“No, I wouldn’t, actually. I prefer intelligent women. But intelligent women are usually also strong, stubborn, ambitious, independent women who have no tolerance or respect for weak men. Tell the truth, Caro,” he prodded as he pulled out a chair for her. “Wouldn’t you rather marry a man like me than some poor schmuck like Ernie Thompkins in the mail room?”
“Ernie’s a very nice guy.” Caroline deftly dodged the question.
“Yes, well, we all know where they finish up, don’t we?” For a moment, she caught a flash of steel in Nick’s eyes, so she knew with certainty that he would never end up in last place. He was too clever and determined for that. “And don’t think I didn’t notice how neatly you ducked out of answering me. I did. So be warned—you’ll have to get up pretty early in the morning to put anything over on me, Caro.”
“Why would I ever want to? I’m not a deceitful person, Nick, and if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s honesty in a relationship. And I’m sure you know why that is, too.”
“Yes, word did get around the company about you and Paul Andersen.” Nick dished up the salad, beef Stroganoff and crusty French bread he had prepared, then set her plate before her. After opening a bottle of Beaujolais from his small wine cellar, he poured her glass half full. “That must have hurt, stung your pride, broke your heart—knowing the guy was only marrying you for money.”
“But isn’t that one of the reasons why you agreed to wed me?”
Nick glanced at her sharply from beneath hooded eyes. “That’s different. Ours is an arranged marriage, a business deal. I never led you on, pretended to love you in order to get you to a wedding altar. I find the fact that Andersen did despicable. Now, eat up. You’re not your supermodel sister Allie, thank heavens. You don’t have to run around looking like some gaunt refugee who just got off a raft from Robinson Crusoe’s island.”
“How can you say that? Allie’s gorgeous!”
“So are you, Caro,” Nick declared lightly, although his eyes were strangely now sober. “But I’m beginning to understand that you don’t realize that. That ever since your disastrous affair with Andersen, you have had no sense whatsoever of your worth as a woman.”
Caroline didn’t know how to reply to that. She wasn’t accustomed to having a handsome man tell her she was attractive. Usually, she intimidated men. Or suspected they were only interested in her share of the Fortune riches.
Nick, however, didn’t appear to be daunted by her in the least, and while it was true he was being paid a tidy sum to marry her, he wasn’t going to gain access to any of her own personal wealth by the deed. So he had no need to pay her compliments.
To cover her confusion, she dug into the beef Stroganoff, finding it delicious. “This is wonderful! Where did you learn how to cook?”
“Oh, when you’re a single man who appreciates good food, you either dine out a lot or else you figure out how to fix it yourself. I chose the latter course.”
“You’ve never been married before, then?” Caroline inquired, curious.
“No. This will be a first for me.”
“Me, too. I guess that’s why—in addition to the circumstances themselves—it all seems so awkward and unnerving, so unreal.”
“Once we grow more accustomed to the idea, to each other, those feelings will pass, Caro. Then you’ll undoubtedly turn into a nag who knows how to handle a rolling pin in more ways than one. I’ll probably come home late one night to be cracked over the head by you for stopping off for a drink with the boys.”
“No, you won’t,” Caroline stated firmly. “I’ve already told you I plan to interfere with your life as little as is humanly possible, Nick.”
“Well, time will tell, won’t it?” he remarked enigmatically.
After supper, Caroline insisted on helping clear away the dishes and clean up the kitchen. When that chore was almost done, Nick left her to complete it while he went into the great room to build a fire in the fireplace. It was blazing cheerfully by the time she joined him, and he had the stereo playing quietly, the strains of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty wafting from the speakers.
Nick himself sat on the floor, near the big, square coffee table in front of the fireplace, his back against one of the twin sofas. Two of the Tiffany lamps glowed softly, and two glasses of wine sat on the coffee table.
It was the seduction scene from any number of movies, Caroline thought, swallowing hard. And he was more than qualified for the leading-man role.
Earlier, before fixing supper, he had taken off his suit jacket and tie, loosened his collar and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Now, as he lounged on the floor, his long, powerful legs stretched out before him, she was forced to admit to herself that no matter what she thought about him personally, she still found him terribly attractive physically.
He had his head laid back upon the sofa; his eyes were closed, and he was smoking a cigarette, obviously reveling in the music. Instinctively, she knew this was how he spent many a long winter evening when he wasn’t otherwise engaged.
“Nick, it’s getting late. I should be getting home,” she said.
“Yes, I know that’s what you’d like, Caroline.” His voice was low, silky—like the satisfied purring of a predatory panther—and he didn’t even bother to open his eyes to look at her when he spoke. “But I’m afraid you’re going to be forced to spend the night here with me instead.”
At that wholly unexpected announcement, Caroline could only stare at him wide-eyed, abruptly horrified, panic-stricken, her heart pounding in her throat, her palms sweating. Given its size and location, Nick’s house had to sit on at least a couple of acres of land, she judged, so there were no near neighbors she could run to for assistance. And since he had insisted on driving her out here, she had no car of her own. She thought he must have planned that from the very beginning, so she would be trapped here alone with him, unable to escape.
No, surely, he could not be serious about keeping her here, she tried to reassure herself. Surely, he must know there were laws against rape in the United States. But Nick was Russian, from a country where women did not have as many rights and freedoms, as much protection under the law, as they did here in America—for whatever that was worth. Because even here, the rape statistics were terrible—worse even than the officially recorded figures, since many women, out of fear and shame, chose not to report the brutal, degrading crime against them. Perhaps because of that, Nick thought he would not be punished if he coerced her compliance.
Caroline didn’t know what to say, what to do. As she studied his carelessly sprawled figure, his arms and legs corded with muscle, she knew she hadn’t a prayer of fighting him off. Even if she ran upstairs and locked herself in one of the bedrooms, there was nothing to prevent him from simply breaking down the door to get at her.
“Nick, you can’t honestly mean to keep me here against my will, to—to force yourself on me.” Somehow, she managed to choke out the words, her hands clenching into fists at her sides, as though she were already preparing to do battle with him.
At that statement, his eyes flew open wide, and as his gaze took in her ashen face, her saucerlike eyes filled with apprehension, he growled harshly what she suspected was a very foul curse word, although she couldn’t be certain, because he spoke it in Russian. Then, without warning, he leaped to his feet and strode toward her determinedly, his face grim, a muscle throbbing in his taut, set jaw.
Utterly terrified then, Caroline screamed and turned to flee. But he caught her before she was even halfway across the room. Frantic, she struck out at him wildly, hammering her fists against his broad chest, shrieking and sobbing protests, while he gripped her upper arms tightly, refusing to release her and still snarling at her furiously in Russian.
Then finally, after several long, awful minutes, it dawned on Nick that in the heat of the moment, he had lapsed into his native language, so she couldn’t understand him, and he abruptly switched to English.
“Caroline, stop it! Stop it! Stop f
ighting me!” he snapped angrily, giving her a small, rough shake as she hit him in the chest again. “I’m not going to hurt you, damn it! My God! What in the hell kind of man do you think I am, anyway? I only meant that even if you held a gun to my head, I simply couldn’t take you back into town tonight. Have you even looked outside, for pity’s sake?”
She hadn’t, but she did then, glancing out the huge bank of windows and gasping at the sight that met her frightened, tearful eyes. It was snowing—hard—and obviously had been for quite some time. His long, serpentine driveway was probably buried by now.
“I can’t get my snowplow out there until tomorrow morning, when it will be light enough to see what I’m doing,” he told her.
“Oh, Nick, I am so sorry,” Caroline said weakly, in a very small, mortified voice. “I feel like such a fool…so embarrassed and ashamed. I thought—I thought—”
“I know what you thought, damn it! It’s why you thought it that has me so damned mad! Is that really what you think of me, Caroline? That I’m the kind of man who would rape you, for God’s sake!”
“No…no, of course not. It’s just that…well, you’re quite big and strong, extremely masculine and—and foreign…with what I’ve always thought of as Old World patterns of male thinking. And so when you said what you did, I—I just jumped to the wrong conclusion, that’s all. I’m so sorry….” Her voice trailed away, and she bit her lower lip contritely, unable to meet his eyes, her own brimming again with tears. Then, after a moment, she continued quietly.
“You don’t know, Nick—you can’t know, because I never told anyone—but the night I confronted Paul about him wanting to wed me only because of my money, he went crazy, and he…attacked me. He’d been drinking pretty heavily that evening, so I don’t know what he was thinking. I mean, it wasn’t as though we…hadn’t already slept together, or that forcing himself on me would cause me to change my mind and marry him, after all. At any rate, if he hadn’t been so drunk, I wouldn’t have been able to fend him off. But even though I managed to get him out of my apartment, I still felt so stupid and humiliated afterward at being so misled by him that I—I just couldn’t bring myself to trust any man enough again to let him get close to me.”
“Shhh. It’s all right, Caro. Really. I understand,” Nick crooned comfortingly as her tears spilled from her eyes at last.
He drew her into his arms then, holding her close against his whipcord body. During their struggle, her hair had come loose from its stylish French twist, and now he gently tugged the rest of the pins from it, combed it with his fingers, so it fell around her shoulders in a thick, silly sable mass. Somehow in the process, he managed to remove her tortoiseshell glasses, too, laying them aside on a nearby table.
In that instant, instinctively seeking reassurance and solace, Caroline didn’t object to his actions. Lost in the pain of her past, she was hardly even aware of them. But after a time, she eventually did begin to grow acutely conscious of how she was pressed against Nick’s warm, hard body, of the strong, steady beat of his heart against her ear, of how he stroked her unbound hair and her back soothingly, and of the fact that although he truly intended only to offer her consolation, he had nevertheless become aroused by her proximity.
Involuntarily, Caroline glanced up at him then, her brown eyes startled and momentarily confused, her mouth slightly parted in a small gasp of surprise. As Nick’s own nearly black eyes met hers, they abruptly darkened, glittering like obsidian as he stared down at her. Then he swore softly, and before she realized his intention, his lips swooped to capture her own.
In the beginning, his kiss was tentative, tender. But when, taken unaware, Caroline did not demur, Nick’s mouth grew harder, hungrier, more demanding. His tongue traced the outline of her lips before compelling them to part and thrusting inside, tasting and taunting. Unbidden, Caroline felt a sudden surge of longing and excitement sweep through her, setting her aflame. Of their own volition, her arms crept up to wind around his neck, and his own arms tightened around her, his hands tangling in her hair.
In some dazed corner of her mind, she reflected dimly that he had chosen his profession aptly, because there was definitely strong chemistry at work between them…roiling like some combustible liquid in a beaker heating over a Bunsen burner, about to explode. But at that thought, Caroline recognized that by not protesting, by letting Nick kiss and caress her like this, she was undoubtedly giving him the wrong impression: that she was his for the taking—both tonight and for the duration of their marriage.
Abruptly, she broke away from him, trembling from the yearnings he had wakened inside her, her knees so unexpectedly weak and fluid that she was compelled to lay one hand on the nearby table to steady herself. The other flew involuntarily to her mouth, moist and heated from his kisses.
“Nick, it really is getting late, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to bed now,” she told him breathlessly—then flushed furiously as she realized what she had inadvertently said, the unintentional double entendre of her words.
“Hmmm. That sounds like a real good idea to me,” he drawled lazily in response, his eyes drowsy beneath half-shuttered lids, an enigmatic smile curving his lips.
“That is not what I meant—and what’s more, you know it!”
“Do I, Caro baby? And are you sure that’s not what you meant?” His eyes gleamed wickedly now, and his smile broadened as she nodded tersely before kneeling to retrieve her hairpins scattered on the floor, then rising to pick up her glasses from the table. “Ah, well. Never let it be said that I don’t know how to accept defeat gracefully. I guess I’ll just have to comfort myself with the fact that I at least got to see you with your hair down and your glasses off—and that wasn’t a shabby consolation prize, by any means.”
He escorted her upstairs to the bedroom she had selected for herself and gave her one of his shirts to sleep in. Since she knew she’d have to wear her winter-white wool suit again in the morning, Caroline hung it up in the closet carefully after she had taken it off. Then she bathed in the sunken tub of the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom and washed her lingerie out in the sink, draping it over the towel rack to dry. Nick’s shirt was too big for her, hanging almost to her knees, the sleeves so long that she had to roll them up.
She was just fixing to get into bed when he knocked gently on her closed door. When she responded, Caroline only cracked it open, uncomfortably cognizant of the fact that she was stark naked beneath his shirt. Nick’s gaze traveled the length of her admiringly, lingering on her long, bare legs, and then on the open collar that displayed a good deal of her skin—not to mention the pulse fluttering erratically at the hollow of her throat—before coming to rest on her face.
“I…ah…just wanted to check in on you before I went to bed, see if there was anything else you needed,” he explained.
“No, thank you. There’s nothing. I’m fine.” Self-consciously, Caro drew the open collar edges of the shirt together, wondering anxiously if, in the glowing lamplight, he could actually see her nude body through the fine white cambric.
“Good. Well, if you happen to change your mind, you know where to find me,” Nick said, both of them highly aware that his words held a double meaning. “Good night, Caro. Sweet dreams.”
“Good night, Nick.”
Caroline shut the door firmly, intensely conscious of the fact that he was still standing out in the hall, waiting to see whether or not she pushed the lock into place. If she did, he would know she didn’t trust him to keep his word. If she didn’t, he might perceive it as an invitation, she thought. Torn, she didn’t know what to do. So it was much to her relief that after a moment, she heard him laugh softly in understanding of her predicament.
“Lock it, Caro, if it makes you feel better.” Then he padded silently down the hall.
She climbed into bed, but despite her mental exhaustion born of her extremely unsettling day, Caroline found she still couldn’t get to sleep and lay awake until the wee hours, tossing and turni
ng restlessly.
She remembered the feel of Nick’s mouth on hers, the swift, fiery response he had ignited in her. And she told herself fiercely that if she had one single ounce of common sense at all, she would back out of their arranged marriage first thing tomorrow morning—before it was too late.
Five
In the morning, Caroline discovered that it was already too late to change her mind, that her chance to call off the wedding had already been lost—if indeed she had ever truly had one at all.
She thought that perhaps she had not. Her conscience and her loyalty to her family had always dictated her actions—and now was no exception to that rule. So despite that after grooming and dressing herself, she went downstairs resolved to inform Nick that she could not go through with their marriage, the words died upon her lips as soon as she saw him.
He wore an elegant black Armani suit; its jacket and his foulard tie were tossed over one of the chairs at the kitchen table, upon which lay a pair of gold Cartier cuff links. The collar of his fine white Turnbull & Asser shirt was open, and his sleeves were rolled up, displaying his strong forearms and the gold Rolex watch that encircled his left wrist. His thick, dark hair, combed back in neat wings, shone glossily, as though it were newly washed and still damp.
Despite herself, Caroline felt her heart lurch in her breast at the sight of him, and she thought that nobody should look so good in the morning.
Nick must have risen at least two hours before she had, she realized, because as she glanced out the wide bank of windows, she observed that the driveway was freshly plowed. In addition, he had breakfast ready and waiting for her on the kitchen table: omelets, Canadian bacon, fruit, croissants and hot coffee.
“Good morning, Caro.” He smiled as he greeted her and, taking her unaware as he had last night, leaned over to brush her mouth with his own, as though they were already husband and wife and this were their usual morning ritual. “Did you sleep well?”
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