Redemption of a Ruthless Billionaire

by Lucy Ellis

  All the lights were on, an assortment of cars filled the drive and were planted in odd positions under the oaks, and there were fairy lights strewn along the paths that led to the back terrace, where the party-goers were a blur of colour behind glass.

  It was a freezing night and Sybella huddled in her wool coat as Nik put his arm around her and propelled her up those steps.

  She hadn’t felt this excited or nervous in years, but as soon as she stepped into the warm conservatory the number of people gave her a welcome feeling of anonymity. She was just one of many women in gorgeous bits of nothing. If anything she felt a little overdressed in her backless, knee-length pink silk georgette frock. But she could feel Nik’s hand resting lightly above her waist, against her bare skin, and she felt a renewed surge of confidence.

  Everyone wanted to talk to them, and then Nik left her alone with their hostess, Emma Eastman, a former model who had married a celebrity agent and was one of the locals who arrived on weekends and whose food bills for her guests helped keep Edbury’s local food producers very happy.

  ‘How can it be that you’re local and I’ve never met you?’ Emma asked bluntly.

  Sybella considered mentioning she’d actually applied to Lark House for work experience but decided the wise course was to smile and say, ‘It does seem odd.’

  ‘Of course, we’re delighted to get Nik here. He’s so elusive. When Marla said he’d agreed to come we were over the moon.’ She leaned close and said sotto voce, ‘I have to say, my husband’s line of work means I’m always entertaining performers, TV personalities, big egos, but Marla Mendez takes the cake. She just rang Benedict and invited herself.’ Emma suddenly pulled a face. ‘Oh, heck, have I spoken out of school? Do you know Marla well?’

  ‘I don’t know her at all.’

  ‘Ah.’ Emma looked around in a covert fashion. ‘Well, just a word to the wise—she’s not very happy with you. I suspect she thought this weekend was going to play out somewhat differently. Otherwise I doubt we would have got her here.’

  Sybella didn’t have to ask what Marla imagined might be different.

  ‘You make a fabulous couple,’ said Emma, clearly wanting to hear all the details.

  ‘I don’t know if couple is the right word. We’ve only known one another a handful of days.’

  Emma’s face fell. ‘So you don’t think you would have any sway with Nik if Benedict and I were to ask him to sponsor our Wells for Africa project? It would mean so much having his name attached, and I think it would go over well, you know, socially if he was seen to be contributing.’

  Sybella felt as if she’d suddenly waded out beyond her depth. Her parents-in-law existed on the edges of the county set in the area, but she’d never paid any attention to it. She didn’t like snobs—she’d been raised by two. But Emma’s entire manner, even if it was a little manufactured, had something engaging underneath it. She seemed like a genuinely nice woman.

  ‘I’m sure he’s open to charitable enterprises—you only have to ask him. He’s not nearly as ferocious as his reputation.’

  Emma beamed at her. ‘As soon as we heard he was bringing a local girl with him we knew Edbury Hall must be in safe hands.’

  At dinner Nik was monopolised, but again she didn’t mind, although it was a little disconcerting when the man sitting beside her slipped his business card under her plate.

  ‘If you could get this to Mr Voronov, and let him know Forester & Bean have represented most of the established families in the area for over a century.’

  Sybella politely smiled and went on with her dinner.

  Nik sat opposite her, fielding questions from their host about the ecological impact of mining. Nik rolled out a convincing line about his company’s determination not to log where it wasn’t necessary and his refusal to use chemicals underground. Any mine was a major habitat modification and Voroncor did their best to limit biodiversity issues. But he admitted freely once a mine had gone in, the site would never be the same again.

  Some of the other guests were clearly dinner table ecological warriors—rather like herself—but Nik handled them well. He explained Voroncor had posted bonds with all their sites. Once mining ceased the clean-up would not stop until they had proved the reclaimed land was once more productive.

  ‘So you’re not just digging holes in the earth and ruining habitat,’ she said to Nik as he pulled her out of her chair after dinner.

  ‘I’d be a poor excuse for a human being if I did,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Mining isn’t for sissies, Sybella.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone here is going to mistake you for a sissy, Nik. Do you know everyone here wants a piece of you?’

  He had his other hand around her waist now and was leading her into the ballroom.

  She had so many questions, but mostly what she wanted to do was be in his arms, far away from all these people.

  ‘I do know every man here is envious of me at this moment.’

  He finally held her in his arms as they drifted onto the dance floor and Sybella rested her head against his shoulder.

  Envious? Probably not. But right now her heart was wide open and banging like a barn door and she was just waiting for him to come on in.

  Because she could have this. Nik didn’t seem to be going anywhere and she’d spent the last week pretending to herself it didn’t matter if he came back.

  All the silly things she’d been telling herself. None of it was true.

  ‘I never get to do this,’ she said confidingly, ‘put on a beautiful dress and be admired.’ She shook her head against his shoulder. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you that. You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand.’

  He stroked an invisible strand of hair from the curve of her neck. ‘You’ve denied yourself a great deal, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Not any more.’ Emboldened, she put a hand to his chest. ‘Are you going to make love to me?’ She framed the question she’d been longing to ask him all night.

  ‘Is that a question?’ His breath brushed her ear tip.

  ‘Just looking for a time line.’ Her skin felt hot; her words sounded so bold and sure.

  ‘You think I brought you here to take another look at your beautiful lingerie?’

  Sybella’s heart skipped a beat. ‘I didn’t think men noticed those sorts of things.’

  ‘I notice everything about you.’

  Sybella swore she could feel his hand at her lower back through the boning of her gown. Impossible, and yet…

  ‘I want you now,’ he said against her ear. ‘Is that a problem?’

  Sybella moved her smooth cheek against his rough jaw. ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘But possibly not at a party,’ he observed.

  Sybella, a little weak with longing, couldn’t at this moment see exactly why.

  ‘Surely there’s a guest room somewhere?’ Then she sighed, because she would never do something like that. ‘Oh, Nik, it’s a long drive home.’

  ‘It’s been a long week,’ he said, his mouth warm against her ear. ‘I think we can withstand another half-hour in a car.’

  She looked into his eyes and saw everything a woman could possibly want to make her feel like the only female in his universe.

  His arm came away from her waist but he held onto her other hand and wordlessly he began to lead her across the dance floor towards the exit.

  People parted ways to allow them passage. There was nothing subtle about what they were doing, leaving early, and Sybella was thrilled.

  *

  An hour later Nik didn’t want to move. Sybella was draped across him. She stroked his chest, nuzzled him.

  ‘I missed this,’ she said.

  ‘Six years,’ he murmured against her sweet-smelling hair. ‘It’s a long time.’

  ‘No, you.’ She raised her pleasure-dazed eyes to his. ‘I missed this with you.’

  Nik experienced a surge of something he couldn’t control. It was a wave of feeling that had him holding onto her.
She didn’t seem inclined to let him go either.

  Every time he touched her it was like a conflagration of the senses. Every time it felt like the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Why were they denying themselves?

  Then he remembered a small person who would arrive home in the morning.

  He sat up, banging the back of his head on the frame of the backseat of the SUV.

  Sybella winced for him and tried to sit up, but she was hampered by the space. He chuckled and she dissolved into helpless giggles. They had got as far as the Linton Way Forest when Nik had pulled the car off the road and into this clearing. It was private, but they could hear any cars going past on the road.

  Nik was certain from the outside they would be invisible; the steamed up windows helped with that. Sybella, still in her dress but wondrously dishevelled, her hair falling down and the hem of her dress so high it hinted at the shadowy mystery between her thighs, gazed up at him. He, with his shirt hanging open and his trousers unbuttoned, was trying to make sense of what this woman did to him. They hadn’t even made it into Edbury.

  He drove them to the cottage and carried her inside. Put her in the shower and then crowded her against the splash back until the water ran cold. Then he wrapped his bigger, warmer body around hers in the new bed.

  ‘I’ve got a boat moored at a place I own off the coast of South Africa,’ he said. ‘Come there with me for a few days, just you and me.’

  Sybella looked at him with those clear hazel eyes. He waited for her to say, No, I won’t leave my daughter but she surprised him with a simple, ‘I’d like that.’

  No hesitation, no questions. Instead she asked, ‘Can we do it soon?’

  ‘I’ll make the arrangements.’

  She rubbed her cheek against his arm. ‘I’ve never travelled outside the United Kingdom. Does that make me parochial?’

  ‘No, dushka, just busy.’ His hand stroked her damp hair and she was whisked back to that evening last week when he’d dried her hair with a towel and she’d first begun to let down her guard with him. He’d also just acknowledged how hard she worked.

  There was nothing sexier.

  Deep inside her a feeling Sybella had never had before began to stir.

  ‘It’s good to take a break from real life, yes?’ he said, his chest rumbling against her back.

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed. Only later would she wonder if this was only that for him, a break from real life? When it felt all too real to her. But she quieted that thought because, after all, it was only a long weekend away.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SYBELLA CAME DOWN the stairs into the galley of the boat, her long bare legs appearing first and then her body clad in a black bikini, a diaphanous shirt unbuttoned and billowing around her. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail she looked happy and carefree and about twenty.

  Lust licked along his veins, but it was mingled with something more lasting, something that went along with seeing her so light-hearted, simply enjoying herself and it had a corresponding effect on his spirit. He felt satisfied. Da, satisfied. He had her at last.

  ‘Nik, who is this woman?’

  It was then he noticed the magazine she was carrying and wondered which old girlfriend she’d stumbled onto, but then he saw the photograph of the eighteenth-century villa on the lake and he knew.

  As she came closer she held out the magazine. ‘It’s got a feature on a Galina Voronov, a Russian socialite with fashion connections and a very nice villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. All very lah-de-dah. She apparently tried to sue you but that failed. You rate two lines, by the way, neither of them informative. Is she a relative?’

  Nik ignored the magazine in favour of sliding one hand over her hip as he brought her in against him, the other expertly turning over pancakes in the skillet.

  ‘Who taught you to do that?’ she asked, distracted by his unexpected dexterity in the kitchen.

  ‘Baba, my grandmother. We made blini all the time. She made her own jam from her orchard and I would stuff myself on them.’

  They had a twenty-person staff on the forty-metre yacht and their meals were sublime, but for their last day of four blissful days together on the boat Nik had sent their staff ashore and they were completely on their own.

  He was making her breakfast. It was bliss.

  ‘I can imagine you as a boy, always getting into trouble because you wanted everything your own way.’

  ‘I might have wanted it but Deda made sure I was kept in check,’ he said, but he was smiling as he upended the crepes onto a plate with the rest.

  ‘What about your brother? It can’t have been easy for your grandmother with two boys.’

  Nik’s smile vanished. ‘My brother wasn’t there.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sasha was living with his mother.’

  ‘They split the two of you up?’

  Nik looked grim. ‘No, my stepmother split us up. At Alex’s funeral she took Sasha by the hand and put him in a car and they drove away and I didn’t see him again for ten years.’

  Sybella was effectively silenced by that image.

  ‘My reputation rises and falls on those blinis,’ Nik said, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell. ‘Why don’t you take them out and I’ll bring the coffee? Leave the magazine.’

  Sybella put the old magazine down on the bench and put a hand on Nik’s arm but he gave her a firm smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Off you go,’ he said.

  When he reappeared with a tray, coffees and some condiments she knew he wasn’t going to say any more, and it was clear this was a painful subject for him, as well it should be. She didn’t want to pry, but suddenly she knew this terrible thing about his boyhood.

  ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you, Nik,’ she said as he set the tray down. ‘Your grandfather would talk about you as a boy, but not Sasha. I didn’t make a connection.’

  ‘Why should you?’

  Nik settled down opposite her at the table, all masculine grace in shorts and an open shirt, the brown hair on his body glinting gold after four days in the hot sun. Sybella thought she would never get tired of looking at him.

  He sighed, rubbing his unshaven jaw. ‘Deda and Baba both tried every legal means possible to bring Sasha home but it was like hitting a brick wall. It took Galina going into rehab for Deda to get custody.’

  ‘Galina? The woman in the magazine, who tried to sue you?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘What was it you said about rehab?’

  ‘Alcohol. She’d run out of money and options, and Sasha was fifteen and I imagine every time she looked at him she saw how much he hated her. So Sasha came home to my grandparents. He was already six feet tall and carrying a mountain of resentment on those kid shoulders of his.’

  Sybella weirdly felt a little sorry for Galina Voronov. From what Nik had said she was clearly a troubled woman, but to have your child look at you and hate you?

  ‘How did your grandparents cope?’

  ‘They got him a psychologist and did everything they could, but it was a rough first year. I was just out of national service and doing a science degree, living at the campus. I came home weekends but he resented me from the start, and we argued a lot. I can’t blame him. I got everything that by rights should have been his.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  She had linked her hand with his across the table top, but now that hand closed over hers and he smoothed his broad thumb against the pulse point at her wrist. How that had happened Sybella wasn’t sure. It was like when they were in bed and one minute he’d be letting her have her way and the next she was exactly where he wanted her and happy to be there.

  Yes, Nik was telling her a painful personal story and she was thinking about how sexually dominant he was.

  ‘Nik? What do you mean everything that by rights should have been his?’

  ‘He is their grandson, I’m the ring-in.’

  ‘Nik, that�
��s a terrible thing to say. I know you don’t believe that.’

  ‘Net, but I suspect Sasha did.’

  He must have seen the look on her face because he squeezed her hand. ‘When he was sixteen I took him with me on a geological survey in the Urals. I put him to work helping me out and we started to interact as brothers for the first time in over a decade. He was with me when I first saw the abandoned Vizhny mine and talked about putting some shareholders together and buying it up. Sasha said he wanted in, so when I finally made a bid three years later he fronted up with his life savings. It was a risk, our relationship would have imploded at that point if something had gone wrong but it didn’t and it’s made both of us rich men.’

  Sybella got up and came around and climbed onto his lap and pressed her cheek to his rough one.

  ‘I’m so glad you told me this.’

  ‘It’s over now,’ he said, appearing more interested in how affectionate she was being than seeking comfort. He was stroking the side of her breast so she was distracted when he added quietly, ‘Almost over.’

  ‘Almost over?’ She drew back and looked into his eyes quizzically.

  ‘Nichevo.’ He shook his head and gave her a rueful smile, the fingers of his other hand engaging with the ties holding her bikini top together.

  ‘Stop it.’ She fidgeted and began to laugh. ‘I told you, I am not walking around topless on this yacht, Nikolai Voronov.’

  By the time she’d restored her modesty and been kissed the blinis were cold and the coffee was tepid and Nik had effectively changed the subject.

  It was only when she took some of the plates inside that she saw him binning the magazine.

  ‘Can I ask what the legal matter was about with your stepmother?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not a secret, dushka. Galina was the daughter of a high-ranking Kremlin apparatchik. He pulled strings. She got control of our father’s archive of work, films, documentaries. She owned all the rights for twenty years and, if that wasn’t bad enough, she effectively locked it away so nobody could see it. He’s virtually forgotten now in my country.’