He recalled one Christmas Eve, when he’d been about seventeen, and a night at the local pub had seemed more palatable than a night spent with his parents, George and Dr Stephenson and family.
He’d been unable to get a taxi from the village and had rather foolishly decided to take the long walk home in the snow. He hadn’t counted on the lack of landmarks, or that a few drinks on a stomach of dread might make for a difficult journey. He had given in and holed up in a barn, waking to a weak silvery sunrise before tackling the last mile home.
Marcus had let him in and, following voices, Daniil had walked into the drawing room to see his parents opening their presents, along with George.
They had all turned as he had stepped in, his black hair white with snow, his clothes damp from a night sleeping out, but what had truly frozen out that Christmas morning had been his mother’s slight shrug. ‘Oh!’ she had said. ‘We thought you were still in bed.’
Daniil looked over to where Libby lay. He knew that his anger was misplaced.
‘I thought you would be asleep.’
‘Well, I wasn’t.’
‘I know that now.’
He’d entered the room determined to stay away but now he rolled towards her, his cold mouth seeking hers, his hands everywhere, but she slapped them off.
‘You’d rather screw me than talk to me.’
‘Tonight, yes.’
‘Well, tough,’ she said. ‘You can’t ignore me for half the night and then expect peak performance...’
He rolled away from her and she lay regretting her stance and yet refusing to relent.
She lay facing away from him perhaps as lonely and scared as Daniil had been all those years ago in this very room. After all, her problem was the same as his had been—it was hard to accept that you weren’t really wanted.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LIBBY MUST HAVE drifted off to sleep because she woke to the sound of Daniil in the shower and the recollection of their row.
Maybe she had been too harsh. Libby knew from the little he had told her that coming back here would prove hard but, hell, she was tired of numbing their issues with sex.
She watched as he walked out of the en suite, still sulking.
He dried himself and she looked at his beautiful, toned, sensual body and really she should give herself a gold star for managing to say no to that last night.
She was tired of the roller-coaster ride, though.
For the best part of a year she had lived on one, courtesy of her fading career. Having stepped off that one, she had promptly climbed into a carriage named Daniil, yet she had forgotten to strap herself in.
It was time to rectify that.
‘Are we going down for breakfast?’ she asked, as her stomach declared it would like some.
‘No,’ Daniil said.
‘Well, thanks for keeping me informed.’
She headed into the en suite and looked at her pale complexion and white lips and prayed her pallor was down to the fact she was getting her period.
Her breasts certainly felt as if she was, Libby thought as she showered and felt them swollen and sensitive beneath her fingers.
She simply couldn’t be pregnant.
Apart from the fact that it would mean the father was possibly London’s most notorious rake, there was a little thing called the Libby Tennent School of Dance to consider. It was the summation of her life’s work and her entire future. The dance school had felt for a while like a last resort but it was where all her hope resided now.
Yes, maybe her anger last night and this morning was a touch illogical and misdirected, yet that was how she felt—illogical and misdirected were apt words to describe her behaviour since Daniil had come into her life.
She stepped out of the shower and looked into the mirror, barely turning as Daniil, dressed in black jeans and a black crew-neck, came and stood behind her.
Apart from naked, she had never seen him out of a suit and she was angry that he looked better, if possible. Unshaven, scowling, his expression matched her mood.
‘You didn’t knock.’
‘You know how I feel about knocking,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong, Libby?’ He gave a hollow laugh at his own question. ‘Aside from me not coming back last night, but we were fine until then.’
‘No,’ Libby corrected. ‘We weren’t.’
She was naked but she never felt that with him and unabashed she turned and faced him.
‘Has there been anyone else since me?’
He blinked at her forthright question and, guessing this was still about Charlotte, he just shrugged. There was no need to be evasive or to think so he simply answered, ‘No.’
‘So we’ve been seeing each other for a month?’
‘I don’t think it’s been a month.’
Now he was being evasive.
‘Yes.’ Libby nodded and then proceeded to tick off their encounters on her fingers. ‘It has been—we had dinner and then the next week I came by your office and then the next week you came by my studio and then the next week here we are.’
‘And tonight I am going overseas on business for a few nights,’ Daniil said. He didn’t like a numbers game; he didn’t want it confirmed but they had been together a month. ‘I don’t get your point.’
‘Then, I’ll explain it.’
She had nothing to lose, not even her pride—that had long since gone out of the window where Daniil was concerned. She was tired of things being one-sided, tired of expending emotion on a man who was so reluctant to give it back.
‘I don’t have your phone number,’ she said. ‘Your apartment is like Fort Knox and your receptionist is so intimidating I can’t imagine myself popping in...’
‘I don’t get where you’re going with this.’
‘Then, listen,’ Libby said. ‘I want flowers, I want conversation, I want phone calls and texts and presents...’ He went to open his mouth but she got there first. ‘And before you accuse me of demanding expensive gifts, that’s not what I mean. I’m tired of living on a knife edge. It’s not all about whether you want to see me again, Daniil. It’s about whether or not I want to see you, too, and if you can’t be bothered to pick up your phone and ask about my day then I don’t want you to be a part of it anymore.’
She was through with prolonging endings. If they were over, if he couldn’t offer more than a weekly visit, then they were done.
‘Is that it?’ he said.
‘That’s it,’ she replied, and brushed past him to the bedroom, where she opened the overnight bag that she had packed with such hope and, of course, that wasn’t quite it.
‘Don’t think you can return from your business trip and pick up where we left off.’
‘Why would I want to pick up where we left off? From what I recall, last night wasn’t exactly—’
‘It’s not all about sex.’
‘Actually, for me, it is.’
‘Then, you really did bring the wrong date last night.’
‘I don’t like pushy—’
‘Same answer,’ Libby responded. ‘You’re with the wrong person, then. I’m affectionate, I’m demonstrative, that’s who I am. If you want some nonchalant lover then you’re with the wrong woman. I’m not going to pretend I don’t care just because that’s what you’d prefer.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Yes.’
She had.
Libby was as lovely with his parents as she had been on arrival and as Marcus came from the helicopter where he had deposited their luggage she gave him a fond hug.
Yet as the helicopter lifted off there was no touching hands this time. Instead, she closed her eyes and dozed for the journey home.
Even on the car ride back to her flat she was silent.
She could see the curtain flickering and knew Rachel would be waiting for an update and would scold her for not playing it cool. But where Daniil was concerned there was no such thing as lukewarm; there was no question now of sitting on the fence and waiting to see what his next move would be.
Libby delivered her ultimatum.
‘I don’t do well with maybes so if you leave it till then don’t bother calling—it will be too late,’ she said. ‘I mean it.’
His car didn’t sit idling until she was safely inside.
And neither did Libby turn and wave.
He was in or out and so was she.
She just hoped that some time this century her heart would catch up with that fact.
* * *
To her shame, that night Libby took her phone to her bed and plugged it into its charger.
Just in case.
But she woke to no calls or texts and no flowers, either.
He’s on a business trip, she reminded herself, though it was a poor excuse because he could probably have a koala bear delivered to her if he so chose.
And on Tuesday, again nothing.
Even her period refused to make itself known. That evening, Libby came in the door and tried to pretend to Rachel that she wasn’t scanning the hall, kitchen and lounge for flowers and she asked, oh, so casually, ‘Any phone calls?’
‘Only your parents call you on the landline. I warned you...’
‘He might still be flying...’
‘Oh, so his personal pilot would have told him to turn his phone off? You shouldn’t have pushed so hard,’ Rachel said, because Libby had told her some, if not all, about the weekend she and Daniil had shared.
‘Why not?’ Libby said. ‘I’d be being ignored now whatever I’d said. At least this way I know he’s not interested.’
On Wednesday she played good toes, naughty toes with a group of very wriggly four-year-olds and listened to the sound of babies crying in her tiny waiting room.
She couldn’t possibly be pregnant, Libby thought as she pointed her toes down.
‘Good toes,’ she said, deciding that she was lovesick, that was all.
‘Very, very naughty toes,’ Libby said, wondering why the hell she’d been foolish enough to do it without protection.
Eight little girls blinked at the deviation from the script and the sound of their ballet teacher’s slightly strange laughter.
‘Good toes,’ Libby said, because, hell, he hadn’t come inside her.
But they were soon back to naughty toes and dark thoughts that maybe he was so potent that his sperm would be the same, brutally tapping away at her poor egg just as he had at her heart.
As she waited for her older students to arrive Libby went into her locker and looked at the pregnancy test kit she had bought but hadn’t had the courage to use.
She was scared to find out.
There was the temporary distraction of a young adult class later that evening. For now it consisted of three—Sonia, a girl called Oonagh and a young man called Henry, who had so much talent it both thrilled and scared her to have a hand in moulding it. But her fears caught up with her as she made her way home.
A broken heart she could deal with.
Possibly, an unexpected pregnancy, too.
It was Daniil Zverev who had her stomach somersaulting.
He was the most remote, distant man she had ever met.
The antithesis of her.
A man who had told her from the very start he didn’t get close to anyone, and now with every day that passed it was more and more likely he was going to be the father of her child.
‘You look like death,’ Rachel said, as she came in the door. ‘Your father called...’
‘I know,’ Libby said. ‘I just spoke to him.’
Dr Stephenson was retiring and had asked Lindsey if he could organise the party, and he also wondered if Libby might consider travelling to Oxford to discuss it.
‘He was most impressed,’ Lindsey had said.
‘I’m not meeting with him, Dad.’
‘You’re a point of contact.’
‘No,’ Libby had said. ‘I’m not.’
The last thing she wanted now was a trip to Oxford and a trip down memory lane when it looked as if the next few months would be taken up getting over Daniil.
Getting bigger by him.
Libby looked over at Rachel, wondering if she should tell her friend just what was on her mind.
Rachel would be brilliant; Libby knew that. She’d dash off to the chemist and in half an hour or so...
She’d know.
Maybe she already did.
‘You didn’t ask if there had been any phone calls or deliveries,’ Rachel observed.
‘You’d have told me if there had been,’ Libby sighed. ‘Please, don’t say you warned me.’
‘I shan’t.’
‘Maybe I should have done what you said and—’
‘No,’ Rachel interrupted. ‘If you had, then he’d have been in for a very rude shock a few weeks or months down the line. You’re right, it’s better to be yourself from the start.’
‘Even if that self is pushy and demanding?’ Libby checked.
‘Yep, I’m proud of you for standing firm.’
‘You know, he warned me not to go falling in love, I should have—’ She never got to finish. Instead, she jumped as the one moment she wasn’t looking at her phone it bleeped with a text.
‘Oh!’ Libby let out a shout of joy when she read it. ‘It’s from Daniil.’
‘What does he say?’ Rachel checked as Libby started tapping away.
Hi. Daniil.
‘That’s it?’ Rachel checked, and then jumped up and tried to wrestle the phone from her friend but was already too late—Libby’s response had been sent.
Hearts, flowers, kisses, she had used every emoticon at her disposal and Rachel was appalled.
‘I thought you were proud of me for being myself,’ Libby said, as she chewed on her nails. She knew her response had been over the top and wondered if it was possible to retrieve a text.
Even if it was possible, it was way too late for that, she thought as she saw the little tick beside her message that meant it had been read. ‘I should have just said hi.’
‘You should have waited two hours before saying hi,’ Rachel reprimanded.
‘I know, I just—’
Then it rang.
‘Daniil!’ Libby exclaimed.
He smiled at the obvious delight in her voice and could compare it to nothing else—it was unchecked, without agenda and simply her.
‘I missed you,’ Libby said, and Rachel cringed.
‘I miss you, too,’ he admitted. ‘And I’m ringing to tell you that I lied.’
‘I’m quite sure you did,’ she said, waving to Rachel as she headed into her bedroom. ‘About what? Charlotte?’
Daniil laughed at the edge to her voice.
‘I don’t lie about things that don’t matter. I’m not away on business, I’m in Russia.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m trying to find out what happened to the others.’
‘Have you had any luck?’
‘Not really,’ he said, and then with that hopefully out of the way he changed the subject. ‘How are you?’
Libby hesitated. She wanted to tell him she was floating on air just to hear from him, she wanted to tell him that her period was AWOL and she had never been more scared in her life, but somehow she managed to find the off switch.
‘Busy,’ she said. ‘The classes are filling up.’
‘That’s good.
’
‘Why did you call?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t like how we left things. I was a bastard the other night...’
‘I know that you were,’ she said.
‘I didn’t mean to be. I really thought you would be asleep.’
‘I know that now,’ she said. ‘So what’s this letter your father gave you?’
‘Do we have to talk about it?’ Daniil asked.
‘No,’ Libby said, but it was like being told not to push a button or knowing that her parents were out and her Christmas presents were in the wardrobe. ‘Yes.’
‘You have no patience.’
‘Not a scrap.’
‘Okay, I got a letter from Sev.’
‘One of your friends from the orphanage?’
‘Yes, he must have found my parents’ address and sent it to them. He was asking to meet me outside Buckingham Palace. I guess it was the only place he had heard of in London but they never gave it to me till that night. My father said they didn’t want to rake up the past.’
‘How long ago was it sent?’
‘Five years ago.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Just that.’
‘Tell me.’
Daniil sighed and picked up the letter he had just been looking at.
‘He says, “Hey, shishka.”’
‘Shishka?’
‘It’s slang for big shot. They started to call me that when they found out that I was going to be adopted.’
‘What else does it say?’
Daniil wasn’t sure he should translate the next part verbatim but he did so and read it out loud, telling her about the woman Sev had nearly slept with, and about meeting outside Buckingham palace at midday in November.
‘What else?’
‘Nothing,’ Daniil said. ‘Well, he says that he hopes his writing wouldn’t embarrass me.’
‘Why would his writing embarrass you?’ she asked.
‘He would think I wanted nothing to do with him.’
‘At least it’s something to work on,’ Libby said, but he disagreed.
‘There’s nothing—no contact address in the letter, no surname. There’s no more information than that. We didn’t do much schooling in letter writing.’
The Price of His Redemption Page 13
