Instinctive Male (4 page)

He wanted to press his lips to that soft flesh. He wanted to toss her on that bed and fight out the storm brewing between them for years.

What would that solve? his logical, nonaroused side demanded. They would still be the same people, each disliking the other.

He’d battled another woman, and that experience with his ex-wife had been enough to turn his sexual needs cold.

There was no reason for Ellie to excite him, none at all, and yet she did.

He watched Ellie pull into herself, the sleepy vulnerability gone. She ran her fingers through her hair and sipped the milk, a ploy he knew that gave herself time to organize what she would say to him.

“I’m having a bit of a rough patch, Mikhail,” she said almost briskly in a get-it-over with tone. She reached gracefully to claim a black mussel shell from those in the earth-colored pottery bowl. “I think you can help me—and Tanya. Most of all, Tanya.”

“The girl you hold in the night? Your daughter?”

“My daughter,” Ellie repeated softly. She looked into the flames and then down to the empty mussel shell; her fingers traced the smooth pearl and pink-colored interior as if feeling for answers that escaped her. “She has nightmares. Are you certain your parents know where to find me?”

“Of course. I am a thorough man and she will be well treated. My parents dote on children.”

“Yes, I know.” This time she spoke more thoughtfully, running her finger over the edge of the shell, testing its sharpness. “You’re going to want everything, aren’t you? Every detail.”

There was no reason to soften his words with Ellie; she’d seen him in tough business deals, cutting right to the bottom line. “Of course.”

Still watching the fire, Ellie drew her legs up on the chair, circling them with her arms. “Tanya isn’t my natural
child, but I love her as if she were. Hillary is her biological mother.”

Now everything made sense—Paul’s reluctance to talk about his daughters, the telephone calls inquiring about Ellie, and Tanya’s birth date, which ruled out Ellie as her biological mother.

Mikhail waited, sensing that Ellie was moving very carefully through her thoughts and words, as if she had replayed them many times before. Her voice sounded as if it came from an exhausted woman dragged through hell.

“Tanya is the family secret, Mikhail. Paul didn’t want the scandal of Hillary’s illegitimate child, or the possibility of social workers taking Tanya away from lack of care. You see, my half sister, whom I practically raised, lacks maternal instincts. Tanya was so adorable—she still is. Sweet, you know? I never could—” Ellie’s voice hitched as though holding back a sob. Then she swallowed, brushed her hand roughly across her eyes, and Mikhail waited for her to go on.

The flames crackled, firelight flickering on her face, catching her hair. “When Hillary couldn’t be bothered with an infant, Paul hired a nurse to take care of Tanya…. My sister was off and running with her crowd as soon as she recovered her figure. And I was there, checking on this beautiful little unwanted baby left with a hired nurse who didn’t care. Tanya was born just after the Amoteh’s opening. I was there, too. There is something special about seeing a baby born—”

She smiled softly and now her eyes were dove gray. “She gurgled, you know. Happy little baby sounds…”

A slight sad frown slid over her expression. Ellie brush back her hair as though trying to focus on what she must do. “I fought with Hillary over her behavior, if you can call it that. Paul didn’t bother to check what Hillary told him—and he didn’t want to hear realities from me. He was fine with the situation as long as there was no bad publicity. Hillary’s pregnancy was kept secret. She wasn’t married
and didn’t know exactly who Tanya’s father was. Paul still had plans to marry her off for business reasons. That’s what his daughters are to him, you know—business assets.”

Ellie smiled slightly. “Tanya was amazing, beautiful and I wanted her more than anything I’d wanted in my life. I wanted to adopt her. I chose to marry Mark, because I had this plan that two parents were better than one. He came from a good family. He wanted me—or rather he wanted a Lathrop heiress bred for the life he wanted—and I wanted Tanya. I was used to business deals, teethed on them, and marriage to Mark seemed sensible. I liked him. We were very compatible. We—we filled each other’s needs. I wanted marriage, a home and the idea of a real family. I’m used to making trade-offs, Mikhail. I’ve made them all my life. I knew that I was exactly what Mark wanted, more of a business partner to make him look good. That was the master plan, to give Tanya a good home and a good father.”

She looked so weary and pale, and Mikhail’s instincts were to tell her to rest. But he recognized that she had fought hard and now defeated, baring herself and her pride to him, that she needed to take these last steps by herself.

Ellie was quiet and then another blast of rain against the windows seemed to rouse her from her thoughts. “Tanya was just six months old when I married Mark. We had talked about adoption prior to the wedding. He had agreed…and then he changed his mind. Someone had mentioned genetic defects to him, and he was afraid she’d—I spent the next six months trying to convince him that we needed to adopt Tanya. One of his ridiculous reasons not to adopt was that with Hillary’s frequent changes in lovers, Tanya could have inherited any disease, he said. Basically, he wouldn’t even bring up the subject to Paul. I did…I had to. My father can be…horrible. He believed that someday Hillary would marry and settle down and make a fine mother. So, I divorced Mark and adopted Tanya when she was two years old. Correction—I bought her from Hillary
with everything I owned, and then I adopted Tanya legally. Tanya is my child—legally,” Ellie repeated, clenching her fists until the knuckles glowed white beneath the skin.

To Mikhail, the thought that a woman could reject her own child was unthinkable—but then so was the fact that his ex-wife had an abortion rather than have their child. His child. The past bitterness went tearing through him again, unexpected and dark and hurting. He remembered his ex-wife’s words. “You chose the Amoteh and this godforsaken piece of sand. On those terms, I chose not to be a mother, not to be stuck in this wasteland. When we moved here, I thought it was only for a short time, that you needed to make your mark in the industry and then we would move to civilization. I simply changed my mind about having a baby, and that’s that,” JoAnna had said.

Mikhail pulled himself back from that stormy, primitive edge, that anger and sense of defeat—because his marriage was a failure and divorce the conclusion. To be truthful, perhaps he was as cold and boring as JoAnna had claimed. Perhaps he hadn’t given her what a woman needed. Perhaps that was why his lovemaking had left her cold, why he felt empty and frustrated later.

He sorted through the years since he’d sent that crystal vase to Ellie as a wedding gift. With no word of Ellie’s escapades, he’d thought that marriage had settled her. Paul had stopped speaking of his daughters. Meanwhile, she’d been divorced and had adopted her niece. “And the problem? Why do you think you need me?”

When she looked at Mikhail, Ellie’s eyes were filled with tears. Her hand trembled as she lifted it to dash them away. “To Hillary, Tanya is just a…a thing to use. At first, Hillary hated her because childbirth had left stretch marks, and she’d lost her shape. I found Tanya, in her crib, alone at five months—though the nurse carefully locked the door before she went out with her friends. I vowed that would not happen again. Hillary was off somewhere, playing with another man, and she wasn’t concerned at all. After that, I
was around even more. I basically took Tanya to live with me, and Hillary didn’t miss her at all.”

Mikhail remembered Hillary—wealthy, spoiled and willful, like Ellie. But there was a basic difference. Hillary acted and looked cheap. Paul actually paid her to stay away from business and social functions, but he wanted Ellie at his side to smooth any waves he created with his aggressive manners.

Except for the disaster of the botched real estate deal, Ellie was his little fix-it person—when she wanted. But if Paul and Ellie crossed swords, she was his personal disaster.

Mikhail did not want to share Paul’s fate; he had already been cursed by one sharp-tongued, willful woman.

The woman curled in the huge chair was soft and vulnerable, and a mother fighting to protect her child. She turned to Mikhail, her eyes huge and sad. “A year ago, Hillary said she wanted Tanya back to impress her new boyfriend. He thinks Hillary just had that one affair and excuses her for being too young to handle a Romeo type. He’s wealthy and family-minded and Paul is delighted. He wants this marriage. He’s obsessed by the idea of getting a Wall Street power broker into the family. This man’s first wife wasn’t fertile and he wants children—the complete family-man picture, you know…proving his manhood and healthy sperm count, and the family image for business, yada, yada, yada. He’s ready to claim that Tanya is really his love child. Hillary and Paul will support him.”

Ellie shuddered and spoke quietly. “I’ve used and sold everything I can to fight them legally—jewelry, stocks, wedding gifts, clothes—and six months ago, I started running. My father is a powerful man. He can make things…difficult. He sent men with Hillary to collect Tanya at the day care center—that’s why she has nightmares of ‘the big scary men’ trying to take her away. Hillary came with them. She looks enough like me, and like Tanya, to pass as her ‘aunt,’ and that was when I knew we weren’t
safe at all. I was working at an insurance office, and I left as soon as the day care center called me to double-check releasing Tanya without written permissions—and we moved that night. Tanya still remembers that awful scene—when Hillary is angry, she can be violent…abusive.”

Ellie stood slowly as though she had come too far and could go no farther. She stood in front of him with the air of making a formal, desperate plea. “Mikhail, you are the only man who can help us. Will you?”

Because he knew the players, Mikhail understood the dynamics perfectly. Ellie was a fighter for causes she felt deserved help, and he knew Hillary’s selfishness and Paul’s determination to get his way, no matter who suffered. Now a child was endangered—if Mikhail could trust Ellie to portray the situation correctly. From his experience, she knew how to wrangle her way. “How do you see my part in this? Why am I the only person who can help you?”

She smiled briefly, sadly, and stood like a warrior with all her defenses shed. “Because you are the one man who can match my father’s power, and he respects you. In short, I need an ally—someone to hold him off until I can get back on my feet. I’ve picked you.”

Mikhail tried not to notice the dark peaks of her nipples, pressed against the white of his shirt. He stood abruptly, and went to the window, considering the sleet and snow with his hands thrust into his pockets. “You’re asking me to protect you and the child. Correct?”

Her voice was too soft over the crackling of the flames, the howling of the wind, and the rain against the glass. And yet, he heard her perfectly. “Only my daughter, Mikhail. Do it for her.”

“You realize what you’re asking? Your father is not an easy man.”

“Neither are you. That is why you work so well together. You’re not his usual ‘yes’ man. He respects you for it. He needs Tanya to portray the happy grandfather image to Hil
lary’s new man, to look like she’s a perfect mother. She may play the part for a while, but when she’s done, Tanya will be tossed aside. Don’t let that happen, Mikhail.”

Mikhail remembered his last battle with Paul. The man was ruthless and in some cases unethical, and yet he was a shrewd businessman and carried no grudges when Mikhail proved him wrong. But a fight with Paul was always tough.

Ellie came to stand behind Mikhail. She gripped the back waistband of his slacks as though she was afraid he would escape her. “I know exactly what I am asking. This resort means so much to you. You want to provide employment for the people you love in this town. They depend on the Amoteh’s success. And to battle my father could endanger everything you’ve worked for.”

Mikhail nodded; Ellie’s assessment was exact. “I will want to meet the child…but I would rather not enter your family’s fighting arena.”

“I know. I told her about you…that you were kind to children…that you knew wonderful stories and loved little girls. I told her that because I’ve seen you with children at the resort and campaign functions. Don’t let my father and Hillary make Tanya into another emotional wreck, Mikhail.”

He could feel her body’s warmth, the scent of it, clouding his decision to stay free of what she had asked. “You’re still tired. Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Her hand left his slacks to grip his arm, her fingers slender and pale against his tanned skin. “You’ll think about helping Tanya?”

“One step at a time.”

“Yes, of course. I expected that much from you. You’re very thorough in weighing your decisions.”

“Of course. We’re done for now, Ellie. Make the most of this time and rest.”

With a long, tired sigh, she moved away from him and he missed her warmth. The rustle of the coverlet said she
had slid into bed. But in the shadows, he felt her watching him, pleading with him to help.

She reminded him of a doe he’d once seen—soft, fearful, drained. He’d been camping, resting in the mountains, clearing his mind of business. Illegal hunters had used dogs to run down the animal, and exhausted, she’d settled into her deathly fate when Mikhail arrived to save her.

Saving Ellie was another matter. It endangered everything he’d worked for, the people who depended on him.

Only when he recognized her last sigh before sleep did he turn toward the woman on the bed.

He was a fool for even listening to her. Ellie Lathrop was a natural disaster to men, especially when she wanted her way—a true Kamakani curse. Perhaps Paul would listen to logic—but more than likely not, if Ellie had portrayed the situation realistically. Paul had always considered his daughters as bargaining chips in marriages that would bring him even more power and wealth. He wouldn’t hesitate to use a child as a pawn.