Finding it difficult to draw in enough air, Maisy began to read the paragraph below.
Has Tara met her match in Alexei Ranaevsky, Russian oligarch and all-round bad boy? If the diamonds around her neck are anything to go by, Ranaevsky is serious.
It wasn’t the silly words penned by a journalist that froze Maisy, it was the reality of Alexei’s past that threw her. Alexei had dated Tara Mills?
Calm down, she told herself, tossing the magazine aside. He was allowed to have a past. But she couldn’t help it. She picked up another and started flipping through to the social pages, and then another. Alexei was everywhere, arm around a different woman, all of them with skyscraper cheekbones, mile-long legs and the attitude to go with it. Blondes, brunettes—it didn’t seem to matter.
I’m the redhead.
He had told her about this—that his life was the subject of media scrutiny, that she would be written up, that there would be little privacy—and she hadn’t paid enough attention. Well, she was paying attention now. She was looking at the evidence of exactly why Alexei was a media darling. He was wealthy and powerful and gorgeous, and he paraded women like the sports cars she had seen lined up in the converted stables at the villa.
How on earth has this happened to me?
Not in a million years had she ever imagined this would be a lifestyle she would be stepping into. She took a good look around her. She had wondered over the cost of this spa treatment when she’d stepped from the car and been greeted by an attendant, and been impressed by the luxury surrounds—another converted villa—but had not fully appreciated how exclusive the spa might be. This was a spa with guests—virtually a hotel—and given she was the only client in the facilities she had a fair idea that personalised, discreet service for wealthy patrons was the name of the game.
Without even realising it she had landed in a fantasy. Except it wasn’t her fantasy. She didn’t want to be photographed and written about. Not that there was anything to write other than Alexei Ranaevsky slums it with naive redhead.
Maisy felt as if a huge lump had taken up residence in her throat. Even after her hair was blow-dried to glossy silk, her nails French polished and her face delicately enhanced with some colour, she looked in the mirror and all she saw was a fool.
Maisy was home.
Alexei brought his conference call to a grinding halt, leaving a shocked Carlo Santini to mop up the mess. Every sensible cell in his head was telling him to let her come to him, but every instinct was dragging him down those stairs.
He found her standing in the entrance hall, surrounded by shopping bags—a couple from boutiques he vaguely recognised, the rest clearly retail.
‘Bravo.’ He stopped on the bottom step and commenced a slow hand-clap. ‘You’ve bought out the Amalfi Coast.’
Maisy looked up, and for a moment she didn’t say a word. She just looked at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. Then a parody of a smile broke out on her pink-painted lips and she said, ‘I should be exhausted, but I’m not. I had so much fun.’
Her enthusiasm was so palpably false Alexei just waited for the punchline.
It didn’t come. She began gathering up some of her bags and Andrei, who had driven her around all day, scooped up the rest, earning one of Maisy’s sunny artless smiles. Alexei found himself crossing the floor rapidly, intervening, deciding on the spot to organise a different driver to transport Maisy around. He didn’t like the way the younger man’s eyes lingered on Maisy’s face. He’d be sprawled on the floor if that gaze moved anywhere else on her body.
Maisy preceded him up the stairs—at least her bottom hadn’t changed. Shapely, still moving like a pendulum when she walked, then charged ahead to the nursery, almost running from him.
He’d fix that.
‘I’ve shifted your room.’
Maisy slowed, turned. She looked distinctly disturbed.
‘I had no idea you were sleeping in a broom closet. I’ve put you in the room next to mine. The one I slept in last night.’
‘Oh.’ Maisy looked as if she’d wanted to say something but had thought better of it.
‘But you’ll be sleeping in my bed,’ he added.
On receipt of that little announcement Maisy clung on to her shopping bags like life rafts. What in the hell was the matter with her?
‘Is that a problem?
‘No,’ she said stiffly, ‘of course not.’
Clearly it was. ‘I didn’t think it would be.’ He didn’t mean to sound clipped, but she was already moving away from him, heels clicking. She really had the most endearing walk in heels—as if she hadn’t quite mastered them.