“But the Hale Ka’nani isn’t
small!
It must have cost millions of dollars!”
“Two hundred million, actually.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry.” His lips lifted in a smile. “I got a good deal.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s an investment. In you.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Why would you do something so stupid?”
“Because...” he said softly, reaching a hand toward her cheek “...with your brilliant strategic mind, Bree, I’ve always known you were born to rule an empire.”
Trembling, fighting tears, she stumbled back from his touch.
“I need to take Snowy for a walk,” she blurted out, and, picking up the puppy, she fled to the white, snow-covered lawn outside. Once there, Bree dawdled, taking as long as she could, until her cheeks and nose felt numb from the cold and even the puppy was whimpering to go back to the warmth inside. It was past dusk when she finally returned to the conservatory, her feet heavy, her heart full of dread.
To her surprise, the room was empty. The puppy flopped down on a rug near the warm fire, and Bree frowned. “Where is he?” she said aloud.
The puppy answered with a stretch and a yawn, clearly intending to have a long winter’s nap.
Bree went down the hall, passing various rooms. Then she saw Vladimir. In the study. At his desk. Signing papers.
Shock and horror went through her like lightning.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
“There you are.” His voice was cold, and he didn’t bother to look up. He seemed distant—and how could she blame him? “I will join you for a late dinner after I finish this.”
He was signing the papers by rote, with rapid speed, as if his mind was on something else. She saw Kasimir’s contract peeking out beneath the next paper. “Stop!”
“I got your message loud and clear, Bree.” He pushed the top paper aside. “You don’t want anything from me. You can’t even bear to look at me—”
As he reached, unseeing, for Kasimir’s contract, Bree suddenly knew.
She couldn’t let him sign it. She couldn’t betray him.
She
couldn’t.
With a choked gasp, Bree flung herself across his study and blocked him the only way she knew how. Shoving his chair back, she threw her leg over him, straddling him, separating him physically from his desk. Tangling her hands in his hair, pressing her body against his, she leaned forward and kissed him.
At first he froze. For one dreadful instant she thought he would push her away. Then a sound like a low sigh came from the back of his throat, and his powerful arms wrapped around her. His lips melted roughly against hers.
The pen in his hand dropped to the floor. The pile of papers on his desk was forgotten.
Holding her against his chest, Vladimir rose and, in a savage movement, swept the papers off his desk. Pressing her back against the polished oak, he looked down at her with eyes so full of emotion that her heart caught in her throat.
“Now, Bree,” he said hoarsely, as he lowered his mouth to hers. “I need you now.”
CHAPTER TEN
V
LADIMIR
had never
felt such fire.
Bree had never initiated lovemaking before. The heat of her passion, in contrast to her earlier ice, burned through his body, incinerating his soul. Moments before, he’d felt dark and angry, rebuffed in all his efforts to show he cared, to make her birthday special, and to compensate for those three little words he could not say.
But now, as they desperately ripped off each other’s clothes on his desk, as they kissed and suckled and licked, he felt her soft body move and sway beneath him, pulling him deeper, deeper. And suddenly those same unthinkable, forbidden three words rose in his heart, like sunlight bursting through a dark cloud.
Could he...? Did he...?
Bree moved, rolling him beneath her on the desk. Her silken thighs wrapped around his hips. He looked up at her expressive face, at her breasts swaying like music. A glowing sunset through the study’s window washed her pale shoulders red, the color of a ruby.
The color of his heart.
With a gasp, she impaled herself upon him, pulling him deep inside her. As he filled her completely, for the first time in ten years everything was clear.
He loved her.
He’d been afraid to see it. He’d tried to deny it, to ignore it. He’d buried himself in work, in sex, in dangerous sports. But he could not deny it any longer.
He loved her. The truth was he’d given her his heart long ago. When he thought she’d betrayed him, his heart had simply frozen, like an arctic sea. But from the moment he’d seen her again, across the poker table at the Hale Ka’nani, his heart had begun to thaw. Feeling the sting of her cold rejection today had taught him that he still felt pain. He still had a beating heart.
A heart that loved her.
Whatever the cost. Whatever the risk.
His love for her was absolute. He could not change it.
He wanted to go back in time and be the generous, trusting man he’d once been. He wanted to be the man who deserved Breanna Dalton.
When she gasped with pleasure, he tilted back his head and the first hoarse cry escaped his throat. Their joy built together, until he could no longer tell where his voice ended and hers began.
With a final cry, she collapsed in his arms. He held her tightly, both of them still sprawled on his desk. As he stroked her naked back, his heart pounded in his chest. He wanted to blurt out the words. But words were cheap. He would show her, the only way he knew how. He would do what terrified him most.
“I’m letting you go, Breanna,” he said quietly. “I’m setting you free.”
For a moment, he thought she hadn’t heard. Then she lifted her head to look into his eyes. He’d thought she would be happy. Instead, she looked stricken, almost gutted.
Vladimir frowned.
“Don’t you understand?” Reaching up, he caressed her cheek, tucking wild tendrils of sweaty blond hair behind her ear. “You’re no longer my property. You’re free.”
“Why?” she choked out. “Why now?”
He smiled despite the lump in his throat. “Because...” Cupping her face with both his hands, he looked straight into her eyes. “I’m in love with you, Breanna.”
Pulling back, she gasped, as if his words had caused her mortal injury.
He sat up on the desk beside her. “It took me ten years to realize what I should have admitted to myself long ago. I never stopped loving you. And I never will.”
Blinking fast, she looked away.
“But what if I don’t deserve your love?” she whispered. “What if I’ve done things that...”
“It doesn’t matter.” Gently, he turned her to face him. “Somehow, in spite of all my flaws, you decided to love me. I was too much of a coward to do the same.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed her skin fervently, then looked at her with tears in his eyes. “Until now.”
She sucked in her breath.
“Whatever you do,” he said quietly, searching her gaze, “for the rest of your life, I will love you. For the rest of mine.”
Bree started to speak, then shook her head as silent tears spilled down her cheeks.
Was she so amazed, then, that he could return her love? The thought of that shamed him, reminding him how selfish he’d been. Pulling her back into his arms, he held her. When she claimed she was too tired to eat dinner, he took her to bed. He held her through the night as she cried herself to sleep. He didn’t understand her tears. But as Vladimir stroked her hair and naked back, he vowed that he would never give her any reason to cry again. Ever.
His heart was irrevocably hers. But she was free.
Would she choose to stay with him? Or would she go?
Shortly before midnight, when Breanna finally slept, Vladimir realized he had to prepare for the worst. Pulling on a robe, he quietly left their bedroom and went downstairs to his office. Turning on his computer by habit, he looked for his cell phone. He’d order the jet to be available in the morning, to take her wherever she wanted to go. Then he prayed he could convince her to stay....
His foot slid on the mess of papers scattered across the floor. In the dim glow of light from the computer screen, the first words on the page of a contract he’d never noticed before caught his eye. Bending over, he picked it up.
I hereby renounce all shares in Xendzov Mining OAO...
His heart stopped in his chest. Hand shaking, he turned on a lamp, thrusting the paper beneath the light.
...giving them freely and in perpetuity to my brother, Kasimir.
He read it again. Then again.
This contract had been slyly slipped into the pile of papers on his desk. And with sickening certainty Vladimir knew how it had gotten there. Only one person could have done it.
He closed his eyes. When he’d first seen Bree in Hawaii, he’d assumed she was there to con someone. Later he’d convinced himself that meeting her at that poker game had been wild, pure coincidence. Even when he’d discovered from Greg Hudson that Kasimir had deliberately tried to plot that meeting, he’d convinced himself that Breanna, at least, was innocent.
Exhaling, he crushed the paper against his chest.
But his first instincts had been right all along. She’d been in Honolulu for a con. And just like ten years ago, Vladimir had been her mark.
As he opened his eyes, the dark shadows of his study were bleak. All color had been drained from the world, leaving only gray.
Bree and his brother had to be working together. After Vladimir had started attending private poker games in Honolulu, while recuperating from his racing accident, Kasimir had arranged for Bree to get a job there. His brother must have known all along that she was the poison Vladimir could not resist. The poker game, the wager, the whole affair had been a setup from start to finish.
All so that Bree could infiltrate his house and infiltrate his soul.
All so that Vladimir would sign this document.
His hands shook as he looked down at the contract.
His brother had baited his hook well. And so had she.
Bree had tricked him, the same way she’d done ten years ago. And Vladimir was so stupid that instead of being on his guard, he’d been fooled even worse than before. He thought of how he’d tried to please her, giving her his great-grandmother’s peridot, buying her a puppy, buying her a hotel, and worst of all, declaring his love—when all the time, all he was to her...was a job.
He leaned back wearily in his desk chair. Just hours before, the purpose and meaning of his life had seemed so clear. So bright and full of promise. He’d felt young again, young and fearless. For that one shining moment, he’d been exactly the man he’d always wanted to be.
Rising to his feet, Vladimir poured himself a glass of vodka over ice. Going to the window, he swirled the tumbler, watching the prisms of the ice gleam in the scattered moonlight.
He could still destroy her.
Destroy Breanna?
The thought made him choke out a low sob and claw back his hair.
Was there any way he could be wrong? Any way she could be innocent?
All the evidence pointed against her. It was obvious she was guilty. He looked down at the contract on his desk.
But should he believe the proof of his eyes?
Or the proof of his heart?
Standing alone in the shadows of his study, Vladimir drank the vodka in one gulp and put the glass down softly on a table.
Loving her had brought him to life again. Going back to the window, he opened it and leaned against the sill. He took a deep breath of the cold air, smelling the frozen sea, hearing the plaintive cry of distant, unseen birds. Midnight in Russia, in January, was frozen and white, gray and dead.
But still, he knew spring would come.
He took another deep breath. Everything had changed for him. And yet nothing had.
He loved her. And he always would.
Vladimir looked back down at the unsigned contract. In a sudden movement, he leaned over the polished wood of his desk where, hours ago, he’d made love to her, the woman he loved. Where he’d looked into her beautiful face and told her his love for her would last forever.
Slowly he reached for an expensive ballpoint pen. He looked down, reading for the tenth time the contract that would forever give his billion-dollar company to his brother.
And then, with a jagged scrawl, Vladimir signed his name.
* * *
The warm sunlight on Bree’s face woke her from a vivid dream. She’d been standing with Vladimir on a beach in Hawaii, the surf rushing against their bare feet, the warm wind filled with the scent of flowers as they spoke their wedding vows.
Vladimir’s eyes looked blue as the sea.
I, Vladimir, take you, Breanna, to be my wife....
Smiling to herself, still drowsing, Bree reached out her arm. But his side of the bed was empty.
With a gasp, she sat up.
Last night, she’d thrown herself at Vladimir because she’d been physically unable to let him sign away his company to his brother. But she still didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t betray him. Or her sister.
I’m in love with you, Breanna. I never stopped loving you. And I never will.
She trembled, blinking back tears.
He loved her.
But even before he’d spoken the words, she should have known. He’d shown her his love a hundred times over, with each gift more precious than the last. Bree looked down at Snowy, curled up in a ball at the foot of her bed. Vladimir dreamed bigger things for her than she dared dream for herself, buying her a Hawaiian resort to support her dream of running a small bed-and-breakfast. And last night, he’d set her free. He’d sacrificed his own needs for hers.
Bree took a deep breath, setting her jaw.
She was going to tell him everything.
Pulling on a T-shirt and jeans, she went downstairs, her whole body shaking with fear. She tried not to think of Josie, or the risk she was taking. When Bree told him her sister was in danger, he wouldn’t coldly reply that Josie should face the consequences of her own actions. Would he? He would help Bree save her.
But if he didn’t...
Oh, God. She couldn’t even think of it.
Going down the hallway, she looked in his office. It was empty. Her cheeks grew hot as she saw the desk where they’d made love so passionately last night. Then she stiffened. With an intake of breath, she rushed into the room and rifled quickly through the documents now stacked neatly on his desk, intending to destroy the contract before Vladimir ever saw it.
Then she gasped. Lifting the page, she stared at his scrawled signature.
He’d done it.
He must have had no idea what he was signing. But he’d transferred his company to his younger brother.
Bree closed her eyes, holding the paper to her chest. Why had he finally decided to love her now, of all times? It had taken Vladimir ten years to trust her again. It would take a single act for her to wipe that trust off the earth forever.
But what if this was a sign? What if this was the universe telling her what to do?
Midnight tonight was the deadline to save her sister, and Bree held in her hands the golden ticket. And unlike Vladimir’s mercy, it was guaranteed. She could exchange it for Josie, then return to Russia and beg for Vladimir’s forgiveness. After all, if anyone was going to be thrown on his mercy, shouldn’t it be Bree herself, not her helpless younger sister?
Even if I give Kasimir this contract, it’ll never stand in any court,
she told herself. Vladimir was powerful, well connected. He would be fine.
Even if he had enemies aplenty who would rejoice to see his downfall....
I’m in love with you, Breanna.
She whimpered as she remembered the dark midnight of Vladimir’s eyes, the hoarse rasp of his voice.
I never stopped loving you.
With a choked sob, she ran upstairs. Not letting herself look at the mussed-up sheets of the bed where he’d held her last night as she wept, she packed up her duffel bag, tucking the paper beneath her passport.
“Are you leaving?”
Looking up with an intake of breath, she saw Vladimir in the doorway, wearing a black button-down shirt and black trousers. His face was half-hidden in the shadow.
She swallowed. “Yes.” She turned away. “You set me free. So I’m going.”
Forgive me. I can’t take the chance.
He exhaled, and came closer. When she clearly saw his face, she nearly staggered back, shocked at the luminous pain in his eyes. Then she blinked, and it was gone.
“I have a plane waiting to take you wherever you want to go,” he said.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“You knew I would leave?”
“Yes.” Lifting his gaze to hers, he whispered, “But I hoped you wouldn’t. I hoped you could—love me—enough.”
Her heart was slamming against her chest. She wanted to sob, to throw her arms around him, to pull out the contract and rip it up in front of his eyes. “Perhaps I’ll come back.”
“Perhaps,” he said, but his lips twisted. “And Snowy? Are you leaving her behind?”
“Of course not,” Bree said, shocked. “I wouldn’t abandon her!”