that her mind wandered to her dead husband even when she was in Nikolai’s company infuriated him. It was the very first time that he could remember considering or even caring about what a woman might be thinking about when she was with him.
‘What age were you when you got married?’
Abbey gave him a surprised look. ‘Nineteen.’
‘That’s very young.’
‘I was old enough to know what I was doing.’
‘What age was your husband?’
Abbey tensed, reluctant to answer that question. ‘Thirty-nine.’
Nikolai dealt her an incredulous look. ‘He was old enough to be your father!’
‘You’re being very rude,’ Abbey told him curtly. ‘Jeffrey was handsome, successful and very much in demand socially. I think very few women would have regarded him in that light.’
Nikolai shrugged, well aware that some men went for very much younger women. He was only thirty-three years old, but the idea of bedding a giggly teenager with no experience of men or the world repulsed him. He could only think that Jeffrey Carmichael must have been inadequate in some way to choose such an unequal partner as a wife.
‘How long have you been a widow?’ he queried.
‘Six years—’
‘So you couldn’t have been married that long.’
Abbey realised that he didn’t know as much about her as she had assumed. She told him about the sixteen-yearold drunken joyrider who had caused the accident as the wedding party travelled between church and reception.
Nikolai was sincerely shocked by the story. ‘That was tragic—particularly when your sister-in-law was seriously injured as well.’
‘It ripped the heart out of two families. Jeffrey’s parents have both passed away since then and are sadly missed.’
‘And you’re still mourning?’ Nikolai prompted.
Abbey nodded confirmation. ‘You don’t forget a love like that.’
‘But you and your husband were together such a short time.’
‘Time’s immaterial.’
‘Yet you won’t stay with me tonight, even though it’s what we both want?’
A hot rush of pink discomfiture mantling her cheeks, Abbey decided that it would be undignified arguing that point and she began to eat instead. ‘That’s different.’
Nikolai stroked the back of her clenched hand with a mocking fingertip. ‘I know. I’m not asking you to love me.’
Abbey suppressed a shiver of reaction as she recalled the hot hunger of his mouth on hers and the desire he had unleashed inside her. ‘I don’t need the warning.’
Nikolai surveyed her in frustration. ‘So you’ve already made up your mind about me?’
‘That we don’t suit? Yes,’ Abbey admitted.
‘But we share an amazing passion.’
‘That’s not important to me.’
‘It is to me.’
‘But by next week you’ll find it with someone else,’ Abbey told him with a calm insouciance that set his even white teeth on edge.
‘If I thought that I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to persuade you to come here.’
Nikolai made a rare effort to be entertaining by finding out what interested her. He was on his very best behaviour. Checking her watch over the coffee, Abbey was taken aback when she realised just how much time had passed over the delicious meal. He was highly intelligent and excellent company and she was dismayed by how much she had contrived to enjoy herself.
‘I don’t want to be too late tonight because I have an early start in the morning.’
As she rose from behind the table Nikolai followed suit. He pulled her to him with confident hands. ‘You could have an early start with me.’
As she thought of it a tremor ran through her, sexual heat curling low in her pelvis. Desire was in her now like a dark enemy, undermining her defences. She had a dim picture of him lying on tumbled white sheets. She remembered how she had lost her head with him in the limo and knew that he would be utterly irresistible in less inhibiting circumstances. He bent his handsome dark head and took her parted lips with devouring hunger. She quivered against him, her heart racing as fast as the blood in her veins, driven by a heady combination of excitement and longing. Disturbed by the intensity of what she was feeling, she stiffened.
‘I’m going home,’ she breathed when he lifted his head again.
Paparazzi were waiting outside the building when they emerged. Cameras went off even as Nikolai’s security team made the waiting photographers back off and give them a clear passage to the glossy black Ferrari now parked in readiness by the kerb. Her colour high as demands for her name were loudly shot at her, Abbey climbed into the car with her head down, reluctant to give anyone the chance to get a decent picture of her.
‘They’ll follow us back to your apartment so that they can identify you,’ Nikolai forecast.
‘Surely not?’ But even as she spoke she saw two men jumping onto motorbikes across the road and her heart sank. ‘Is it always like this for you?’
‘I hate it,’ he breathed. ‘By tomorrow morning at least one paper will have offered you cash to talk about me.’
‘I won’t do it. Your secrets are safe with me. The colour of your dining-room wallpaper will go to the grave with me,’ she promised him.
He burst out laughing at that sally.
They were tailed all the way back to her apartment block and she didn’t object when he insisted on seeing her indoors, because even before she climbed out of his car she saw several men race across the pavement to lie in wait for them again. But when one of them aimed a camera, Nikolai’s minders stepped in and snatched it away. An altercation broke out between the men as Nikolai urged her through the entrance to the building with a protective arm splayed to her narrow spine.
‘You don’t need to come all the way upstairs,’ she said as the lift doors sprang open beside them.
An ebony brow climbed. ‘I won’t overstay my welcome,’ he declared.
He took the key out of her fingers and pressed open the front door to follow her in. ‘A model castle,’ he said in surprise, crossing the hall to peer into it.
‘It’s a doll’s house. I always wanted one when I was a child but I had to wait until I grew up and could afford to buy my own.’
A moment’s appraisal of his surroundings had been sufficient to assure Nikolai of the modern minimalist nature of her home, so the interior of the fairy-tale castle was a revelation. A red-headed miniature doll in a voluminous white lace
