Innocent in the Ivory Tower

Maisy stood up, her eyes never leaving his.

‘No,’ she repeated.

He actually looked panicked. Cool, oh-so-sure-of-himself Alexei Ranaevsky looked panicked. She stepped towards him and he backed up as if she was armed and dangerous. Maisy stopped.

‘Ivanka told me about the orphanage.’

Something flickered behind those magnetic eyes, then closed down and Maisy found herself looking into obsidian. She swallowed, watching Alexei’s familiar features harden with every passing second, his cheekbones more pronounced, his Tartar heritage never more obvious as his eyes narrowed on her.

‘Ivanka had no business doing that.’ His voice was hard.

‘Maybe not, but you’d never have told me. Alexei, you were seven years old!’

He didn’t even flinch.

She couldn’t bear the bleakness in his eyes.

‘What’s the significance of today?’

He continued to look through her and Maisy felt her resolve slipping. But she had to try. Knowing even as she closed the distance between them and slid her arms around his waist that he would push her away, she did it anyway, feeling him stiffen in her arms.

But he didn’t push her away. He didn’t shift an inch. She tightened her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest. She could feel his heart beating. Thudding.

‘May seventeenth is my birthday.’

A simple statement, but one Maisy felt soul-deep. This was what he did for his birthday. This was how he celebrated. Nobody even knew.

‘I wish you’d told me,’ was finally all she could think to say.

‘It’s just another day, Maisy.’

‘But it brings back the past for you.’

It was the wrong thing to say. He took her by the elbows, physically setting her back from him.

‘Listen, I know you mean well, dushka, but I don’t need this.’

‘This? Confiding in me?’

‘Sympathy.’ He gave her a crooked smile. ‘I’m a big boy, Maisy.’

Yes, the little boy she wanted to comfort was all grown up. This was the result.

‘Your sympathy is misplaced,’ he said with finality. Then he turned away. ‘I’ll have some clothes sent down to you.’

‘I’m not offering you sympathy,’ she asserted shakily. ‘Don’t go like this, Alexei. Why won’t you let me in?’

But part of her already knew why. She had never really been part of his inner circle to begin with.

‘Maisy—’ His big shoulders dropped and he swung around, a familiar rueful smile tugging at his mouth as if he was finding it difficult to be assertive with her.

It was then she recognised something that had been staring her in the face for a long time now if only she’d had the eyes to see it. She was the only person he did this for. Waited, listened, smiled. With everyone else it was clipped or cool or übersophisticated. The facade. With her he was like this … gentler, more human. She conjured up the Alexei she had first come up against in Lantern Square, hard as nails, taking no prisoners. Certainly not listening to her.

Well, he listened to her now. He’d been listening to her for weeks. She just hadn’t been asking the right questions.

‘Sometimes I feel I know next to nothing about you,’ she admitted. ‘Those men, Valery and Stiva, they’re your family, aren’t they? You must love them very much. And Leo—you must miss him.’ She swallowed hard, took a deep breath and plunged in. ‘But I’m here.’ She paused to let that sink into his thick skull, then tunnelled on. ‘I met Tara Mills this afternoon. I had this silly idea all your ex-girlfriends were perfect goddesses, but Tara was just … cold and angry. Boy, is she angry with you.’

‘I didn’t invite her, Maisy. She came with Dimitri Kouris.’

Alexei inserted this so fast Maisy almost smiled, and then reassured him she wasn’t going to break into a jealous tirade.

In the end she shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter either way.’ And saying it made it so. ‘But it made me think you couldn’t have been happy with her, and you’ve seemed happy with me until today.’

‘I am happy, Maisy.’ He sounded so sincere, but he didn’t make a move to touch her and his actions spoke louder than words.

She put her head to one side, studying him. ‘You look about as happy as I feel, and that’s saying something. You’re an amazing man, Alexei Ranaevsky. I don’t think I’ve stopped long enough to smell the coffee on that one. To have come to where you are, when someone like me wouldn’t have had the resilience to even survive, it makes you pretty special.’

‘So now I’m your hero?’