The Millionaire Affair

‘Oh?’

Tatiana stared into the middle distance, suddenly thoughtful.

‘So where did she come from?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Lisa Whatever-her-name-is,’ Nikolai said impatiently. ‘Where did you find her?’

Tatiana remained distracted. ‘Oh, around,’ she said vaguely.

Nikolai curbed his irritation. Tatiana, he reminded himself, was old and eccentric, and probably worried about money.

So he said carefully, ‘Why this sudden urge to become a landlady again?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve always let out rooms when I needed to.’

‘But the point is,’ said Nikolai patiently, ‘you don’t need to. I went through the figures last year and I saw your accountant again a couple of days ago. You don’t need to do this. You can pay your way easily.’

Tatiana sniffed. Since she had given Pauli carte blanche to manage her affairs more than forty years ago, she could hardly claim that this was high-handed. But she could and did say that her decision was nothing to do with Nikolai.

‘I like Lisa. I wanted her to have the flat.’

Nikolai looked at her narrowly. ‘Is running the house getting too much for you?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Tatiana impatiently. ‘I have a cleaner twice a week. What more do I need?’

‘You are lonely, then?’

‘I do too much to be lonely.’

‘Then why—?’

Tatiana folded her lips together stubbornly. ‘I told you. I like her. She needed somewhere to live and I—’

He pounced on it. ‘Needed. Aha. She is a vagrant. From what I saw this morning, I can well believe it.’

‘Oh, Nicki, don’t be pompous. Of course she’s not a vagrant.’

‘What do you know about her? Have you taken any references?’

‘No, but—’

‘I knew it. She is exploiting you.’

‘Nikolai, will you listen to me? She has a perfectly good job.’

‘Doing what?’

Tatiana had to admit she didn’t know. She had simply not taken in what Lisa did for a living and had only the vaguest idea of where she worked.

Aware of this, she said defensively, ‘I have known her for over a year. We go to the same dance studio.’

Nikolai was not stupid enough to look triumphant. But the faint hint of scepticism about his mouth infuriated Tatiana.

‘And she is not exploiting me. In fact she’s the one who has been insisting that we have a legal agreement.’

If anything, Nikolai’s scepticism increased.

‘Protecting her position,’ he diagnosed. ‘Very shrewd.’

‘You know, it’s very unhealthy, always thinking the worst of people. It gives you ulcers,’ Tatiana informed him.

‘So do great-aunts,’ said Nikolai ruefully. He sobered. ‘Now, are you going to ask her for references? Because if you don’t I will.’

Tatiana looked infuriatingly ethereal. ‘You must learn to trust more.’

‘Right. I’ll deal with it.’

He marched off without waiting for a reply. Tatiana did not permit herself to smile until there was no chance of his turning round and seeing it. But as soon as he was out of sight she threw her gloves up in the air and gave a whoop of triumph.

‘Yes!’

Lisa heard the shout. By that time she had just about stopped dancing with rage. She had got to the point where she didn’t know if she was angrier with herself for being so stupid, or Tatiana’s visitor for being so arrogant.

Considering it, she realised that neither was the main course of her fury. It was the way he’d looked at her! Nobody looked at her like that. Nobody dared.

Angrily she stripped off her clothes and stamped into the bathroom. The floor-to-ceiling mirror showed her a slim figure, pale and shaking with temper—and a clown’s mask of smudged paint.

Lisa was taken aback. She leaned towards the mirror, fingering the mascara experimentally. It spread.

If that was what he’d seen, maybe there was some excuse for the way he’d looked at her. It couldn’t be often that the door was opened to a man like that by the Thing from the Black Lagoon. A brief laugh shook Lisa at the thought.

But then she took a firm grip of her anger again. Somehow she needed that anger; she didn’t know why. Nobody had a right to look another person up and down as if they were a thing, she assured herself. Even if they were looking a little strange at the time. If she ever saw him again—which of course she did not want to—she would tell him so.

She stepped into the steaming shower and prepared to put him out of her mind.

Ten minutes later she was still polishing the scathing things she would never now have the opportunity of saying to him and surveying her fridge blankly. One packet of carrots, going mouldy. One carton of milk, rancid. Two bottles of mineral water. She needed coffee and she hated it black. So—

A glance out of the French windows she had locked in the hateful man’s face told Lisa that it was raining. It looked cold, too. She really did not want to go out. But her stomach rumbled threateningly.

Quiet, she told it. Black coffee won’t hurt you for once. I’ll give the man time to go and then I’ll borrow some milk from Tatiana.

She sat down to wait. But the morning stretched into lunchtime, and there was no sound of the front door closing behind him. Lisa looked at the rain, now falling in a sheet.

‘Damn,’ she said.

She fetched an umbrella.

Nikolai was angry. He was sitting in his hired car, watching his aunt’s house like a private eye. It felt seedy and faintly ludicrous. He didn’t like either sensation.

Something else that was the fault of the downstairs tenant, he thought. On top of defying him, and then making him feel as if he was holding onto his control by the thinnest of threads! It was intolerable. It had to be put right. He had told Tatiana that he would deal with it. So he would.

He didn’t have to wait long. The front door opened and a figure huddled under an umbrella scurried out. She could not have looked more furtive if she was running away from the police, thought Nikolai. It filled him with an obscure triumph.

Lisa didn’t notice the man sitting in the Lexus across the road. She hurried along, head bent. The wind blew the rain in little swirls against which the umbrella was almost no use at all. In the end she put it in front of her like a battering ram, and, looking neither to right nor left, she pelted for the shop.

Nikolai put the car in gear and slid it smoothly out of its tight parking place. Lisa didn’t notice that either, deep in her absorption.

If only the horrible man hadn’t woken her up, she thought, she could still be fast asleep, without this need for milky coffee and a bun. And she wouldn’t be feeling the sting of having made a complete idiot of herself. And the weather made everything ten times worse.

She dived into the small supermarket and emerged with an unwieldy bag containing the Sunday papers, a litre of milk, a crusty baguette that she did not want but hadn’t been able to resist the smell of, and a pineapple—luxurious but low on calories. In fact the smell of new bread had cheered her up so much that it put a bounce in her step. She swung out of the door so energetically that she bumped into someone.

‘Oh, I’m sorry—’ she began, genuinely contrite. And then saw who it was.

Her smile died. ‘What are you doing here?’

Nikolai did not pretend. ‘Following you.’

‘Following—’ Even though it was what she’d suspected, Lisa was lost for words.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said, as if that was justification enough.

‘You’ve talked,’ Lisa said shortly.

Her carrier bag began to tip. Nikolai caught the wavering baguette.

‘Rather too aerodynamic, these things, aren’t they?’ he said pleasantly enough.

Then, to Lisa’s outraged astonishment, he broke the end of the crust off and ate it.

‘Not bad,’ he said, with the air of a connoisseur.

Lisa clutched her purchases to her breast before he could pillage any more.

‘And you’re an expert, I suppose?’ she said scathingly.

Nikolai gave her a wicked grin. ‘Pretty practised, yes.’

The grin was alarmingly attractive. It set off all sorts of warning bells in Lisa’s head. She didn’t want to be attracted to any man. In her experience it was a distraction at best, at worst a one way ticket to misery. And this man was arrogant and had already made her feel as much a fool as she had done in years.

So she hugged her lumpy package protectively and jerked her head in the direction of the shop’s interior.

‘Well, they’re on sale in there. Help yourself.’

She made to pass him. Nikolai did not move.

‘I told you. I want to talk to you.’

‘Great,’ said Lisa bristling. ‘Does it matter what I want?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. He didn’t sound in the least apologetic.

He hoisted the carrier out of her arms.

‘Come along. I have a car and we’re getting wet.’

Lisa stood stock-still. ‘Give me back my shopping,’ she said in a dangerously quiet voice.

‘Don’t be difficult,’ Nikolai said with odious patience.

Still quietly, Lisa said, ‘Then don’t challenge me.’

She held out her hand for the bag. He held onto it.

‘You have to admit you’d be more comfortable in my car. We’ll talk and then I’ll drive you home.’

Her expression was very steady. Too steady, her colleagues would have told him. Nikolai did not recognise the danger signals.

‘I don’t do what I’m told,’ she said. ‘And I warn you, I fight dirty.’

‘Who’s fighting? Nikolai said softly.

He gave her his most charming smile. The one that made hostesses forgive him for arriving late and had girls lure him home for coffee after an evening together. On Lisa it had no effect at all.

She stood looking at him for an appraising moment. Then she put her head back and screamed at the top of powerful lungs. It startled Nikolai so much that he dropped the unwieldy bag. And it brought an interested audience out onto the pavement to join them.

Lisa stopped screaming. She gathered up the shopping.

‘Thank you,’ she said composedly.

She turned her back and walked away from him. It felt good. So good, in fact, that she didn’t bother to put up the umbrella. Instead she lifted her face to the rain and let it cascade off her cold skin. She even broke into a little run of pleasure.

She was halfway home when the powerful car caught up with her. It cruised to a halt on the wrong side of the road, beside a line of parked cars. Nikolai opened the window and called across to her.

‘Round one to you,’ he said. ‘I still need to talk to you.’

Lisa sent him a look of dislike. She steamed on, not saying anything. The shopping bag bumped against her legs. The baguette had snapped, of course. It hung over the edge of the bag at a crazy angle, smeared with dirt from where it had hit the wet pavement.

Nikolai called after her temptingly, ‘I’ve got you a replacement loaf.’

Lisa ignored him.

He kept the car cruising in second gear, matching her pace. Lisa looked at him with irritation.

‘In this country we drive on the left.’

Nikolai chuckled. ‘In London, you drive where you can get through. Anyone will be able to pass me,’ he said with confidence. ‘But if you got in the car I could go back to driving on the legal side of the road.’

She shrugged, still marching. ‘Break the law if you like. I don’t care.’

‘That’s not a very responsible attitude,’ said Nikolai reprovingly. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

Lisa fixed her eyes straight ahead. ‘I’m not responsible for anyone but myself. You want to behave like a nutter—your choice.’

‘It’s raining. The car is warm and dry,’ he said temptingly.

Lisa did not abate her pace. ‘My mother always told me never to get into cars with strange men.’

‘But, as we have already established, you are more than able to take care of yourself,’ Nikolai said ruefully. ‘Besides, I’m not a stranger. I’m Tatiana’s nephew.’

That brought Lisa up short. She did stop then. In disbelief, she turned to face the car. Nikolai brought it gently to a halt and sat returning her stare.

‘The jungle warrior?’

Suddenly Nikolai was not enjoying himself quite so much. A faint look of annoyance crossed the handsome face.

‘I do go on expeditions to the jungle, yes.’

‘Beard?’ said Lisa gropingly. ‘Camouflage trousers?’

‘Not in London,’ said Nikolai stiffly.

The annoyance turned to downright affront. The terrible girl had started to laugh.

It was not a quiet laugh. She flung back her head and let out a full-throated peal of delight. To a wincing Nikolai, the sound seemed to bounce between the Palladian terraces with the resonance of a kettle drum.

‘Are you always this noisy?’ he said, irritated.

‘Yup,’ said Lisa without apology.

Nikolai looked at her with frustration. It had started to rain heavily again. He set the windscreen wipers going.

Now that the rainbow spikes had gone, he saw that she was a blonde. The rain was plastering her hair to her head. Her head, he noticed with a little shock of pleasure, was a very elegant shape.

He had not thought of elegance in relation to this girl before. She had called herself a dirty fighter, and a street fighter was exactly how she had looked when she’d opened the door this morning. Now, suddenly, he was seeing deeper: long throat, porcelain skin, deep-set wide open eyes with gently curling lashes. Her eyelashes, he saw with an odd clutch in his stomach, were long enough for the raindrops to gather on. He wanted to lift the drops off with his fingertip.

It startled him. It also made him angry. This was not a girl he wanted to be attracted to. She was too rude and too loud and he had severe doubts about the honesty of her dealings with his aunt. Yet here he was, thinking about her as if he wanted to take her to bed. He was furious with himself. It translated into fury with her.

‘Get in,’ he said. It was an order.

Lisa jumped. Her laughter died. She raised her chin belligerently.

‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ she flashed.

But Nikolai had had enough. ‘Then stop playing games. You’re no helpless innocent. And you don’t think I’m any threat to you. For God’s sake be sensible and get out of the rain.’

Slightly to her own surprise, Lisa did.

Nikolai set the car in motion. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s start again. Who are you?’

Having surrendered a point by getting into the expensive comfort of his car, Lisa was going to make him fight for every scrap of information he got out of her.

‘What’s it got to do with you?’

Nikolai looked at her out of the corner of his eye. ‘Tatiana,’ he said quietly, ‘is my great-aunt. We don’t see enough of her but that doesn’t mean we forget her. Besides, I am very fond of her.’

‘Oh.’ Lisa bit her lip. She was fond of Tatiana too. To her regret, she had to admit that he had a point.

Nikolai hid a triumphant smile.

‘So, who are you and where do you come from?’ His tone was quite pleasant but it demanded an answer.

Lisa shrugged and gave him one.

‘Lisa Romaine. Tatiana and I go to the same dance studio.’

‘So she said. And that’s not quite what I meant,’ said Nikolai drily.

A faint flicker of resentment returned. ‘What do you want to know?’ she snapped. ‘My ancestry for the last six generations and my bra size?’

He was taken aback.

‘I think we can skip the ancestry,’ he said smoothly. ‘I was thinking along the lines of where you lived before and whether you work.’

Lisa was insulted. ‘Of course I work. I’m Head of Bond Trading at Napier Kraus.’

The car slewed dangerously close to the parked cars. Nikolai braked.

‘Napier Kraus?’ He saw enough of Uncle Dmitri at family gatherings to know the bank’s name—and know that it was not a lightweight institution. ‘You’re a banker?’ he said blankly.

Lisa was pleased with the reaction. ‘I told you. A bond trader.’

‘You don’t look like a banker,’ said Nikolai, unheeding. There was a strong note of indignation in his voice.

‘Oh?’ said Lisa dangerously.

He didn’t notice the danger. ‘You’re too young. Too scruffy. Too—’

‘Female?’

He did hear it then. For a moment his face went blank. Then he glanced sideways at her and drawled very deliberately, ‘Well, you’re certainly not feminine.’

There was a sharp silence. Then Lisa gave a silent whistle.

‘Oh, very nasty,’ she congratulated him in her most affable tone. ‘You must be a real barrel of laughs in the jungle.’

Nikolai was annoyed with himself. ‘I just thought—’

‘Yes?’ She was too angry to let him off the hook. ‘I’d be interested to know just exactly what you did think.’

That was when Nikolai made a tactical error. ‘Tatiana knows some strange people. And she can be—unwary.’

There was a long pause.

Then Lisa said on a note of discovery, ‘You think I’m a con artist.’

He did not deny it.

Lisa began to shake, very slightly.

It had happened before, but not very often. Usually when someone threatened her family; once or twice when it had been Lisa herself in a corner and fighting for the job on which they all depended. It had something to do with survival and a lot more to do with justice.

Now the unfairness of it blinded her. For a glorious moment she lost control of her temper and let it ride her. Straight to the devil, if that was where it wanted to go.

She said sweetly, viciously, ‘After all, a scruff like me couldn’t rent a room in a posh place like this any other way, could she?’

Nikolai was taken aback. He hadn’t expected retaliation so swift or to the point.

‘I shouldn’t have said that you were scruffy,’ he said stiffly. ‘I apologise.’

‘Oh, why bother?’ She gave him a glittering smile. ‘It’s so much easier to do business if you’re straight with each other, don’t you think?’

At once he was very still. ‘Are we going to do business, then?’

Lisa widened her green eyes and gave him her sweetest smile. ‘Aren’t we?’ she asked dulcetly.

She was so angry she could barely hold it together. But she was not going to let him see that. Instead she was going to lead him to think that she was the worst sort of con artist he could imagine—and then show him there was not a thing he could do about it. It was time somebody showed this control freak that he was no master of the universe.

They were back in Stanley Crescent now. There was the tightest possible parking space on the opposite side of the road from Tatiana’s house. Lisa, who did not like driving, thought he would never slot the car into it. She fell silent, in pleased anticipation.

But to her annoyance Nikolai backed in at first go. He hardly seemed to notice the difficult manoeuvre at all. He was frowning, but not about wheel angles.

‘Are you asking me to pay you to leave my aunt’s house?’ he said bluntly.

Lisa inspected her nails.

Nikolai said softly, ‘Let me warn you now. I’m not a good subject for blackmail.’

‘And I’m not a good subject for bullying.’ She gave him a bland smile and unlocked her seat belt. ‘Should make for an interesting negotiation.’

‘I am not,’ said Nikolai between his teeth, ‘going to negotiate with a woman like you.’

Lisa could feel the rage in him. And the frustration. It gave her a heady sense of power that almost swamped the effect of the insult. Almost.

‘Up to you,’ she said, and reached for her shopping.

His hand closed over her arm. For a moment Lisa blinked in real alarm. He was shockingly strong. Suddenly she could believe in his jungle prowess. Quickly she reminded herself that she was not afraid of him. She even gave a scornful laugh.

Their eyes met. Lisa’s expression dared him. Nikolai’s grip relaxed a fraction. But he did not let her go.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘Taking me on.’ He let her go and drew back, considering her with a connoisseur’s deliberation. ‘You can’t win, you know.’

‘I can do anything I choose,’ Lisa said calmly. ‘I have something you want and we both know it.’

The atmosphere in the car was suddenly arctic.

‘Oh?’ Nikolai sounded mildly interested, but Lisa knew he was wound up tight as a spring. ‘And what do you think that is?’

She showed her teeth.

‘Squatters’ rights.’

Lisa swung out of the car. Nikolai didn’t move to prevent her. He was sitting very still, his expression frozen.

At last Lisa gave vent to her fury, if only for a moment. She slammed the car door with the full force of her arm. Nikolai winced.

She crossed the street without looking back.

Nikolai picked up the car phone and dialled.

‘Hi, Tom,’ he said when it was answered. ‘I’m going to have to take a raincheck on lunch. Something’s come up.’

‘And Sedgewick? What do I do with him? I’m not the one who wants to go with him to Borneo.’

‘Hang onto him. I’ll be over later.’

Tom was not best pleased. ‘He goes at teatime, whether you’ve caught her by then or not,’ said Tom firmly.

Nikolai grinned for the first time in what seemed like hours.

‘Caught her? I don’t know what you mean.’

Tom ignored that. ‘How long have I known you, Nicki? Put the skirt on ice for the afternoon. If you really want to go on this expedition.’

Nikolai was injured. ‘You’ve got a suspicious mind. I am dealing with my great-aunt’s affairs.’

‘Affairs, I believe,’ Tom said drily. ‘Four o’clock, latest. Or forget Borneo.’ He hung up.

Nikolai got out of the car.

As soon as Lisa let herself in to the house she saw that Tatiana’s door was now open. Immediately Tatiana herself appeared, almost as if she was waiting for her.

‘Are you all right?’ the older woman asked.

‘Of course I’m all right,’ said Lisa furiously. ‘Did you think your nephew would bombard me with poison darts?’

Tatiana blinked. She hadn’t seen Lisa in a temper before.

‘He—er—said you’d met.’

‘Met! Well, you could call it that, I suppose.’

Tatiana began to be alarmed. ‘What did he do?’

‘To be precise,’ said Lisa, ‘he leered down my cleavage. Then he accused me of fraud.’

She was still shaking. Tatiana saw it.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘He has upset you.’

‘He could not,’ said Lisa with precision, ‘upset me if he tried. All men are a joke. And your nephew is a caveman and a bigot as well.’

She clattered downstairs, dashing away angry tears. Going straight to the bathroom, she splashed cold water on her hot face. Her reflection in the mirror looked like an angry cat.

Lisa’s temper subsided somewhat. She leaned forward and rested her hot forehead against the glass. She sighed.

Men! It was enough to make a woman weep. They caused so much trouble: Sam hating to admit that she was good at her job and doing everything he could to denigrate her; Alec deciding he was in love with her so that she had to move out; the whole dreary succession of men over whom her sister Kit had broken first her heart and then her health. Lisa’s mother, Joanne, watched her daughter like a hawk, but Kit seemed to have an unerring instinct for finding men who would use her badly and leave her flat. And then she punished herself because they didn’t love her. Lisa’s eyes pricked with unexpected tears again as she remembered.

And now Nikolai Ivanov, King of the Jungle, accused her of trying to blackmail him! Lisa ground her teeth, reviving at the thought. Well, if he wanted a fight, she was going to show him that she was every bit as tough and nasty as he thought she was. And she was going to win.

The doorbell rang. Lisa had no doubt at all who it was. She whipped upstairs, past Tatiana in her doorway, and flung it open like a cavalry charge.

‘Go away!’

Unseen behind her, Tatiana bit back a smile and retreated into her own part of the house. Neither Lisa nor Nikolai noticed.