me. It will be part of your role to ensure that the use of such tactics is kept under control. As for clothes—just bring a few basics. I’ve already ordered a suitable wardrobe for you, which will be waiting at our destination. I shall require you to be here tomorrow for eleven-thirty in the morning.’
Vasilii had turned his back on her to walk over to his desk before Laura could so much as acknowledge her understanding of the information he had just given her, never mind make her natural objections to his highhanded behaviour with regard to her working wardrobe, or tell him that she didn’t like the way he had been so sure of her acceptance that he had already given instructions with regard to her clothes.
Only self-respect was one thing. Wilfully prejudicing the job she so badly needed if she was to be able to continue to help her aunt was another. Her aunt had sacrificed a great deal to bring her up. Sacrificing her pride now in order to help her was the least she could do.
It wasn’t that the concept of an employer requiring a certain standard of dress was something new to her, or something to which she objected. She’d had a clothes allowance with her previous job. The thought of someone else actually choosing those clothes, though—especially when that someone else was Vasilii—sent prickles of a sensation she did not like trembling down her spine. Even worse than that—humiliatingly so, in fact—were the sudden unexpected and unwanted images which had produced themselves inside her head of delicate and very sensual silk and satin wisps of underwear.
Such images were highly inappropriate. The clothes that Vasilii had selected for her would be work clothes. It could only be because she had walked past a couple of exclusive lingerie shops on her way here this morning that those images had somehow lodged inside her head. No other reason. Vasilii Demidov might be the kind of man who had the style and the good taste to buy his lovers the kind of underwear that women loved, but she was most certainly not the kind of woman he would ever want as one of those lovers. Nor did she want to be.
‘Here is the information you will need, and here is your contract.’
Vasilii had turned round, and now her face started to burn. Get a grip, Laura warned herself as she took the papers he had put down on the coffee table within her reach but without touching her. Another unwanted stab of emotion pricked at her heart.
She knew his opinion of her. She knew he didn’t like her or trust her. Everything about his manner towards her now that she had actually met him revealed him as a man who was corrosively antagonistic and nothing like the white knight she had fantasised about as a girl. So, given that, why should she feel hurt and rejected because he was making it plain that he didn’t want any kind of physical contact with her?
It was safer to lose herself in speed-reading the contract than to allow herself to dwell on finding a truthful answer to that question, Laura acknowledged with relief as she read and then reread the contract.
As she had already known, the remuneration package was very generous, and with the added benefit of the bonus Vasilii had mentioned thrown in this six-month contract would give her the kind of financial security she needed. There would be a high price to pay for that financial security, though, Laura suspected. Not so much in the two hundred per cent dedication to her work which she knew Vasilii would demand, but in the cost to her pride and her self-respect in knowing that she was working for someone who disliked and despised her. Beggars could not be choosers, Laura reminded herself firmly. For her, right now, pride and self-respect were luxuries she could not afford. She needed this job.
Reaching into her bag, she removed the expensive pen that John had given her on the anniversary of her first year of working for him. He had had her name inscribed on it, and she treasured it as the gift of faith in her professional skills that she knew it to be. Dear John. Despite everything, he was a good man. He had been dreadfully upset about what had happened, though Laura suspected that a part of him had also been secretly rather flattered that his fiancée felt so possessive about him.
The contract signed, Laura replaced it on the coffee table and then gathered up all the other papers.
‘You said you wanted me here for eleven-thirty tomorrow morning?’ she double-checked.
‘Yes. We’ll be flying out by private jet. I’ll discuss your grasp on the negotiations so far with you during the flight.’
There was nothing else to be said. Putting the papers into her bag, Laura headed for the door.
She had a lot of very intense work ahead of her now, if she was to be able to answer any question Vasilii chose to throw at her tomorrow, but irrationally, as she walked back down Sloane Street towards the tube station, it wasn’t concern about the work that filled her mind. Instead what was preoccupying her thoughts and her emotions was her own ridiculous and dangerous reaction to that heart-stopping moment back in the apartment when, unbelievably, it had seemed as though Vasilii was going to touch her.
The thrill of horrified revulsion she had felt then echoed through her again now. She went hot and then cold at the knowledge of just how foolishly and instinctively she had been on the point of going to him, reaching out to him herself, as though … as though she’d wanted him to hold her. Which of course she most certainly had not. She wasn’t fourteen any more, and he certainly wasn’t the white knight in shining armour she had imagined him to be in her girlish fantasies. He was autocratic, disdainful, sardonic and utterly without a single aspect of shining knighthood to his personality. But somehow her body had thrilled recklessly at the prospect of his touch. No wonder she had felt so horrified and revolted by her self-betrayal.
As she started down the steps to the tube station Laura couldn’t help wishing that she hadn’t had to accept his job offer. The reality was, though, that she hadn’t had any other choice.
Once Laura had gone Vasilii gathered up the signed contract—her signature, he noted, was well formed and elegant, rather like Laura herself. That acknowledgement brought a swift cold frown to his eyes as he filed the contract. He had no wish to have any kind of personal thoughts about Laura Westcotte intruding into his private mental and emotional space.
As he straightened up from locking away the contract in his desk the group of silver-framed family photographs on the sideboard opposite caught his eye. The photographs had originally been placed there by his half-sister, when she had shared the apartment with him prior to her marriage.
He walked over to the sideboard and looked at them, reaching for the photograph that was almost tucked away behind the others—a photograph of his parents on their wedding day. His stepmother had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday, having gone to what he knew must have been an enormous amount of trouble to find it. After his mother’s death Vasilii himself had burned all the photographs he could find of his mother, because he hadn’t been able to endure seeing her image when he couldn’t see her any more in the flesh. He had only been a child then, and of course—although he could never have admitted it to anyone—later he had regretted his emotional reaction.
His stepmother had guessed how he felt, though, although she had never said so. Her choice of that special gift to him had told him that. She had somehow known of the pain of his loss, and she had tried to offer him some comfort. Vasilii could still remember how torn his feelings had been when he had opened his gift—the sharpness of his sense of humiliation that his guard had been pierced by a woman’s knowledge of what he believed to be a weakness he had successfully concealed from everyone but himself battling against the deep well of emotion looking at his mother’s youthful features had brought him. Allowing oneself to need another person in one’s life was dangerous. He had needed his mother but she had been taken from him. He’d had to learn to go on alone without her. That experience had taught him never to take the risk of loving anyone in a dependent way ever again.
Vasilii
