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This drew her gaze back to his, now completely shadowed by the shafts of shade in the cottage.
‘How can I thank you?’
‘We can figure that out next time.’
‘Next time?’ Ella repeated, hating that she sounded so hopeful.
‘The next time we meet in the woods.’
* * *
It was two days before she saw any sign of Roman again. Two days in which her grandmother regained consciousness and underwent operations and procedures to heal her hip and the shoulder fracture resulting from the fall.
When her grandmother had first woken, she had mistaken Ella for her mother, Adeline. It had only been for a few moments, but the bittersweet cut to her heart had been deep. Her grandmother was Ella’s only connection to her French mother and she hoarded any fragments Claudette had ever told her. Ella’s childhood summers had been spent wandering the woods and delving deeper into the stories that her grandmother would tell of the handsome American tycoon Nathaniel Riding and the sweet innocent Adeline Ardoin who had met, fallen in love and married within months. She knew her grandmother had been heartbroken when they had relocated to Russia for Nathaniel’s business and even more lost when Adeline had passed away, and Ella had been reluctant to break the spell that had returned Claudette’s daughter to her, almost sixteen years after her death.
But her grandmother’s sharp mind had quickly orientated itself and, with a single tear slowly tumbling down her softly lined features, Claudette Ardoin had shaken her head and apologised for being an old fool. After several meetings with doctors and medical personnel, it was clear that Claudette would be staying in hospital for at least two weeks and was highly unlikely to be able to return to the cottage and her independence that she valued so much.
It was the awful practicalities, the decisions to be made, the almost upsetting specifics of moving her grandmother into a care home that left Ella feeling a little shaken and unsettled. And with startling clarity she realised the magnitude of what her guardian had done for her as a child.
When her parents had been killed in a helicopter accident, Ella had been only five. Even all those years ago, Claudette had not been able to take her in and care for her, due to her age and minimal income, and Ella had been given over to Vladimir Kolikov, her father’s business partner and closest friend. So the daughter of an American father—an only son whose parents had both died far too young—and a French mother went to live in Russia with a man who might have been a bit isolated and cold, but was more than ready and willing to give her a home, to care for her and make decisions for her. Vladimir was not the easiest of men, but Ella felt an affection there and as a child had split her time between boarding school in Switzerland, summers in France and winters in Russia.
As she prepared to leave the cottage to return to the hospital, she wondered at meeting Roman—who she had thought of a lot in the last two days. At the peculiarity of meeting a Russian in the deepest part of the South of France. Perhaps that was why she felt there was something slightly similar between her guardian and her rescuer, as she had come to think of him.
And once again she felt the painful blush of embarrassment sting her cheeks. Roman must have thought her completely incompetent. A woman who allowed a stranger into her home, watched in silence as he built a fire, made sure there was food in the fridge and went so far as to set out the makings of a cup of tea. A woman who wanted...things she should not, she concluded to herself as she grabbed her bag and opened the front door.
It was then that she saw the small parcel on the top of the steps. Casting a glance out into the woods, she saw nothing but swathes of trees with windswept leaves, enticingly cool shadowed pathways and long stretches of bluebells.
Returning her attention to the lavender-coloured tissue paper bound with brown string, she picked it up and saw a small cream tag with small, neat writing in English.
To replace what was lost.
Frowning, she picked the bow of the string apart and carefully unwrapped the package in case it might have somehow come by accident to the wrong house. The paper parted to reveal a swathe of burgundy, the softest cashmere she had ever touched. She drew out the present and marvelled at the floor-length hooded cape, by far superior to the one that had been all but destroyed by her journey through the woods two days ago.
It was exquisite and could only have come from one person. Her fingers ran down the stunning material and she was overwhelmed by the gift. Felt a heady combination of joy, surprise and excitement that Roman had thought of her and given her such a gift. Wearing it, she knew, would make her feel beautiful...but also strangely guilty. A guilty pleasure that was only surpassed by the hope that she would see him again. Soon.
*
* *
Roman reluctantly turned away from the sight of Ella on the doorstep to her grandmother’s cottage. Even as everything in him wanted to consume whatever sight of her he could, he ruthlessly thrust aside his base desires in favour of his true intention. He felt every inch the predator he had been forced to become to reach his desired goal. It was imprinted on his soul—it had shaped him, directed him for so many years and now vengeance was within his grasp.
He had been shocked by her innocence. Truly. Expecting to find Vladimir’s ward hardened, sharp with angles by her time spent with such an evil man, instead he’d wondered at the untouched quality of her. She had, two days ago, seemed like a fairy-tale creature. It had made him forget his purpose. As if she had some magical power that had made him almost forget everything. He’d not missed how she had looked at him in the cottage. When the cashmere cloak had half slipped from her shoulder, revealing the curve of pale skin, he’d struggled with the urge to draw her near. He hadn’t missed the way her pupils had dilated, casting her inky blue eyes in an unfathomable dark hue that spoke of desire and want.
Nor had he missed the blush of embarrassment as if she did not know what she was wanting. And it had been that which had broken the spell.
Her beauty was undeniable and he acknowledged, reluctantly, the small part of him that wished perhaps that things were different. But they were not. He had set about this path the moment Vladimir had signed his mother’s death warrant eighteen years ago.
Searing pain gripped him hard and fast, taking him by surprise and shocking him with its intensity. A thick, heavy grief-laden nausea swirled in his gut as if he felt that terrible blow for the first time. The horrifying blankness that had descended once he’d felt the bewildering impossibility of moving forward, of surviving without the one person in his life who had anchored him, who had loved him. It had crashed over him like a wave he hadn’t already surfed. Roman struggled to breathe and forced the pressure in his chest to morph from grief to fury in a years-old practised technique.
Fury at the memory of his grandfather refusing the pleas of a thirteen-year-old boy, begging for help, for finances that would pay for the medical treatment his mother so desperately needed. Vladimir had slammed the door on him. And the consequences had been devastating.
Now Kolikov would know that same feeling. Roman wanted Vladimir to beg and plead as he had once done. Ella Riding was the only way he could take revenge against his grandfather. And he would take it by any means necessary.
CHAPTER TWO
There are many forms of disguise, some in clothing, some in nature, but the most dangerous of all are those that have the thread of truth stitched through them, making it even harder to pull truth from fiction.
The Truth About Little Red Riding Hood
