Too Proud to be Bought

by Sharon Kendrick

  Coming from inside the kitchen, she heard the sound of her cell-phone ringing and when she went to answer it she saw the name Nikolai flashing on the screen. And even though an inner voice urged her to ignore it—wasn’t it telling that she paid it no attention? Because wasn’t she longing to speak to him—secretly praying that the stupid row could be resolved?

  ‘Hello, Nikolai.’

  ‘So have you calmed down this morning? ‘

  Zara swallowed. ‘If that remark was designed to placate me then I have to tell you that it has failed dismally.’

  ‘I am not trying to placate you!’ he bit out. ‘Just to ask whether you are intending to be sensible and to come back?’

  Sensible? Now he was making her sound like some overexcited schoolgirl who had thrown an unreasonable hissy-fit! ‘And then what?’

  Nikolai gave a long sigh. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is, he urged her silently. Didn’t she realise that even asking her to come back had been hard enough and that part of him still couldn’t believe he was doing it? ‘Then we carry on as we are, Zara—just as we’ve been doing. We have a good time together. We’re good for each other.’ His voice dipped. ‘You know we are.’

  ‘But that’s where you’re wrong,’ she whispered, steeling herself against the sultry caress in his voice. ‘We’re good at all the externals and we’re good in bed—but it’s not enough. Relationships are supposed to grow, Nikolai—not stay packed in ice.’

  His voice was silky-soft. ‘I thought I told you that I would not tolerate any kind of ultimatum.’

  ‘And I’m not making one! I’m just telling you that I don’t want to live your life any more.’

  ‘Really? And just what kind of life is that?’ he demanded dangerously.

  ‘One which is superficial. One where things get replaced when the novelty and the gloss has worn off them.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to elaborate since I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re accusing me of?’ he demanded even as the knuckles of his clenched fist whitened with anger.

  ‘What about your friend Sergei with his decades-younger girlfriend?’ she questioned shakily. ‘Is that how you see yourself in the future? Thinking that once my appeal has faded you’ll replace me with a newer, shinier version and then eventually you’ll replace my replacement. Until one day you wake up as a fifty-something man in bed with a woman who’s young enough to be his daughter?’

  ‘How dare you speak to me this way?’

  ‘The fact that you feel you have the right to ask that question is answer enough! I dare because I’ve realised that I am your equal, Nikolai! Oh, not in money or in material things or anything like that, but under the skin we’re exactly the same—two human beings with the right to an honest, decent life. You’ve decided that you don’t want to find out more about your mother—well, that’s your choice. But that decision has impacted on everything else in your life. You’re never going to be able to trust a woman and I’m not going to pussyfoot around your feelings any more—simply because you got lucky and made yourself a fortune!’

  ‘Got lucky?’ he stormed. ‘Got lucky! I worked damned hard to get to where I am today!’

  ‘Lots of us work hard, darling—but we don’t all end up as billionaires!’

  He said something furious in Russian and cut the connection, hurling the phone down so that it skidded like a novice ice-skater across the desk, before pacing over to the window of his vast office. Who the hell did she think she was, talking to him like that? Some little nobody of a waitress whom he’d picked out and offered the opportunity of a lifetime. Yet what had she done to thank him? Nothing! Only thrown everything back in his face and added a few choice insults into the bargain. He glowered out at the London skyline, telling himself he was well rid of her.

  That evening he attended a party he’d been intending to miss—after deciding it might be good for him. It was held in a lavish six-storey town house in Notting Hill and was attended by politicians and media people, with a large smattering of stars from the world of showbiz and the accompanying bank of paparazzi waiting outside.

  The music was achingly trendy, the wine superb and the air buzzed with the indefinable sound of success. A beautiful French actress made a beeline for him and he found himself assessing her dispassionately as she smiled up at him. He admired her petite figure in the sleek Chanel dress and the towering black patent shoes which complemented it. He thought she was rather beautiful—with her glossy twist of raven hair and full lips and that way which actresses had of making you feel as if you were the only man in their universe when they fixed you in the spotlight of their gaze.

  But he drank barely a single glass of champagne as he listened to her. When he turned to leave, she asked whether he might drop her home and it seemed churlish to refuse—even though they had to dodge the battery of photographers on the way to the car. But he turned down her invitation to join her for a nightcap—despite her promises of a wonderful night-time view from her balcony. He bit back a wry smile. He’d been offered views like that in the past—and rarely did they involve any kind of sky-watching. Instead, he said goodnight and leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed as his car took him home to Kensington.

  At least work had always been his saviour and he began to devote more time to projects already in the pipeline. He tackled new mergers with alacrity and injected more funds into his long-running research to find greener energy supplies. A plot of land he’d acquired in Moscow was being developed as a day-centre and crèche for single mothers and he promised them he would pay it another visit soon.

  But through it all he felt a strange kind of empti-ness—as if someone had punched a big gaping hole inside him—and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Angrily, he told himself that he wasn’t going to let any woman get underneath his skin, particularly the kind of woman who hadn’t learnt when to keep silent and be grateful for what she’d got. Was that what significant women always did? he wondered bitterly. Made themselves important in your life so that it hurt like hell when they left you?

  He spent two weeks with his head pounding with questions he had no desire to answer and he pushed them away with a ruthless certainty which made him furious when they kept coming back. Every morning he awoke with an aching body and cursed the day he had ever set eyes on Zara Evans with her come-to-bed eyes and a distinctive brand of honesty which should have sent him running in the opposite direction. Damn her sweet seductive body, he thought—and the way that a man could lose himself inside all its slick, secret places.

  Until one day he realised that he simply couldn’t go on like this any more.

  And that was the day he picked up the telephone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SUNLIGHT caught the sparkling stream of water which Zara directed onto the parched earth from the metal watering can. There had been no rain for days now, and the neglected vegetables had taken much more effort than she’d anticipated. Morning and evening she’d been outside whenever work had allowed—trimming and snipping, and pinching side shoots from the tomato plants so that the fruits could grow bigger. The tangled jungle had retreated and daily routine had restored some sort of order to the little plot. Now it looked more like the place she used to come home to—where she and her godmother would sit outside in deckchairs on warm summer evenings and eat newly picked strawberries and raspberries still warm from the cane. What a long time ago those distant days of childhood seemed.

  But she was grateful for the garden. Warm earth and encroaching weeds were a great distraction from thinking about Nikolai. Sometimes she even managed to go for a whole half-hour without him being on her mind. And it was at times like this that she wished she had a more demanding job—something that would require all her attention instead of only part of it—because it was all too easy to daydream when you were standing around, waiting for people to finish their pudding.

  It was going to bed she dreaded most of all—because it was there that she rem
embered the way he’d held her and stroked her hair. In the silent, empty hours of the night it was bittersweet to recall his slow kisses and the powerful physical intimacy which had existed between them.

  Sometimes she wondered if she had been too hasty in walking away from him—but the pain of missing him was quickly replaced with the realisation that the price of being with Nikolai was too high. For a man to warn a woman that she could never carry his child nor wear his ring. To tell her that his heart would always be empty and cold—how could any woman bear that?

  The sound of the doorbell interrupted her painful thoughts and she put down the watering can, wiping her hands on the front of her jeans as she went to answer it. Maybe it was one of the neighbours—or Emma paying another ‘surprise’ visit, which was nothing but a thinly disguised attempt to get Zara to eat more.

  But it wasn’t Emma who stood there—nor one of the neighbours. Instead, Zara’s heart missed a beat as she saw Nikolai Komarov filling most of the tiny doorframe.

  Little spots danced in front of her eyes as the ice-blue eyes and angled features blazed into her line of vision. He was dressed very casually, in jeans and a T-shirt. She had done precious little else other than think of him in the days since they’d been apart, but the reality of seeing him again took her breath away and her heart was hammering so hard that she felt quite dizzy.

  ‘Hello, Zara,’ he said.

  ‘Nikolai.’ The word seemed to stick in her throat, like a fishbone—but she swallowed down her nerves. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘Is it?’ His eyes glittered her a question. ‘Didn’t you think you’d see me again?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I thought.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of…of course.’

  He stepped over the threshold and followed her into the sitting room. He hadn’t been here since that night when he’d stormed in to find out why she’d ripped his cheque into a thousand tiny pieces. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. He had come here that night, blazing with sexual desire and a determination to carry her off to make wild and passionate love to her. And she had resisted, he recalled wryly as he remembered her refusal to go home with him. It seemed that one way or another she had always been resisting him all along. And hadn’t that refusal to bend to his will been one of the things which had made her so irresistible to him, even though it had infuriated the hell out of him?

  ‘Would you …?’ Zara was feeling nervous and aching with longing, which she hid behind a careful smile. Be polite, she told herself. Even if you’re destined to be nothing but ex-lovers, at least you can be civilised about it. ‘Like a drink? ‘

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Not the orange liqueur?’

  ‘Actually, there’s white wine in the fridge. Or I’ve got some home-made lemonade, if you’d prefer. We could drink it in the garden.’

  He shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  Stepping outside into the little yard, he took in the scene before him. He had judged her humble house by the quality of the nearby dwellings but out here he found an unexpected oasis of green. Vegetables and soft fruits sprouted prolifically and the scarlet gleam of tomatoes hung heavy on the thick-stemmed plants. In a way it reminded him of Russia, where people used to cultivate every spare centimetre of land in order to grow food. In the midst of all this tangled green was a small wrought-iron table and a couple of chairs and he sat down on one.

  The tinkling of ice announced her appearance and Nikolai watched as she carried the tray into the garden, creating a bizarre, snapshot image of rural life in the heart of the city. For the first time he could imagine her as the agricultural student she’d once been—with her long legs encased in mud-dusted denim and her thick hair piled up on top of her head. Tendrils of it fell down untidily about her flushed cheeks and he realised she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up. For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe the reason Zara hadn’t leapt on the chance to wear the silk and jewels he’d offered her was because that image wasn’t really her. That it was more than a stubborn refusal to be bought or controlled by a man—but a sense of not wanting to submerge her own identity in his.

  She leaned over to pour him some lemonade and he could see a trickle of sweat meandering down her neck, towards her breasts. He wanted to lick it off and he wanted to tell her that he’d never drunk home-made lemonade before. He shook his head very slightly as he accepted a glass from her. Was he losing his mind—or simply light-headed from the beat of the sun and the hard ache in his groin?

  ‘So.’ Zara pulled out the other chair and sat facing him. This was weird. More than weird. She’d always comforted herself with the thought that Nikolai would never have been comfortable if their lives had ever overlapped, but the irony was that at that moment he looked as if he had been born to sit in her tiny garden. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, his dark gold hair was all ruffled and there was a terrible tearing pain in her heart as she realised how much she wanted to go up and sit on his lap and kiss him. But he didn’t look remotely in the mood for kissing and his guarded expression made a thousand questions crowd into her mind. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Because I took your advice.’

  ‘You took my advice?’ she repeated slowly.

  He acknowledged her surprise. If it came as a shock to her, it had come as an even greater one to him. If anyone had told him that he would have given her words careful consideration—even while part of him had kicked against it—he’d never have believed them. But he had. ‘I thought about what you said about laying ghosts to rest.’ There was a pause. ‘And realised that I needed to find out what happened to my mother.’

  Zara stared at him—but could read no hint of what he had found in the enigmatic gleam of his eyes. ‘And did you?’

  ‘I did.’ In the distance, he heard a woman shout to someone that dinner was ready and he thought about all the different ways that people lived their lives. He thought about his mother and about what he had discovered.

  ‘She started out working in a salad-packing factory when she first came to England,’ he said slowly. ‘Which was the only job she could get. It was soulless work—long hours on a low wage—but it was still more than she could ever have earned in Moscow. Like her, the other women working there were all immigrants and they lived in cramped caravans on site. Sometimes they would travel to the nearby town on a Saturday for a night out—and it was there that she met a man.’ There was a pause before he spoke again. ‘He was older than her and enormously rich—and completely captivated by her beauty. She told him her story and he was touched that she was trying to make a better life for her little boy who was so far away. So he gave her extra money to send to me in Moscow.’

  He met Zara’s eyes and shrugged in answer to her unspoken question. ‘By this time she was sleeping with him, yes—though from what I understand, it was a genuine love-match between the two of them. But it wasn’t until he saw the size of her miserable bed in the damp caravan that he announced that he was buying them a house and taking her away from her life there.’

  ‘You mean, she married him?’

  There was another pause and this time she saw his mouth twist.

  ‘That was never an option since her lover was already married,’ he said heavily. ‘And he told her from the outset that he had no intention of leaving his wife and children. In fact, the family home was in the very next town and he rarely spent a night with my mother.’

  Now Zara was confused. ‘So why did she stay? And why didn’t she send the money to you? ‘

  ‘She stayed because she was torn. She loved him, and the money was too good to turn her back on. She thought it would provide my life with a kick-start. And she did send me money—a great deal of it, in fact. The problem was that it never actually reached me.’ His fists clenched; unclenched—the knuckles making a cracking sound as they whitened against his knees. ‘My aunt and her partner siphoned off every ruble which came to the apartment and then drank most of it away. Worse than t
hat, they destroyed most of her letters to me.’

  ‘Oh, Nikolai.’ Zara’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘That’s absolutely terrible. What…what happened? ‘

  He had known that her face would soften with sweet sympathy and hadn’t a part of him longed for that—just as the other conflicting side of his nature had made him want to reject it? To tell her that he didn’t need her sympathy. That he didn’t need a damned thing from her.

  ‘She died—quite suddenly—and when they went through her belongings, they found out that she’d spent years trying to get the authorities to allow me to join her.’

  ‘But how…. how did you discover all this?’ she whispered.

  ‘I tracked down her lover’s son. He was surprisingly helpful—in fact, he was exceedingly generous, given the circumstances. He said his father had really loved my mother but that he’d owed the greater loyalty to his family. He took me to her grave. I …’

  The faltering thickness of his voice was like a spear to her heart and Zara stood up and went to him, not caring about the state of their relationship or whether or not it was over. Not caring about anything other than a fierce need to reach out and comfort him. She put her arms around him, hugged him very tightly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  For a moment he resisted and then he put his arms around her waist and rested his face on her breasts. ‘How I have misjudged her,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘What else could you have done? You had no evidence of this—only the reality of your life. You were just a child—caught in a mixed-up world of adults with all their conflicting needs. How could you have known that you were a victim of your aunt’s greed?’ She sucked in a faltering breath before expelling it in a rush. ‘But you’ve made your peace with her now, Nikolai.’