Then she swung away and headed inside. She’d had her say. At last. Whatever happened next was up to him.
It occurred to her that his friends had probably heard a great deal of what had been said—especially the last part where she’d been shouting—but suddenly she didn’t care. She felt almost light-headed with emotion. If strangers thought she was a fool, what did it matter? She was fighting for the life and the man she wanted, and she refused to be ashamed of that.
She accepted a glass of iced tea from Valery as she sat down, who murmured, close to her ear, ‘We’re rooting for you, Maisy, and by the way I love the dress.’
Maisy went red to the roots of her hair, but the adrenaline enabled her to smile and shrug.
‘Valery, stop flirting with Maisy,’ said Ivanka mildly.
Alexei had come into the room looking like thunder, hands hooked into his pockets. He stood at the end of the sofa, staring at her.
Maisy shrugged off his jacket and threw it at him.
Stiva clapped his hands and dropped into the chair opposite Maisy. ‘Now, this I’ve gotta see.’
‘You’re toast,’ said Valery, handing Alexei a glass of brandy.
Alexei ignored it. ‘Maisy, upstairs—now.’
‘No.’ She crossed her legs and concentrated on her drink. She could literally feel Alexei breathing. ‘But if you’re the—what was it?—class-A bastard you claim to be why don’t you just drag me out of here by my hair?’ She blinked innocently up at him, her fingernails scoring her palms.
She heard Stefania’s sharp intake of breath, and then the solid warmth of Ivanka’s leg and hip as she slid onto the sofa close up beside her. She remembered her assurance—’I’ve got your back’—on Firebird, and wanted to tell her it was fine. Alexei wasn’t about to do anything so primitive. Except she really didn’t know.
And the not knowing sped up her heart.
Alexei towered over her, laser-blue eyes fixed on her alone.
‘You really want to have this out here and now?’
There was a warning in his eyes even as his voice remained cool, direct. Public voice, private eyes.
She flashed back to that morning when he had towered over her as she’d sat on the terrace, Kostya in her arms. Literally crushing her heart with his careless assertion about other women.
Except it hadn’t been careless. He had used it as a weapon to keep her at a distance and more importantly, it hadn’t been true.
Was he lying to her now? Was he doing it to push her away?
‘Alexei thinks I’m too good for him,’ she said out loud.
‘Yeah, because you are,’ said Stiva jovially.
‘Stiva!’ Ivanka glowered at him.
‘He tried to make me his mistress, but I’m not. I’m his girlfriend. Not that he’s ever even brought me a bunch of flowers.’
‘Or bling,’ put in Stefania.
‘I don’t mind about the jewellery. I told him I didn’t want any. I didn’t say anything about flowers, though.’
Maisy was talking to her glass. She knew in revealing what was between them before others she was taking a chance with this most private and closely guarded of men. These people were his family, but that probably made it worse. Yet what choice was he giving her? And what had she to lose? She needed to push him. For him to see he was surrounded by people who loved him. She loved him. She wanted him to love her.
‘A single rose from the garden would have done, or maybe some wildflowers from the roadside—’ She broke off as her glass was snatched from her and then big familiar hands closed around her waist.
He plucked her from the sofa and she wound her arms around his neck and let him carry her, as docile as she had been that morning when he had come to seduce her.
‘Like I said,’ Valery commented dryly, ‘toast.’
Maisy threw an anxious look at Alexei’s face so close to her own. He wasn’t angry. He was determined, but it wasn’t anger he was radiating—it was something else. Something that made her instinctively cling to him.
‘Where are we going?’ she demanded, although it was clear he was taking her upstairs.
‘Why can’t we have fights like that?’ Stefania’s high voice floated after them.
Maisy suspected she was about to be ravished on that big bed upstairs and little else. A miracle would have to take place to get Alexei to talk, and she was just about out of pulling miracles from her sleeve.
Maria appeared at the top of the stairs and Maisy struggled to be put down, but Alexei held fast.
‘I have bad news for you, Alexei,’ she said simply. ‘The bambino wants his mamma.’
Alexei paused on the threshold of the nursery, expecting a difficult struggle to calm Kostya down. It was going to take many months to convince a child of this age his parents weren’t coming back. He’d been through it all with the psychologist.