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‘How well do I know you? That is a very good question and one I’ve been wondering for quite some time now.’
* * *
Roman skirted the table, refusing to stare any longer at the backless dress revealing more of his wife than he’d ever seen. The distracting need to run a thumb, or tongue, down the length of her spine had nearly embarrassed him. Not that the view from the front was any better—his hungry eyes ate up the inches of smooth pale skin between the shocking red fabric of her dress at her chest.
Forcing his eyes to her face, he saw she was both the same and somehow changed. At first, he thought the signs subtle. The way she held herself before his unwavering gaze, the way she was dressed. But perhaps this was who she had been all along and he had been taken in as much as she.
Her hair was twisted up into a knot held high at the back of her head. Not even a stray tendril spoke to the softness of her that he had once relished. The coldness in her eyes did nothing to dampen his arousal, only inflame.
Worthy.
That was what he thought. She was now worthy of doing battle with him.
‘What does it matter how well you knew me? You got what you wanted.’
‘We both know I didn’t. Not really.’
‘And that is my fault?’ she demanded, just an edge of heat to her words betraying the smooth, calm, icy exterior.
He didn’t react, didn’t move a muscle. He felt every inch the predator he knew she believed herself to be—and he relished it. This was what he had hoped lay beneath the soft innocence she’d presented to him before. This thread of steel, encasing a molten core of passion and heat.
‘You have the audacity to try to blame me?’ she said on a half laugh, as if incredulous. ‘You made your bed, Roman. It would seem to be beneath your dignity to whine about it.’
Her easy dismissal roused his ire. ‘You come to me in that dress and talk of beds, Ella? It would be remiss of me not to warn you against such a thing.’
‘Still looking out for my innocence, husband?’
Choosing not to answer her question, he pressed on. ‘Did you know?’
‘Know what?’ She was playing with him. He could tell she understood what he wanted to know.
‘What Vladimir was up to. Did you know?’
* * *
There was part of Ella—a very large part—that wanted to say yes. Wanted him at least to believe that she had been more in control in that month in France than she had been in reality. Wanted him to think she’d had the upper hand all this time. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to be part of this cycle of hatred. It made her feel dirty and disgusted.
‘I didn’t even know what you were up to. How on earth was I supposed to know what my guardian was planning?’ She saw his gaze narrow, searching her features, her disgust and resentment plain and clear. ‘Would it make it easier for you? If I had been? Would that somehow excuse the horrifying lengths you went to achieve your revenge?’
Only because she had been studying his face as fiercely as he studied hers did she think that just this once she had struck home. That she might have been right. But she refused to credit Roman with enough conscience for that.
‘Well, I didn’t. Up until that night, I’d only known my guardian as the man who rescued me, gave me a home, education, security—’
‘All the things he should have given his own daughter.’
‘Is that why? Why you took your vengeance out on me? Because in some way you thought I had stolen what was rightfully your mother’s?’ She needed to know. It was the one burning question that cut through her like a knife. The fear that somehow she was responsible for bringing his vengeance down on her too.
‘I took my revenge through you because, for a moment, I forgot what a cold unfeeling bastard my grandfather was and thought that he might have actually valued you as opposed to using you as bait.’
He spat the words out at her and if he regretted them, she simply couldn’t tell any more.
‘So, I was inconsequential to you both in your double-edged plans for vengeance.’
‘Inconsequential? Do you know what it was like? To turn up at that estate, to have to beg a man for whom money was no concern for the equivalent of a measly twenty thousand euros for medical treatment that would have saved his daughter’s life?’
Ella had wanted to know, had wanted to understand, but this? This was horrifying to her. Growing up, she’d been aware that Vladimir had once had a daughter and had believed the silence surrounding her had something to do with the grief he’d felt. She’d even been touched by the idea that they had been brought together by loss. Him somehow replacing her parents, and her Vladimir’s lost child. And when she’d learned that he’d cut her off she’d been horrified. But to think that he’d held within his power the chance to save his own child and said no? It seemed almost impossible. Nausea mixed with the ice-cold vodka in her stomach, curdling, turning and twisting in her thoughts.
Now it was Roman’s turn to exhale a bitter laugh. ‘Why am I not surprised? Of course your loving guardian wouldn’t have admitted that he’d had the chance to save his daughter’s life and chosen not to.’
