I understand,” Kassandra said to Maksim.
She’d said almost the same thing to Andreas and Aristedes before him, just to end the calls with them, too.
For she certainly didn’t understand at all. How the three predators, who’d left her office out for blood yesterday, had each come back to her less than a day later, purring a totally different tune. That of urging her to give Leonid a chance.
How had he managed to get to them all? What had he said to have them so wholeheartedly on his side?
But why was she even wondering? Didn’t she already know how irresistible he could be when he put his mind to it? He’d worked the three men over but good. It was clear that their initial thoughts about having once been in Leonid’s shoes and in need of clemency were back in full force. Anything she said now would be her intolerant word against Leonid’s penitent one.
Putting down her cell phone, she pressed her fingers against burning eyelids.
So. She was out of options. There was no way she could stop Leonid herself. All she could do now was make sure he didn’t turn their lives upside down.
Suddenly, another bolt of agitation zapped her.
The bell. Leonid. He was here. Exactly two hours before Eva and Zoya’s bedtime, as promised.
She wouldn’t even wonder how he knew at what time she put them to bed. She had a sick feeling he knew everything about her life with the girls over the past two years. And that there was far more to this whole thing than he was letting on.
Yet she could do nothing but play along, and see what exactly he wanted, and where this would lead.
Crossing from her home office past the living room, she signaled to Kyria Despina that she’d get the door.
She took her time, but Leonid didn’t ring again. Stopping at the door, she could almost feel him on the other side, silently telling her he’d wait out her reluctance and wear down her resistance.
She pressed her forehead against the cool mahogany, gathering her wits and stamina. Then she straightened, filled her lungs with much-needed air and opened the door.
As always, nothing prepared her for laying eyes on him. Every time she ever had, an invisible hand wrapped around her heart and squeezed. Her senses ignited at his nearness, each time more than the time before.
Standing like a monolith on her doorstep, he was swathed in a slate-gray coat, a suit of the same color and a shirt as vivid as his eyes, radiating that inescapable magnetism that had snared her even before she’d laid eyes on him. Blood rushed to her head before flooding her body in scalding torrents.
And she cursed him, and herself, all over again. For him to still have this choke hold over her senses, when he didn’t even try, didn’t even want to, was the epitome of unfairness. But life was exactly that. As was he. Both did what they wanted to her, her approval irrelevant, her will overruled.
So she’d let him take his invasion to the next level. She only hoped after getting a dose of domesticity, he’d retreat to a nominal position in the girls’ lives, which she could deal with without too much damage to herself.
Certain she was opening the door to a new dimension of heartache, she said, “Come in, Leonid.”
Leonid crossed Kassandra’s threshold.
For a second, before she retreated, he almost touched her. It was the last thing he wanted to do. The one thing he couldn’t bear.
If he could have done any of this without seeing her at all, he would have jumped at the chance. But it was out of the question. If he wanted his daughters, she had to be involved. Closely. Suffocatingly.
Mercifully, she’d been averse, keeping him at the distance he needed to remain, in every way. But right now he’d miscalculated his movement, and she hadn’t receded fast enough. A second after he’d advanced, their clothes had whispered off each other. Just being near her caused the slow burn in his every nerve to spark into a scalding sizzle.
Before he could judge if the fleeting contact had disturbed her, too, she turned and strode away, leaving him to follow in her wake, a path filled with her sense-warping warmth and scent.
The glance she threw at him over her shoulder spoke volumes, making it even harder to breathe. The surface layer was annoyance that he’d showed up at all, and at the exact time he’d said he would. Then there was resignation that she couldn’t turn him away. Beneath that lay another sort of anger he couldn’t fathom. And at the core of it all, there was...a threat.
They both knew he wielded power that would give him access to the twins no matter what she did. She’d tried to recruit allies to stop him. She’d picked them well. But after he’d neutralized their threat, she must have realized there was no point in prolonging a losing fight. Being the pragmatic businesswoman that she was, she’d wasted no more time coming to the best course of action. Let him have what he wanted. For now. Until she studied the situation further and decided if she could adjust her trajectory.
But he also knew she wouldn’t use the twins in her struggle against him, not even for a cause as vital as keeping him out of their lives. She’d never do anything to disturb them. So her threat didn’t have any real power behind it.
Still, he couldn’t let her suspect how anxious he was, how uncertain of his ability to conduct himself in any acceptable manner. For what constituted acceptable with eighteen-month-old toddlers? He knew far more about astrophysics and the latest trends in nail polish than about interacting with children. And it was almost beyond him to keep his upheaval in check.
But he had to pretend equanimity as he followed her deeper into her exquisite home, the oasis of color, gaiety and contentment she’d built for her—for their—daughters, taking him to meet them for the first time. After he’d spent every day since they’d been born obsessing over their every detail.
Then she turned a corner into a great room equipped with a short plastic fence, decorative and sturdy, and just enough to keep little feet from wandering without detracting from the wide-open, welcoming feel of what must be every child’s dream wonderland. And it was empty.
“Darling...”
Kassandra’s breathy endearment made him stop. Suspended him in time.
She used to call him darling. Not always, just when she’d been incoherent with pleasure, which had been very frequently. The last time she’d said it to him he’d swiped at her proverbial jugular and severed it.
For heart-thudding moments, he didn’t understand why she’d said it now, once, then again. Then he realized.
From what turned out to be an elaborate playhouse blended into the periphery of the room, a gleaming dark head peeked out of a tiny doorway, followed by an equally shiny golden one. She held out her arms and squeaks of glee issued from both girls as they competed to crawl out first, struggling to their feet as soon as they cleared the entrance. Two young cats, reflecting the girls’ colorings, a black Angora and a golden Abyssinian, slinked out after them.
His heart contracted painfully. They were fast. He knew from his surveillance of them that their toddling had been improving every
