Born to be Bad (International Bad Boys Book 3) (7 page)

“I’m sorry to hear that.” And, because they’d been intimate, she took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I really am.”

Roman looked down at her fingers and then to her green eyes that smiled back at him and there wasn’t even a trace of discomfort that he could see.

“Sorry, Roman.” She let go of his hand and took up her drink and drained her glass. “But I really do have to go now.”

Roman followed her out of the bar, to the lovely spring afternoon and to air that smelt better guilt free. “We’re good, then?” Roman checked.

“All good.” Milly smiled. “Aren’t you going to wish me luck with the audition?”

“
Udachi
,” Roman said. “One more thing.”

He went over to an ATM and withdrew another wad of cash and Milly stood there and when he turned to her she smiled again as his body moved her to the wall.

And still, she smiled as he placed one hand on the wall behind her and kissed her while the other pressed money into her cleavage as he paid again for her time.

Ah, Roman, Milly thought as she kissed him back . . .

I hate you.

He moved his hand to her waist and pulled her in just enough that she could feel he was turned on and, to her shame, she was too. Bruised, swollen and swore down below, still she wanted him. He had humiliated to her very core and yet still she burned for this man.

“I really do have to go,” Milly said pulling away.

“I might see you later?” Roman asked because, off the hook, his cock was stirring into life and she really did look amazing out of that awful cream suit. “Tonight,” Roman pushed because he wanted her again.

“Sorry, baby—fully booked,” Milly said and gave that sulking mouth of his a light kiss.

Milly walked into the theatre and gave her name, then handed over her head shot and resume and sat with the others waiting for her name to be called.

She had the part, Milly knew it.

After what she’d just done, Milly knew that she could play Desdemona standing on her head with an orange in her mouth.

And play the triangle with her knees at the same time.

Millicent Harper truly was a brilliant actress, Milly now knew—she had Roman Zaretsky believing that she was a whore.

R
oman had no
reason not to believe her.

As Milly walked towards the theatre, he pulled out his phone and called Isaak.

“Hey . . . ”

“Did you call her?” Isaak asked.

“No, I just took her for a drink. It’s all good.”

“You took her for a drink?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s the middle of the day,” Isaak pointed out. “I don’t recall seeing you out in daylight for some time.”

“I’m not ringing about that,” Roman said. “The nursing home just called . . . .”

“I don’t want to speak about him,” Isaak said and quickly changed the subject. “I need you go to Dubai. There’s another hotel that looks good. I’m going to be busy the next few weeks.”

“Doing what?”

“Getting married, going on honeymoon. Can you go to Dubai for me?”

Roman leant against the wall and tried to answer his brother. He knew he hadn’t been pulling his weight at work. He knew that Isaak was probably trying to throw him in at the deep end so that things could get back to normal but, Dubai?

Roman closed his eyes and remembered waking up to a phone call, lying in bed and looking out to the spectacular view of the Arabian Gulf just after sunrise, and Ava telling him that she had awoken bleeding in the night and that their baby had died.

He had never known grief until that moment.

Just this hollow loss that hit with more force than his father’s fists ever had.

Roman was scared to get close to women. He knew his father was a brute, but worse, his grandfather had spent time in jail for sexual attacks on women. He had always been scared that somehow he had inherited their traits and he had held back from loving another.

He would love his child though.

Roman had no fears there. Never particularly effusive, even so, he had warmed to the idea of being a father and had even bought the baby a little present in Dubai—a little silver box that played music. He looked over to the desk where it now sat and he looked out to the window.

The waves kept crashing to the shore, the sun kept on shining and he did not understand how the ocean did not recede nor that the world hadn’t been plunged into darkness.

A maid had come in with his breakfast as he spoke with Ava.

“The scan showed everything was okay though . . . ” Roman said. In truth he had been worried. He had looked up symptoms of pregnancy and even though she was only ten weeks pregnant, Ava had none of the signs that they spoke about. There was no vomiting, her breasts were the same and her drinking really troubled Roman too. He had voiced his concerns and she had booked an ultrasound while he was away. Two days into his business trip Ava had called him with the good news that all was well on the scan, though it was too soon to know what they were having. Now, five days later, she was telling him the baby was dead.

“The doctor says it just happens that ways sometimes,” Ava said.

“I’ll be there . . . ” They were the only words he could manage, but Ava had said no, the doctor had told her to just stay in bed. And anyway, there was nothing he could do.

“Roman!” Isaak hauled him back to the present.

“I can’t go to Dubai,” Roman said, his voice a husk.

“What can you do then?” Isaak said. “You can’t keep going on like this Roman, you are out of control and the press are just waiting for you to mess up. You’re going to get arrested . . . ”

“I don’t need this now,” Roman said. “And don’t accuse me of running away from things. Our father has had another small stroke and is crying and begging to see us both and you won’t even discuss it.”

“Because I don’t want to hear it.”

“They think that he’s only got a few weeks to live,” Roman pushed. “Don’t you want to make some sort of peace with him?”

“After the way he treated us there can never be peace. Have you forgotten all that he did to us? Have you forgotten how close he came to killing you? Because I haven’t.”

Isaak rang off.

Roman pocketed his phone and idly watched as a guy gave his moody looking girlfriend a kiss and wished her good luck with her audition. “I’ll be watching.”

She walked into a side door and the man went through the front entrance.

Well, Roman thought, he clearly wasn’t going to be catching up with Isaak this afternoon, so, instead, he followed the man inside the theatre and headed up to the stalls and decided to kill a couple of hours watching the auditions, safe in the knowledge that it was dark and that Milly would have no idea he was there.

Roman liked the theatre. He liked the musky smell and to sit in the dark and lose himself for a couple of hours. It was interesting watching the different actresses take on the same lines.

The moody blonde who he had seen kiss her boyfriend was a lot more gushing as she pleaded to an absent Othello to believe her, when she said she would never cheat.

Some were good, a couple were terrible and then out stepped Milly. Not the Milly he had had a drink with this afternoon, more the woman he had met in the hotel corridor at times, or glimpsed in the club, whenever she let her guard down. Shy and blushing, Milly stood awkwardly at the front of the stage and Roman could hear the nerves in her voice when she told them her name.

“Millicent Harper.”

They barely even looked up and Roman cringed on the inside for Milly as she took a breath.

And then, right before his eyes, she changed.

Roman sat transfixed as she
became
Desdemona—innocent, yet flirtatious, she somehow managed to be both and, though Othello was absent, Roman could almost see him and Milly certainly could for she was on her knees begging him to believe her.

The casting director wasn’t looking at his thumb now, he was sitting up, as were the others, as Milly held them in her spell.

And Roman knew then she had lied to him, that back at the bar, out on the street, she had been playing the reverse of Desdemona, and playing that part just as well, because she had been able to convince him she was a whore.

Roman let out a breath, unsure what to do with his knowledge, if anything.

Perhaps it would be kinder to her to simply leave things as they were and to let her think that she had him fooled, Roman decided, as he left the theatre.

He thought about it again as he got ready to go down to Club that night—he could hardly tell her that he knew she was lying—I know you’re crazy about me really, Milly!

It would be cruel and Milly didn’t deserve that.

Had it been strictly business, or a casual encounter, Roman thought, as he took the elevator down to Club, then how would he be with her now?

The answer was easy—last night would usually have been forgotten by now.

*     *     *

When he came
into Club, the night after the night before, and Milly flashed him her corporate smile, he asked for his usual vodka and he was back to his sullen self.

“How’s Roman?” Simon asked as Milly came into the kitchenette biting back tears.

“Back to staring out of the window.”

For the next two weeks, he broke Milly’s heart on a regular basis as, basically, he ignored her.

Not even the fact she landed the role of Desdemona was enough to ease the hurt that Roman had caused. Even though she was enthusiastic in her acceptance of the role, even though she carried on smiling as she went about her days, it was as if the world had been set to dim.

Worse than the fact he thought her a whore, worse than being ignored, was that she still wanted him, or rather, she wanted the man she had met that night.

*     *     *

When, ten days
later, the newspapers broke the salacious news that Ava Zaretsky hadn’t been pregnant when she died, it took everything Roman didn’t have to get out of bed.

So, he didn’t.

He just lay there and read the filthy rags who had actually got it right—the bitter fight on the night of Ava’s death was because Roman had found out she had set out to trap him.

The papers revealed her mounting spiral of debt and the downwards slide of her modelling career. “Ava had liked the finer things in life,” her close friend was quoted as saying.

Who better to provide for the nice things in life than Roman Zaretsky?

He hauled himself out of bed and thought he might need scaffolding to hold his head up as he walked that evening into Club.

He had no choice but to face others, it was Isaak’s wedding at the weekend and he took facing Milly as a trial run and chose not to ignore her tonight.

Try as Roman might, he still hadn’t forgotten their time together.

He walked into Club and Roman knew then that this was no trial run. Milly’s opinion of him mattered far more than Isaak and Kate’s wedding guests.

She could see the tension in his features.

He had offered no comment to the press, yet he offered a comment to Milly as she gave him his drink.

“You’ve heard?” Roman said, because instead of her forced smile, he had seen her eyes flick away, perhaps in embarrassment for him, when he came in.