A Game With One Winner

by Lynn Raye Harris

  “Of course I don’t.”

  Inside, he was a mess of violent, swirling emotions. Outside, he had to be cool. He had to shut it all down and deal with her like the traitor she was. The traitor she’d always been. He didn’t care that she looked miserable—it was because she’d been caught, nothing else.

  “I left,” he growled, “because I had no choice. Because your father fired me and managed to get my work visa yanked.”

  She bowed her head for a moment. And then she was looking at him again, her clear hazel eyes spearing into him. “I had no idea. I’m sorry that happened.”

  Sorry? He clenched his fists at his sides, fighting the urge to howl with rage.

  His voice was tight with fury. “I lost everything, Caroline. My job, my home. You. I went back to Russia with nothing. Less than nothing.” He swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “It was a...very difficult time.”

  She spread her hands in supplication. “I didn’t want to leave you, Roman. But I had to marry Jon.” She took a step toward him, her beautiful face etched with pain. “It was the only way to save Sullivan’s. His parents owned majority shares at that time, and they were threatening to sell to a competitor if we didn’t get married.”

  Roman stared at her for a long moment, his gut roiling with emotion. And then he laughed. A rusty, bitter laugh. A disbelieving laugh.

  “Sullivan’s. Of course. It is the only thing that has ever mattered to you.”

  Her skin flushed. “People were going to lose their jobs. My family was going to lose their heritage. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  “Did you sleep with me now, thinking that I would soften and let you keep your precious stores? Because that will never happen, Caroline,” he finished viciously.

  She seemed to deflate just a little. And then her chin came up. Her eyes blazed. “I did not sleep with you for Sullivan’s. God knows I’m fully aware that you are too ruthless for that. I’ve watched you circling closer and closer for the past two years. I’ve known you were coming for us, Roman. I’ve always known.”

  He stiffened. “I buy troubled companies. This is no mystery.”

  “No, it’s not. But you would have come for Sullivan’s anyway.”

  He felt the truth of that statement like the crack of a whip. Yes, he had been angling for Sullivan’s for a long time. From the very beginning, he’d wanted to own the company that had nearly ruined his life and made his mother’s last days so dreadful. “I’m a businessman. I don’t take unnecessary risks.”

  “But you would have done so to get back at me.”

  He took a halting step toward her, raw fury breaking through the tight lid he’d snapped onto his composure. She was unbelievable. He was reeling over the fact that he had a child with her, a child she’d kept hidden from him, and she was babbling about her precious stores.

  She folded her arms and turned her head away from him. Her profile was so achingly lovely. The sudden curl of tenderness weaving into his psyche made him angry. He had no room for tenderness for her. No room for anything but disgust.

  “You’ve known where I was for two years at least,” he said tightly, “when I took Kazarov Industries global. Why did you not tell me about the child sooner?”

  She fixed eyes shimmering with tears on him. “How would I have done that? Jon and Ryan and I were a family then. Not only that, but Jon’s leukemia took a turn for the worse soon after you emerged on the scene. I was a bit preoccupied.”

  Roman didn’t want to feel the wisp of sympathy for her rolling through him like smoke. “At least now I know why you lied about your address that night.”

  She dipped her chin again. “I was going to tell you,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sure how or when, but I was going to. Not that you’ll believe that, of course.”

  “I’d say the same thing in your place.” He bit out the words. “But it doesn’t make it true.”

  There was a sound behind him. He spun to see Ryan pressing up against the glass, his hands flat on the pane, his eyes on his mother. Roman felt as if someone had punched him in the gut all over again. How had he missed it before? Now that he knew, he could see the kid was a Kazarov. He had the same eyes, the same nose.

  But he also had Caroline’s features. Roman had noticed that immediately. The narrow chin, the jaw, the blond hair. He’d looked at the boy’s picture several times and never seen anything but Caroline. And when he’d seen the kid in person for the first time, he still hadn’t seen anything but Caroline and what he assumed to be Jon Wells.

  His own flesh and blood, and he hadn’t even realized it. What did that say about him?

  Ryan looked up at him then, his big blue eyes wide with fear, and Roman’s gut clenched. He had a son. And his son was afraid of him. It hurt in ways he hadn’t imagined.

  He spun back to Caroline. “Why is he so damn scared of everything?”

  She moved toward him, smiling, and he realized she was doing it to make Ryan think nothing was wrong. That she wasn’t upset. When she stood in front of Roman, blocked from the little eyes at the glass door, she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. For some reason, her tears hurt.

  And that angered him further. Why should he care that she was upset? Why, when she’d stolen his happiness five years ago—and his child, as it turned out?

  “He’s always been a bit shy,” she said. “It’s his personality.”

  Roman closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing in air thick with chlorine and the perfume of plumeria bushes. “Do you have any idea how much this hurts? You telling me about his personality, me needing to ask why he’s this way?”

  She nodded, and a fresh wave of tears spilled down her cheeks. “I know it does. I’m sorry.”

  He swore. Violently. The most vulgar words he could think of, the kind of words no good Russian would say without a sense of horror. His mother, if she were alive, would have washed his mouth out with soap. “Sorry doesn’t fix a goddamn thing, does it?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “There is no excuse for this,” he told her, his voice whipping like a lash. He was boiling inside—hurt, anger, fear, all coming together, churning in his gut like acid. “No excuse.”

  She sniffled, and the sound tore at him. He hated that it did. He despised her. Behind him, the door slid open on its track, and Ryan shot between them, running headlong to his mother and hugging her legs tight.

  She put a hand on his still damp hair, stroking it. “It’s okay, baby,” she said softly. “Everything is okay.”

  Roman stood there, an outsider, watching the tableau before him. Caroline dropped to her haunches, hugged her little boy to her until he started to squirm. “Are you ready for that pizza?” she asked brightly.

  Ryan nodded.

  “Then we’ll go. Why don’t we ask Mr. Kazarov to come with us? Would you like that?”

  Ryan only buried his head against her and didn’t speak. Roman felt the strength of that rejection as if it were a nuclear detonation inside his head.

  “I have work to do,” he said, his heart a solid ball of lead in his chest. “Go without me.”

  She looked uncertain. No, she looked pitying. And that he couldn’t take. Roman turned and went inside, blindly finding his way to the study, where he locked the door and then sat in his chair with a thud.

  Outside, the world continued the way it always had. But his world had changed. Irrevocably. Now he had to figure out what to do about it.

  * * *

  “We’re leaving.”

  Caroline looked up from where she was going over some reports on the couch, while Ryan and Blake played a game at the table in the dining room. They’d gone out for pizza, but they hadn’t stayed away long. The minute the pack of paparazzi swarming around the restaurant figured out who she was, they’d descended, pelting her with questions about her and Roman.

  Ryan had started to cry, and Caroline had lost her temper. Roman’s driver intervened before she could say anything
truly stupid. Then they’d gotten their pizza to go, and hustled into the limo and back to the hotel.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Blake look up from the game, but she kept her focus on Roman. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking from his expression. He’d managed to hide the raw emotion from earlier behind his usual cool veneer.

  She wanted to hold him, but that was out of the question now. “When?”

  “In about two hours.”

  He looked so cold, so closed off, and her heart ached. The truce between them certainly hadn’t lasted long. She’d even thought, laughably now, that they might grow closer with time.

  He’d never before opened up to her the way he had in the limo this afternoon, and briefly on the plane, when he’d told her about his parents.

  Not that she’d ever asked. She’d been young, selfish, concerned with her own drama. She’d been so overwhelmed with love for him, so greedy for his attention, that she’d never asked him any searching questions. She’d thought they would have all the time in the world, back then. She’d only wanted to know how badly he wanted her, how much he worshipped her body. She’d spent every encounter with him thinking of her feelings and how to keep him forever.

  How terribly naive she’d been.

  “Is that necessary?” she said. “It’s rather late for Ryan. His bedtime is in another hour.”

  The coldness in Roman’s eyes could have frozen Niagara Falls. “We are traveling on a private plane, not coach class. He can sleep.”

  She wanted to argue, but she wouldn’t. In the scheme of things, disrupting Ryan’s schedule by an hour wasn’t worth fussing over. And she sensed that arguing with Roman right now was not in her best interests.

  “Which location are we going to next?”

  She had to have something to focus on, something to prepare for, or she would go insane thinking about all the ways this could have turned out differently.

  “We aren’t going to any stores,” he said.

  “I thought that was the point of the exercise.” She didn’t like the note of panic that crept into her voice.

  “That was before.” He glanced over at the table, turned back to her with a stony face. “I think things have changed, Caroline. Don’t you?”

  “I still need to oversee the company,” she said. “We have obligations to meet.”

  His expression grew hard. “You never had a chance, don’t you understand that? You can’t make the payment, Caroline.”

  “We still have a little over a week,” she said evenly. “And I’m not giving up simply because you say I should.”

  “You can work from anywhere in the world. You have a computer, a cell phone, video conferencing. I suggest you use them, because we are not going back to New York just yet.”

  Her heart was a hot flame in her chest. “You can’t force me to go with you wherever you like, Roman. This isn’t a dictatorship. I have responsibilities. Ryan and Blake have a schedule to maintain—”

  He leaned toward her suddenly, his face twisted in rage. “Really, Caroline? You would throw the fact that our son has a schedule I am not aware of in my face?”

  Chaotic emotions charged through her, shaking the landscape she’d always stood upon.

  Nothing would ever be the same again, she realized. She had a son with Roman Kazarov, and there was no going back to the way things had been only hours ago.

  “I’m not throwing it in your face. I’m just pointing out that you cannot uproot a child’s life like this.”

  He looked utterly bleak in that moment, and her heart twisted in sympathy.

  “You’ve uprooted mine,” he said, his voice like chips of ice. “We are going in two hours. I suggest you get ready.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kazarov and Caro—Will They or Won’t They?

  CAROLINE DIDN’T KNOW what she’d expected, but the bright blue ocean beneath the plane’s wings had not been it. They’d flown through the night and now dawn was breaking and the landscape below was blue. Endlessly blue.

  She shook with some terrible emotion, some horrible feeling that he was taking them to Russia and that he would separate her from Ryan. She hadn’t considered that possibility when she’d boarded the plane, the idea that he would take her somewhere foreign, where birth certificates and parental rights didn’t stack up against the might of a very rich man.

  But the ocean below was dotted with green islands, she soon realized. Not the vast reaches of the Pacific then, or at least not the Pacific as it caressed the shores of China and Russia. And soon she comprehended that it wasn’t the Pacific at all, but the Caribbean, when she logged on to the onboard Wi-Fi and tracked their flight.

  The very real relief that coursed through her was short-lived, however, when she realized that she still didn’t know his aim. Where, precisely, was he taking them? And what was his purpose in doing so?

  When they landed less than an hour later, a van waited to take them to what turned out to be a sprawling private estate. They’d ridden from the tiny airport along empty roads that were lush with tropical foliage, until they came to a complex built on the beach.

  “Yours?” she asked Roman as they climbed out of the van. It was the first word she’d dared speak to him since they’d left L.A. so many hours ago.

  The house was on one level, but it spanned at least a large city block. A profusion of bougainvillea grew along the front veranda, along with potted geraniums and beds of bird of paradise and flowering hibiscus. Palm trees shaded the yard, and a hammock was tied between two trees where the grass gave way to the white sand of the beach.

  “It is,” Roman said. She hadn’t been certain he would answer her. It wasn’t a warm answer, or even a very friendly one. But at least he’d spoken to her.

  “Which island is this, then?” she asked. The airport had been small, with only Roman’s jet and a single island hopper that had been boarding when they’d landed.

  “Mine.”

  Caroline blinked. “The whole island?”

  His face was dark. “This is an exclusive resort where utter privacy is guaranteed. There will be no more paparazzi harassing you and Ryan.” She hadn’t realized he’d known about the incident at the pizza parlor, but she should have guessed that he did. “We host movie stars, politicians, heads of state, tycoons. Anyone who can afford the price can stay in one of the villas on the island. This, however, is my house.”

  She thought she understood now. By bringing them here, he was guaranteeing they wouldn’t be hounded by paparazzi seeking a story. They were free to behave as they wished without fear of prying cameras or microphones. No one had to put on a brave face for the press when they were quietly coming apart inside.

  “I had no idea,” she said, turning to look at the vast stretch of white beach and turquoise water that fronted the house. Palm trees swayed in the breeze, and the tropical sounds of bamboo wind chimes tinkled with each gust.

  “I want to go to the beach, Mommy, but Uncle Blake says no.”

  Ryan tugged at her skirt, his little face screwed up in a pout. Until precisely twenty minutes ago, the child hadn’t even known what a beach was.

  “Ryan Nicholas Wells,” she said firmly, “you know better than to ask me if you can do something when Uncle Blake tells you no, don’t you?”

  Ryan’s expression fell. His lower lip protruded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now go with your uncle Blake and do as he says.”

  Ryan kicked his feet in the grass. She expected a tantrum, but a large black woman in a colorful tropical dress came outside just then and invited them in. She carried a tray of brightly colored drinks with umbrellas.

  “Banana smoothies,” she said. “To welcome you to Isla San Jacinto.”

  Blake took a drink and handed it to Ryan. Beach suddenly forgotten, he disappeared inside the house with Blake, sucking his drink nonstop through the straw. Caroline started to follow, but stopped when she glanced at Roman standing so silently, his eyes hard as he looked
at her.

  Her heart took a nosedive into the floor at the intensity on his face.

  “His name should be Kazarov,” he said shortly.

  “It wasn’t an option,” she replied, heat throbbing to life inside her. “You were gone, remember?”

  If anything, he looked more furious. “I did not precisely have a choice, Caroline. I lost my visa.”

  She turned to look at the whitecaps breaking near the beach. A tropical breeze ruffled her hair, bringing with it the scent of flowering trees. “But I didn’t know that back then.”

  He snorted. “And yet you were marrying Jon for your precious stores. I somehow doubt you would have told me the truth if it would have jeopardized that arrangement.”

  She met his gaze evenly. Because she knew he was right. She wouldn’t have jeopardized the arrangement, but she would have figured something out. Something. “I did what I had to do, Roman.”

  “And I will do what I have to do,” he said. “You’ve taken too much from me. I expect to be a part of my child’s life from now on. And I expect him to be a Kazarov.”

  Her heart thumped. “Jon’s name is on the birth certificate.”

  Roman still looked so hard and angry. He took a step toward her, and a trickle of sweat slid between her breasts. It was hot and muggy in the Caribbean, but she wasn’t entirely certain that was the cause of the perspiration rising on her body.

  “We are going to fix this, Caroline. We are going to give Ryan my name the old-fashioned way.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” But she knew.

  “Don’t play dumb with me. It does you no credit.”

  She tilted her chin up. The breeze ruffled the ends of her hair and, thankfully, cooled the sweat beginning to glisten on her body. “You can’t mean to marry me, Roman. You are the notorious playboy, the man who will never settle down. This is not how you want your life to be.”

  “How would you know what I want? You have never known.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of the khaki shorts he wore. His dark hair lifted in the breeze, his icy blue eyes cutting into her. Chilling her.