing all over, and his hot hands were grasping her soft flesh, drawing them into excited peaks. His lips traced along her neck, and she tossed her head back, the heat overwhelming, cutting off all thought of retreat, his lips exploring her twin peaks, nipping and sucking, nibbling and licking, and she cried out with the exquisite pleasure of it all.
Then, suddenly, it was all over when he took a firm grip on her shoulders, only this time not to pull her in but to push her firmly away. And when she caught his gaze, his eyes were hard and dark again, and she shivered in shock.
“No,” he growled. “I can’t do this.”
The cruel rejection cooled her blood, and when h
e rose and dragged his fingers through his dark mane, she drew her torn blouse over her heaving bosom, the touch of his lips still fresh on her nipples, the feel of his tongue still burning her skin.
Then he strode to the door, and muttered a concise Russian oath, before glancing back to her. “Please forgive me,” he muttered. Then he was gone.
The moment he closed the door, she sat stunned, but tears wouldn’t come, merely a quickening of her breath, a rush of blood attesting to the enormity of what had just happened. She blinked in confusion as she absently placed her hands on her cheeks. They were burning, as if she were running a high fever.
She swallowed, pressing her fingers to her eyes. She’d been too long without a man, she thought. It had been months since she broke up with Brad Tucker, the last boyfriend she’d had. Since then, Yulian had occupied her every waking moment, and sometimes even haunted her dreams. She’d simply succumbed to the simple yearnings of her own body. After months of abstinence, after denying her flesh the satisfaction of urges that were a natural part of the human biology, it was only normal to feel this way when touched by a man—kissed by a man.
Not just a man, she corrected. Yulian Gornakov, the man she’d been obsessed with for weeks now. And when he kissed her, that obsession had induced a physical reaction, an emotional response that was out of proportion.
Yes, she was quick to reassure herself. She wasn’t attracted to Yulian. Of course not. How could she be attracted to the self-centered, infuriating Russian? Hadn’t he tried to destroy her? Taken away her life, her job, her pride?
And hadn’t he just tried to do the same by physically subjecting her to his will? Lifting a tremulous chin, she thought he was nothing more than a bully, and the emotional turmoil he’d left in his wake was a mere figment of an overactive imagination and a body in urgent need of release.
She heaved a shuddering breath as she hugged her arms around herself.
“Keep it together, Julia,” she admonished, then removed the blouse and lifted the dress from the bed. To her distress, she saw it was all rumpled now, both from her tussle with the Gorev man, and with Yulian.
