An Obsessive Love

Natasha nodded, fascinated. ‘I’m amazed to discover I’ve been working for her son all this time without realising it. It’s never been mentioned around the office, or in the Press.’

‘Well, I’m proud of her, of course, but she prefers to keep her English identity—that of Xenia Thorne, my mother—reasonably quiet. Her public image is so strong. Tragic Russian countess turned best-selling novelist, parents escaped during the revolution, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a great image and it sells.’ He laughed drily. ‘Much more romantic than being born in London, marrying my father, Jack Thorne, an industrial factory owner.’ He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘And of course, although I’ve rebuilt the company since my father’s death, it nevertheless remains a basically British firm, for all its international tentacles. So she keeps me out of the imagepicture, too.’

Natasha stared. ‘But—but I would have thought you’d enhance her sales.’

He laughed again. ‘How on earth could I do that?’

Unguardedly, she blurted out, ‘Because you’re so good-looking and so successful!’

His dark lashes flickered, and the blue eyes gleamed as he smiled, a smile so charming that it made her temporarily breathless. ‘Why, thank you, Miss Came.’

A slow burn turned her face a delicious shade of pink. ‘At any rate—what exactly will this job with your mother entail?’

‘Taking dictation, answering the phone, typing up notes, helping with research.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘The usual secretarial bit. But there’s rather more to it than that, particularly at this point. You see, you will be expected to go to Russia with her.’

Natasha caught her breath with excitement.

‘To St Petersburg.’

Her green eyes glittered like emeralds in her white, Slavic face, and she had no idea how beautiful she looked in that moment, how Russian, how feminine, how completely romantic: strange almond eyes shining with excitement, dark red mouth curved radiantly, long red hair spilling around her porcelain skin.

Dominic Thorne stared at her, smiling too, looking suddenly as though what he wanted most in the world was to fall into her eyes.

Natasha blushed again, astonishingly, and said in a strange, husky voice, ‘I—I don’t know what to say. I’ve wanted to go to St Petersburg since I was born. It’s the most magical-sounding name in the world to me.’

‘Then you want the job?’

‘Oh, yes, of course! I’d do anything to get it!’

‘Good.’ He smiled long and slow, his eyes moving over her face, then said, ‘Because you seem perfect for it, and I’m certain you’ll get on famously with my mother. I had you checked out, you understand. An elementary precaution.’

‘You had me checked out…?’

‘Yes.’ He picked up the black file again, flipped it open, reading aloud. ‘Your grandmother was one Anastasia Malakova——’

Natasha gasped.

‘Born April 7, 1913 in St Petersburg, the illegitimate daughter of Marie Malakova, a ballerina at the Kirov and your great-grandmother, and her long-term lover, Prince Sergei Kallensikov——’

‘How did you get all that information?’ Natasha could hardly believe her ears as she heard him reading out the details of her grandmother’s birth. ‘My God, I haven’t told anyone in this office that my grandmother was illegitimate! Let alone the illegitimate daughter of a ballerina and a prince of Russia!’

‘I had you traced back to the village in Kent you were born in,’ Dominic said coolly, and then nearly jumped out of his skin.

‘How dare you?’ Natasha shouted, leaping to her feet, eyes blazing like a tempestuous Russian princess’s. ‘How dare you investigate me like that? Going back to my home town, digging up dirt, making me——’

‘Now, just a minute!’ he bit out forcefully, standing up and dwarfing her with his extraordinary height. ‘I had to have you checked out if I was going to agree to hire you to——’

‘You had no right to go to my home town!’ Her voice shook with appalled emotion. ‘What else did you find out about me? Come on! Tell me! They all talked their heads off, didn’t they? Everyone in that stupid little town! They told you all about Tony Kerr, didn’t they?’ She tried to grab at the black file on the desk. ‘Let me see it! Let me see what lies they’ve——’

‘Who the hell is Tony Kerr?’ he demanded, slamming a strong hand on the file to stop her picking it up, his eyes blazing furious blue. ‘And who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like this?’

Natasha’s heart was pounding violently with rage and fear. The thought of him knowing something about Tony Kerr, about the way she’d fallen so obsessively in love with him, humiliated herself in front of the town—well, it was a nightmare even to think about.

‘Answer me!’ Dominic Thorne bit out harshly. ‘Who is Tony Kerr?’

At once, she looked away, breathing hard. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He clearly didn’t know, and if she had any sense she wouldn’t push it, or he might just decide to find out.

‘It obviously matters a great deal to you.’ He watched her with narrowed eyes. ‘Who is he? What has he done to make you react like——?’

‘Nothing.’ Her face was tight with emotion. ‘Anyway—I need to know the details of this job with your mother. When would I go to St Petersburg?’

He watched her for a long time, eyes shrewd, and he was clearly aware of her deliberate change of subject, also of the way she was struggling to remain calm in the face of what was clearly extreme provocation.

Suddenly, he seemed to come to a decision to let it slide. ‘You’ll go to St Petersburg in two weeks,’ he said briskly. ‘But first, you’ll have to meet my mother for a preliminary interview. Shall I arrange it for tomorrow morning, eleven sharp?’

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Very well. Be at this address——’ he handed her a

business card ‘—at eleven tomorrow.’

‘Thank you.’ She put it in her top jacket pocket. ‘I’ll be there. But I must stress that I fully intend to resign from my position here as of this moment—whether I get the job with your mother or not.’

He nodded, unsmiling, and his eyes were very dark. ‘I accept your resignation. Consider yourself free to go. But before you do, I want the names of everyone involved. Tell me precisely what happened and who was directly responsible.’

Natasha told him, her voice cool, clipped and precise.

‘Do you want to make an official complaint?’ he asked when she had finished. ‘You obviously have a solid case. The only problem is—how many of the other men will come forward to testify on your behalf?’

‘None, I should think.’

‘Because you hurt their egos,’ drawled Dominic Thorne, a gleam in his blue eyes as he looked down at her ravishingly unique and dramatic face. ‘A shame they weren’t here to witness your very exciting display of red-blooded passion!’

‘I was in a temper.’ She felt deeply embarrassed. ‘I didn’t know what I was——’

‘Oh, please,’ he drawled sardonically, ‘don’t apologise. It was a scene from one of my favourite office fantasies.’

‘Oh…!’ Her face burnt crimson and she looked away, unable to maintain eye contact, her fingers fumbling with the still loose lapels of her open jacket, aware of his blue eyes roving insolently down to probe the shadowy hollow between her breasts.

‘I only wish I could stay here with you a little longer to discuss it, but I’m afraid I have a board meeting in precisely——’ he glanced at the Cartier watch on his hair-roughened wrist ‘—seven minutes.’

Natasha recognised dismissal when she heard it. ‘Yes, of course.’ She got to her feet, turning to walk to the door.

He followed her. ‘Send Leachman up to me right away.’ Another glance at that expensive watch. ‘I’ve just got time to execute him before the board meeting.’

‘Execute him?’ Natasha turned at the door.

‘Of course.’ He towered over her, face dramatically good-looking and very exciting. ‘You don’t seriously think I’m going to allow him to stay here after this, do you? He’s out. Consider it done.’

Her eyes seemed to stare adoringly, of their own accord, up into that hard, handsome face.

He smiled down at her. ‘And one other thing…’ His gaze lowered intimately to her breasts, his voice growing rough with sexual attraction. ‘Best do this up before you go back down to the den of wolves…’

Natasha’s whole body pulsed with waves of shimmering pleasure as he slowly, surely, began to button her jacket up, flicking his gaze from her eyes to the scented hollow between her breasts, then up to her dark red mouth, then back to her breasts while she stood there, heart pounding, feeling her nipples erect and shivers run up and down her skin.

‘See you soon,’ he murmured, and bent his dark head to brush a brief, burning kiss on her mouth. ‘Just returning the compliment,’ he drawled, and slid one strong hand to her naked throat, inciting shivers of pleasure as he bent his head again, and kissed her passionately.

‘Oh…!’ She succumbed without meaning to, almost as though she were hypnotised, her arms going around his strong neck as he pulled her hard against his powerful body.

The hot onslaught of his mouth made her dizzy, and she clung to him, breathing faster, aware of his heartbeat thundering as his strong hands moved firmly, possessively over her slender body.

Suddenly, the telephone on his desk rang.

‘Damn!’ he said thickly, wrenching his hot, commanding mouth from hers and glancing over one broad shoulder.

Natasha swayed as he released her, and fumbled with the door-handle, going out, his touch still on her skin, his kiss still lingering on her lips, his presence still making her tremble with excitement, romance, magic…

And he was part-Russian, too, just as she was.

I knew it as soon as I saw him, she thought dazedly. My God, he’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a man, everything I’ve ever dreamt of, everything I’ve——

What rubbish! she thought in sudden fear, as she stopped herself weaving fantasies around a man she hardly knew.

I just got carried away because he showed some interest in me, and kissed me. He’s a very attractive, desirable man, and of course I got carried away in a stupid romantic daydream.

But it doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean I’ll ever see him again, even if I do go and work for his mother.

Certainly, she wasn’t going to let herself get into the same mess she got in over Tony! Oh, dear me, no, she thought furiously as she strode out of the lift and back to her own office.

No more fantasies for me, no more obsessive love without foundation, no more love, full stop.

None.

CHAPTER TWO

TTHE next morning, she was smartly dressed in a severe black tailored skirt suit, buttoned right up to the neck, with a small, elegant frill at the throat and discreet pearl ear-rings in her ears. As always, she wore her long red hair swept up into a cool chignon.

Xenia Valevsky lived in a beautiful white house in an exclusive London square. A butler answered the door on Natasha’s ring, and ushered her into a very formal drawing-room furnished entirely in French antiques.

Natasha had rarely seen such luxury outside a magazine. She came from an ordinary family—albeit with an extraordinary past.

She felt slightly out of place, therefore, sitting on an elegant yellow brocade sofa with little gold claw feet, while the sunlight shone in through the long windows on to fabulous, elegant antiques.

‘Ah!’ Countess Valevsky entered. ‘Miss Carne!’

Natasha looked up to see her heroine in the flesh, and she was awed for a second, staring at her with a radiant smile, for she was everything Natasha had always thought she would be.

Tall, slender, very elegant, the Countess wore a smart white skirt suit, very similar to Natasha’s, buttoned up to the neck, two strings of pearls across it, her dark hair swept up in an elegant chignon.

‘How wonderful to meet you at last!’ The Countess swept over to her as Natasha stood up, and held out her hands. ‘I’ve been dreaming how you would look, and I can hardly believe that you’re just as I pictured you.’

‘And you’re every bit as beautiful as your photographs, Countess.’

‘Do, please, call me Xenia.’ She moved past her to the blue and yellow brocade armchair. ‘I’ve asked Bowers to bring some tea. Did my son tell you about the research trip to St Petersburg?’

Natasha at once found herself enthusing over the prospect, and before long they were both swapping love-stories over St Petersburg, Imperial history, and Russia.

Bowers brought the tea on a silver trolley.

‘Just wait until you see Peterhof!’ Xenia was saying as she poured from the silver pot. ‘It’s the Russian equivalent of Versailles.’

‘I’ve seen photographs of it.’

‘And, you know, Peter the Great’s study is still there,’ Xenia informed her. ‘I’ve seen it. Actually stood in the same room that he did, when he made all those plans. What a marvellous tsar he was.’

They talked on and on, skipping from one topic of conversation to the next. They clearly had similar minds, similar personalities, similar interests.

Time slipped by unnoticed.

Xenia called for more tea.

They talked about the tragedy of the Romanovs, and Natasha was thrilled to discuss in detail the last months of the Tsar, his imprisonment first in Tsarskoe Selo, then in Tobolsk, and finally at the Impatiev house in Ekaterinburg, where the family were slain.

‘I can see you’re going to be my dream secretary.’ Xenia was as excited as Natasha. ‘I’ve always longed for a secretary who understood Russian history as you do.’

‘I’ve spent my whole life reading every book on Russian history I could lay my hands on,’ Natasha confessed with a smile.

‘Of course you have. With your ancestry.’

‘It’s mainly because I look so much like the Russian side of the family,’ Natasha told her. ‘I’m apparently the living image of my great-grandmother.’

‘She must have been very beautiful.’

Natasha laughed, thinking herself not very beautiful at all.

‘Dominic remarked on it, too,’ Xenia continued. ‘He said you were the most strikingly beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And very Russian.’

Her heart skipped a stupid beat. ‘Well…that was very kind of him.’

‘He’s always been irresistibly attracted to Russianlooking women. He was even in love with one, once. A ballerina, funnily enough. Kyra, her name was. I thought for some time that he would marry her.’

‘Do you think he’s the marrying kind?’ Natasha asked wryly, somehow doubting that a man like Dominic Thorne would ever settle down.

‘He’s thirty-seven now, and beginning to think of having a family. But it’s difficult for him, because he wants the woman to have Russian blood, or at least some Russian connection. And that’s not so easy——’

The doorbell rang softly in the marble hallway.

‘Who on earth can that be?’ Xenia frowned, looking at her elegant watch, then gasping, ‘Oh, no, I completely forgot! Dominic said he’d drop by for lunch!’

Natasha’s heart leapt violently, and a second later she heard his deep, dark, gorgeously masculine voice in the hall.

No fast-beating hearts, she thought angrily, struggling to control her responses. No blushing and no pulsesoar, and definitely no smiling at him like a besotted idiot.

Dominic Thorne isn’t interested in you, he never will be, and you’re not interested in him, either. You mustn’t be interested in him or you’ll do the same thing, all over again, that you did with Tony. Besotted, obsessed, fixated…and then people find out and you’re humiliated.

So ignore his stunning looks, his intellect, his dynamism, his sex appeal, his power and his Russian ancestry. Stop being romantic and start being a bit more level-headed.

‘I know!’ Xenia said. ‘Why don’t you stay for lunch, too?’

‘Oh, no, I really couldn’t.’

‘Why not? I’m sure Dominic would be delighted, and so would I.’

‘I have an appointment with my bank manager at two o’clock,’ Natasha remembered with relief.

‘Oh, what a shame that——’

The door opened and Dominic Thorne, a superb masculine presence, strode in, dominating the room at once with his height and power and air of effortless authority.

‘Still here?’ he drawled, smiling dazzlingly at Natasha, whose heart leapt like mad in response. ‘I take it you’ve got the job, then?’

‘Yes, I have.’ Natasha got to her feet, her face icily serene, determined not to let him know how devastatingly attractive she found him.

‘Good,’ he drawled. ‘I look forward to running into you frequently from now on.’

‘How kind.’ Natasha’s voice dripped ice.

He frowned, because of course she wasn’t even smiling at him, and he had given her the kind of smile that made her do back-somersaults inside.

There was a brief, tense pause.

‘Well!’ Xenia clapped her elegant hands together. ‘Shall we have a little champagne? To seal the bargain and welcome Natasha into the fold?’

‘Yes, why not?’ Dominic gave a hard smile, still frowning, and turned to walk to the door, opening it, drawling over one broad shoulder, ‘I’ll tell Bowers to set the table for three, shall I?’

‘No, I can’t stay for lunch,’ Natasha clipped out coolly. ‘I have a previous engagement.’

He paused in the doorway, eyes narrowing on her, aware of her sudden icy hostility and not understanding it, particularly after the passionate kiss she had given him yesterday when she left his office.

Then he went out, closing the door with an angry click.

Natasha relaxed, turning to her new employer. ‘When do we leave for St Petersburg? Where are we staying?’

‘We leave in a fortnight, and we’ll be staying at the Hotel Europe, right in the centre of the city.’

Dominic’s footsteps came clicking angrily back down the hall.

Natasha’s mouth went dry. ‘Is it a nice hotel?’

‘Ravishing. Malachite pillars, gilded mirrors, hot and cold running waiters…’

The door opened and Dominic strode in, hard-faced and holding a bottle of Bollinger, the neck smoking, three champagne flutes in his strong hand.

‘But Dominic will give you the details next week, won’t you, darling?’

‘Yes,’ he said tersely, putting the glasses down on the gold oak coffee-table and pouring champagne into each of them.

Xenia frowned at him, then at Natasha.

He handed Natasha her glass, his face tough. ‘I’ll drop in at your flat some time next week with the details. Meanwhile, I need you to fill out a form for the entry visa.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said coldly.

Straightening, he took the form from his inside jacket pocket, giving her a glimpse of that powerful chest, the taut stomach, and the dark grey silk lining of his jacket, the unmistakable black-silver label reading Gieves and Hawkes, No. 1, Savile Row.

Natasha took a pen from her handbag and sat down to fill the form out, marvelling at the excitement she felt on seeing all that Russian writing, so foreign, so romantic, so magical.

When she had finished, she glanced at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I really must dash.’

‘I’ll see you to the door,’ Dominic said curtly, and her pulses hammered as she tried to look cool, kissing Xenia goodbye, saying how much she was looking forward to beginning work with her in a fortnight, then, riddled with tension, walking out with Dominic right behind her.

He closed the drawing-room door.

Natasha increased her pace, hurrying to the front door.

‘Just a minute!’ Dominic bit out under his breath, catching up with her in three long strides, grabbing her arm, spinning her to face his blazing blue eyes. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why am I suddenly getting the ice-maiden stuff?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said tightly, stung by his choice of words and the memories of yesterday they brought back.

‘Don’t lie! Yesterday, you kissed me passionately, poured out your heart to me, then kissed me even more passionately. Today you’re ice from the neck down. No, from the eyebrows down—it’s even more noticeable looking into those eyes.’

‘Then don’t look into them, Mr Thorne!’

‘Mr Thorne?’ He laughed harshly. ‘Call me Dominic, or I’ll start to think you kiss every man you meet the way you kissed me!’

Her eyes flared angrily. ‘You know perfectly well I only did that because I was so upset!’

‘The first time—yes.’

Hot colour burnt her face as she remembered the passion with which she had surrendered to his kiss yesterday, the feel of that hard, commanding mouth on hers, the feel of his powerful body.

‘So what’s going on?’ he said thickly, lowering his head closer to hers. ‘Why are you suddenly so hostile?’

‘I’m not hostile.’

‘Natasha, you are not the woman I met yesterday.’

‘I could always produce my passport.’

‘Don’t be funny,’ he bit out, staring angrily into her eyes. ‘You know damned well what I mean.’

She raised her head, face tight with defensive anger. ‘Look—I’ve just accepted a job with your mother. It would hardly be appropriate for me to go around kissing her son every five minutes!’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he drawled with a sardonic smile. ‘I rather enjoyed your kisses yesterday, and I want to enjoy them again.’

Nothing he could have said could have frightened her more. It meant he planned to chase her, to kiss her, to whisper sweet nothings in her ears…

And that would do it, that would make her flip her tiny lid again, that would feed the obsession she already knew could develop for a man as gorgeous and unattainable as Dominic Thorne.

‘Well, you can’t!’ she said icily, and wrenched open the front door, her face a white mask of scorn and contempt. ‘Kindly keep your hands off me from now on, Mr Thorne. I am not interested!’

Turning, she strode away down the path, her face rigid with determination, but she was both shocked and hurt when he didn’t try to follow her, because of course she thought he was wonderful, gorgeous, dazzlingly attractive, and she wanted him.

Her hand shook as she unlocked her little blue sports car, slid behind the wheel of it, and drove away without looking back.

God help me, she thought, her heart still pounding with excitement and fear. I feel more attracted to him than to any man I’ve ever met—and that includes Tony the Swine Kerr.

Look how she had flipped her lid over Tony, and she had barely found him attractive at all in the beginning. He had just been so attentive, so charming, and so unattainable, that in the end she had fallen hook line and sinker for him.

Unattainable was the key word, of course. She had worshipped him like a teenage fan with her idol, and the fact that he had never made love to her had made her obsession worse.

But Dominic Thorne was even more unattainable…

He was everything she had yearned to meet in a man, and far too eligible to take notice of a boring little secretary like her.

Tall, strong, intelligent, sexy, dynamic, sensitive, charming, gorgeous—and with a romantic Russian background, just like hers. He could have been handmade for her by fate.

Yes, she thought grimly, handmade for me to fall for, because that’s what’ll happen if I don’t fight him. And before I know it, I’ll be feeding an obsessive love for him, just like I did for Tony.

Feeding it.

Like a secret plant, kept in the darkness of a hothouse, pouring water on it every hour, talking in hushhush whispers to it, words of love and desire making it grow and grow until it became a monster…

I must not let myself fall for Dominic Thorne, Natasha told herself fiercely.

I must not let that obsessive streak out, ever again.

I mustn’t even kiss him again.

Not ever.

He came to her flat ten days later.

She thought she was ready for him, because he had telephoned earlier to let her know he was on his way, and his terse, cold tone of voice hurt something inside her, even while she reciprocated, equally cold and impersonal.