Innocent in the Ivory Tower

He swore under his breath, those blue eyes narrowing suspiciously on her. ‘Why in the hell didn’t you say so earlier?’

‘I wasn’t sure what was going on.’

It sounded lame even as she said it. She couldn’t very well say, You put your arms around me and I felt your body and I got thoroughly distracted, and then I saw your face and you reduced me to a puddle of wanting woman. Because she darn well knew it probably happened to him every other day.

Maisy moistened her lips, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet four inches. ‘I want you to hold on and explain to me exactly what you intend doing.’ Her voice sounded high and breathless, and unlikely to get her a response from this hard man.

He didn’t look ready to explain. He looked as if he wanted to shake her. He looked as if he couldn’t believe he was having this—any—conversation with her. A child’s wail broke the stalemate.

‘Konstantine.’

‘Kostya.’

They both spoke at once. Maisy dared him with her eyes to push her aside and he hesitated, clearly not wanting to let her pass but less sure about how gung-ho he should be with a two-year-old infant.

Maisy seized the opportunity and went first, but she could sense him close behind her all the way. She hesitated at the nursery door, then swung around and almost bumped her nose on his hard chest. His big body tensed and she cringed. She had to stop touching him. He’d think there was something wrong with her. Yet already a reactive shiver of response was running the length of her body and she instinctively took a step back.

‘Listen,’ she said, groping for composure. ‘You will stay out here. He’ll only be frightened if he sees a strange man.’

He inclined his head. ‘I will wait.’

Maisy ducked into the room, dimly lit by a night lamp near the cot. Kostya was standing in the middle of the mattress, face red and wet as his cries died away on a last wail when he saw what he wanted. Maisy. His chubby arms extended trustfully towards her and Maisy closed the distance between them in an instant.

‘Maisy!’ he enunciated clearly.

She struggled with lifting him. He was big for his age, and in another year she would have difficulty carrying him in her arms. She felt for the armchair behind her and slid into it, cradling the warm little body in her arms.

Alexei stood watching them. He hadn’t expected to be moved in any way by the sight of the child in a woman’s arms. She seemed at ease in a way he knew he could never be with such a small child. He supposed it came naturally for some women, being maternal; it had certainly not been a natural function of any of the women he knew. In fact he struggled, now he thought about it, to come up with any woman he’d been with who was comfortable around children.

Which was something he had in common with them. He definitely had no interest in his friends’ kids. He’d been godfather to Konstantine for two years and seen the child once: on the day he’d stood up for him in the Russian Orthodox Church here in London.

‘I didn’t know he would be so … small,’ Alexei said quietly, not wanting to startle the child.

Maisy smoothed her hand over the back of Kostya’s restive head as the little boy peered around to see where the male voice had come from. It was a voice that sounded somewhat like his father’s, Maisy registered. A shade deeper, but with the irregular emphasis on vowels that revealed English was a second language for him.

‘Papa,’ he said uncertainly, in his clear, high child’s voice.

‘No, it’s not Papa,’ Maisy said softly, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

He came slowly towards them and dropped down beside the chair, so that his height and bulk were no longer frightening, and said in a grave voice, ‘Hello, Kostya. I am your godfather, Alexei Ranaevsky.’

Some of the tension Maisy was holding in her body shifted and melted with those words. Kostya’s godfather. Why hadn’t she remembered? The day of Kostya’s christening she had been in bed with a fever, but the au pair girl had brought back a gushing description of the übercool Alexei Ranaevsky, and here he was—in the flesh.

He lifted those megawatt blue eyes to her and said quietly, ‘You will get him back to sleep and I will wait for you outside.’

The velvet of his voice brushed over her. Maisy recognised his words as a directive and wondered if Alexei Ranaevsky ever asked permission for anything.

When she emerged the house felt empty again. The security detail had evaporated, although Maisy doubted they were far away. She stood at the top of the stairwell, listening for movement.

‘Here,’ came a deep voice from across the landing.