Untouched by His Diamonds

She lay there for a long time, until by his deep even breathing she was sure he was asleep. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, but it felt much later to Clementine. It felt like an endless day that was never going to be over.

She had faced up to this when she was a seventeen-year-old girl, knowing the only way free of the emotions tearing her apart was to go out into the world on her own and make a new life.

She was a twenty-six-year-old woman now, and it should be easier. Except it wasn’t. The pain was tearing her up like the claws of a wild animal and she couldn’t stop it. And the longer she lay here in this bed the harder it was going to be to get up and force herself to go.

Extricating herself as carefully as possible, she silently dressed, packed her suitcase with her old clothes, and sat down to write Serge a note on hotel stationery.

She didn’t know what to say and in the end she simply wrote her name—Clementine. One name to add to his many. She put the note on the bedside table, pinned it down with the red jewellery case, and took a last look at his sleeping form. His beautiful male face looked so peaceful—as if he’d let go of something that had been hurting him and now all she saw was a kind of relief.

One day I will feel that way too, she told herself.

‘I will get over you Serge Marinov,’ she whispered.

But the force of her emotions threatened to overwhelm her again, because something told her she never would. Not completely.

She had to protect herself. It was time to go.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE bright lights in the main terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport seared Clementine’s sensitive vision, and she made a stop at a chemist and bought a pair of cheap sunglasses, an eye-pack for the flight and some aspirin.

As she crossed the concourse she found herself looking around for him. As she queued, as she waited, even as she went through Security she kept half expecting to hear that dark Russian voice, to turn around and tangle in his eyes again. But what good would it do anyway? He didn’t love her. He wasn’t going to love her. The past weeks had been a fantasy. She had been right in that little shop when she had first seen him—a Cossack out of a historical epic. Ridiculous, hopelessly romantic, it didn’t stand up to the light of day. He wasn’t going to chase her. Not any more.

It was truly over. It was time to get on with her life.

As she bumped along the aisle to her seat in cattle class her thoughts flashed back to the private jet, and it brought home to her just how unreal her time with Serge had been.

In less than two hours she would be on her adopted home soil and life would begin again—more or less as it had been when she’d left months before. She remembered how she had felt back in St Petersburg when she’d thought she had lost him, the little lecture she had given herself about putting her experience with Joe Carnegie behind her once and for all, getting on with her life in a proactive fashion.

But now she was finding it hard to picture her flat, had forgotten Joe Carnegie, and couldn’t fathom how she was going to drag herself through the next few days, let alone get a grasp on her dreams and ambitions once more. Because she had allowed herself to dream with Serge and those plans now lay in ruins.

One step at a time, her weary mind acknowledged.

As her head touched the back of her seat she closed her eyes. The noise in the plane ceased to touch her as the emotional strain took its toll and she slept.

It was five o’clock in the morning when Clementine emerged from the airport with her luggage. She wondered how she was going to get a taxi—briefly considered phoning Luke until she realised the hour. People jostled her as she ground to a halt on the concourse, but she had a suitcase, a piece of hand luggage and a shoulder bag to deal with and only two arms. She fumbled in her handbag for her purse and the money for a coffee. She needed to take a breath before she gathered herself together and thought about getting home.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw her suitcase lifted and swung out of her line of vision. She gave a cry of, ‘Hey!’ before her gaze ran up six and a half feet of muscle-honed male in jeans and a jacket and a blue T-shirt she remembered that brought out the intense green of his eyes. Her shock turned to heart-stuttering confusion. Then he hauled her hand luggage under his arm and took off.

‘Serge!’

For a moment shock held her immobile as he strode off. With her belongings.

‘Serge!’ She took off after him. ‘Wait! What are you doing?’

She dodged and weaved through the wave of people coming in the other direction, but she was hardly going to lose him. He stood head and shoulders above the crowd, and he wasn’t in a hurry. It was just the length of those long, purposeful strides.