by Cait London
“Me? Civilized? Don’t you dare—”
Mikhail’s smile was brief and contained genuine humor, a notice that he had once more scored a hit. Then ignoring Ellie’s frown, he walked to crouch beside Tanya, explaining the collection of shells in the pottery bowl.
Georgia, a plump woman wearing a white apron and a hairnet that crossed her forehead, arrived with the tray. Mikhail replaced the previous tray with the fresh one, and the scent of aromatic coffee and fresh croissants cruised the room.
In a heartbeat, Georgia had won Tanya’s confidence, and they left the showroom, leaving Ellie alone with Mikhail. He poured two cups of coffee from the carafe and leaned against a tall dresser, watching her.
Watching her like a big predator, assessing, waiting. She could feel him trying to put her together, like a puzzle. Then there was something else in him, brooding and male and resentful.
That look pushed all her buttons, her anger leaping. He’d seen her without her pride, inferred her poverty by the hole in her briefs. Ellie sprung from the bed, tossing back the covers. “Tanya is not used to very many people, and I don’t like you taking control of her. She gets frightened when she’s away from me too long.”
“And you resent that she isn’t in your control, dependent upon you. She isn’t a baby. She’s a young child with a natural need to have playmates other than you.”
That Tanya could be swayed so easily did bother Ellie. She walked to the tray and took the coffee cup he offered, splashed with the Amoteh’s strawberry logo. “I know she needs playmates. But we haven’t had time to settle in before they found us and we had to move again.”
“You’re angry with me. Why?”
Because he looked too rugged, as if he could withstand any fight, and because—“Do you think I actually like asking you for help? You’re determined to make me squirm, before you turn me down. Oh, I know the routine. Paul likes to play that game.”
She was shaking with anger, the scenes with her father too familiar. He would ask all the questions, make her answer, and then, when he was tired, he refused her needs. The whole process had served to humiliate her, even as a child. Emotional baggage? Yes, but she couldn’t allow that treatment again.
Ellie placed the coffee cup down on the tray with a click, careless of the spillage. “Look. It was a mistake to ask you for anything. Now leave. I’m getting dressed and we’re getting out of here.”
Mikhail placed his coffee cup aside slowly, thoughtfully. “You haven’t answered all my questions.”
“No, and I’m not going to. If you’re not leaving, then I am.” With that, she walked to where she had shed her clothing. She frowned as she picked it up, remembering that Mikhail had seen her undress. She’d been so vulnerable with one man, and she wasn’t—
She had one hand on the doorknob when Mikhail picked her up. Surprised, she didn’t have time to fight before he tossed her on the bed. “Stay put.”
No one, not even her father, had ever manhandled her. Ellie pushed upward, only to find Mikhail’s hand on her forehead, pushing her back down. Frustrated and worried and tired, she’d come too far—Ellie struck out blindly, but Mikhail was too quick for her.
In a flurry of movement and cloth, he had cocooned her in the comforter, making movement impossible. She thrashed within the tight clasp of the cloth and finally, winded, spoke furiously, quietly. “If I could just get my hands on you…”
“If looks could kill,” he murmured as she tossed her head and blew a strand of hair from her face.
He sat beside her on the bed, controlling her too easily—physically controlling her where Paul had once used other methods with a young Ellie. “Let me go, Mikhail.”
But those dark green eyes, as brooding as the ocean on a stormy day, were searching her face, touching her too intimately. His gaze darkened, locking on her lips, tracing them. She couldn’t breathe, feeling exposed with Mikhail too close and too powerful, and she resented the blush creeping up her cheeks. In her adult lifetime, she’d learned to protect herself, never letting anyone truly see into her. And now, she could feel Mikhail probing, taking her apart, appraising the pieces too thoroughly….
“Stop watching me.”
“Stop ordering me.”
He was breathing too quietly, intent upon her as he looked slowly down, then up her body. There was just that tensing of his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils and the sense that he was too intimately dangerous to her.
“Is your ex-husband going to be a problem in this?” he asked quietly, searching her face, and again that tracing of her mouth, a sensual touch that shivered and warmed in the air between them.
“Mark thinks Tanya should go back to Hillary. No, he won’t be a problem. He’s remarried and has a child. He has the wife he wants.” She didn’t know why she whispered, only that the spacious showroom now seemed as intimate as a bedroom.
“Did that hurt you? That he would have a child with another woman?”
She blinked, trying to making the connection. “No…. Why?”
“If you loved him, it might hurt. Did you love him?”
She didn’t want Mikhail prowling too close to her emotions. Love wasn’t discussed in her family. “That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“I want to know how the players stand in this game. You practically raised Hillary, from what I understand. And now you have her child.”
“My child, Mikhail. Tanya is my child,” Ellie stated fiercely. “Are you going to call Paul?”
She sensed he was satisfied, if only a little as he spoke. “Not now. I want to know more. If you are playing a game with her to defy your family—”
“How can you say that? You know them.”
“Of course. For now, you and Tanya will stay with my parents—they’ve already asked.”
“You won’t call Paul just yet?”
“No.”
She could have kissed him. She badly needed rest and thinking room, and Tanya needed even more—she needed the security of a home that the Stepanov family could provide, if only for a time.
She eased a hand up to press it against his cheek. She must have shown her gratitude, because Mikhail frowned slightly, then a slow warmth began to rise up his cheeks. She could feel it dance and pulse beneath her fingertips.
Mikhail’s hand curled around her wrist and removed it slowly, firmly. “I’ll want the list of places you’ve lived in the last six months.”
Business, she thought. Mikhail was good at details, but she had nothing to hide now. “I understand. You need confirmation.”
“Of course.” He stood abruptly, nodded and left the room.
Ellie lay on the bed, easing from the tight cloth, and tried to pinpoint Mikhail’s unsettling expression.
As she dressed to join Tanya in the kitchen, Ellie decided that he was embarrassed by her gratitude. She had reached inside him to where a human heart lurked.
She hummed a bit and served herself a buttery croissant, slathered with the Amoteh’s house strawberry jam. For the moment, she had sanctuary for Tanya. On a more personal and separate level, she had Mikhail in retreat, a possibility she couldn’t imagine. He’d actually blushed. All her taunting and playing had failed, and now, without trying, she’d scored a hit on Mikhail—she’d seen just that sliver inside him, the real man. The stakes now were too big to revel in the game or her win. Tanya had to be safe and Mikhail—
Well, Mikhail was Mikhail. Ellie didn’t understand him at all, but she knew she could trust him—on one level. He had said he wouldn’t call Paul, and that meant he wouldn’t.
With that, she inhaled the scent of lemon furniture polish as if it were fresh hope and slid a paper tablet from a lamp table. She began listing the places she’d lived with Tanya in the last six months. There were so many, and always, sooner or later, Hillary or Paul’s emissaries would arrive….
In the gray of early morning, with the fog curling around the tourist pier, the shops deserted now, Mikhail thought about the woman sleepin
g in his parents’ home. She had been too soft and warm from sleep this morning, cuddling Tanya beside her, the two looking so much alike, gray eyes and blond hair, almost mother and child.
He’d wanted her. The idea shocked and repelled him. Mikhail knew what she was—spoiled, and a user; she had admitted to contriving her marriage to get the child.
Yet the affection between Ellie and Tanya couldn’t be dismissed, not the smoothing of her hands on the child’s hair, the kiss on her rosy cheek, the snuggling against her, as if the girl gave her comfort. Children often comforted, just by being near and sweet.
Thoughts of Ellie pushed against him as unrelentingly as the ocean waves rolled against the pier.
Seagulls gleamed ghostly white in the fog, settling in to watch the man prowling the pier. In the off-season, he was alone.
Mikhail inhaled the salty, frigid air and scanned the fog sliding along the shoreline. He’d grown up here, wild and free, digging for razor clams with Jarek, netting Dungeness crabs and selling them.
Other than the few Stepanov furniture workers, the employment opportunities had been slight in the small oceanside community then, but now, the Amoteh Resort brought tourists and work. Trinny, a bold, big woman with a brood of growing children, was even now placing the Amoteh’s strawberry logo on cups to be used in the resort and sold in the gift shop. In the summer, the pier’s shops would be filled with tourist goods, keepsakes to remind them of their visit. The air would smell of excitement, salt and clam chowder; the sounds of vacationing families mixing with that of the townspeople running the shops.
Ed and Bliss, Jarek’s in-laws, would be happy hawking worry stones and tie-dyed T-shirts.
And by summer, Leigh, his wife, would be showing off the baby to be born next month. Leigh was round and glowing, and both fearful and happy. Jarek watched her every move. According to their mother, Stepanov men were excellent “hoverers” and spoiled their wives without caution.
Mikhail would never know how it felt to hover and spoil a pregnant wife. He fought the clench of bitterness that his own child had been destroyed before its first breath. He wondered when that emptiness would leave. The need to have children and a home ran deep in the traditional Stepanov males, and Mikhail had used the resort to fill that need.
He shrugged slightly within his peacoat and tugged the collar higher against the damp cold. He had what he wanted—the success of the Amoteh.
If he protected Ellie and Tanya, gave them shelter, he could lose everything he’d worked for, endangering the resort and the people he loved.
The boards creaked beneath his feet; an icicle broke free from a shop, shattering on the ice and snow that would quickly melt with the warmth predicted for the day. The fog stirred, and out of it came a man as tall and powerfully built as Mikhail. “Jarek.”
The brothers stood together as men, bound by blood and boyhood, watching the day light, skimming the shore, the seagulls already searching for fresh food on the shoreline.
“Dinner at the folks’ was good last night,” Jarek said quietly.
“Um.” Mikhail sensed his younger brother picking through words, and he sensed that at the end of the trail there would be Ellie.
“Stroganoff. Lots of cookies…those little gingersnaps filled with raspberry jam that Dad likes. Apparently Tanya and Mom have a baking thing going. Ellie was too quiet. She’s waiting for something, and at each sound she looked toward the door, as if expecting the only missing member of our family—you. She’s tired and afraid, too afraid, as if she’s run on nerves for a long time. She never let that show to the girl, though. From her clothes and that car, I’d say she’s down on her luck. The heiress of the Lathrop fortune, down on her luck. Makes you wonder why she’s here, doesn’t it?”
Mikhail sighed. His family wanted to know why he’d missed his favorite meal. The chosen emissary was Jarek.
“She’s a disaster, you know. She has been since I met her in Paul’s Seattle office almost eleven years ago. About five years ago, she fouled a big business deal for Mignon International. They were set to buy a high-priced piece of land for a resort near Cannes. The contract had been negotiated and renegotiated. Ellie knew the terms and Paul’s plans to build on the part of the property he needed, split the rest and sell it off at premium prices. The seller decided to split it himself and squashed the deal. If Ellie’s around, there is trouble.”
Jarek’s shoulder nudged Mikhail’s. “You’re brooding, so she’s evidently troubling you, big brother. She stayed in the showroom last night. Georgia said you’d fixed a tray for her that evening, and ordered one this morning. There were two cups used.”
“Georgia talks too much.”
“Uh-huh. And you’re afraid Ellie will run. Before coming here, you stopped at the house just long enough to lift the hood of her car. I’d say it’s not going anywhere for a while. Could it be that she’s got your motor revved?”
“Not a chance,” Mikhail lied to avoid his younger brother’s teasing. Younger brothers had a way of taunting and paying back. “Lay off. How’s Leigh?” Mikhail asked to waylay Jarek and the knowing grin spreading across his face.
The grin turned into a soft woozy smile of an expectant father. “Cute. Beautiful. More than beautiful. I love her. She is my life,” Jarek finished simply and looked out over the tide frothing nearby and across the ocean’s black swells as if longing for her.
He held up a sack with the Amoteh’s logo and the grin widened. “Leigh’s favorite breakfast—strawberry jam and sardines and buttermilk. I had to raid Georgia’s pantry. We’re out and we’re having breakfast at the folks’ this morning. I’m holding out for Mom’s blueberry pancakes.”
In the other direction loomed the narrow passage of water necessary to reach Strawberry Hill, a peninsula jutting out into the Pacific. When the tide was up, Deadman’s Rock marked the passage and Strawberry Hill could only be reached by boat, or the curving roundabout road by land.
Jarek’s brief look toward Deadman’s Rock said he remembered his first wife, who believed in the curse, and who had died, in love with the chieftain. Yet Leigh had traveled the same stretch of water, and Deadman’s Rock had not taken her life. She had danced before Kamakani’s grave, a woman who knew her own heart and who would protect those she loved.
“Ellie wants my help. If I give it, I’ll endanger the Amoteh,” Mikhail said quietly, wanting his brother to know why he brooded. “Paul won’t be happy.”
Jarek nodded. “You’ll do what you think is right. You always have. She’s chosen you because you’re a match for Paul.”
“Yes. But she’s trouble. I’ve seen her in action.”
“She trusts you. You are a man to trust. And she disturbs you. I’ve seen it before, at the opening of the Amoteh. She sets you off and you her. I was enjoying flirting with her, but you were in her sights. Ellie wanted to take you down. She’s not like JoAnna, Mikhail. She’s got a heart and she’s a natural mother. Her entire world is that little girl.”
Mikhail shook his head. “There’s too much at stake. But I’m thinking.”
He was thinking about Ellie, about touching her and taking her to fill the sharp need within him now.
It was only a need, Mikhail thought as Jarek nodded and moved silently off into the fog, eager to return to his wife.
The tide frothed and ebbed against the sand as Mikhail stood locked in his thoughts. Then a slender figure delicately picked its way around the driftwood logs, down to the shore and he found himself moving toward Ellie and trouble.
“Ellie.” Her name was a flat statement on Mikhail’s lips, not a greeting, as if she were on his problem list and had to be solved. Even before he spoke, she’d known he was near—her body had tensed, the hair on her nape rising. She shivered within her light jacket, the hood up over her hair.
Chilled in her damp jeans and canvas shoes, she kept her gaze locked on the dark swells, the white line of foam marking the bridge between water and land, the seagulls hunting for food, sandpiper
s scurrying here and there. Clumps of seaweed on the beach almost seemed alive and moving as the water slid through them.
The sound of the waves and the fog marked an eerie time, a lonely one, and a reckoning with a hope that couldn’t be reality. Mikhail wasn’t likely to endanger everything he had worked for, or the income of people depending on them. Last evening at the Stepanovs, she understood how vital the community had become, lives affected by Mikhail’s resort, the tourists it brought.
She’d been crying in the lonely hour, letting her fears envelop her. She didn’t want him to see her weakness; she’d exposed enough of herself already. He was enough like Paul to move in to pick over the pieces and find the most tender, raw ache of a loving parent. She couldn’t provide for her child.
Ellie could feel Mikhail behind her, the warmth of his body, the intimacy of the fog wrapping around them. “We can’t stay here. I have to find work, and I won’t be responsible for keeping you from your family by staying there. Whatever you might think of me, I don’t live off other people. I paid my dues with Paul. I practically raised Hillary for him, and I didn’t do a very good job. And so help me, I still love her and I’m fighting to keep Tanya from being messed up like my sister and myself. So I’m not feeling up to you this morning, Mikhail.”
“Shut up.” The command was unexpected, fierce.
She turned on him, hands clenched into fists. “You’re so like him.”
“Am I?” His answer was too quiet, so quiet, she could hear water drip from a stack of driftwood…plop, plop…
This morning, in the intimate dawn, he was even taller and more ominous than in his resort. A muscle clenched in his jaw, covered by stubble. His usually well groomed hair was waving, beaded with mist. His eyes were narrowed, dark gleaming pinpoints that burned her face, looked inside her fears and tore them out of her….
“I have to get work, Mikhail,” she said unsteadily. “I’m going to wire a friend for money—just enough to get us out of here. All I’m asking is two or three days in which you don’t call Paul.”
