Hidden Motives

Some truths were just as hurtful to her. “Perry hates me.”

“He’s a very jealous man.”

“He wasn’t jealous of me. You weren’t affectionate enough to me to make him jealous.”

Sadness filled Beatrice’s eyes. “No, I haven’t been. He was jealous of Jacob.”

“Because you never stopped loving him.” Despite all evidence to the contrary.

“How do you stop loving the other half of your soul?”

Finally Chanel understood a part of her childhood she’d always been mystified by. She’d tried with Perry at first. Really tried. “Perry blamed me. He took his jealousy out on me.”

“Your father wasn’t around to punish.”

“You let him.”

Beatrice looked away and shrugged. As if it didn’t matter. As if all that pain was okay to visit on a child.

“You let him,” Chanel said again. “You knew and you let him hate me in effigy of my father.”

Her mom’s head snapped back around, her expression dismissive. “He doesn’t hate you. He wanted you to be the best and all you wanted was your books and science.”

“It’s what I love. Didn’t that ever matter to you?”

“Of course it mattered!” Beatrice jumped up, showing an unfamiliar agitation. “Science stole your father from me. Do you for one second believe I wanted it to take you, too?”

“So, you pushed me away instead.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“I don’t fit with the Saltzmans.”

Beatrice didn’t deny it, but she didn’t agree either. Should Chanel be thankful for small mercies?

“I did fit with the Tanners.”

“Too well, but they’re all gone, Chanel. Can’t you see that?”

“And you think I’ll die young like Dad did because of my love for science?”

“You’re too much a Tanner. You take risks.”

“I don’t!” She’d been impacted by the way her father and grandfather had died, too. “I’m very careful.”

“If you are, then I’ve succeeded a little, anyway.”

“You succeeded, all right. You succeeded in picking away at our relationship until there wasn’t one anymore.” Chanel nearly choked on the words, but she wouldn’t hold them back anymore. “You couldn’t handle how much having me around reminded you of Dad, so you pushed me away with both hands.”

“And now you can barely bring yourself to see me even once a month.”

“Visits with you are too demoralizing.”

“Your sister and brother see you more often.”

Even Andrew. He was away at university, but Chanel went to visit her brother at least once a term. She always made sure she got time with him when he was home. While she’d done her best to nurture her relationships with her siblings, Chanel had avoided her mother with the skill of a trained stunt driver.

“You have your sister date with Laura every week, but somehow you manage to avoid seeing me or Perry.”

“Can you blame me?” Chanel demanded and then shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if you do, or don’t. I know whose fault it is we don’t have a relationship and it’s not mine.”

Finally, she truly understood that. It wasn’t that Chanel wasn’t lovable. Unless she’d been willing to become a completely different person, with none of her father’s passions, mannerisms or even affections, Chanel had been destined to be the brunt of both her mother’s grief and Perry’s jealousy.

There was no way she could be smart enough, well behaved enough or even pretty enough to earn their approval.

Not with hair the same color as her dad’s and eyes so like his, too. Not with a jaw every Tanner seemed to be born with and her bone-deep desire to grow up and be a scientist.

Beatrice’s eyes filled with grief that slowly morphed into resolution. “No, it’s not. You deserved better than either Perry or I have given you. You deserve to be loved for yourself and by someone who isn’t wishing every minute in your company you would move just a little differently, speak with less scientific jargon…”

“Just be someone other than who I am.”

“Yes. You deserve that.” Her mom’s voice rang with a loving sincerity Chanel hadn’t heard in it since she was eight years old and a broken vulnerability she never had. “That’s why I’m urging you with everything in me not to push Demyan away because how you feel about him scares you. I wouldn’t trade the years I had with your father for anything in the world, not even a life without the constant pain of grief that never leaves.”

“You think Demyan loves me like Dad loved you?”

“He must.” In a completely uncharacteristic gesture, Beatrice reached out and took both Chanel’s hands in her own. “Sweetheart, a man like that, he doesn’t offer you marriage when he could have you in his bed without it, not unless he wants all of you, but especially the life you can have together.”

Her mother hadn’t called her sweetheart in so long that Chanel had to take a couple of deep breaths to push back the emotion the endearment caused. “He’s really possessive.”

And bossy in bed, but she wasn’t going to share that tidbit with her mom.

“He needs you. For a man to need that deeply, it’s frightening for him. It makes him hold on tighter.”

“Did Dad hold on tight?”

“Oh, yes.”

Chanel had a hard time picturing it. “Like Perry?”

“Nothing like Perry. Jacob wasn’t petty. Ever. He wasn’t jealous. He trusted me and my love completely, but he held on tight. He wanted every minute with me he could get.”

“He still followed his passion for science.”

“Yes. I used to love him for it.”

“You grew to hate him, though, didn’t you?” That made so much sense.

Chanel hadn’t just spent her childhood as scapegoat to Perry for a man who couldn’t be reached in death. Her mom had punished her for being too like her father, too.

“I did.” Tears welled and spilled over in Beatrice’s eyes. “I betrayed our love by learning to hate him for leaving me.”

Chanel didn’t know what to do. Not only had she not seen her mother cry since the funeral, but they didn’t have the kind of relationship that allowed her to offer comfort.

“He doesn’t blame you.” Chanel knew that with every fiber of her being. Her dad’s love for her mom had had no limits.

“For hating him? I’m sure you’re right. He loved so purely. But if he were here now to see the damage I’ve done to you, to our bond as a family, he’d be furious. He would hate me, too.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHANEL COULDN’T RESPOND.

Her throat was too tight with tears she didn’t want to shed, but her mom was probably right.

Jacob Tanner had loved his daughter with the same deep, abiding emotion he’d given his wife. He’d expected a different kind of best from both of them than Perry ever had.

The good kind. The human kindness kind.

Beatrice sighed and swiped at the tears on her cheek, not even looking around for a tissue to do it properly. “I wish I could say I would do it all differently if I could.”

“You can’t?” Chanel asked, surprised at how much that hurt.

“As I have grown older and watched your brother and sister mature, had the opportunity to observe the way you are with them, it’s opened my eyes to many things. I have come to realize just how weak a person I am.”

“If you see a problem you have the power to fix and do nothing to change it, then yes, I think that does make you weak.”

“So pragmatic. Your father would have said the same thing, but you both would have assumed I had the power to change myself. If I did, do you think I would have worked so hard at changing you?”

“So, that’s it? Things go on like always?”

“No,” Beatrice uttered with vehement urgency. “If you’ll give me another chance, I will do better now.”

“So, you have changed.” Could Chanel believe her?

“I’ve acknowledged the true cost of my weakness. The love and respect of my daughter. It’s too much.”

“I don’t know if I can ever trust you to love me.”

“I understand that and I don’t expect weekly mother-daughter dates.”

“I don’t have time.” Chanel realized how harsh that sounded after she said the words, and she winced.

Her mom gave her a wry smile. “Your time is spoken for, but maybe we could try for more often than once every couple of months.”

“Let’s see if we can make those visits more pleasant before we start making plans for more.” Words were all well and good, but Chanel had two decades of her mother’s criticisms and rejections echoing in her memories.

Beatrice nodded and then she did yet another out-of-character gesture, opening her arms for a hug. When Chanel didn’t immediately move forward to accept, her mother took the initiative.

Chanel responded with their normal barely touching embrace, but her mom pulled her close in a cloud of her favorite Chanel No. 5 perfume and hugged her tight. “I love you, Chanel, and I’m very proud of the woman you’ve become. I’m so very, very sorry I wasn’t a better mother.”

Chanel sat in stunned silence for several seconds before returning the embrace.

“You don’t think I’m too awkward and geeky for Demyan?” she asked against her mother’s neck.

Still not ready to see the older woman’s expression in case it wasn’t kind.

But Beatrice moved back, forcing Chanel to meet her eyes. “You listen to me, daughter. You are more than enough for that man. You are all that he needs. Now you need to believe that if you’re going to be happy with him.”

“It’s only been a month, Mom.”

“Your dad proposed on our third date.”

The synergy of that took Chanel’s breath away. Demyan hadn’t proposed on their third date, but he’d told her then that they were starting something lifelong, not temporary. “I thought you got married because you were pregnant with me.”

“I was pregnant, yes, but we’d already planned to get married. Only, our original plan was to do it after he finished his degree.”

“You said…”

“A lot of stupid things.”

Chanel’s mouth dropped open in shock at her mother’s blunt admission.

Beatrice gave a watery laugh. “Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

“Thank you. That means more than you’ll ever know. I know I don’t deserve it.”

“I didn’t say I liked you,” Chanel offered with her usual frankness and for once didn’t regret it.

Their relationship was going to work only if they moved through the pain, not try to bury it.

“You will, sweetheart. You loved your daddy, but I was your favorite person the first eight years of your life.”

“I don’t remember.” She didn’t say it to belabor the point. She just didn’t.

“You will. I’m stubborn, too. You didn’t get it all from Jacob.”

“What about Perry?”

“I’ll talk to him. I guess I never realized how bad it was in your mind between you. He really doesn’t hate you. He’s even told me he admires you.”

Chanel made a disbelieving sound.

“It’s true. You’re brilliant in your field. I think it intimidates him. He’s a strong businessman, but if he had your brains he’d be in Demyan’s position.”

With a penthouse with a view of the harbor? Her parents lived in the suburbs and she couldn’t imagine them wanting anything different.

Her mother left soon thereafter, once she’d promised again to change and make sure Perry knew he had to alter the way he interacted with Chanel, too.

No one could have been more shocked than Chanel when she got a call from the man himself later that night. He apologized and admitted he’d thought she had always compared him unfavorably to her dad, just like her mom did.

Chanel didn’t try to make him feel better. Perry did compare unfavorably with Jacob Tanner. Her dad had been a much kinder and loving father, but Chanel agreed to try to let the past go if the future was different.

How had Demyan affected such change in her life in so little time? She wasn’t going to kid herself and try to say it was anything else, either.

Somehow Demyan had blown into her life and set it on a different path, one in which she didn’t have to be lonely or rejected anymore.

If she could let herself trust him and the love she felt for him, the rest of her life could and would be different, too.

She picked up the phone and called him.

“Missing me, little one?” he asked without a greeting.

“Yes.” There was a wealth of meaning in that one word, if he wanted to hear it.

“Yes as in yes, you miss me, or yes as in you will marry me?” he asked, sounding hopeful but cautious.

“Both.”

“I will be there in ten minutes.”

It was a half-hour drive from his penthouse, but she didn’t argue.

Demyan knocked on Chanel’s door with a minute to spare in the ten he’d promised her.

What he hadn’t told her when she called was that he was already in the area.

The door swung open, and Chanel’s eyes widened with disbelief. “How did you get here so fast?”

“I was already on the road.” Had been for the better part of an hour, driving aimlessly, with each random turn taking him closer and closer to her apartment complex.

She frowned. “On your way here?”

“Not consciously.” He’d argued with himself about the wisdom of calling or stopping by after she’d told him she wanted the night to think.

So far, respecting her wishes had been winning his internal debate.

“Then what were you doing over here?”

He gently pushed past her, not interested in having this discussion, or any other, on the stoop outside her door. “I was out for a drive.”

“On this side of town?” she asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t planning to come by.”

“No.” And that choice had clearly been the right one, though more difficult to follow through on than he wanted to admit.

“Do you go out for drives with no purpose often?” she asked, still sounding disbelieving.

“Not as such, no.” He went through to the kitchen, where he poured himself two fingers of Volyarussian vodka before drinking half of it in two swallows.

He’d brought the bottle with him one night, telling her that sometimes he enjoyed a shot to unwind. She’d told him he could keep it in the freezer if he liked.

He did, though he rarely drank from it.

“Are you okay, Demyan?” she asked from the open archway between her living room and kitchen. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“I didn’t like the emptiness of my condo tonight.” He should have found the lack of company peaceful.

A respite.

He hadn’t. He’d become too accustomed to her presence in the evenings. Even when she only sat curled up with one of her never-ending scientific journals while he answered email, having her there was pleasant.

Had almost become necessary.

“I missed you, too.”

“You wanted your space. To think,” he reminded her, the planning side of his facile brain yelling at him that his reaction wasn’t doing his agenda any favors.

“It was fruitful. Or have you forgotten what I told you on the phone?”

He slammed the drink onto the counter, clear liquid splashing over the sides, the smell of vodka wafting up. “I have not forgotten.”

Her gray eyes flared at his action, but she didn’t look worried. “And you’re happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

“You look it.” The words were sarcastic, but an understanding light glowed in her lovely eyes.

“You are a permanent fixture in my life. It is only natural I would come to rely on your companionship to a certain extent.” He tried to explain away his inability to remain in his empty apartment and work, as he’d planned to.

A small smile played around her mobile lips. “So, you considered me a permanent fixture before I agreed to marry you?”

“Yes.” He was not in the habit of losing what he went after.

“I see. I wasn’t nearly so confident, but I missed you like crazy when you were in Volyarus.”

“And yet you refused my proposal at first.”

“I didn’t. I told you I had to think.”

“That is not agreement.”

“Life is not that black-and-white.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” She moved right into his personal space. “I think you’re even more freaked out by how fast everything has gone between us than I am.”

“I am not.” It had all been part of his plan, everything except this inexplicable reaction to her request for time away from him.

“You’re acting freaked. Slamming back vodka and driving around like a teenager with his first car.”

“I assure you, I did not peel rubber at any stoplights.”

“Do teens still do that?”

“Some.” He never had.

It would have not been fitting for a prince.

“I said yes, Demyan.” She laid her hands on his chest, her eyes soft with emotion.

His arms automatically went around her, locking her into his embrace. “Why?”

Her agreement should have been enough, but he needed to know.

“My mom came by to talk. She told me not to give up on something this powerful just because it scares me.”

“Your mother?” he asked, finding that one hard to take in.

“Yes. She wants to try again, on our relationship.”

“She does realize you are twenty-nine, not nineteen?”

Chanel smiled, sadness and hope both lurking in the storm-cloud depths of her eyes. “We both do. It’s not happy families all of a sudden, but I’m willing to meet her partway.”

“You’re a more forgiving person than I am.”

“I’m not so sure about that, but one thing I do know. Holding bitterness and anger inside hurts me more than anyone who has ever hurt me.”

A cold wind blew across his soul. Demyan hoped she remembered that if she ever found out the truth about her great-great-grandfather’s will.

She frowned up at him. “You were driving without your glasses?”

“I don’t need them to drive.” He didn’t need them at all but wasn’t sure when he was going to break that news to her.

“You always wear them, except in bed.”

“They’re not that corrective.” Were in fact just clear plastic.

“They’re a crutch for you,” she said with that analytical look she got sometimes.

“You could say that.”

“Do you need them at all?”

He didn’t even consider lying in answer to the direct question. “No.”

He expected anger, or at least the question, why did he wear them? But instead he got a measured glance that implied understanding, which confused him. “If I can step off the precipice and agree to marry you, you can stop wearing the glasses.”

The tumblers clicked into place. She saw the glasses as the crutch she’d named them for him. Being who she was, it never occurred to her that they were more a prop.

“Fine.” More than. Remembering them was a pain.

She grinned up at him and he found himself returning the expression with interest, a strange, tight but not unpleasant feeling in his chest.

“Want to celebrate getting engaged?” she asked with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.

The urge to tease came out of nowhere, but he went with it. “You want a shot of my vodka?”

He liked the man he became in this woman’s presence.

“I was thinking something more mind-blowing and less about imbibing and more about experiencing.” She drew out the last word as she ran her fingertip across his lips, down his face and neck and on downward over his chest, until she stopped with it hovering right over his nipple.

He tugged her closer, his body reacting as it always did to her nearness. “I’m all about the experience.”

“Are you?” she asked.

He sighed and admitted, “Not usually, no. My position consumes my life.”

“Not anymore.”

“No, not anymore.” He hadn’t planned it this way, but marrying Chanel Tanner was going to change everything.

He could feel it with the same sense of inevitability he’d had the first time he’d seen her picture in his uncle’s study. Only now he knew marrying her wasn’t going to be a temporary action to effect a permanent fix for his country.

And he was glad. The sex was mind-blowing, but that didn’t shock him as much as it did her. What he hadn’t anticipated was that her company would be just as satisfying to him, even when it came without the cataclysm of climax.

Right now, though? He planned to have both.

Chanel adjusted her seat belt, the physical restraint doing nothing to dispel the sense of unreality infusing her being.

Once she’d agreed to marry Demyan, he’d lost no time setting the date, a mere six weeks from the night of their engagement. He’d told her that his aunt wanted to plan the wedding.

Chanel, who was one of the few little girls in her class at school who had not spent her childhood dreaming of the perfect wedding, was eminently happy to have someone else liaise and plan with her mother. Beatrice was determined to turn the rushed wedding into a major social event.

And the less Chanel had to participate in that, the better. If she could have convinced Demyan to elope, she would have, but he had this weird idea that she deserved a real wedding.

Since she’d made it clear how very much she didn’t want to be the center of attention in a big production like the type of wedding her mother would insist on, Chanel had drawn the conclusion the wedding was important to Demyan.

So, she gave in, both shocked and delighted to learn that her mom had agreed to have the wedding take place in Volyarus with no argument.

Beatrice had been vague when Chanel had asked why, something about Demyan’s family being large and it only being right to have the wedding in his homeland. Chanel hadn’t expected that kind of understanding from her mom and had been glad for it.

She’d even expressed genuine gratitude to Beatrice for taking over the planning role with Demyan’s aunt. Chanel had spent the past weeks working extra hours so she could leave her research in a good place to take a four-week honeymoon in Volyarus.

She hadn’t been disappointed at all when Demyan had asked her if she’d be willing to get to know his homeland for their honeymoon.

She loved the idea of spending a month in his company learning all she could about the small island country and its people, not to mention seeing him surrounded by family and the ones who had known him his whole life.

There was still a part of Chanel that felt like Demyan was a stranger to her. Or rather a part of Demyan that she did not know.

Her mother had flown out to Volyarus two weeks before to finalize plans for the wedding with Demyan’s aunt. Perry, Andrew and Laura were on the plane with Chanel and Demyan now.

Perry had made a determined effort not to criticize her, but Chanel couldn’t tell if that was because of her mother’s talk with him or out of deference for Demyan. She’d never seen her stepfather treat someone the way he did Demyan, almost like business royalty, or something.

It made Chanel wonder.

“What is it you do at Yurkovich Tanner?” she asked as the plane’s engines warmed up.

Demyan turned to look at her, that possessive, content expression he’d worn since the morning after she agreed to marry him very much in evidence.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I realized I don’t know.”

“I am the Head of Operations.”

“In Seattle?” she asked, a little startled his job was such a high-level one, but then annoyed with herself for not realizing it had to be.

Only, wasn’t it odd for the corporate big fish to personally check out the recipients of their charitable donations?

“Worldwide,” he said almost dismissively. “My office is in Seattle.”

“I knew that, at least.” Worldwide, as in he was Head of Operations over all of Yurkovich Tanner?

She’d done a little research into the company after they gifted her with a university education. It wasn’t small by any stretch. They held interests on almost every continent of the world and the CEO was the heir apparent to the Volyarussian throne.