‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m taking you home with me. I’m not leaving you here alone.’
‘I’m used to being alone,’ Abbey argued.
‘So am I. It doesn’t mean we have to like it,’ Nikolai quipped, hauling open the door again and guiding her out towards the lift.
‘I look a total mess and I am not sleeping with you again—’
‘You’re so forward,’ Nikolai breathed. ‘At least wait until you’re asked.’
She almost laughed, and then she remembered Jeffrey again and the urge evaporated, for life as she knew it was over. She no longer had the comfort and security of looking back and wrapping herself in her fond memories of Jeffrey’s love. ‘I was always second best to Jeffrey,’ she whispered. ‘According to what his sister told me, he only settled for me because Jane wouldn’t leave her husband. Everything I thought I knew about him was wrong. He even invited her to our wedding with her husband. He always talked as if he was so moral and there he was carrying on with someone else’s wife and cheating on me throughout our engagement!’
‘You’re as close to being someone else’s wife as I’ve ever got,’ Nikolai remarked wryly. ‘Stop torturing yourself. That affair and your marriage all ended a long time ago.’
‘But I believed that he loved me.’ Until that moment, Abbey had not appreciated just how good that belief had made her feel about herself. ‘That meant so much to me. I was a lanky beanpole at school—none of the boys were interested—’
‘They’d be kicking themselves if they saw you now,’ Nikolai told her, pressing her head into his shoulder in a protective move when he saw the paparazzi on the pavement outside, a sharp jerk of his head telling his bodyguards to be as aggressive as they liked in shielding them from the cameras.
‘I bet you were one of the popular ones at school,’ Abbey commented when they had got through the crush and were safe inside his limo.
Nikolai was pouring drinks from the well-stocked bar. He handed her a shot glass of perfectly chilled vodka. ‘No. My father was a crooked loan shark despised by most people. My grandfather was ashamed of him and so was I,’ he admitted, only to wonder why he was telling her something that until that moment he had not even admitted to himself. His little nasty weasel of a parent had been a chronic embarrassment to him while he was growing up.
Abbey knocked back the vodka and then almost choked as it burned a liquid passage of icy fire down her throat and brought tears to her eyes. ‘My word!’ she spluttered as he banged her between the shoulder blades so that she could breathe again.
‘Full marks for not sipping, but you didn’t even give me time to make a traditional toast.’
Abbey was still thinking about what he had said. ‘Why were you closer to your grandfather?’
‘I lived with him until he died when I was nine years old. My father wanted nothing to do with me.’
‘Why?’ Abbey fixed expectant eyes on his lean dark face, her curiosity raised to a height.
‘He was already married with three children when he got my mother pregnant. My grandfather took me in and raised me against my father’s wishes. I think my grandfather saw it as a second chance to be a father.’
‘My mother died of a heart attack a day after I was born,’ Abbey confided, accepting a refill and holding it high to say. ‘To a new and better understanding between us! My father never warmed to me after my mother died. He hadn’t the slightest interest in me or my achievements. I was surplus. My brother was important to him because he was a boy—’
‘That may be why you married an older man.’
‘Nothing’s that simple. I fell in love with Jeffrey.’
‘But now you’re going to get over that,’ Nikolai intoned with cool conviction.
Shivering in the cool night air, Abbey allowed Nikolai to assist her out of the limousine and wrap her in his dinner jacket. His unexpected gallantry made her smile while his protectiveness surprised and pleased her. ‘Thank you.’ A car screeched to a halt a few feet away, doors flying open noisily as more men with cameras leapt out. ‘Why are they still following us?’
‘Press hounds have an infallible nose for a drama.’
The two shots of vodka she had had in the car made Abbey feel rather dizzy in the lift. She knew she shouldn’t be with Nikolai. If ever there was a case of leaping from the frying pan straight into the fire, this had to be it, she conceded ruefully. But she was amazed that he wanted to be with her when she was in such a mood and she was equally keen not to be left alone with her depressing thoughts.