Innocent in the Ivory Tower

There was an awful moment as Maisy realised what she had done. His eyes locked on hers, whatever he’d been about to say giving way to a look of complete disbelief. Satisfaction at finally gaining his attention turned up the corners of Maisy’s lips, and his stare dropped to the lush unpainted pink of her mouth and buzzed there.

Disconcerted, she lost her concentration for a moment, and something of this must have communicated itself because an answering smile hovered over his mouth. Struck, Maisy dropped her gaze and, making the most of her advantage in that moment, moved fast, scooting ahead of him and blocking his way as best she could.

‘I am not letting you see Kostya until you tell me what’s going on.’

His gaze ran the length of her, and his tone was an arctic degree cooler than his eyes. ‘You’re in full possession of the facts. I’m his legal guardian. Remove yourself.’

As if that was all he had to say.

‘Or what? You’ll get one of your bully boys to do it for you?’ Maisy challenged. Some part of her brain told her this was not persuading him she was the right person to look after Kostya, but he was making her so angry with his high-handed attitude. It wasn’t his house. Kostya wasn’t his child. And she certainly wasn’t his doormat.

‘Do you cook here? Clean?’ he rapped out. ‘Because, quite frankly, I don’t explain my actions to staff.’

‘I’m the nanny,’ she flung at him—which was close enough to the truth.

He swore under his breath, those blue eyes narrowing suspiciously on her. ‘Why in the hell didn’t you say so earlier?’

‘I wasn’t sure what was going on.’

It sounded lame even as she said it. She couldn’t very well say, You put your arms around me and I felt your body and I got thoroughly distracted, and then I saw your face and you reduced me to a puddle of wanting woman. Because she darn well knew it probably happened to him every other day.

Maisy moistened her lips, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet four inches. ‘I want you to hold on and explain to me exactly what you intend doing.’ Her voice sounded high and breathless, and unlikely to get her a response from this hard man.

He didn’t look ready to explain. He looked as if he wanted to shake her. He looked as if he couldn’t believe he was having this—any—conversation with her. A child’s wail broke the stalemate.

‘Konstantine.’

‘Kostya.’

They both spoke at once. Maisy dared him with her eyes to push her aside and he hesitated, clearly not wanting to let her pass but less sure about how gung-ho he should be with a two-year-old infant.

Maisy seized the opportunity and went first, but she could sense him close behind her all the way. She hesitated at the nursery door, then swung around and almost bumped her nose on his hard chest. His big body tensed and she cringed. She had to stop touching him. He’d think there was something wrong with her. Yet already a reactive shiver of response was running the length of her body and she instinctively took a step back.

‘Listen,’ she said, groping for composure. ‘You will stay out here. He’ll only be frightened if he sees a strange man.’

He inclined his head. ‘I will wait.’

Maisy ducked into the room, dimly lit by a night lamp near the cot. Kostya was standing in the middle of the mattress, face red and wet as his cries died away on a last wail when he saw what he wanted. Maisy. His chubby arms extended trustfully towards her and Maisy closed the distance between them in an instant.

‘Maisy!’ he enunciated clearly.

She struggled with lifting him. He was big for his age, and in another year she would have difficulty carrying him in her arms. She felt for the armchair behind her and slid into it, cradling the warm little body in her arms.

Alexei stood watching them. He hadn’t expected to be moved in any way by the sight of the child in a woman’s arms. She seemed at ease in a way he knew he could never be with such a small child. He supposed it came naturally for some women, being maternal; it had certainly not been a natural function of any of the women he knew. In fact he struggled, now he thought about it, to come up with any woman he’d been with who was comfortable around children.

Which was something he had in common with them. He definitely had no interest in his friends’ kids. He’d been godfather to Konstantine for two years and seen the child once: on the day he’d stood up for him in the Russian Orthodox Church here in London.

‘I didn’t know he would be so … small,’ Alexei said quietly, not wanting to startle the child.

Maisy smoothed her hand over the back of Kostya’s restive head as the little boy peered around to see where the male voice had come from. It was a voice that sounded somewhat like his father’s, Maisy registered. A shade deeper, but with the irregular emphasis on vowels that revealed English was a second language for him.

‘Papa,’ he said uncertainly, in his clear, high child’s voice.

‘No, it’s not Papa,’ Maisy said softly, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

He came slowly towards them and dropped down beside the chair, so that his height and bulk were no longer frightening, and said in a grave voice, ‘Hello, Kostya. I am your godfather, Alexei Ranaevsky.’

Some of the tension Maisy was holding in her body shifted and melted with those words. Kostya’s godfather. Why hadn’t she remembered? The day of Kostya’s christening she had been in bed with a fever, but the au pair girl had brought back a gushing description of the übercool Alexei Ranaevsky, and here he was—in the flesh.

He lifted those megawatt blue eyes to her and said quietly, ‘You will get him back to sleep and I will wait for you outside.’

The velvet of his voice brushed over her. Maisy recognised his words as a directive and wondered if Alexei Ranaevsky ever asked permission for anything.

When she emerged the house felt empty again. The security detail had evaporated, although Maisy doubted they were far away. She stood at the top of the stairwell, listening for movement.

‘Here,’ came a deep voice from across the landing.

Maisy followed it into her own room. She hesitated on the threshold. Alexei was standing by the window, somehow managing to fill the entire room with his presence. Amidst the delicately feminine decor of duck-egg-blue and white he looked absurdly out of place.

‘Sit down,’ was all he said.

‘I’d rather stand …’

‘Sit down.’

Maisy rolled her eyes and sat on her narrow bed. He began to walk around, lifting framed photos, knick-knacks, even examining an atomiser of the perfume Maisy usually wore. All the while his attention seemed to be on her, and it was disconcerting. His raw energy was starting to roll through her and Maisy shifted on the bed, wishing she hadn’t sat down.

Alexei rubbed his chin ruefully and wondered why it was that after four days of abstinence, and a total lack of interest in sex for the first time in his adult life, it had all come roaring back the minute his body made contact with hers.

Looking at her now, it seemed she didn’t appear to have a waist under all that wool, but he remembered the curve of it under his hands. In the same way he knew her breasts would be soft and round and her hips and bottom lush in his hands. Her hair was much longer than it looked—she had it all caught up—and it would be long and curling. He could bury his hands in it when she was on her knees to him …

He almost growled with frustration. What was it about death and sex? Maybe that was why his body had gone there and his head had followed. Leo was dead. Leo’s child was now his lifetime responsibility, and he took his responsibilities seriously. Sitting in front of him was something both life-affirming and yet not serious at all. Sex with a real woman—not a sprayed, painted, waxed, plastic actress/model perfume commercial. Hell, she wasn’t even wearing make-up. She didn’t really need it, she had great skin, and that hair …

Suddenly she stood up. ‘Mr Ranaevsky—’

‘Alexei,’ he offered.

‘Alexei.’

She took a deep breath, and he registered she was about to make some sort of speech. That was never good.

‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Maisy. Maisy Edmonds.’

Maisy.

‘Sit down, Maisy.’

‘No, I need to say this standing up.’

‘Sit down.’

She sat. It was a good sign. Pliable.

She stood up. ‘No, this is important. I want to come with Kostya. I don’t know what your circumstances are, or what you have organised, but I want to stay with him until he’s settled. And he doesn’t know yet. When he’s told, I need to be there.’

Alexei frowned heavily. ‘He doesn’t know his parents are dead?’

Maisy shook her head, the pain rushing through her.

‘I had no intention of leaving you behind,’ was his only comment. ‘Do you have a valid passport?’

‘Yes,’ said Maisy. ‘But why—?’

‘Pack a bag. We move in twenty.’

‘But—’

He gave her a brief, almost offended look. ‘I’m not accustomed to explaining myself.’

To staff, added Maisy silently, biting down on a sharp retort.

Alexei registered her frustration, thinking wryly it was nothing next to his own. He had to get out of there before he did something stupid. He had overlooked momentarily who this woman was—a future employee. And he didn’t bed his female staff. He left her to it, reaching for his pager as he plunged down the stairs to alert his men to the changed situation.

It took Maisy twenty minutes to bag up enough of Kostya’s belongings for a week’s stay. She assumed the rest of his life would come later. Her own would take considerably longer to assemble, but fortunately she still had that suitcase she had packed for France on Sunday. Only five days ago, but it felt a lifetime.

But before she took a step out that front door she was going to have a shower.

Downstairs, Alexei consulted his watch for the third time. Half an hour. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t used to waiting on a woman. He had yet to meet one whose ‘five more minutes’ meant anything less than twenty. But Maisy Edmonds wasn’t in any way, shape or form a date, and he didn’t have time for this.

He never dealt with the small stuff, and he could have sent someone up for her, but with his libido humming he realised he actually wanted her at his side. The sparks at least were keeping him awake and functioning.

Her bedroom door was slightly ajar. He gave it a push, half expecting to find her knee-deep in clothes. Instead he found a naked wet woman wrapped in a little white towel, with ringlets of damp hair cascading down her back.

Lust roared through him like a hot desert wind, obliterating thought.

She didn’t cry out, or protest, or do any of the things an outraged woman should do in this situation—something that would make him turn around and leave her alone. She just gaped at him, clutching at the towel, her eyes growing wider, and then she actually stepped towards him.

He crossed the space between them, caught her around that surprisingly small waist and pulled her into his body, half dragging the towel off in the process. He was conscious of her making a noise as he hungrily took her mouth with his own, his tongue invading the sweetness inside. She was stiff in his arms, and he could feel her hands pushing at his biceps, but the rest of her was soft and pliant. Everything about her was everything he wanted in that moment; she was all feminine roundness and softness and warmth. He could bury himself in her and forget everything that had happened, everything that was going to happen. Sweet oblivion inside sweet Maisy.

Maisy could hardly form a coherent thought. Shock had turned to humiliation as she felt her towel shift and drop, and she was aware that at any moment she would be completely naked in a strange man’s arms. This man was kissing her with a passion that went beyond expertise, as if his mouth and his tongue and his touch were desperately searching for something from her. And Maisy found something in herself was tentatively responding. The resistance melted out of her hands as she nestled closer to the source of this warmth that was spreading through her, seeking the shelter his arms offered, leaning into the strength that seemed so much a part of him. His hunger softened into something else as she began to respond.

It was almost too much. Her heartbeat was speeding out of control and his arms around her were almost too powerful, too possessive. She struggled a little, but only to drag his head back down to hers as he shifted in response, and she felt him laugh uninhibitedly against her mouth. He half lifted her and swept her up against the back of the door. It slammed with a thud, his forearm taking the brunt for her back, and Maisy felt his other big, callused hand smooth up her inner thigh. She grabbed it, muttered, ‘No,’ against his hair, and his mouth dropped to the pulse-point throbbing at the base of her throat. He licked her like a big cat, right there, his tongue rough and wet and hot.

Oh, Lord, thought Maisy, her body on fire. I can’t do this. I’m not ready to do this.

‘Lose the towel, Maisy,’ he murmured hotly against her ear, his hands at her hips, moving around to cup her bare bottom.

‘I can’t,’ she winced, embarrassment crawling through her.

And then it was over. It all happened in a moment. His mouth was gone, his hands were gone and she was leaning up against her bedroom door, clutching a towel to her near nakedness and staring into the eyes of a man who looked shell-shocked.

He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, as if removing the taste of her, and said in a low, fractured voice, ‘That was inexcusable. I’m tired. I made a mistake. Forget it ever happened.’

Maisy’s hazel eyes prickled. A mistake? Forget it ever happened?

Alexei knew he wasn’t thinking straight. The girl in front of him was staring at him as if he was mad, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d started something he couldn’t finish. He’d left her high and dry, and the ache in his body wasn’t going to go away any time soon.

What in the hell was he doing here? He had twelve security personnel scoping the property, a car waiting and a jet on the tarmac at Heathrow. And he, Alexei Ranaevsky, was tupping the nanny in an upstairs bedroom.

The goddamned nanny!

And doing a spectacularly lousy job of it.

Shoving aside the useless introspection, Alexei sized up the woman huddling against the door.

‘You need to move so I can get out of here,’ he directed. ‘And for God’s sake put some clothes on.’

Maisy flinched, but she still didn’t move. She wanted desperately to be away from him, to be behind the bathroom door, to sink to the ground and wish away all her humiliation, but she knew the moment she stepped aside she might lose her chance.

She probably already had. He seemed so angry with her it was more than likely he had changed his mind. She should have shoved him off her to begin with. She should never have responded. She should have remembered Kostya came first.

Anais would be horrified if she knew what was going on, what had just happened—in her own home, just days after … Maisy felt so sick she actually thought she might throw up.

‘Maisy.’ He spoke her name abruptly.

‘You haven’t changed your mind?’ she challenged, with what nerve she had left, strengthening her voice with the knowledge that Kostya came first. ‘About me coming? With Kostya?’

For a moment he actually looked confused, as if she had said something completely out of left field when this was the only thing that mattered, wasn’t it? Then he sighed and ran a hand over his unshaven face.

‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ he muttered. ‘God help me, I haven’t changed my mind.’

She looked so lost for a moment something twisted inside him. He remembered her driven, ‘No,’ when he had asked her to drop the towel, her hand like a trap on his when he’d sought to find the sweet wet place between her thighs.

But then why would she have left her door ajar if she hadn’t wanted him to walk in?

Cynicism firmly in place, he took one last frustrated look at what he wasn’t going to have and informed her, ‘Get dressed. You’ve got five.’

It was the hardest walk Maisy had ever had to make. She hated him seeing her after what had happened—so much bare skin, as if offering herself up to him on a plate. He must have been watching her because she didn’t hear her bedroom door close until after she’d shut herself in the bathroom and sunk onto the floor. Waves of humiliation rolled over her, and then she snatched her towel off and grabbed at the big fluffy bath sheet she should have been wearing. It wrapped around her like a hug, and she buried her face in its folds.

She’d been so uninhibited, so out of control. She’d felt his raw need, his naked desire, and she’d matched it with her own. Shame burned through her. This was not part of her bargain with herself and Anais. The last gift she could give her friend was a secure future for her son, and instead she had been wrapped around his godfather, seeking the comfort she needed, Kostya far from her mind.

It was the shock, she told herself. The grief. She would never have responded to him like that if she wasn’t half out of her mind with misery and lack of sleep. But even as she formed the excuses she knew they were a lie, and it shamed her.

She had no choice. She must get up, wash her face, get dressed and go down there and face him. This volatile, unpredictable man was going to be Kostya’s father to all intents and purposes. She must learn to deal with him.

Yet her fingers strayed to her swollen lips and she allowed herself a small shudder. That kiss. That mistake. It must never happen again.

CHAPTER THREE

THE boy, the plane … and the nanny.

No, cancel that last appellation. The red-haired sex kitten, curled up in her chair and pretending to sleep whilst he endeavoured to make sense of the figures being pumped into his email from New York. No sleep, the altitude, and now the unexpected introduction of his libido into the equation meant he was in danger of making a mistake that could cost a great many people their jobs.

He gestured to one of the attendants—a young guy named Leroy. Alexei didn’t hire attractive female staff any more for his private jet. They tended to lose focus on their job.

‘Leroy,’ he said. ‘Miss Edmonds. Move her. I don’t want her in my eyeline.’

Leroy looked from the sleeping bundle that was Maisy back to his boss. Alexei knew what the man was thinking but would never say, so he added tiredly, ‘She’s not asleep. She’s faking it.’

Maisy gritted her teeth. She had heard every word Alexei Ranaevsky had uttered since he’d sat down over an hour ago. Usually in Russian, usually brief and to the point. He hadn’t addressed a single syllable to her. It was as if she had simply ceased to be. But apparently she was distracting to his eyeline.

She lifted her head as Leroy approached her. He bent down and said in a soft voice, ‘Miss Edmonds—’

‘I know.’ Maisy gave him a resigned smile, then yawned, ruining it. She stretched and gathered up her angora travelling blanket, and climbed out of the luxurious seat. She looked pointedly at Alexei, who had removed his jacket and was propped with his feet up, scrolling through the information on the state-of-the-art laptop positioned in front of him. He didn’t even acknowledge her, his amazing bone structure taut under this artificial light. He looked more tired than she felt, which was saying something.

‘Put Miss Edmonds in a bed,’ he said as she passed by him.

Alexei heard a faint, ‘Thank you,’ in that sweet, tangy voice of hers, and felt his whole body shift instinctively in her direction.

Down boy. He growled. This wasn’t the time or the place to indulge his sudden craving for soft-eyed redheads. He’d had six long months of not particularly satisfying sex with Tara. Five months and twenty-nine days too long, in his opinion. Although not in Tara’s. She was telling the press they were still ‘good friends’ two days after he broke up with her. Ironic, as he’d never had a female friend—and if he did he wouldn’t choose Tara.

It was complicated. Maisy Edmonds was in his household, for now. Although she was no nanny. She’d lied to him straight up—another element to keep in mind. He had a fair idea who she was: one of Anais’s crew of hangers-on. Somehow she’d inveigled her way into the house and into Kostya’s life. If Leo was alive he might have vouched for her—a single word would have sufficed. But if Leo had been alive Alexei would never have met her in such fraught circumstances, leading to such a stupid indiscretion.

Which was bound to happen again.

The fierceness of her sexual response had taken even him off guard. It had turned blind need into something more exciting, edgier. It had been he who was out of control, he recognised. Whilst she had met him every inch of the way, she had also backed down fast. Meeting that resistance had saved him from a very big mistake, and possibly a costly one. Because there were always consequences.

He didn’t do casual sex. And he didn’t do sex full stop without a condom—which he wasn’t carrying. He could only have her word on where she’d been. He wondered if Leo … Then he closed down that thought, because it suddenly made him very angry. An image of Maisy Edmonds in a towel, rubbing herself against a series of men, flashed through his tired brain, firing his temper, and he swore.

It wasn’t going to happen—not in the coming days and weeks anyway. The dust still had to settle on Leo’s portfolio, and more importantly there was his child.

Kostya had been unexpectedly lively earlier on the trip, but now was sleeping as if the world had ended. Alexei envied him that ability to completely shut down. He imagined he had possessed it once, many aeons ago, when he was an infant. A childhood rubbed raw by neglect and strife had worn it off. He rarely slept a regular eight hours. The past few days had robbed him even of that.

With the kitten safely put to bed, he could focus on what the screen was telling him. None of it was good news. His shares in Kulcor were merely window dressing. If the company foundered it wouldn’t show up as a blip on his financial radar, but it was Kostya’s inheritance—he had to hold it. It was the least Leo would have expected of him. Family came first. However, growing up with nothing but the clothes on his back had taught Alexei to value material security. When people let you down, abandoned you, and all you had was yourself, several billion in the bank was a nice bulwark against destitution.

Leo’s son would never want for anything. He would make sure of it.

A bed. Not the bed—not the one and only bedroom on a private jet—but a bed. One of three. What kind of a man had three bedrooms on a plane? Maisy smiled helplessly at her thoughts. He had a private plane. The number of bedrooms was probably beside the point.

She sat down on the sumptuous bed, looking around at the luxurious fabrics on the walls and furniture. She ran her hand over the silky bed coverings in deep purple and black. A man had definitely chosen the colour scheme, although she couldn’t quite picture Alexei Ranaevsky spending much time with fabric swatches.

She could, however, imagine him on this bed, and her mind began to drift as she settled down under the luxurious covers, entertaining imagery mainly to do with him diving into bed with her. In the fantasy she didn’t stop him; she was confident and even sexually aggressive. Part of her wanted to call a halt to the daydreaming—it wasn’t healthy; she could never act on it. He probably wouldn’t fancy her in the cold light of day … But another, darker part seized on his mouth hot on hers and his hand like a brand on her inner thigh. She shifted in the bed, irritatedly aware she was arousing herself, which only made it all worse.