His Diamond of Convenience Page 7

  It had been eternal darkness. It had been hell.

  Until Colvin had lifted him out of it and shown him a better way. Sure, it was a painful road. One paved with blood and broken bones, but it was no more than he’d deserved. He couldn’t imagine a more fitting exit from his personal hell.

  Yes, there were many reasons he had purposed to live a life that was led by something other than emotion. Reasons he had buried his old self, and risen again new, clean, different. A baptism by blood and pain, in the truest sense. He’d had to be born again, to accept what he’d become so he could move on, and so he had been. He had not lied when he’d told Victoria that.

  She had forced them together and he resented that. It made it all the more important that he not indulge his desire for her because he’d been manipulated into this and he would not let her lead him around by his male anatomy in addition to everything else.

  But, with her so near, golden hair so soft, so tempting and close enough to touch again, to wrap around his finger, he wanted to indulge.

  You want to go back to that again? To having no choice? To having your hand forced?

  His stomach tightened hard as memory closed in around him.

  Overwhelming fear, blinding rage, a gunshot and a scream in the air, leaving his entire life shattered, never to be mended again.

  No, he could not pursue this.

  Control was everything, and the fact that he had forgotten that even for a moment, the fact that he had been on the verge of justifying giving in to temptation meant that he could not.

  “It’s just upstairs, Victoria. Shall we go?” he repeated, reminding himself of why they were here, what they were doing.

  She treated him to one of her tightly controlled smiles. If anything, he should use Victoria as an example of how he should behave. He should admire the fact that she didn’t break, rather than being tempted to shatter her.

  “An excellent idea, Mr. Markin. I eagerly look forward to our dinner.”

  He extended his arm, and she curled her own around it. He tried to ignore the flash of heat that rioted through him.

  But this was not settled. Nothing was inevitable. Not even this.

  He didn’t have to give in.

  “As do I.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THERE WAS NO ONE else out on the hotel balcony; there was nothing else save one table set for two, crisp linen laid over the surface. Two chairs were placed opposite each other, a low flickering candle in the center. It was designed to be the perfect romantic dinner. Too bad Victoria wanted no part of romance where Dmitri was concerned, and very much too bad that she had to play as though she did anyway. But they could not afford to break character, not even here, not even for one moment.

  Of course that meant sharing a room while they were in New Orleans, but fortunately she had been able to book them in a suite that was large enough they might as well be staying down the hall from each other. He hadn’t come up to the room during her shower, and as long as he maintained his distance she would be fine.

  This—this dinner set out here in the ever-darkening evening—for whatever reason, felt even more intimate than the shared suite. Perhaps because they were on display, which should make it seem less intimate, but given the nature of their arrangement, it did not.

  It was starting to get dark outside, the gas lamps that lined the streets of the quarter flickering on, casting an orange glow on everything beneath him. Where they sat she could hear the noise beginning to pick up on Bourbon Street just around the corner. If they rounded to the other side of the hotel they would be able to get a view of the revelers, and Victoria had to admit that part of her was curious. New Orleans had a reputation for being a city that stripped you of inhibition, and since Victoria had been firmly attached to her inhibitions since that great, final humiliation, she found she was slightly interested in what the city might look like now. Something like wanting to observe a foreign culture and gain an understanding.

  That was it. It had nothing to do with the man who was currently crossing the balcony and moving to the romantically laid out table. Nothing to do with the fact she was intrigued by what it might mean to lose her inhibitions with Dmitri.

  No, she was not considering that.

  He held her chair out for her, and she smiled in a fashion that she was certain was exceedingly gracious and sat down.

  Dmitri took his place at the table across from her. “The meal will be served soon. It’s prix fixe, so I hope there is nothing you are exceptionally unfond of.”

  “I can’t imagine anything served at a place like this wouldn’t be wonderful.”

  “The city does have a great food reputation.”

  “And I am very excited to partake of it.” She looked around at the empty balcony. “I would also like that drink.” Something to take the edge off being so near to the man.

  As if on cue, hotel waitstaff appeared, one brandishing a bottle of wine and the other with a plate of appetizers. The first employee set about pouring the wine while the second laid the plates in front of them laden with a salad with softshell crab, and set about explaining the dishes that they would be eating that evening.

  Then they both bowed out quickly, leaving Victoria alone with Dmitri again.

  “You are satisfied with how things for the event are shaping up?” Dmitri asked, lifting his glass of wine to his lips.

  Victoria wrapped her hands around her own glass, running her fingers over the smooth, cool surface. “Yes, I’m quite happy. Things are coming together much more smoothly than I could’ve anticipated. Especially given the time frame. I’m particularly surprised with how things are coming together in New York and London.”

  “Pleasantly, I hope.”

  “Very. Not only that, it appears that the press is deciding that you are changing, after all. Your commitment to me solidifying that you are indeed going in a new direction.”

  “I gather they will be terribly disappointed when our engagement ends.”

  “No, they won’t,” she said, lifting her glass. “They will be thrilled because they have something new to report on. Happiness gets stale after a while. They really don’t like that.”

  “For someone whose past has been so alarmingly free of scandal, you seem to know the inner workings of the press quite well.”

  “Because I pay attention, because I am aware that there are certain things I need to avoid. It has always been my aim and intention to keep my reputation as spotless as possible.” Which was true enough, cutting out the period in history where she hadn’t thought much of it at all. When she hadn’t thought about much of anything beyond herself.

  “I imagine having grown up in the spotlight is a different experience to having come into it later.”

  “Yes, I cultivated in awareness fairly early.” She had no illusions that she had escaped the iron fist of the press by mere luck. It was fortunate that her father had had no desire to uncover her, that Nathan, for all his sins, had simply wanted London Diva and not to humiliate her or crow about the methods by which he had won his victory.

  Though sometimes she thought that the lack of crowing, the lack of open cruelty...the pity he’d looked at her with when she’d bared her body to him...was much worse than disdain.

  She shook off the memories, the encroaching shame. None of it mattered now. That part of her didn’t matter.

  “I confess that when I was thrust into the spotlight I had very little awareness for how the media could impact my life and what I wanted to do with it. In fact, until recently I hadn’t given it much thought, because it had never prevented me from achieving an aim. I’ve never cared what people thought of me, never minded that I was seen in a negative light based on how I had come into my fortune, based on the number of women that I’m seen with. Until now.”

  “I suppose th
at has to do with several fundamental differences between the two of us.”

  “Such as?”

  She took a sip of her wine. “Well—” she set the glass back down on the table, smoothing the wrinkles of the cloth down around it “—for a start, I’m from a wealthy background. Second-generation money and all. I’m not exactly self-made.”

  “And the other difference?”

  “I’m a woman. So while your reputation might have always been bad, it was in that way people like men to be bad. It’s considered rather rakish and charming when you’re male, isn’t it?”

  “Until you want to run a charity for children. Then you’re suddenly a monster of some kind not fit for polite society.”

  “Oh no, once you get children involved they trump all. Think of the children.”

  “You are quite cynical, Victoria. For someone who has had a life as charmed as yours.”

  His words made her chest tighten. She ran her fingertips over her arm, feeling the moisture left behind by the heavy air. “I have had a privileged upbringing, I won’t deny that. But I also learned a very valuable lesson early on about human nature. Having my blinders ripped off so effectively made me look at things differently. It made me look at people and their motives differently. I have never been able to take people at face value, not since that happened.”

  “And now I’m intrigued. What exactly did happen?”

  Bugger. She thought about lying to him, and truly, she would be justified. Because it wasn’t his business, and it had nothing to do with their agreement. Nothing at all to do with their interaction, or her relationship—if you could call it that—with him. But she’d never been the type who lied well on her feet—she excelled in being blunt and straightforward, and putting people on the back foot with that method. Subterfuge wasn’t in her bag of tricks. Sadly.

  “When I was sixteen my father introduced me to a friend. A business associate of his. He was incredibly handsome, in his early thirties and I developed a massive crush on him from the first moment I laid eyes on him.”

  “This is not starting where I imagined it might,” he said, and she could see that the muscles in his body had started to tense.

  Yes, well, if he thought it was going to be difficult for him to hear, he had no idea how difficult it would be for her to say.

  “I don’t imagine it is. However, this is where it begins. I developed an instant attraction for him. It was nothing like I’d ever felt before. I had always felt like boys my age were rather silly and it had been easy to ignore them in favor of my studies. This was different.” She looked up and met Dmitri’s gaze, refusing to look down, refusing to look as ashamed as she felt. “Nathan was different. At least, I thought he was. I think he knew how I felt, too, immediately. I think, perhaps, I was terribly obvious. Either way, he found ways to get in touch with me. Excuses to drop by and discuss business with my father when my father wasn’t there. And over the course of that time we were able to talk quite a bit. I fell for him, hard. You can’t imagine how hard. I thought he loved me, and I certainly loved him. And when the line of questioning changed to my father’s business affairs I didn’t think anything of it, because he worked with my father on various projects and seemed to be his friend. And I trusted him. But I let slip some very crucial information about a new fashion line, and Nathan gave the information to a competing company. They stole our ideas out from under us, launched their products first and sent London Diva’s stocks into a spiral. From there, Nathan purchased the majority of the shares and ousted my father. Because of me. So you can see, it’s my responsibility to get it back. And you can see where I learned to start questioning the motives of others.”

  She looked back up at Dmitri’s face. The expression there could only be described as murderous. He opened his mouth as though he was about to say something when the hotel staff returned with different plates of food. They waited while their entrées were placed in front of them, and she watched Dmitri as he watched the staff leave.

  Then he turned back to face her, his dark eyes fierce. “Any man that age who takes advantage of a sixteen-year-old girl is no man.”

  She huffed. “Oh, you get no argument from me, but the fact remains I was instrumental in the loss of my family business. Nathan acted badly, but I was a fool. It’s my responsibility to rectify that mistake. And I am doing so.”

  “I don’t see how it’s your responsibility to atone for the sins of others.”

  “Because I’m the only one who cares to atone for them. You don’t see Nathan hanging around groveling, offering to return London Diva to the Calder family.”

  “Well, in part because he can’t. Because I bought it out from underneath him.”

  Victoria couldn’t conceal the smirk that curved the right-hand corner of her mouth upward. “So you did. I knew I liked something about you.”

  “It does not surprise me that you like the rather more cutthroat part of me.”

  “It shouldn’t. I admire it because I had to change after I made that mistake. I knew I had to fix the way that I saw the world and the way that I acted within it. I had always been a good daughter, and I had never done anything wrong, but it didn’t matter because I made a mistake that cost my family greatly. I might as well have been rebellious for all of my life. A couple of piercings and tattoos would’ve been a lot less costly.”

  Dmitri stretched his arm out across the table, pushing his white shirtsleeve up past his elbow, revealing the intricate tattoo on his forearm, the leather cuff that bisected it. “The right kind of tattoo is fairly costly.”

  She looked down at his arm and tried to ignore just how dry her throat had got. But there was something about the web of artistry over his tanned, muscled arm that caused a visceral reaction in her.

  Who was she kidding? There was something about him that caused a reaction in her. All of her. And all of him.

  So different in many ways from that thwarted love affair from years ago, when she’d thought to give Nathan her body because of an intense emotional longing.

  This feeling was no less longing, but it had nothing to do with emotion. And it was just as undesirable.

  “Still not as expensive as losing an entire chain of clothing stores, I fear. Then, you should know since you bought an entire chain of clothing stores.”

  “I have bought several of them,” he said, his tone light.

  “And I only care about the one.”

  “And I see why now.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Were you not curious about it before?”

  He drew his hand back and pushed his shirtsleeve back down. Then he lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “A little. But then, I figure we all have our secrets. And since I am not the sort of man who likes to share his, I don’t expect other people to, either.”

  “Except, then you asked me to.”

  “My patience has its limits,” he said, his lips curving upward into what could only be described as a deadly smile.

  Something about that smile made her stomach tighten further. Suddenly, the sound of raucous cheering broke through the tension, and Victoria breathed a sigh of relief. She really needed a break from whatever intensity was building between the two of them.

  This whole acknowledging that she found him attractive thing was supposed to alleviate the issue. Sadly, it was not.

  “I wonder what’s going on down there.”

  “Probably a hen night or bachelorette party of some kind. This is a very popular location for them.”

  “I’ve never really understood the appeal of them.”

  “Of a bachelorette party?”

  “Yes. They’re...not really the sort of thing I can see enjoying.”

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  “What? You’d like a stag party? Strippers and booze and lots of people standing ar
ound leering?”

  He chuckled. “No. I like strippers just fine, but a private room is more my style.”

  She didn’t know why, but the idea that he enjoyed strippers disappointed her. It shouldn’t, because she shouldn’t be surprised and she shouldn’t care at all. But she did.

  “Well. That’s something at least,” she said.

  “Oh, Victoria, you need to learn to let out a breath,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his arm slung indolently over the back, his leg stretched beside the table, rather than being shoved beneath.

  “What does that mean? That I’m uptight? If you have a question as to why, I refer you to the personal tête-á-tête we had only moments ago.”

  “One mistake and you have to change who you are forever?”

  “One life-altering mistake that ruined things for my family. That destroyed the relationship I had with my father and lost him the respect of his peers.”

  “Do you suppose Nathan changed because of you?”

  The question hit her in the face like a cold, wet rag. “No,” she said, feeling her insides constrict, tightening into a ball. “I don’t suppose he did. Well, his life changed on some score since he obviously got a chain he was very invested in acquiring so I changed his...life for the best. Oh, that utter bastard.”

  “Time does not heal every wound.”

  “No,” she said, her tone fierce. “I’m hoping an engagement arrangement resulting in my getting London Diva back will cure my more serious wounds, though.”

  “It’s a good plan.”

  The servers returned and whisked their plates away, replacing them with the very famous beignets, topped with a mountain of powdered sugar and served with café au lait.