Kitabı oku: «The Mistresses Collection», sayfa 42

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EVERYTHING was perfect.

Nikolai gave his first speech as president of the Korovin Foundation, making it clear that he was fully capable of ushering the charity into its bright new future, his ruthless coldness seeming more like pure, corporate focus when he spoke. Ivan gave his own speech afterward, using a highly sterilized account of his childhood to explain why he wanted to take the gifts he’d been given from the ring and from the screen and find a way to help children in need. So they didn’t have to choose between their self-respect and their survival. So they could choose to fight because they wanted to fight, not because they had no other way. So they could avoid selling themselves, whether to fight promoters or militaries or the far more unsavory “saviors” they might encounter in their times of need.

So they could choose.

All the while Miranda stood next to him, glowing like the trophy he’d once told her she wasn’t, gleaming and unutterably beautiful. Her hair was coiled back into a complicated twist of braids and pins that looked somehow effortlessly chic. Her eyes were mysterious. And she wore very high, very delicate silver shoes that made her look tall, invincible and deeply, deeply sexy. Every inch the Greenwich, Connecticut, heiress she would have been, had her life taken a different path. Had her father been something other than a monster.

Her final dress from the Parisian couture house was one of their signature creations, understated yet proud. Ivan had loved the sketches—had, in fact, spent longer than necessary imagining her in the dress—but the reality was far better than his fantasies. The dress managed to be bold and elegant at once, a deceptively simple-looking near-silver concoction that fit so beautifully it made her look edible. A smart, sexy package he couldn’t seem to get enough of.

And it was different, somehow, that she knew the truth about him. All of his truths. The stark terror he’d lived through, the guilt he couldn’t help but feel for escaping so much sooner than Nikolai had. She knew everything, and still she looked at him in that way of hers, as if he was something miraculous, after all: a good man.

And because of that, it felt like less of a performance. Less of an act. It felt real.

Just as she did. Her hand in his, their fingers laced together.

He didn’t know how he would let her go. He couldn’t imagine it—but then, how could this go on? How many of his internal foundations would she shatter before she was done?

He realized, looking at her there on the small dais the event managers had erected in the corner of the ballroom he usually used as his dojo, that she was the only fight he didn’t think he could win.

That he didn’t want to win. He just wanted her.

He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about that. Not when he still owed his brother so much. Not when he’d promised.

“That was wonderful,” she told him when all the speeches were done, the formal pictures taken, and there was only the mingling left to do. She smiled at him, and he knew that was real. He knew her now. He could feel her inside of him, like a small, perfect light. Like hope. “I think you made the whole house cry.”

“So long as they dry their tears with their checkbooks,” he murmured, “we should be fine.”

Her smile deepened when he pulled their joined hands to his lips and placed a kiss there.

“I’m sure they will,” she said. “Especially if they get a chance to talk to you about it.” A curious sort of expression moved over her face, then disappeared behind a new smile he liked a good deal less than the one before. He wanted to know what she was hiding behind it.

“We have things to talk about,” he said, trying to see behind her dark jade gaze. He didn’t want to share her, he realized. Tonight or ever. He wanted to hide them both away from the world and fall into her, just as he’d been doing since she came to Los Angeles. He wanted that with a sudden surge of fierceness that surprised him. “Tonight.”

“Worry about your benefit,” she replied, which was completely unsatisfactory.

“Tonight,” he repeated more firmly.

“Go,” she whispered, and let go of his hand.

He shouldn’t have felt it like a loss.

But he had work to do, so he left her side, pasted on his Hollywood smile and got to it.

This is it, Miranda told herself as she fixed her lipstick in the mirror of the small powder room hidden away in the house’s impressive library. This is the end.

There was no use pretending otherwise.

Because Ivan had talked a lot. He’d talked about his childhood, about his fighting years, about the foolish things he’d done when he was newly a movie star and could no longer step foot in public without being propositioned and paparazzied. Or both. He’d talked and talked, as if some wall had broken down inside of him.

But he hadn’t said anything about this agreement of theirs. He hadn’t said that he wanted anything more than what they’d laid out in the documents they’d both signed. He hadn’t mentioned it at all—he’d only taken her with an ever-intensifying ferocity, leaving her mindless and spent.

Which said all he meant to say, she supposed. She imagined that was what he wanted to talk about later tonight. The simple mechanics of how this would end.

She would be elegant about it, she decided, pressing her lips together and ignoring the dark shadows in her own eyes. She would pretend she was as sophisticated as he undoubtedly was. She would act the way she imagined that Parisian mistress might have acted centuries ago, upon finding herself summarily dismissed in the same matter-of-fact fashion. She would handle herself with grace and maturity, and save the sobbing for when she was back in New York. Alone.

She could do this.

The clutch handbag she held vibrated, and she sighed, digging into it for her cell phone. It was her literary agent—again. He’d called almost every day for the duration of her time with Ivan, and, she reasoned, she might as well answer him now. She might as well start this terrible ball rolling.

“It’s over,” she said instead of saying hello. “I assume that’s why you’ve been calling.”

He paused for only the tiniest moment. “When you say ‘over,’” he said carefully, every inch the placating agent, “exactly what do you mean by that?”

“I mean Ivan and me. We’re finished.” She stood with the phone to her ear and played with the impossibly decadent fabric of the dress with her free hand. It was sumptuous. It felt decadent and sensual against her skin, the way Ivan did. How was she going to let go of that? “I’m coming home tomorrow without him.” She took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut. “And you should know that there isn’t going to be any book.”

“What happened? You broke up? Maybe you’ll get back together—”

“We won’t.” It was important to sound firm. Unemotional. Maybe her voice would rub off on her heart. And if she faked it long enough, maybe it would come true.

“—and maybe in a few weeks when you’re looking at things in a new way, you’ll remember that you need a new book idea. Your publisher needs a new book idea. And this one is a guaranteed bestseller. How often does that happen? I’ll tell you how often. Never.”

“No book,” she repeated, emphasizing each word, as if maybe he hadn’t heard her the first time.

“Miranda.” She could almost see that patented expression he trotted out at moments like this, frowning and concerned. “This is your career.”

“Is my career solely dependent on gossiping about Ivan Korovin?” she asked him, and maybe her tone was sharper then than strictly necessary, not that she blamed him for the choices she’d made. That was on her. “Then it isn’t much of a career, is it? It’s time for something new. Long past time.”

“I don’t think you’ve really thought this through—”

“This isn’t a negotiation, Bob,” she said, fighting to keep the edge out of her voice this time but not sure she succeeded. “I’m not writing another word about Ivan. I’m not talking about him in public ever again. That part of my career is over.”

And then she cut off the call.

She expected to feel regret, panic. She expected she might fight the urge to call her agent back at once and tell him she was sorry, overly emotional, made silly by all of this. She thought she should have been gasping for air over a decision she hadn’t known she was going to make until she’d opened her mouth and announced it. But instead she only stood there, and she was fine.

Because the least she could do was not be one of his attackers outside the ring. She had to blink hard, then, to keep the sudden heat from spilling over. The very least you can do is that.

She squared her shoulders and wrenched open the powder room door—then gasped involuntarily when she saw the figure standing there, just outside. Tall, intimidating. Ice-cold eyes fixed on her in their usual glacial manner.

Nikolai.

She couldn’t pretend he didn’t make her nervous, but she forced a smile anyway. Elegant. Sophisticated. This might have all started with an embarrassing public scene, but it didn’t have to end that way. She wouldn’t let it.

“I didn’t see you there,” she said inanely, as if she could have spied him through the door.

His frigid gaze tracked over her face, and she marveled, not for the first time, that he and Ivan could be related. Ivan was all heat. That molten force of his, that simmering, searing power. While Nikolai was all deep frost and drifts of snow, shaped into daggers. She fought off a shiver.

“Come,” he ordered her in that unfriendly way of his. “Ivan waits for you.”

And it was just like that first night in that Georgetown hotel, she thought as she fell into obedient step behind him. Her very own fearful little symmetry to hold on to, as if it meant something. As if it was some kind of bread-crumb trail that would lead her out of these woods of her own making.

She was such a fool.

But she followed Nikolai even so, out of the kitchen and into the crowd.

And it didn’t occur to her until much later that he must have heard every single word of her phone call.

Ivan didn’t know how late it was when he felt he’d made the appropriate rounds, posed with all the key donors for more photographs and could look around for Miranda again. He’d seen her earlier, out on the lawn near the pool, shining brighter than the lanterns strung above her like she was her own constellation. It had physically hurt him not to go to her then, touch her, bask in all of that light she threw around so carelessly.

And now, of course, she was nowhere to be found. He found his way out to a secluded corner of the ground-level patio and let himself breathe for a moment near one of the dramatically high cactus arrangements that his landscaper had been so insistent on placing at intervals along the edge of the patio, creating the illusion of private nooks. He gazed out at the moon high over the dark sea, and let the mask of Ivan Korovin, Famous Actor, slip just the slightest bit.

“Has the plan changed?” Nikolai asked mildly, coming to stand next to him. “Because if not, you are running out of time.”

Ivan felt himself tense and tried to control it. He shouldn’t want to punch his own brother in the face. What did that say about him? That he wanted to pick a woman over his own blood?

But he did. And he hated himself for that, too.

“Maybe you have become so immune to any hint of pleasure that you can’t hear the sound of the band playing, even now,” Ivan said when he was certain he could speak smoothly, easily. “The party is in full swing. There is nothing but time.”

“Why didn’t you take advantage of the perfect opportunity earlier?” Nikolai asked, almost casually. Almost. If he’d been someone else. “You had a microphone in your hand.”

“That would have been an excellent idea,” Ivan said tightly, “if our goal was to overshadow the work the foundation is trying to do with some tawdry tabloid drama.”

“Ah, Vanya,” Nikolai said, something like a sigh in his voice, and that look in his cold blue eyes that suggested Ivan had let him down. Again. “You don’t have the guts to do this after all, do you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Your actions say it all.” Nikolai shook his head. “This should not have been hard. Seduce the professor. Then finish with her as publicly as possible tonight, making certain that no one will ever take her seriously again.”

“Nikolai.” His own voice was harsh, but he knew it was aimed at himself. For coming up with this plan in the first place. For making it happen. For making his brother—who had been let down and lied to by everyone he’d ever known, who’d been abandoned so many times he now expected it as a matter of course, who had nothing and no one in the world except Ivan—one more promise he wanted to break. “I know the damned plan.”

“You couldn’t wait for her to show up in your hotel, you were so excited to enact your revenge,” Nikolai said then, his voice something other than cold—which set off all kinds of alarms inside of Ivan. “You promised you would make her pay.”

“You’re giving me a headache,” Ivan growled. “I know all of this.”

“And it’s already worked beautifully,” Nikolai continued, unperturbed by the scowl Ivan was directing at him. “You’ve got your revenge. So why not drive it all the way home? The way you promised?”

Finally, something that should have been obvious from the start occurred to Ivan, and those alarms within grew louder. Deafening.

“Nikolai …” He searched his brother’s face. That hard face so much like his own, those cold, broken eyes he barely recognized. “Why are you talking to me in English?”

But even as he said it, he knew.

He saw that grim, painful sort of triumph in his brother’s eyes. More than that, he heard that soft sound from behind them.

He knew before he turned.

Miranda stood there, ashen. Her mouth was parted slightly, and two hectic spots of color appeared on her cheeks as she stared at him. As if he’d slapped her.

“Miranda …” he said, but she held up a hand, as if she couldn’t bear it, and for a moment her lovely face crumpled in on itself. He thought it might kill him. But he knew better than to move toward her, to hold her.

“I shouldn’t be surprised.” Her voice was small, but it didn’t shake. She looked at Nikolai briefly, then her gaze slammed into Ivan’s. “I’m not surprised, as a matter of fact. It makes perfect sense that you would do exactly this. It’s who you are, isn’t it? You decimate your opponents. You never lose.”

“Miranda,” he began again. He hated that tone in her voice, that stunned sort of pain. “Please.”

“And I suppose I owe it to you,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. She was standing so straight, so perfectly straight and unbearably fragile, and he had the sudden notion that she might shatter into pieces if she so much as breathed. “I’ve learned that, if nothing else. I was wrong about you, and I regret it.” She swallowed, hard, her gaze nothing but black as she stared at him. “But I can’t take it back. I can’t change it. So if you have to do this thing—if you have to humiliate me in public, here …” She stopped for a moment, then sucked in a ragged-sounding breath. “If that’s what you need, Ivan, I’ll do it.”

“This is not what I need,” he said furiously, painfully. “This is not what I want.”

“It’s your plan,” she said, so simply, so quietly, it broke his heart.

Her eyes were glazed with what he knew were tears, but she didn’t cry. She only waited. For him to tell her what to do—how best to participate in her own downfall. He saw the tiniest hint of a tremor move over her, but she repressed it almost at once, and he wondered what it cost her to stand there like this—for him.

He wanted to pull her into his arms. He wanted to be the man who saved her, who protected her—not the man who hurt her. He wanted to be the man he imagined he was when she smiled at him. The kind of man who would never make her feel the way she did right now. The man he’d always thought he was, not the man she’d believed him to be all these years. He wanted to kill his own brother for putting that terrible look on her precious face. And himself for letting it happen.

“No,” he said, his voice hoarse, barely a thread of sound. “It’s done. There is no plan anymore.”

He heard Nikolai’s muttered curse in Russian, but all of his attention was on Miranda. His beautiful Miranda. She nodded once, jerkily. Then she shifted back on her heels, and he saw the way she bit her lip.

“Your brother is right,” she said, her voice scratchy, as if the tears she fought back clawed at her throat. “The damage is done. You got your revenge. Congratulations.”

“This is not over—”

“It is.” She shook her head when he moved, almost involuntarily, and he froze. “It’s finished. This was the agreement, wasn’t it? This was always our last night.” She started to turn, but then she looked back at him, and her dark eyes, nearly black with the pain she wasn’t letting show, not completely, slapped at him. Shamed him. “Don’t follow me, Ivan. Please.”

And then she really did turn, and she walked away from him, head held high, as if he hadn’t seen the misery he felt raging inside of him written all over her.

As if she was already well on her way to surviving this intact. Ivan couldn’t say the same.

He forced a breath. Then another.

But he still wanted to rip his brother limb from limb when he turned.

Nikolai’s face was shut down. Hard and blank. But Ivan knew what he hid behind it. What howled in him, tearing him to pieces from within. Tonight, he didn’t care as much as he should.

“Don’t forget, Vanya. I am trained to do the things others don’t. Or won’t.” Nikolai’s frosty blue eyes met his. Held. “And I always keep my promises.”

Ivan knew that should have pierced him to the core. Two weeks ago, it would have swamped him with that same old guilt. But tonight he only looked at his brother and pitied him—pitied both of them. And it was nothing next to the rage he felt that Miranda was caught up in this old family mess. That it had tainted her, too.

No more. It’s not your fault, she’d told him, and it had changed everything. Perhaps he hadn’t understood how much until now. He rubbed his hands over his face.

“If you feel you have to fight me,” Nikolai continued, sounding hauntingly like the little brother Ivan remembered from a world away, a lifetime ago, “I don’t mind. If it helps you remember who you are.”

“Kolya,” he said finally, fiercely, using the family name he hadn’t dared speak aloud in too many years to count.

Nikolai jerked in surprise, and for the first time, there was something other than ice in his gaze. There was a glimmer again of the brother Ivan remembered.

“You are my brother, my only family, my blood. I wish I could have protected you. I wish I could have protected myself. But you need to go and fix your life before you disappear completely. And before you destroy whatever love I have for you.”

He held Nikolai’s gaze, and didn’t drop it when his brother’s face flushed slightly, as if he’d hit him. For the first time in years, Nikolai looked uncertain. Even lost. But it was too late.

“And I don’t want to see you again until you do.”