Behind the Palace Walls (9 page)

She thought of Chad and Emma, and pushed away a spear of guilt that notched into her breastbone.

“You are enjoying the pelmeni?” Alexei asked.

“Everything is wonderful. But which dish is pelmeni?”

“The dumplings. The filling is a mixture of beef, lamb, pork and spices.”

Paige stabbed another. “It tastes amazing. You were right there’s more to Russian food than cabbage.”

He followed the fork from her plate to her mouth, his gaze lingering while she chewed. She was beginning to feel self-conscious, but then he looked down at his own plate and resumed eating.

“They were my sister’s favorite,” he said. “It is a recipe from the Urals. My mother made them for us quite often.”

“I’m sorry that your sister is no longer with you,” she said carefully. And then she wanted to smack herself. Could she have sounded any stiffer? Any more uncomfortable?

“It has been many, many years,” he replied. “But thank you.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she felt duty-bound to change the subject. Another tenet of the Southern creed: never make folks uncomfortable, and never talk about upsetting subjects.

“My mother cooked a mean Southern-fried chicken,” she said lightly. “That was my favorite growing up.”

He looked at her with interest. “But not any longer?”

Paige shook her head. “Not since I learned about cholesterol and heart disease. And not since I lost ten pounds once I gave up fried foods.”

Though she’d probably still be eating Mama’s chicken if Mama were alive to make it.

“I have never had this Southern-fried chicken before.”

“If you ever come to Texas, I’ll make it for you.” Polite chitchat was the hallmark of Southern manners. She didn’t expect he would truly come, but she felt obligated to say it.

He grinned. “Perhaps I will plan a visit.”

Paige took another sip of her wine. After tonight, the last thing she needed was for this man to come to Texas and see her meager little house. Nor was he likely to do so, really. He was simply being polite in return.

“Your home is lovely,” she said. “It must have been amazing growing up here.”

His expression clouded, but then he shrugged. “I did not grow up here, maya krasavitsa. My father died when I was five, and my mother was forced to leave with my sister and me. We were, as you say, persona non grata.”

She felt she should drop it, and yet she found she could not. “That seems so unfair. Shouldn’t your mother have inherited the property when your father died?”

He took a sip of his wine. “You would think so, but no. Times were hard back then, and Mama did not have, shall we say, the right connections. There were those who very much wanted her gone.”

“But you are here now,” she said, trying to recover from her mistake.

“It took many years, but yes, I managed to buy the property back.” His ice-gray eyes glittered with an emotion she could not identify. Hate? Rage? Fear?

Before she could figure it out, his mask slipped back into place. Once more he was the handsome, solicitous Russian prince.

She stabbed her fork into a pile of greens. “Where does your mother live now?”

The seriousness never left his expression. She began to get a bad feeling that she’d somehow blundered again.

“She is in the church you saw when we arrived. As are my sister and my father. I moved my mother and sister here to join him when I took possession.”

Paige felt her stomach drop. She set the fork down. He’d gotten the family home back, but his family wasn’t here to enjoy it with him. “I’m so sorry, Alexei. I shouldn’t have asked—”

“How could you know?” He reached for her hand across the table. “They have all been gone a very long time now. But they are where they should be, in the family crypt, and I am happy I could give that to them.”

She squeezed his hand, her heart going out to him. Though it was no consolation, she wanted him to know that she understood. “My mother died eight years ago.”

“I am very sorry for your loss.”

She shook her head. She was messing everything up, failing in her efforts to comfort him. Turning the conversation to oneself at a time like this was unforgivably rude—and not at all what she’d intended. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted sympathy. I just wanted you to know that I understood what it’s like to be alone.”

He looked surprised, but he quickly hid it. “You have Emma.”

She swallowed. “Yes, but not for much longer.”

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “You will always have her, Paige. She is still your sister.”

Paige’s throat felt tight. He’d lost his sister, and she was complaining about hers moving out and getting married? What was wrong with her? “Goodness, how did we end up talking about me when we were talking about you?”

“I like learning about you,” he said.

“I’d rather talk about you.”

“What do you wish to know?” he asked, leaning back in his chair. His black hair gleamed in the firelight as he focused on her. Her thoughts began to stray, but the hint of a grin on his face brought her back to the present.

Paige’s pulse ticked up. There was one thing she wanted to know most of all, but she hardly dared ask. Then again, why shouldn’t she? She’d already strayed outside the bounds of polite conversation. “Why are you being so nice to me, Alexei?”

If she thought he would be put off guard by her question, she was wrong. He smiled lazily, his gaze glittering as he looked at her. “You have to ask after last night?”

She wanted to believe him, but she was too practical to do so.

“If you want information, you’re wasting your time. Until this trip, I was a junior secretary. Chad only picked me to come because of my sister.”

Saying it aloud hurt, but it was the truth. Chad had chosen her for this trip because of Emma. Because they didn’t want to be apart, and without Mavis, he needed a secretary anyway. It had been the perfect cover. It was embarrassing to admit to anyone, much less to a man as successful as Alexei Voronov.

But she would not have him believe she knew things she did not. If he took her back to Moscow right this instant, then so be it. At least she would know what his true motive had been.

“Does that anger you?”

His question took her by surprise. It wasn’t what she’d expected out of him, but she decided to answer honestly. “Yes, but that’s life, isn’t it? I’m still good at what I do, and this trip is still an opportunity. Provided you don’t acquire the land and close Russell Tech for good.”

He looked very dark, very dangerous in that moment—as if his masks had all been stripped away and only the essence remained. A dark, cold, cruel essence.

“When I win, I will not close Russell Tech,” he said. “I will absorb it.”

Her temples throbbed with the beginnings of a headache, and she felt hot in her itchy wool-blend suit. You started it, she reminded herself.

“Chad says you would destroy the company and we’d all be out of work.”

Alexei made a noise. “Chad is wrong. Though there will be some reorganizing, you would still have a job, Paige. You would simply be working for me instead of for Chad Russell.”

It was his cold certainty, his arrogant assumption about her that made her say what she did next.

“If you win, I’ll look for another job.”

How could he imagine she would want to work for him? It wasn’t because of the animosity between him and Chad, or the repercussions to Russell Tech, though of course those things bothered her.

No, it was because of this, tonight. Because he gave every appearance of liking her and then spoke of her working for him as if tonight had never happened.

But what has happened, Paige?

Aside from the extravagance of his method, he’d done nothing more than take her to dinner. Yes, he’d kissed her last night, but she didn’t fool herself it’d meant anything. Everything about last night had been outside the realm of normal, from the kiss in Red Square to the kisses in his apartment later.

“Why would you not want to work for me?” he demanded.

She laid her napkin on the table, her appetite gone. There was another reason, a more important reason than her wounded pride. And she had no problem telling him what it was.

“If you ruin Chad, then you ruin my sister’s happiness. I can’t work for the man who hurts Emma. She’s done nothing to deserve it.”

Alexei could only stare. She bristled like a wild Siberian tiger, her eyes sparkling in challenge, her creamy skin golden in the firelight. He should tell her she was foolish, but instead he wanted to drag her into his arms and kiss her.

No, he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to strip that ugly suit from her body and bury himself inside her. The urge was overwhelming, surprising.

Alexei stood abruptly, before he acted upon his impulse. She tilted her head back, a shadow of alarm crossing her features before she veiled it.

It bothered him, the way she sometimes looked at him like he was a great Russian bear planning to devour her whole. Like he was a character in a Dostoevsky novel, a human personification of impartial evil.

Perhaps he was.

But he had reason. And he would not crumble now, not when victory was so close. Not when she was here, and he wanted her. He’d told himself he wanted to find out what she knew about Chad’s business, but he was beginning to believe the truth was a bit more complicated.

That his need for her was based on more than expedience.

He wanted her, but he hadn’t expected to like her. She’d surprised him with how interesting she truly was. She was a woman who appreciated beauty so deeply it made her cry, and who protected her sister with a fierceness he could well understand. And she was loyal, steadfastly so, in spite of the insult she’d been dealt by the two people she’d come to Russia with.

He tried not to think of what he planned to do as yet another betrayal of her trust when she’d already suffered so many. He did what he must.

It was necessary. Some promises went deeper than any misgivings he might have. Her sister might be hurt if Chad lost his business, but she would recover. And Paige would recover as well. This was not a life or death situation.

He had to be ruthless. He was too close to his goals not to be. Katerina deserved it. His mother deserved it. Tim Russell had cost them everything, and Alexei wouldn’t be finished until he’d stripped everything from Tim’s son and wife.

He would not allow this one intriguing woman to divert his focus.

“Nevertheless, you will have a job should you want it. Now come,” he said, offering her his hand as he shoved away any thoughts of taking her back to Moscow immediately. “This is no time to talk about business.”

“Where are we going?”

“It is a surprise.”

She still glared at him, her color high in her cheeks, but he held his hand steady and waited. He didn’t think she would accept, but then she sighed and placed her small hand in his. The touch of her skin sent a shock of desire coursing through him. He tried to push it away, but the feeling was too strong.

A shudder rippled down his spine. He could not let her go now even if he wanted to.

She rose in a fluid movement to stand at his side. He was hyperaware of her, could feel her breath ghosting in and out of her lungs, her blood flowing through her veins, her answering desire thickening and burgeoning inside her body.

Her color was still high, but he knew it was for a different reason now. It gratified him, this knowledge that she wanted him, even while it made him feel as if he were imprisoned behind bars—because he could not act on it, not yet.

But he would as soon as the moment was right.

Instead he drew her to the window and stepped back so she could see. Outside, in the snow that was beginning to sparkle as the sun sank beneath the cloud cover and shot its last rays over the icy landscape, three horses were hitched side by side to a troika. A groomsman stood at their heads, holding them in place, while another checked the traces on the sled.

He heard the intake of her breath, the little gasp of wonder, and he took advantage of her change in mood to press in closer. To settle his hands on her shoulders and lean down to nuzzle her ear.

“As promised,” he whispered, his lips finding and nibbling her tender earlobe. He allowed himself that much because he could not stop. Soon, very soon, he would take her to his bed.

Her only answer was a shudder.

CHAPTER SIX

THE AIR SMELLED CRISP and clean, and Paige couldn’t help but laugh as the troika glided over the snow. The horses snorted and tossed their heads, the bells and tassels shaking with their movements as Alexei drove them down a lane beneath trees covered in white.

“It’s glorious,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

“It would be a shame to come all this way and not experience it, da?”

She was bundled in her new coat, with the fur hat pulled down over her head and tickling her skin where it touched. She was warm, and yet a shiver of excitement arced over her body. Paige pulled the thick blanket that lay across their legs higher.