Untouched by His Diamonds (7 page)

‘I have your answer, Clementine,’ he said formally.
‘Forgive me if I’ve offended you. It wasn’t meant that way.’ He wasn’t going to stand there and pressure her in this thug role he was beginning to feel he’d been cast in. ‘Enjoy the rest of your stay.’

His good manners welded Clementine to the spot. All of a sudden the last few minutes seemed to have rolled up into a ball of confusion in her head. Maybe he hadn’t propositioned her. Maybe it was up-front an offer to spend time with him—his best effort to fit her into his schedule. She knew all about seventy-hour weeks. He said he had business in New York City. It wasn’t a pleasure trip for him. Maybe he just wanted to get to know her…

Had she read him wrongly? Was it just an innocent invitation from a very busy man?

Suddenly the entire world seemed to narrow down to that pinprick of vision she had fastened on the spread of Serge’s muscular shoulders as he walked away.

Was she really never going to see him again?

You’ll never meet anyone like him again
, a little voice whispered in her head. You knew that yesterday—the moment you clapped eyes on him. You knew that he was special. You knew he had been made especially for you. He was your fantasy come to life.

And maybe you’re his. Maybe he’s feeling exactly the way you do and you’ve said those terrible things to him and you’re never going to see him again.

What had she done?

What had she done?

Her feet were moving. She could see him a long way from her now. She wanted to run but it wouldn’t be any use. She could see him getting into his car. She opened her mouth to call out to him but her throat had closed up, and then she just stopped, dead in the middle of the pavement, as his sports car swiftly rejoined the traffic.

She still had Luke’s mobile. She had Serge’s number. She began rummaging in her bag. What would she say to him?
I’ve changed my mind. I want to come. I want to see where this leads me…where you lead me…

‘Clem.’ Luke had caught up with her. ‘What is it, darl? What’s going on?’

It was the reality of Luke’s voice and the memories that came back with it that had her dropping the phone back into her bag, the frenzy of feeling subsiding. Luke had helped pick up the pieces when the Joe Carnegie incident had exploded in her face. She had slept in his and his partner Phineas’s spare room for a week, and he had cared for her with all the kindness and tenderness she had never found in any of the guys she’d dated.

Serge Marinov was no different. She’d imagined him as her hero come to life, but her history told her the odds were against it ever working out.

Her best friend Luke was a reminder that she deserved more.

It wasn’t in her nature to mope. There was work to do, and she was kept busy all afternoon sweet-talking the snooty representative of a high-profile fashion magazine who had been housed in the Grand Hotel Europe instead of the Astoria Hotel.

Try the Vassiliev Building, she thought, even as she twittered on about the incredible history of the Grand Hotel. The painful irony being she only had those stories because Serge had told them to her on their magical date. She must have been convincing because the woman, mollified, agreed to a larger suite in the hotel.

I can do this, she thought, walking through the lobby. She was spending the night with Luke, unable to face even one more night in the fleapit. Her dress was upstairs and she intended to take a long hot shower.

She had a party to go to. Parties she could do. It was men she had a problem with.

As she stepped into the elevator one of the species gave her a covert once-over and she narrowed her eyes, mean as a dunked cat.

She was still feeling prickly as she moved through the crowd at the launch. The fashion show didn’t go smoothly, but it was the hiccups that made it fun. The models galloped down the runway—pretty boys carting luggage, wearing watches, flashing cocky grins at the cameras. Clementine did her usual meet-and-greet, brain switched off, dress switched on. She loved this black velvet evening gown. It was elegant and flattering, and Verado had loaned her a string of diamonds to wear around her neck. She was a walking advertisement tonight, and it suited her down to the ground. She was good at her job and it correspondingly made her feel good about herself.

If men thought she could be bought maybe it was time to start asserting her financial independence. She earned a reasonable living. She just had an expensive clothing habit. But she was twenty-five years old. It was time to stop living like a teenager and start looking towards her future. The fairytale husband and three children might never materialise—and given her romantic history and today’s disaster it felt further away than ever. She needed to look after herself. Protect herself. And that meant settling into her career.

She was turning from one group of buyers to cross the floor to another when she saw him.

Six and a half feet of Russian male wasn’t easy to miss. He was all dressed up in a tux, his unruly hair tamed. He looked devastating, a powerful man among many lesser men, and for a moment in time she merely stared. Until she recognised the
older gentleman he was speaking to was Giovanni Verado himself.

Verado was a notorious womaniser. Probably swapping notes, she thought snappily. But in her heart she knew it wasn’t true. Serge had been nothing but up-front with her, and she kept replaying his expression when she had thrown his invitation back in his face. He’d actually looked baffled.

But why was he here? He knew this was her job. She’d certainly blabbed all about it last night, revealing more than she was comfortable with now. She’d said some indiscreet things about Verado. Serge hadn’t mentioned a connection to the owner. Serge hadn’t said much of anything that was personal.

Her mouth suddenly felt very dry, her palms moist.

It didn’t fit the character of the man she believed she knew to drop her in it. Why would he? Why would Verado care about her opinions as long as she did her job?

No, what was worrying her was that she suddenly realised she knew nothing about him other than the fact he made her senses whirl every time he looked at her, and she’d felt so safe and admired in his company.

Right now her heart was leaping into her mouth because he’d come, and it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

He’d come for her.

A rush of nerves bubbled up in her tummy like champagne. All of the tales she had told herself this afternoon about Serge Marinov being just some guy disintegrated as she entertained the possibility that she was getting a second chance, and now she could give him one.

Clementine tugged at her dress, straightened her shoulders, and headed over. She wasn’t going to make his finding her any more difficult than it needed to be.

There were a lot of people between them, and then there was a break in the crowd and she saw what she had missed
before. There was a woman with him—a slender brunette in a sparkly blue dress. She was beautiful, perhaps around thirty, and she had her hand on his arm. It was that territorial display that stopped Clementine in her tracks.

Almost. She’d almost made a fool of herself.

Another woman. Well, that was quick. But what had she expected? Clearly it was exactly what he’d been thinking this morning in that fraught silence. Not,
I’m disappointed Clementine won’t be coming with me
. Simply,
Where’s the next in line?

Her shoulders dropped. She felt as if she was getting a crash course in male mating patterns. Was it really that easy for him? She had opened herself up last night to a connection between them and she couldn’t close it off so easily. Didn’t it mean anything to him?

Clementine stuffed down the sudden sharp pain in her chest. She was such an idiot. Him and Joe Carnegie—both of them deserved flogging. Except, watching Serge now, she recognised he wasn’t really anything like Joe. He hadn’t hidden anything. He’d been up-front all the way. Probably in his world that was how these things were done. He was hardly going to be her
boyfriend
by any stretch of the imagination. She couldn’t imagine him dropping by on a Friday night at her flat with a pizza and lying on the sofa rubbing her feet.

He turned his head suddenly and scanned the crowd, and Clementine froze. She knew when he found her because she felt it like a jolt down to her toes. She recognised the flare of those green eyes, how her own were probably huge in her frozen face. She waited for him to dismiss her, to turn away, but instead his features firmed. He looked resolved.

She spun around before she could see anything that would make mincemeat of her feelings and made her way blindly towards the bar. She needed a drink. She needed hard liquor and fast.

If I’d said yes I could be with him now, she thought helplessly. I could be in that woman’s shoes. I could be going with him to New York.

She reached the bar and asked for a Bloody Mary. It wasn’t something she normally drank, but she needed something sharp and unfamiliar to snap herself out of this mood. Before it arrived she felt him rather than saw him. The solidity of his body; the turning of other people’s heads. There were people everywhere, brushing shoulders, bumping elbows, but she knew it was him.

She gravitated towards him like a planet to the sun and looked up into those eyes of his. She said softly, ‘Yes,’ then hopelessly, ‘I wish I’d said yes. I should have said yes.’

He looked stunned, poleaxed. But at least he didn’t look angry or, worse, amused.

I am crazy, thought Clementine. Why did I tell him that? He doesn’t care.

Serge experienced the now familiar surge of frustration connected with this woman. What was she playing at?

As Clementine pushed her way through the crowd his first instinct was to pursue her. It was basically his foremost instinct where she was concerned, he acknowledged with more frustration. Yet all he could do was watch her vanish into the crowd, even as his thoughts curled possessively around her admission.

That’s the girl. Run away. You won’t be getting far
.

He had to deal with Raisa before he tried anything bolder with Clementine, and that would take tact, but once he was free he would be going after her.

Clementine had better be able to run fast on those impossible heels of hers, because she’d just declared herself his and he was coming to collect.

‘D
ARL
, can you cheer up? You’re frightening the other passengers.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t get much shut-eye.’ They were queuing to put their bags through at the airport, and at four in the morning she felt just about dead on her feet. But she manufactured a smile for Luke, remembering the old adage to fake it until you make it.

Which she would be applying to her life the minute she got back to London. The last couple of days had impressed on her as nothing else had the need to get back on track with her life. It was time to let the past go. She’d allowed her experience with Joe Carnegie to completely blow anything she might have with Serge Marinov right out of the water. He held a measure of blame, too. If he’d been less forceful she might have been able to navigate around his invitation. Instead they’d both hit a wall—his expectations versus hers—and he had moved on.

‘Still thinking about the gorgeous brute?’ commented Luke from behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder. ‘I thought he was going to pop me one yesterday.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘I didn’t mean for you to get involved.’

‘He seems pretty keen on you, Clem.’

‘What? No, that’s all over.’

‘Okey-doke. But I’m not sure he agrees.’

Clementine frowned and moved forward in the queue. Why was Luke speaking in the present tense? Why were people in the queue looking at her?

‘Clementine.’ His voice turned her around. Deep, dark Russian male.

Serge. So close to her she didn’t know where to look. So she looked up and tumbled into his eyes again. It happened each and every time, and she couldn’t work out why. Her breath hitched. She didn’t know what to say.

His mouth eased into a knowing smile. ‘Come with me now to New York,
kisa
.’

Go with him? She was boarding a plane…Of all the unreasonable…

‘Are these your bags?’

To her astonishment a young man in a jacket and tie took hold of her suitcase and overnight bag.

‘Just a minute—those are my things!’

Serge made a casual gesture with one hand and the guy froze mid-move.

‘You have changed your mind?’ That smile was still curling wickedly at the corner of his mouth, as if it couldn’t possibly be true.

‘No, I—’ She looked around to find Luke madly nodding at her like a jack-in-the-box.

She rolled her eyes at him.

‘Perhaps you would like to say goodbye to your friend and then join me.’ Serge’s eyes had narrowed on Luke. Clementine already recognised that slight hardening of his mouth.

He was jealous. Well, maybe a teensy weensy bit. Which reminded her…

‘What about your girlfriend?’

‘Sto?’
He looked genuinely puzzled.

‘Last night. Remember? She was your date. Or are there so many we start to blur?’

Luke snickered.

‘Raisa is a friend, nothing more.’ He actually sounded a bit affronted, as if he couldn’t believe they were having this conversation.

The lady in front of her looked Serge up and down. ‘I wouldn’t trust him, love. Too good-looking.’

Too good-looking. It was an understatement. He was a big, tough gorgeous Cossack. Every other woman in the vicinity was glued to him.

Clementine bit her lip. It was funny, and she had to admit it was extremely exciting.

She deserved some fun—to be a light-hearted girl again instead of the cautious woman she had become, constantly second-guessing herself.

And he was here. He’d come for her. It was ridiculous to consider any of this romantic but she did. It was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to her.

‘All right,’ she heard herself saying, throwing herself off the emotional diving board. ‘Why not?’

Satisfaction entered the look Serge was giving her, and she noticed a little breathlessly that his gaze took a round trip of her body but she decided to let it pass. Right now she just wanted to revel in her romantic moment.