One Kiss in... Moscow: Kholodov's Last Mistress / The Man She Shouldn't Crave / Strangers When We Meet

‘I’ve certainly had a few of those today,’ she said after she’d taken a tiny sip of wine.

‘So tell me about this trip of yours,’ Sergei said as he sat next to her. ‘This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’

‘Well …’ She paused, frowning faintly. ‘My parents died. They were elderly, and it wasn’t unexpected, but it was all kind of … intense, and I decided afterwards that this was an opportunity to take some time out for myself.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘Even if I didn’t have any savings.’

‘I’m sorry about your parents,’ he said quietly. Her admission had given him a flicker of surprised sympathy. She was an orphan, of a sort, just as he was. ‘Savings aside,’ he continued, ‘you obviously had enough money to fund the trip at least.’

‘Just,’ Hannah agreed. ‘But it was tight. I had to close the shop, of course, and scrimp quite a bit—’ She stopped suddenly, shaking her head ruefully. ‘But you don’t want to hear about that. Very boring stuff, especially to a millionaire like you.’

Billionaire, actually, but Sergei wasn’t about to correct her. He was curious about this shop of hers, and her whole life, and the way she stared at him as if she trusted him, as if she trusted everyone. Hadn’t life taught her anything? It made him want to destroy her delusions and wrap her in cotton wool all at the same time.

Desirable, he reminded himself. That was it. Simple. Easy.

‘You mentioned a shop,’ he said. He shifted in his seat and his thigh nudged hers. He saw her eyes widen and she bit the lush fullness of her lip once more.

‘Y-yes, a shop,’ she said, stammering slightly, and he knew that brief little nudge had affected her. And if that affected her—what would she be like in his arms? In his bed?

Guilt pricked him momentarily, sharp and pointed. Should he really be thinking like this? She had innocence stamped all over her. His lovers were always experienced and even jaded like him, women who understood his rules. Who never tried to get close.

Because if they did … if they ever knew …

Sergei pushed the needling sense of guilt away, hardened his heart. And pictured himself slipping that dress from her shoulders, pressing his lips to the pulse fluttering quite wildly at her throat. She wanted him. He wanted her.

Simple.

It was foolish to feel so … aware, Hannah told herself. So alive. They were just talking. Yet still she was acutely, achingly conscious of Sergei’s thigh just inches from hers, the strength and heat of him right across the table, the candlelight throwing the harsh planes of his face into half-shadow.

‘A shop,’ she repeated, knowing she must sound as brainless as he’d thought her this morning. ‘My parents started it before I was born, and I took it over when they died.’

‘What kind of shop?’

‘Crafts. Mainly knitting supplies, yarn and so forth, but also embroidery and sewing things. Whatever we—I—think will sell.’ Even six months after her mother’s death, it was still strange—and sad—to think the shop was hers. Only hers.

‘And you had to close the shop? You couldn’t have anyone running it while you were away?’

‘I can’t really afford it,’ she said. ‘It’s a small town and we don’t get a lot of business except during tourist season.’ And even then just drive-throughs.

‘Where is this small town of yours?’

‘Hadley Springs, about four hours north of New York City.’

‘It must be beautiful.’

‘It is.’ She loved the rugged beauty of the Adirondacks, the impenetrable pine forests, yet living in a small town as a twenty-something could get a bit lonely, something she thought Sergei surmised from the shrewd compassion in his narrowed eyes.

‘You have not wanted to move?’

‘No, nev—’ Hannah stopped suddenly, for she couldn’t actually say she hadn’t wanted it; it had simply never been an option. Her parents had needed her too much, the shop needed to be run, and she couldn’t imagine abandoning it all now. The shop had been everything to them, and she needed to make a go of it, for the sake of their memory at least. She knew it was what her parents would have wanted, even expected. And yet …

‘I don’t even know where I would go,’ she said after a moment, trying to shrug the question—and the sudden doubts it had made her have—away.

Sergei’s smile glinted in the candlelight. ‘Possibility can be a frightening thing.’

‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, thinking that it never had been before. She hadn’t let herself think about possibilities, yet somehow sitting in this candlelit room with this breathtakingly attractive man gazing at her so steadily made everything—and anything—seem more possible.

Sergei cocked his head. ‘You are thinking about selling this shop,’ he said softly.

‘No—’ She’d been thinking about him, but she couldn’t deny that his pointed little questions had opened up something inside her, something she wasn’t quite ready to consider. ‘It was my parents’ dream,’ she told him. ‘Their baby.’

‘Weren’t you their baby?’

She shook her head, wondering why he insisted on seeing everything in such a cynical light. ‘You know what I mean. They poured their life savings into the shop, all their energy. My father had a stroke while stacking boxes in the stock room.’ She swallowed. ‘It was everything to them.’

‘So it was their dream,’ Sergei said quietly. ‘But was it yours? You can’t make someone want the same things you do.’ He sounded as if he spoke from experience. ‘You need to have your own dream.’

‘What’s your dream, then?’

‘Success,’ he answered shortly. ‘What’s yours?’

The question felt like a challenge, one Hannah didn’t want to answer. Sergei gazed at her, his eyes glinting in the candlelight, the sharp angular planes of his face bathed in warm light. His was a harsh, stark beauty, yet she could not deny the whole of his features, cold and assessing as they were, worked together to make him a truly striking man. Hannah swallowed, wanting to say something light, something that would smooth over the sudden jagged sense of uncertainty Sergei had ripped open inside her. Perhaps he understood this, for he gave her a small smile and said, ‘Perhaps this trip has been your dream.’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘It was.’ And it was over now. Tomorrow reality would return. In a day or two she would open the door to the shop, dusty and unused, and deal with the bills and the piles of uncatalogued merchandise and the creeping realisation that her parents’ baby made very little money indeed. She had ideas, she had plans to make the shop work, and they were her plans. The shop was hers. She just didn’t know if the dream was. Hannah pushed the thought away, and the resentment she couldn’t help but feel that Sergei had opened up these uncertainties inside her. ‘So your dream is success,’ she said brightly, determined to move the focus of the conversation away from herself. ‘Success in what?’

‘Everything.’

‘That’s quite a dream.’ She felt a bit shaken by his blatant arrogance, as well as the bone-deep certainty she felt in herself that such a dream was most assuredly in the reach of a man like Sergei Kholodov. ‘Well, judging by this hotel you’re on your way to achieving it,’ she said as a waiter stepped silently into the alcove and began to serve them their starters. Sergei glanced at the young man who laid their plates on the table with a solemn concentration.

‘Spasiba, Andrei.’

The waiter gave his boss a quick, grateful smile and then withdrew with a little bow. Hannah felt a flicker of curiosity. Did Sergei know all his staff by name? The brochure in her room had said he employed a thousand people here. ‘So how did you build this empire of yours?’ she asked. ‘Is it a family business?’

He stilled, staring at her for a moment, the only movement the slow rotation of his wine glass between his fingers. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Not family.’

‘You made it on your own?’ She reached for her fork and took a bite of wafer-thin beef carpaccio.

‘Yes,’ Sergei said flatly. ‘I learned early that is the only way you’ll ever succeed. Don’t depend on anyone. Don’t trust anyone, either.’ His voice had hardened, and his already harsh face suddenly seemed very cold.

‘You must have someone you can trust,’ she said after a moment. Her own life was a little lonely, but not as bad as that.

‘No,’ Sergei said flatly. ‘No one.’

‘No one who works for you?’ She thought of Grigori, or even of the waiter Andrei. Both men had seemed to respect Sergei.

He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. ‘I am their employer. It is a different kind of relationship.’

‘A friend, then?’ He didn’t answer. Hannah shook her head slowly. ‘I find that very sad.’

‘Do you?’ He sounded amused. ‘I find it convenient.’

‘Then that’s even sadder.’

Sergei leaned forward, his eyes glittering like shards of ice or diamonds. Both cold and hard. ‘At some point in your life, Hannah, you’ll find out that people disappoint you. Deceive you. I find it’s better to accept it and move on than let yourself continually be let down.’

‘And I,’ Hannah returned robustly, ‘find it better to believe in people and live in hope than become as jaded and cynical as you obviously are.’

He laughed, the sound rich and deep, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, there we are,’ he said. His gaze roved over her in obvious masculine appreciation. ‘Two very different people,’ he murmured.

‘Yes,’ Hannah agreed. Her knees suddenly felt watery, her whole body shaky. The tension over their disagreement had been replaced by something else, something just as tense. And tempting.

She didn’t think she was imagining the way Sergei was looking at her, his gaze roving over her so slowly, so … seductively. She certainly wasn’t imagining the answering, quivering need she felt in herself, every nerve leaping to life, every sense singing to awareness. He might be cynical, but he was also sexy. Incredibly so, and her body responded to him on the most basic—and thrilling—level.

She swallowed, tried to find another topic of conversation, anything to diffuse the sudden tension that had tautened the very air between them. ‘What about your parents?’ she said. ‘You must have depended on them, at least when you were a child.’

Sergei’s eyes narrowed as his gaze snapped back to her face, his expression colder than ever. Clearly she’d picked the wrong topic. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m an orphan, like you are. No family to run your little shop, and no family to run my business.’

And no family to depend on. ‘When did your parents die?’ she asked quietly.

‘A long time ago.’

He couldn’t be much more than thirty-five, she guessed. ‘When you were a child?’

His eyes narrowed, lips thinning into a hard line. ‘I don’t know, actually. No one bothered to tell me. I was raised by my grandmother.’ Hannah stared at him in surprise, and Sergei leaned forward. ‘All these questions,’ he mocked softly. ‘You’re so very curious, aren’t you? Don’t worry, Hannah. I survived.’

‘Life is about more than survival.’ Clearly he didn’t like personal questions. ‘In any case, I’m sorry about your parents. It must have been hard to lose them, whatever age you were.’ Sergei lifted one shoulder in something like an accepting shrug, his expression completely closed.

Andrei came and cleared their plates, replacing them with the next course of pelmeni, a kind of Russian ravioli with minced lamb filling encased in paper-thin dough. Hannah took a bite and her eyes widened in appreciation; this was no peasant food.

Sergei noted her reaction with a faint smile, the tension that had tautened between them thankfully dissipating. ‘You like it? Anatoli, the chef here, is world-famous. His signature is haute cuisine, Russian style.’

‘It’s delicious,’ Hannah said, and took another bite. She smiled, deciding to keep the mood light. ‘So you don’t want to talk about your business,’ she said, ‘or at least anything personal.’

Sergei arched his eyebrows. ‘I don’t remember saying that.’

‘Maybe not in so many words,’ Hannah allowed, ‘but I think it was pretty clear, don’t you?’

He stared at her, nonplussed, and Hannah gazed evenly back. She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her, not when she knew underneath all that arrogant bluster there was a kind heart. Or at least a somewhat kind heart. He’d looked out for her, hadn’t he, in his own brusque and bossy way? She’d seen compassion in his eyes. And she trusted him, instinctively, implicitly, no matter how coldly arrogant he could seem. Underneath the bluster there was something real and good, and she felt bone-deep she was right to trust that.

His mouth twitched in something that just hinted at a smile and he set his wine glass back down on the table. ‘You’re very candid, aren’t you?’

‘If you’re saying I’m honest, then yes. But not nosy,’ she added, daring to tease just a little. ‘If I were nosy, I’d ask you why you don’t want to talk about personal things.’

His eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring slightly even as he smiled and picked up his wine glass once more. ‘Good thing you’re not nosy, then.’

Hannah watched him, curiosity sharpening inside her. Sergei Kholodov was, she decided, a man with secrets. Ones he had no intention of telling her. Yet she was intrigued and a little bit intimidated … and attracted. Definitely attracted. The desire she felt was heady and new, for men like Sergei Kholodov—or even men under the age of fifty—generally didn’t come to Hadley Springs all that often, much less ask her out on dates. And this was a date … wasn’t it?

‘Good thing,’ she finally agreed, and Sergei’s mouth curved into a smile that suddenly seemed to Hannah both predatory and possessive.

‘In any case,’ he said, his tone turning lazy and even sensual, his gaze heavy-lidded, ‘I’d much rather talk about you.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘ME?’ HANNAH stared at him, registering that lazy tone, that sensual smile. A thrill raced through her. ‘I don’t know why,’ she told him. ‘We’ve already talked about me. And I’m very boring.’

Sergei’s smile deepened, his gaze sweeping slowly—so slowly—over her. ‘That remains to be seen.’

She let out a little laugh. ‘Trust me.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Hannah shrugged and gave up the argument. He’d learn soon enough how mundane her life seemed, especially to a millionaire like him. ‘Okay.’ She spread her hands, gave him a playfully challenging smile. ‘Shoot.’

‘Tell me more about this shop,’ Sergei said and Hannah blinked. What had she been expecting, that he would demand to know her most intimate secrets, or lack of them? Well, sort of.

‘I told you about it already,’ she said. ‘There’s not much more to tell.’ He said nothing, merely watched her, and so Hannah elaborated, ‘It’s a little shop. Just a little shop.’

‘Knitting, you said?’

‘Yes.’

‘You like to knit?’

Hannah stared at him, swallowed. It was a logical question, an innocuous question, and yet it felt both loaded and knowing. Something about the way Sergei gazed at her with that shrewd assessment made Hannah feel as if he’d stripped away her secrets and seen right into her soul.

Which was absurd, because she didn’t have any secrets. ‘Not really,’ she said, smiling. ‘My mother taught me when I was little, but I never got past purling. She gave up on me eventually, much to my relief.’

‘I see.’ And in those two words Hannah heard how much he saw, or at least thought he saw. He really did have a dark view of the world, she decided, reading the worst into everything. He was starting to make her do that a little bit too, and she didn’t like it.

‘I like the business side of it,’ she said, even though that wasn’t quite true. She didn’t mind it would be more accurate.

‘And so you continue with this shop alone.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ He was still watching her, his eyes narrowed, lips parted. Everything about him seemed sharp and hard except for those lips. They were soft, mobile, warm-looking. She was really quite fascinated with them. Hannah jerked her gaze upwards. ‘I can’t imagine doing anything else,’ she said simply. ‘And I have lots of plans to improve it.’

‘It needs improving?’

‘Doesn’t everything? In any case, as I said before, the shop was everything to my mom and dad. I can’t just let that go.’

‘But to you?’

‘It’s very important to me,’ she said firmly, but she felt, for the first time, as if she was lying. The realisation jolted her, like when you thought there was one more step on a staircase.

‘Tell me about this trip of yours,’ Sergei said. ‘Have you been to many places?’

‘A few.’ She smiled, glad not to think about the shop any more. ‘I bought a rail pass and have been working my way through Europe. Moscow was the last stop.’

‘Which would account for the flight you missed about two hours ago.’

She swallowed, reality landing with an unwelcome thud. ‘Right.’

‘With my help, I don’t think it should be difficult to reschedule your flight tomorrow.’

Relief mingled with reality. Even so, as glad as she would be to have her passport sorted, she didn’t want this night to end. Yet if she believed Sergei—which she did—she’d be back in Hadley Springs in twenty-four hours. ‘You can pull some serious strings, I guess,’ Hannah said. It was hard to imagine that kind of power.

Sergei shrugged one shoulder, the movement one of careless and understated authority. ‘In Russia it is all about who you know.’

‘Well, I obviously didn’t know the right people. The lady at the embassy wasn’t interested in my sob story at all.’ Hannah smiled wryly before quickly adding, ‘She was helpful and nice, of course—’

‘Of course,’ Sergei agreed, his amused tone suggesting he thought otherwise. He leaned forward, eyes glinting. ‘Or maybe she was just a miserable cow who never spares a thought for the hapless traveller who comes to her window.’

Hannah shook her head slowly. ‘Do you think the worst of everyone?’

‘I haven’t thought the worst of you,’ Sergei pointed out blandly.

Curious, she raised her eyebrows. ‘And just what would the worst about me be?’

‘That you planned to be pickpocketed in my presence so I’d help you—’

Hannah nearly choked on the wine she’d been sipping. ‘What?’

‘And then finagle and flirt your way into my good graces, and most likely my bed.’

Now Hannah really did choke. She doubled over, coughing and sputtering, while Sergei solicitously poured her more water. She straightened, wiping her streaming eyes, and stared at him in disbelief. ‘Do women really do that kind of thing? To you?’

Another one-shoulder shrug. ‘On occasion.’

She shook her head, incredulous and reeling a little bit from the casual mention of his bed. And her in it. ‘And they’re not scared off by your incredibly surly attitude?’

Now he grinned, properly, not a lazy smile that Hannah suspected was meant to singe her senses. This was a smile of genuine humour, and she was glad. It made her grin right back. ‘I wish they were,’ he said.

‘I’m sure,’ she replied tartly. ‘It must be so very tedious to fight all these women off. How do you make it down the street?’

‘With difficulty.’

‘Poor you.’

Still smiling, he poured her more wine. Wine she shouldn’t drink, because she was already feeling rather delightfully light-headed. ‘In any case, we were talking about this trip of yours. Why did you want to travel so much?’

‘Because I never had before,’ Hannah said simply. ‘I’ve spent my entire life in upstate New York—’

‘What about university?’

‘I went to the state university, in Albany, just an hour away.’

‘What did you study?’

‘Literature. Poetry, mainly. Not very practical. My parents wanted me to take a degree in business.’ She swallowed, remembering how they’d wrung their hands and shaken their heads. Literature won’t get you anywhere, Hannah. It won’t help with the shop.

The shop. Always the shop. The stirring of resentment surprised her. Why had she never thought this way before? Because she’d never met someone like Sergei before, asking his questions, making her doubt. And thrilling her to her very core.

‘But you kept with literature?’ Sergei asked, and Hannah jerked her unfocused gaze back to Sergei’s knowing one.

‘I left.’ She shrugged, dismissing what had been a devastating decision with a simple twist of her shoulders. It was a long time ago now, and she’d never regretted it. Not really.

‘Why?’

She looked up, saw that telling shrewd compassion in his narrowed gaze, and wondered how he was able to guess so much. Know so much. ‘My father had a stroke when I was twenty. It was too difficult for my mother to cope with him and the shop, so I came home and helped out. I intended to return to school when things got settled, but somehow—’

‘They never did,’ Sergei finished softly, and Hannah knew he understood.

She lifted her shoulders in another accepting shrug. No point feeling sad about something that had happened years ago, something that had been her choice. ‘It happens.’

‘It must have been hard to leave university.’

‘It was,’ Hannah admitted. ‘But I promised myself I’d go back, and I will one day.’

‘To study business or literature?’

‘Literature,’ Hannah said firmly, a little surprised by how much she meant it.

Sergei’s mouth curved into a smile. ‘So you do have your own dream after all.’

Hannah stared at him. ‘I guess I do,’ she said after a moment. ‘Although I’m not sure what I’d actually do with that kind of degree. I took an evening course back home, on Emily Dickinson, an American poet. But …’ She shrugged, shook her head. ‘It’s not like I’m going to become a poet or something.’

Sergei’s smile deepened. ‘And here I thought you were an optimist.’

She let out a little laugh. ‘Yes, I am. So who knows, maybe I’ll start spouting sonnets.’

He pretended to shudder. ‘Please don’t.’

Hannah laughed aloud, emboldened by that little glimpse of humour. She propped her elbows on the table and hefted her wine glass aloft. ‘“I bring an unaccustomed wine,”’ she quoted, ‘“To lips long parching, next to mine, And summon them to drink.”’

The words fell into the stillness, created ripples in the silence like wind on the surface of a pond. The intimacy of the verse seemed to reverberate between them as Sergei’s heavy-lidded gaze rested thoughtfully on her and he slowly reached for his wine glass. ‘Emily Dickinson?’ he surmised softly, and Hannah nodded, too affected by the lazy, languorous look in his eyes to speak. Obviously she’d had too much wine if she’d started quoting poetry. Slowly, his gaze still heavy on her, Sergei raised his glass and drank. Unable—and unwilling—to look away, Hannah drank too.

It wasn’t a toast, it wasn’t anything, and yet Hannah felt as if something inexplicably important had just passed between them, as if they’d both silently agreed … yet to what?

‘How old are you now?’ Sergei asked abruptly, breaking the moment, and Hannah set her wine glass down with a little clatter.

‘Twenty-six. I know it’s been a while since college but I will go back,’ she told him with a sudden, unexpected fierceness. ‘When I have the money—’

‘Saved?’ Sergei slotted in and she gave a little laugh.

‘I know what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t have blown all my money on this trip if I really wanted to go back to college.’ And that was probably true, but she’d needed this trip. After her mother had died and her closest friend Ashley had moved to California, Hannah had felt more alone than ever. She couldn’t have faced continuing on, alone in the shop, struggling to make ends, if not meet, then at least see each other. She’d needed to get away, to experience things. Still, she knew it had been impulsive, imprudent, maybe even just plain stupid. Something a man like Sergei Kholodov never would have done.