Los Angeles, my mother’s had trouble paying her mortgage. I need ten thousand dollars to stay working for you. Call it a retroactive raise.”
“Ten thousand?” he gasped. “Dollars? Are you joking?”
“And effective immediately,” she continued sweetly, “I expect a raise in pay commensurate with the increased cost-of-living expenses in London.”
“Grace!”
“So what do you say?” She paused. “Shall I stay and finish writing your speech for the charity event this afternoon? Or shall I clean out my desk?”
He stared at her.
“Stay,” he muttered. “Finish the speech. You’ll get your raise with your next paycheck.”
“And my bonus?”
“Ten thousand dollars? That will take longer.”
“You have until Christmas Eve.”
He ground his teeth. “Fine. Would you perhaps like to take the rest of the afternoon off, as well?” he suggested acidly.
“Yes, thank you.” She smiled at him. “I’ll go as soon as I’m done with your lovely speech.”
Alan tightened his jaw, then turned away. “Fine.”
She almost felt sorry for him as she watched his hunched shoulders as he returned to his office and slammed the door. Almost.
Getting one afternoon off wasn’t even close to all the hours she’d worked for free over the past two years, but…Maksim was outside at this very moment, waiting for her. Grace’s feet tapped excitedly as she polished the last few paragraphs of the speech, making sure it was perfect before she e-mailed Alan the finished copy. Her spirits were soaring as she put on her old coat and came triumphantly out of the building.
She found Maksim waiting for her at the curb in an ultra-expensive, black Bugatti Veyron.
“Thank God,” he said with a dark gleam in his eye as she climbed into the car. “It was agony waiting for you.”
“It was twenty minutes.”
He put on dark sunglasses. “I’m not a patient man.”
She laughed aloud, happier than she’d been for years. “Thanks for the flowers,” she said. “They really lifted employee morale. I just got a raise from my boss.”
“You lift my morale, solnishka mayo,” he growled. He reached over to change gears, and his hand accidentally brushed her thigh. “Ready to celebrate?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“So am I,” he said, looking down at her steadily in a way that made her feel hot all over. Then he gunned the thousand-horsepower motor, and the Bugatti flew like a black raven through the mist and rain.
GRACE took a deep breath as she stood on the terrace of Maksim’s Dartmoor estate, staring out at the snow-dusted fields. They’d left the London rain far behind. Here the moors were wide and haunted beneath the last rays of fading red sun. A thick white mist was blowing in from the sea.
Tears fell unheeded down Grace’s cold cheeks. The sound of her mother’s happy crying still echoed in her ears as she tucked her cell phone back into her bag.
She’d done it. She’d told her mother that she would save the house from foreclosure. Now Grace would make sure her family never worried about money again. She took another deep breath, grateful beyond words that she’d found her strength. That she’d found herself.
Thanks to Maksim.
Maksim, who’d treated Grace like a princess. She’d never have imagined that any man, let alone someone so handsome and powerful and rich beyond belief, would treat her that way.
Now Grace realized she should accept nothing less. She would never settle again.
She wanted the fairy tale.
She turned from the wide terrace overlooking the carefully tended classical garden and returned through the back door of his eighteenth-century country house. Maksim was waiting.
The inside of the house was every bit as Gothic and misty as the moors outside. Perhaps because the fifty rooms had no furniture—just white translucent curtains that seemed to move against the windows even when they were closed, twisting eerily in an invisible draft that no human skin could feel.
She’d called her mother outside on the terrace, where the cell phone reception was better, and where she could have privacy. She didn’t want Maksim to know how desperate she’d been for money. She didn’t want him to think of her as someone who needed saving.
She’d been proud to save herself.
She wanted Maksim as her equal. As her friend. As her…lover? She could barely move her lips to form the word, but there it was. Her secret.
She wanted him as her lover.
She wanted him for the fire he sparked inside her. For the way he’d somehow made her become the woman she’d always dreamed she could be. For the dreams suddenly coming true around her, like roses blooming full and red amid the breathless hush of winter.
Grace walked back through the empty salon. Painted cherubs looked down at her from the two-hundred-year-old painting soaring high above the enormous chandelier.
This house was beautiful, large…and lonely.
No one lived here, Maksim had told her. He’d bought it to use as his weekend escape, but he’d been too busy with work to bother visiting. The caretaker and his elderly wife, who resided in a nearby cottage, were the only ones who’d entered the estate for the last several years.
Until now.
The house seemed happy to finally have company, she thought, then nearly laughed at her own ridiculous thought. The house was happy?
What was it about houses that made people so batty?
Grace wiped her eyes as she approached the dining room. She felt like an idiot for crying because she was happy, but as foolish as it sounded, she felt as if her family—as long as they had their home—could survive and be strong.
She entered the dining room, then stopped in shock.
The room was dark, lit by the fire in the marble fireplace—and by dozens of white pillar candles of various sizes and shapes on the floor.
Maksim was lighting the last candle as she entered. He was darkly handsome, wearing a black shirt and black pants. He looked up at her, then straightened as the expression on his handsome face changed to concern.
“You were crying,” he demanded.
“Houses,” she sniffled, looking with wonder at all the candles. “They don’t make a
