‘Just drive.’
So they did.
One a.m. Two a.m. They drove around.
‘Left,’ Aleksi said as once again the city lights receded. ‘Take the exit here,’ he commanded as they swerved into suburbia. ‘Right at the roundabout. And right again.’
Then he saw Kate’s house, nondescript in the darkness. The little streak of grass needed a cut, her car needed a wash, and a ‘For Sale’ sign was posted outside.
‘Stop here.’
Money talked, so the taxi driver didn’t—just stopped there, for five, ten, fifteen minutes, as Aleksi waited for normal services to resume, for this madness to abate, to tap the driver on the shoulder and tell him to take him back.
He had said never again.
He had sworn to himself he’d never come here again.
Hated himself for leading her on—because nothing could ever come of it.
Three times he had ended up here—and loathed himself for it.
Tomorrow, when the sun rose, he would surely regret it again.
Don’t make the same mistake again, he begged himself.
But…
‘Go.’ He stepped out of the cab.
‘I can wait,’ the driver offered. ‘Make sure someone’s home…’
‘Go,’ Aleksi repeated.
He stood there, in the middle of suburbia at three a.m., with no phone, watching the cab drive off and wondering to himself what the hell he was doing here.
Again.
He quashed that thought, tried to dismiss memories of his other late night visits to this house, but they rose to the surface again, demanding an answer he struggled to give.
He’d known her the longest.
It was the first time he’d considered it, thought about it, pondered it.
Apart from family, Kate had been in his life the longest of any woman—their fractured five-year history was the furthest back he’d ever gone. Aleksi travelled light; when a relationship was over it was over, and as for female friends—well, he’d never quite worked out how to keep it at that…
But he’d had to with Kate.
He walked up the path. Stared at the door. Told himself he could handle it.
And then took a breath and knocked.
Hearing the knocking on the door, Bruce barking just a couple of moments too late to earn the title of guard dog, Kate turned on the light. Half awake and half asleep, even as she headed down the hall she told herself not to hope.
Kate sometimes wondered if she imagined these visits.
There was never any mention of them—and certainly no acknowledgment of them—afterwards.
She didn’t really understand why he came, yet three times before now he had arrived on her doorstep.
Once, a couple of weeks after she had started back at Kolovsky, he had said that the press had been chasing him and he had shaken them off and ended up here. She had loaned him her sofa. His silver car had looked ridiculous in her drive and he had been gone by the time she had awoken the next morning.
Then, a few weeks later, there had been a row and she had resigned when he’d demanded she stay at work late. He had arrived in a taxi, a little the worse for wear, and had asked her to reconsider handing in her notice—had offered to more rigorously uphold the part-time conditions he had previously agreed to and then, when she had agreed to return, promptly fallen asleep on her sofa.
He had returned a third time after the charity ball, incoherent, clearly the worse for wear and at odds with everyone—furious with Belenki, with his family, and with the world. They had shared their second kiss—a sweet, confusing kiss, because even as it had ended she’d seen the conflict in his eyes. What had taken place would not be open to discussion, and again he had been gone by morning. Then the accident had happened.
But now he was back—not just at work, but in her home, too.
Cruel, restless, angry—and never more so than now—again he was at her door.
‘My leg…’
She could see the sweat beading on his forehead as he limped over the threshold—which told her of the pain he was in, because this week he had hidden his limp so well. ‘Have you had a pill?’ She had never seen him like this. Not since the early days at the hospital, when they had been trying to get his pain medication under control. ‘Maybe you need an injection?’
‘I’ve stopped taking anything!’ he gasped.
He was so pale beneath his tan she thought he might pass out.
‘You’re supposed to be on a reducing dose.’
‘I have reduced—I’ve stopped completely.’
‘When?’
‘Today.’
‘Aleksi!’ She was truly horrified. ‘They said you had to reduce slowly—that it would be months before you could manage without them. You can’t just stop like that.’
‘Well, I just did.’ Aleksi said. ‘I need to think straight.’
‘You can’t think straight if you’re in pain!’ Kate insisted.
‘Listen!’ His hand closed around her wrist, his voice urgent. ‘Listen to me. Since the accident I have not been able to think straight…’
‘That’s to be expected.’
‘Exactly.’ His eyes were grey, the whites bloodshot, and she had never seen him look more ill. ‘They do not want me to think straight. Since that new doctor, always there are more pills…’
‘He’s the best,’ Kate insisted. ‘Your mother researched…’ Her voice trailed off—surely Nina wouldn’t stoop that low? But from the way she was acting now, maybe she could.
‘I am going back under the care of the hospital. I have an appointment on Monday. Once I can think, once I am off this medication, I will get them to manage things—not a doctor of my mother’s choosing.’ He looked over to her, and she could see pain there that was so much more than physical. ‘You must think I’m being completely paranoid…’
She was silent for the longest time before she spoke. ‘Regretfully, no.’ She thought a moment longer. ‘I think maybe we’re both being paranoid but, yes, I can see you don’t trust her.’
‘If I can get through tonight then I can think straight…’
That much she understood.
There was still so much she didn’t.
It should have been uncomfortable—awkward, perhaps, but when he was here in her home. It wasn’t.
Oh he was scathing and loathsome and everything Aleksi, yet he travelled lighter here—even if he was in pain, it was as if all his baggage had been checked and left at the door.
‘How,’ he said, standing at the bathroom door, ‘can you lose a plug?’
She’d suggested a bath and, given he’d probably never run one in his life, for tonight she’d made allowances and offered to run it for him. Except she couldn’t find the plug!
‘Maybe Georgie…’ Kate started. But, no, she’d had a bath herself tonight.
‘Retrace your footsteps!’ was his most unhelpful suggestion.
‘What about a shower?’
‘You’ve just talked me into a bath, Kate,’ Aleksi said. ‘You spent the last ten minutes telling me how it would relax me, how—’
‘Here!’ The plug was in one of its regular hiding places—between the pages of a book she’d been reading—and of course he didn’t let her get away with it that easily. As she put in the plug and turned on the taps, having checked for towels and the like, she tried to beat a hasty retreat. But Aleksi blocked the door, holding out his hand and taking the novel from her reluctant hands.
‘I might like to read in the bath too,’ he told her.
He must, because he was gone for an age.
She didn’t really know what he was doing here—what it was that made him come. She just knew that he did.
Knew, somehow, that to question him would close the tiny door that occasionally opened between them.
The suave, sophisticated thing to do would be not to answer the door.
To pretend perhaps that she was out.
But she was
in.
Definitely in to Aleksi.
She had a life.
A career.
A family.
But he was her thrill.
A guilty, delicious secret. An endless question that delivered no answers. But how nice he was to ponder. Unattainable to her, but for a while, at least, here with her in her home.
Oh, she knew what Aleksi was going through tonight—going cold turkey from his medication—and tomorrow, when she awoke to him gone, it would once again be Kate battling withdrawal symptoms from the loss of Aleksi.
‘Does she go back to him?’ He stood, leaning in her doorway, dripping wet, a towel around his hips, and Kate jumped where she lay on the bed and tried to scramble her thoughts into order. ‘Jessica?’
He really had been reading it! ‘For a little while,’ Kate said as he walked over. Really, there was no question of the sofa for either of them; somehow she knew that tonight they were both staying here in her bedroom. ‘Then…’
‘Then what?’ Aleksi asked, sitting on the bed. ‘Then she realised she was better off without him?’ He lay down beside her, stretched out, just a towel covering his loins, and she couldn’t look—how she wanted to look, but she couldn’t.
‘I haven’t got that far yet.’ He closed his eyes and now she could look at him. Sitting up against the pillows, she stared at the most beautiful specimen of a man, lying beside her, one of her small towels a sash around his groin, his cheekbones—oh, God, his perfect cheekbones—two dark slashes on his cheeks, and the spike of wet eyelashes closed. But it was his nearly naked body that was new to her tonight—many nights of imaginings hadn’t sufficed. Up close and personal, he was nothing but stunning.
‘You’re selling your home?’ Somehow he managed to talk normally, and Kate tried for the same.
‘My landlord is selling.’
Eyes still closed, he frowned, because of course he didn’t really understand what it meant to her.
‘That’s why I asked my sister to have Georgie—I need to find somewhere this weekend.’ She watched the edge of his eyes scrunch to deepen his frown.
‘Surely he must give you notice?’
‘I got given a month’s notice,’ Kate said. ‘Last weekend you informed me you were flying home. This weekend I start looking. Next weekend I hope I find somewhere…’ She stopped herself before her voice cracked. Kate never took the woe-is-me route, and suddenly she didn’t need to to stop herself from getting upset, because then she got a little bit angry and it crept into her voice. ‘That’s if my employer will give me a reference.’
He opened his eyes to her.
‘I came on too strong, perhaps?’
‘There’s no perhaps about it,’ she retorted indignantly.
‘I can’t afford for you to leave just now.’
‘That’s all you had to say.’
When she looked back on this night—and it was certain that over and over she would—Kate wondered if she’d remember how she came to be touching him. But now, living it, feeling it, when it actually came to it, it was so seamless, so natural, that after a while of talking, after another while of silence and then talking again, when his leg was racked with painful cramping, it was more a response than a thought that led her hand to his thigh. Once it was there, once that jump had been made, she didn’t want to return to a world without the feel of him beneath her fingers, even if she knew that tomorrow she would.
His skin was warm, firm and taut beneath her fingers, the contact firing her nerves into a frenzied alert. She wrestled to calm them, had to concentrate on slowing her breathing down as she slid her hand over the tight muscle, and then slowly the sirens in her body hushed a little, grew deliciously accustomed to the feel of him, and Kate could breathe more normally as she worked his spasmed flesh. She could see the scars where the pins and bolts had been. She took some baby oil—it was all she could think of—and squirted it on, rubbing the tense mound of flesh, tentatively at first and then more firmly. It took ages, and she wasn’t even sure it was helping, but the muscle finally gave beneath her fingers. Then just after it relaxed it tensed again. She heard his curse, saw him grit his teeth, and she actually knew something about how he felt.
‘When I had Georgie…’
‘Don’t!’ He both laughed and warned her at the same time. ‘Don’t say you know how it feels…’
‘But I do.’ Still her hand worked on. ‘I was on my own, and the nurses kept telling me that I was doing fine, that it was all completely normal, but I was begging for something. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. I knew childbirth was supposed to hurt, but it was agony. The pain just kept coming…’
‘For how long?’
‘All night,’ Kate said. ‘And I thought I’d never get through it, but I did.’
‘I don’t want drugs,’ Aleksi said, and Kate smiled.
‘I said the same.’ She pressed her fingers harder into the tight knot of his thigh muscle, heard his hiss of breath, saw his hand go to remove hers. But the muscle finally relented, the tight spasm loosened, and she worked on.
‘Did you give in?’ Aleksi asked.
‘Absolutely.’ Kate smiled. ‘I screamed the place down for everything.’
And Aleksi smiled, too. ‘I won’t give in.’
He wouldn’t—that much she knew.
‘Is it agony?’
‘No.’ His answer surprised her. ‘It’s not so much the pain…more the thoughts.’
‘Thoughts?’ Still her hands worked on.
‘It would be easier to knock myself out,’ Aleksi explained. ‘But I just need to get through this.’
He’d put on muscle in his leg. The last time she had seen it, it had been withered and wasted, studded with pins and bolts. Now it was tanned and lean, with fresh scars and dark hair. When his thigh muscle was pliant she worked down, as the physio had done, and unknotted the calf muscle that bore so much of the strain of his healing thigh.
‘You’ll get there.’ She was absolutely sure of it. ‘Just relax.’
‘Easier said than done,’ he said wryly.
‘Just try,’ she pleaded.
So he did.
He lay there and thought only of her hands.
Listened to the tick, tick, tick of her little alarm clock.
He had loathed this in hospital—the invasion of his body, being told to relax, not to fight—but right now he got what they had been trying to tell him, because when he did relax, when he did let go, it was as if his muscles were melting.
He had never been better looked after.
Aleksi lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
He had never been more relaxed, more comfortable with another soul.
Always he performed.
At dinner, in business, in bed, in hospital—always it was Aleksi driving the conversation, the deal, the orgasm, the recovery. Whatever the goal, he was relentless in pursuing it, but tonight—this morning—he lay there and for a little while just let her…
Let his mind, let his body, let himself just be—till the spasm hit again, his leg contracting, his mind tightening with the pain of recall, memories awakening. The screech of tyres and the smell of burning rubber, his car spinning out of control because his mind had been so full of other things. And as he lay there it was so vivid he had to clench his fists to prevent his arms flying up to shield his face.
Her hands were at the back of his thigh now, working the tight hamstring, and he wanted to shout out because it was sheer hell to remember.
‘Don’t think of anything,’ she said gently.
So he looked at her instead of looking inside his mind. Her eyes were down in concentration. His moved lower too, to her cleavage, and he focused on that for a soothing moment, willing the gown to part, to reveal just a little bit more, but desire alone couldn’t do that. Then he watched her hands work, saw his flesh move with each stroke to his thigh, felt his breathing slow down, and it was almost hypnotic the effect she had on him.
He
was covered now by just the small towel which had loosened. His thigh was soft, but her tender ministrations had been recognised by his body elsewhere.
‘Don’t worry.’ Embarrassed, she turned her face away, went to stand, tried to be matter-of-fact. ‘I’m sure it happens…’ Well, it must—all the physiotherapists, nurses who had touched him…
‘Not once.’
And so here was her guilt.
Her never again.
Because each time he came to her door the bar shifted.
First a kiss.
Then a conversation.
Each a guilty memory that she took out and examined now and then like a precious hidden treasure.
And now this.
Her hand was still on his thigh, not moving. She could have walked away at that point, except she didn’t.
This was the bit she would never understand.
Because here, alone with him in her house, away from it all and only for a short while, she felt beautiful.
For the first time in her life, when those grey eyes looked into hers, she felt as if she were another person entirely.
A bold, sensual woman.
Only she wasn’t.
Sex had been mired in shame for Kate. Her first attempt with Craig had resulted in Georgie, followed closely by Craig insisting that her intention had been to trap him into marriage, then cruelly berating her for putting on weight and finally, on Kate’s insistence, leaving.
Craig’s relief to be leaving her had been palpable; she had actually seen his tension evaporate as she’d exonerated him of any duty to their unborn child. His parents had some contact with Georgie, and on occasion he saw his daughter there. He did send birthday presents and Christmas cards, but that was the sum total of his involvement.
As she had closed the door on him, Kate had sworn never again.
She was a mother, and she’d be the best mother she could be, and she’d do it without a man rather than subject Georgie to her mistakes.
But now Aleksi lay in her bed, and she was more than a mother tonight. For the first time in the longest time she was a woman again.
His eyes were on her face, and she just stared back at him, her hand still on his thigh. She moved it again, stroked him again, but it was more than a healing touch and they both knew it. She could feel his thigh contract beneath her fingers, feel the waves of pain rising within him again. But she would soothe him with a different touch now.
The Last Kolovsky Playboy Page 6
