A Reluctant Cinderella

by Alison Bond

  ‘Unfortunately I am with someone tonight,’ said Lubin, as if to suggest that otherwise he wouldn’t leave her side until morning. ‘But tomorrow I would very much like to take you to dinner if you are free. You are free?’

  ‘I am free,’ she said, unsure whether they were both talking about her plans or her romantic status. But either way the answer was the same.

  18

  The restaurant he had chosen was high above the Rynek Glowny, the medieval square dominated by the elaborate Cloth Hall. Late at night, now that the stall holders had gone home and taken their touristy wares with them, it was easier to imagine the city as it would once have been, a wealthy trading centre, rich in art and beauty.

  She threw some coins at a violinist on the street, the eerie melody capturing her mood perfectly. Just being here made her feel more European, less like a typical English person treading carefully through life, fearful of embarrassing situations. What better place to start over than somewhere new? London was full of her past. A place like this could be her future.

  She climbed the stone stairs to the restaurant. So deep in thought was she, thinking of offices somewhere on this very square, of swarthy Eastern European defenders and cunning deals, that she was in front of Lubin’s table for a few seconds before she looked up and saw him.

  His eyes narrowed and the meanness of his expression snapped her back into the evening ahead.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, slipping into the seat opposite him. ‘I was miles away.’

  He looked confused and she wondered if the idiom had been lost in translation.

  ‘I was thinking about something else,’ she said. But that sounded even worse. She smiled and took a deep breath. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am not used to waiting,’ he said.

  She was only ten minutes late.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say so she looked down at the menu instead. It was all in Polish.

  Lubin suggested that he order for both of them, and from his tone she suspected that it was not so much a suggestion as an instruction. He didn’t ask her for any likes or dislikes, just rattled off a stream of indecipherable Polish to the supplicating waiter and then dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

  Too young, too moody. I shouldn’t be here.

  And yet she squirmed in her seat, imagining what he would be like when he was truly angry. For so long it had been Jackson, only Jackson. The idea of a new lover, this one, young and vital, awakened fresh desire that made her burn.

  He looked out of the window and took a deep breath and whatever was irking him lifted from his features. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but he was no longer looking at her with something close to hate.

  ‘I especially don’t like waiting for you,’ he said. ‘The thought of a beautiful woman is too tormenting.’

  ‘Um, thank you?’

  ‘You’re most welcome.’

  This fling, if that’s what it was to be, couldn’t possibly go anywhere. But then didn’t that make it the perfect relationship for her?

  ‘You didn’t grow up in Poland?’ she asked. ‘How long have you been here?’

  He didn’t take much prompting to talk about himself. He told her about his humble childhood in the Ukraine. He brushed sharply aside the tragic death of his mother and she wondered whether that was because it was too painful to talk about or perhaps not painful enough. For it was startlingly clear that Aleksandr was his father’s son, and the conversation was thick with mentions of Goran Lubin’s name.

  ‘My father can defend every acquisition that he made,’ he said, over an appetizer of faultless caviar. ‘There are no ethical question marks above his interests. This is rare in modern Russia.’

  Rare? She thought it was unheard of. To hear others tell it you could almost believe that induction to the Russian Mafiya came free with every first million. All that money made directly after the fall of communism was made in a lawless land. Only the most determined and ruthless emerged grasping such enormous wealth. Either his father was the last honest billionaire in Russia or his son was so blinded with hero worship that he saw only that which he wanted to see.

  He had ordered duck for both of them, which wouldn’t have been her first choice even though she could tell it was perfectly cooked and served. Having never been the subservient type she wondered if this was what it would be like to be in a relationship playing that role. Constantly bending your appetite to another’s will. After a lifetime of making decisions there was something liberating about relinquishing responsibility for a while, even if that meant you did end up with duck. Jackson never dominated her. Unless she wanted him to.

  ‘You are staying at the Sheraton?’ he asked, clearly disgusted.

  She cocked her head to one side, curious. ‘You don’t like the Sheraton?’

  ‘The British are like the Americans – they are drawn to names they know; they trust the familiar.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I enjoy the unknown. And I trust no one.’

  He drank a bottle of champagne without her help. ‘Your trouble, in England,’ he said, ‘it is over?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve hired a private investigator.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean? So that I can clear my name.’

  ‘You want your old job back?’

  ‘I don’t like being under suspicion,’ she said. ‘I think somebody is trying to ruin me. I want to know who. I want to know why.’

  ‘And you think that knowing this will make everything okay again?’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘The Lubin family name has been dragged into scandal numerous times. I do not worry. Enemies are a by-product of success. I think scandal makes headlines. The truth does not. Even if you find out exactly how this happened to you, and you tell a hundred reporters, you think they will print anything? You think anyone will care?’

  ‘I care,’ she said.

  ‘But you already know you are innocent.’

  There was an undeniable truth to what he said. The old uptight thoroughly British Samantha might battle on purely for truth and principle, but perhaps this new European version of herself could be more relaxed. About everything. In time the scandal that made her leave behind her old life might be the best thing that could have happened.

  All her dreams of success had been so fixated on London she had forgotten that there was an entire world out there to conquer.

  She could just let it go.

  She snapped out of her thoughts to find him staring at her again. When he looked at her like that she felt like an item on a menu, like he wanted to eat her, and she was stirred in his presence.

  ‘So tonight you will see my apartment,’ he said.

  She wanted the adventure of him. And yet, damn it, she knew that it would be a reckless escapade, full of risk, promising nothing. Was that really the best way to start over in a new town? ‘I’m not sure, Alek. It’s late and I have a full day tomorrow.’

  ‘It wasn’t a question,’ he said. ‘Tonight you will see my apartment. If this was about business I would have invited you to lunch.’ He assumed they had both known that dinner in the finest restaurant in Krakow was just a polite preamble to the real reason they were here.

  She could still say no.

  She pictured herself going home to her empty hotel room. If she went with him she knew that she might regret it, she might not. If she went back to the hotel alone she thought there was a good chance she could end up ordering porn and feeling lonely as hell. She would regret that for sure.

  The building where he lived looked unspectacular from the outside; a slash of graffiti on the messy brick wall was half hidden by an enormous mountain of snow that had been piled up by a snowplough and left to get dirty and grey. She had to tread carefully in her heels. Not very romantic. She wanted to keep her buzz, so concentrated on how beautiful he was, and rich, and young. Like a footballer only better. Footballers rarely wanted to tolerate powerful women. And they all wanted
kids. Their taste vacillated from mother to whore with very little in between, and she was neither. Lubin wasn’t threatened by her strength. And she found that attractive.

  In the shadows behind them she saw a dark figure and flinched. Was someone following them?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll protect you.’

  She laughed, because the idea of Samantha Sharp needing to be protected was absurd. ‘I’ve been taking care of myself for … years,’ she said. She’d almost said exactly how many years, but had stopped herself just in time. But she looked behind them again all the same. ‘Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Is that the kind of thing that gets you hot? You’re very safe with me, Samantha. I stand to inherit over seven billion dollars. I have the most secure apartment in Krakow.’

  He pushed through thick wooden doors and they walked across a cobbled courtyard, unprepossessing even in the dim light. But at the far end, through another set of doors, they entered a beautiful atrium, the soaring glass ceiling above the perfect modern contrast to the cobbles underfoot. A liveried doorman nodded at them, but was ignored.

  In the elevator Lubin took a key from his pocket and inserted it into a discreet niche by the panel of numbered floors.

  She wondered if he would grab her in the elevator, but he didn’t and the sexual tension ratcheted up another notch or two until she was so turned on she thought perhaps he could feel the heat radiating from her. They moved smoothly upward until the doors opened straight into his truly glorious penthouse apartment.

  He knew she would be impressed. Women always were. He enjoyed seeing her expression as she took in five thousand feet of spectacular city living, the floor to ceiling windows across the width of the room showing off the city, the lights of the bridges over the Vistula River, the floodlit Wawel Castle in the foreground and the terracotta rooftops of churches and convents caught by street lights stretching towards the main square.

  In London, she thought, if such a place existed, it would cost millions. In London such an enormous space would surely have been converted into ten regular-sized apartments and sold for a million each.

  The apartment itself was austere, the walls a uniform slate grey, pieces of sculpted art sparsely displayed where they could cast the most dramatic shadows, an enormous stone fireplace cut into the wall. Modern touches came in the form of a plasma screen and a stainless-steel kitchen. The whole place was cold and masculine, the only warmth was the aged oak parquet beneath her feet.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. She knew a response of some kind was expected.

  ‘Of course I cannot be sure,’ he said. ‘But I think I have the finest view in the city.’

  It was spectacular. She was unable to stop staring out at the fairytale concoction of castles and spires. He came up behind her and his arms looped around her waist. He swept her hair away from one shoulder and dipped his head to kiss her neck. It was the first time he had touched her and she felt herself turn liquid, melting.

  She twisted towards him, offering up her lips and he pushed her against the cold glass as he pressed a kiss upon them, clutching a handful of hair at the base of her neck so that she couldn’t move. She was hungry for him, probing deeper, feeling the kiss all the way down to her high heels. After a moment he drew back.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, her legs trembling, longing to sit down, to lie down, longing to be kissed again.

  ‘Perhaps this is a mistake. We do business together.’

  ‘Don’t you think,’ she said, snaking her hand round his waist and feeling the mean muscles on his back, ‘that you should always mix business with pleasure?’ Her voice was husky with desire, her lips still moist from his kiss.

  Lubin walked over to the kitchen. She watched with some dismay as he took a small wrap from his pocket and started to cut two lines of cocaine on his stainless-steel work surface. She winced as he spilt some and brushed it carelessly onto the floor.

  Once Liam would have worked a whole week to afford what you just spilt.

  He took a small silver straw from his inside pocket and snorted up one of the lines before offering the straw to her.

  She shook her head. ‘Not now,’ she said, ‘maybe later.’ She meant ‘never’ but it seemed too judgemental to say so.

  Jackson hated drugs.

  Jackson. She knocked back the thought of him.

  He shrugged and had the second line himself. ‘Later we’ll be busy,’ he said. He sniffed loudly and patted the edge of his nose with his fingertips. ‘Take off your clothes now.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  God, the thrill of being ordered around. It was shameful. She shrugged off her jacket and twisted out of her skirt, stepping from it carefully. Then she slipped off her shirt so that she stood in front of him in just her heels and her black satin underwear.

  She stared at him provocatively, running a lazy hand over her own curves. She knew she had a beautiful body. Funny how being half naked made her feel more powerful.

  He came to her again and kissed her, biting at her lips, his hands moving across her body, his breath coming throaty and warm. It seemed like she was drowning, her body lost to the exciting sensations of an unfamiliar touch. Between kisses he kept telling her she was gorgeous, fucking gorgeous, and she told him he was turning her on and making her burn. He stopped, eyes hungry, hard-on unmistakable, mouth wet from her kiss.

  ‘Now what?’ she teased.

  ‘The window,’ he said thickly, dragging off his shirt and fumbling with his flies, ‘get up against the window.’

  She pressed her palms against the freezing glass.

  He placed his hands on either side of her hips, pulling her back into him. She shuddered with responsiveness. His fingertips played across her bare belly and the tops of her thighs, tantalizing her. She stared down at the city far below and felt dizzy. She bit down on her lip as he grabbed at her breast with one hand while reaching into her with the other. She pushed up against his hand, grinding disgracefully, desperate to feel him inside her.

  Then abruptly he pulled back. His head whipped round the far side of the room and she noticed the faint whirring sound of the elevator.

  He sprang away from the window and cursed in Russian: ‘Yob tvoyu mat!’

  It was like a bucket of cold water. She was confused, watching as he bolted to the kitchen and hastily pocketed the cocaine wrap and the straw, frantically wiping down the surface to ensure no tell-tale trace of white powder remained.

  ‘Dress yourself,’ he said, throwing her suit and shirt at her feet. She did as she was told, the abrupt change of mood like a dream rudely interrupted.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, but was ignored.

  Mere seconds later the door to the elevator opened and his father stepped into the room. She recognized him from the cover of Fortune magazine, and, besides, his son’s cowering reaction would surely have tipped her off.

  He was unhappy. He barked something in Russian, flicking his hand towards her.

  ‘Father, this is Samantha Sharp. She’s an agent from London. This is a business meeting.’

  Goran Lubin switched seamlessly to English. ‘Then I suggest you do up your shirt.’

  She tried not to smile. Aleksandr diminished as she watched, no longer a billionaire playboy, just a boy, and one clearly terrified of Daddy. He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his eyes darting around the apartment, no doubt checking for more contraband.

  ‘My son and I have personal business to discuss,’ he said, fixing her with an uncompromising gaze, his eyes solid like blocks of onyx. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.’

  She didn’t need to be told twice. She gathered her things and said a brief goodbye to Aleksandr who looked as if he’d push her from the window if it meant she’d leave sooner. As the doors to the lift closed behind her she thought she heard his father shouting in Russian.

  She leant against t
he wall and started to laugh. Behind every rich playboy is a father that must be obeyed. Suddenly she saw all Aleksandr’s posturing as a poor imitation of his father’s power. He’s really far too young for me.

  But she couldn’t help thinking about what would have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted. And she enjoyed thinking about it too much to say never again.

  19

  Layla Petherick lived next door to his grandmother and Joe had been in love with Layla since he was seven years old.

  One day he would tell her and they would live happily ever after.

  Even at seven Joe was rarely to be found without a football at his feet, except when annoying things like eating or school got in the way. His father encouraged his son’s football craziness; without it he wouldn’t really know what to do with him.

  Until he was about thirteen Joe thought that his dad lived here with Nan, in her West Sussex semi-detached a short drive from the sea, not realizing that Simon lived in a small one-bedroom flat in east London in a neighbourhood full of flats just like it, swarming with traffic and trouble, and not much else.

  No place for a child, so when he visited England to see his dad they went to Nan’s, which was ace, because he got to play football in the garden and watch Brighton and Hove Albion play at home, and he got to meet Layla.

  Seven-year-old Joe was thwacking his football, a new Adidas one, up against a brick wall in the back garden, trying hard to find some pattern between the way he kicked the ball and the way it came back at him, already aware that it was supposed to make a difference. He’d heard a man called Des Lynam talking about ‘side’ and ‘spin’ on a football programme called Match of the Day and if that’s what Dennis Bergkamp did then Joe wanted to learn how.

  Over and over again he would kick the ball – first on the left, then on the right – until he could safely predict which way he had to move to connect with the rebound. His little seven-year-old face creased in concentration while he practised, with annoyance when he made a mistake, and sheer delight when the ball went just the way he wanted it to.