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She dashed out of the kitchen before he could stop her. Not fast enough he hadn’t seen the flash of tears in her eyes.
Yeah, he was a real prince. He’d finally made Clementine cry.
CHAPTER TEN
IT TOOK him ten minutes to clear the house. Alex lingered the longest, took him aside on the front steps.
‘What are you doing with that girl, Serge?’
‘Come again?’
‘The look on your face when you came into the kitchen was priceless.’
‘If you could translate, Aleksandr, it might make more sense,’ said Serge dryly.
‘That’s right—play dumb. I saw you last night. You care about her. She’s not one of those bimbo airheads on your revolving door policy, she’s a savvy woman. I really might employ her, Seriosha, then what are you going to do?’
‘Fire you.’
‘Touché. You know, Mick’s right. You turn up with her at a few charity events and we’re cooking with gas again. How about a magazine spread? “At home with Serge Marinov and the lovely Clementine”.’
‘You’ve either lost your ever loving mind or you’re looking to see stars,’ commented Serge, folding his arms.
‘I’m not the one shacked up with Jessica Rabbit crossed with Martha Stewart.’ Alex laughed and bounded down the remainder of the steps, heading for his car. ‘She had groceries, man,’ he shouted. ‘Groceries!’
Serge went back inside and took the stairs by threes. The bedroom door was half ajar and he knocked a couple of times. ‘Clementine?’
He’d expected to find her spread across the bed crying into a pillow, or whatever it was women did when they were put out, but the room was empty. The bed was made—nary a crease thanks to Housekeeping.
Where in the hell was she?
In the end he found her on the roof garden. She was kneeling on the ground, pulling weeds out of pots. She barely acknowledged his presence.
‘First you go grocery shopping, now you’re gardening,’ he commented. ‘This domesticity has got to stop, kisa.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t have anything else to do. You’re gone most of the time and I don’t have a job. So I do domestic, okay?’
He hunkered down beside her. ‘Last night, Clementine—’
‘Yes, I get it, Slugger,’ she interrupted. ‘I overstepped the mark or the boundary or whatever it is. It won’t happen again.’
Serge was silent for a moment.
‘I didn’t want you at the event last night because it’s violent,’ he said with deliberation, ‘and you don’t react well to violence, Clementine.’
She wanted to snap, I wasn’t talking about the match. I was talking about afterwards. ‘You put me in a ringside seat,’ she protested instead, turning her head so she could look him in the eyes.
‘Because you were there, and I didn’t want you out of my sight. I made a bad judgement call.’
‘You didn’t want me out of your sight?’ she repeated, trying to make sense of it.
‘It’s my responsibility to look after you.’
The hairs prickled on her body. She was nobody’s responsibility. She looked after herself. The minute she started believing Serge was going to do that was the moment this all came crashing in—as it had this morning.
He wasn’t going to protect her. He wasn’t going to love her. He was just her lover. Her current lover. She was a big girl. This was the way the world worked. Serge’s world worked.
‘You’re not my dad, Serge. You’re my—’ She broke off, at a loss for a descriptor. Embarrassment prickled along her neck, worse than before.
‘Your father lives in Geneva,’ interposed Serge smoothly, letting her know she was right to hesitate. ‘Do you ever see him?’
She avoided talking about her parents whenever she could, but suddenly her father seemed like a much safer topic than whether or not Serge was her boyfriend.
‘No, not for many years. We had a falling-out when I was fifteen and I’ve never been back. I was a bit of a handful in those days.’
‘Unlike now, when you’re a pussycat.’
Clementine smiled a little. ‘Why do you call me kitten all the time?’
‘Because you’re cute and playful and then you scratch me.’
She waved the gardening fork. ‘Better be careful, then. I’m armed and dangerous.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘She presents a breakfast TV show in Melbourne. She was never home and when she was we fought. Mum and Dad were both barely out of their teens when they had me—it’s why they married—and neither of them had much interest in a baby. So I grew up with a lot of childminders and nannies and fights until I was ten, when they finally split for good. Only then the fun started. The commute. Twice a year to Geneva.’
