With This Ring

I didn’t recognize the jet but what I did recognize was Nikita, my father’s secretary of fifteen years. She greeted me with her gorgeously fruity voice. I embraced her. It had been too long.

“Doing okay love?” she asked, her blonde curls bobbing around her cheeks.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Dad wants to ruin it, though.”

She laughed out loud and it was contagious and I joined her.

After a while I settled into a truly wonderful menu of steaming cabbage soup and beef stroganoff that my father’s cook used to cook from the time of my childhood. I had to admit her food still tasted the best. With my stomach full, I dozed off for the remaining eight-and-a-half hours until we landed in Moscow.

For the sake of caution, my father always sent me what I could recognize truly came from him, be it a person like Nikita, or his familiar Soviet limo Gaz-13 with his special number plate that was waiting for me a little distance away from the plane. I got in and didn’t recognize the driver or the guard in front but I did instantly recognize my father’s scent of Ghurka Black dragon cigars.

When I was a young girl I could remember wishing he would stop smoking because I was worried about what something that smelt that foul would do internally to him. How silly I was. I should have worried about what he could do to the poor cigars.

When we arrived at the house, I got out and took in the white mansion I had called home for most of my life. Now my home was a cramped two-bedroom in a neighborhood that Britney called the ass end of the big apple. Nevertheless, I knew which one I preferred.

I was greeted by Elena, my father’s housekeeper. She was a good woman and I had great affection for her, but she only nodded formally. After rejecting her offer of a meal or a drink I headed straight up the golden balustrade and red-carpeted flight of stairs to my room. I crossed the massive gilded space and jumped into my old king size bed with its silk sheets and goose down pillows. Compared to the bed I had in my apartment it was like falling into clouds.

I was asleep in minutes.

Chapter Nineteen

Freya

I came awake to the sense of a presence by my side. It was my father and he was seated comfortably on my bed as he watched me sleep.

“Papa,” I mumbled sleepily.

He chuckled affectionately. “Why did you not eat?” he asked in Russian.

“I wasn’t hungry. I had a massive meal on the plane,” I replied.

He placed a palm against my cheek. I didn’t move. This hand that could caress so gently could just as easily slap so hard I would feel the vibration in the bones of my neck. This time his fingers moved to caress. At that moment I felt an old tug in my heart. This was my father. All said and done he had fed, clothed, sheltered, and protected me for most of my life. I felt sad at the reminder of his insistence that I marry Maxim. That was the only thing right now that threatened to pull us apart. I looked into his eyes. If I was ever going to reason with him now was the moment.

But as if he understood what I was about to say, he placed a kiss on my forehead and rose to his feet. “We are going out to dinner. Put on a dress and maybe,” he leaned forward and brushed his fingers through my crazy hair, “tie your hair back? There are four new dresses for you to try.”

I nodded dumbly and looked past him to the coffee table in my lounge area. There were four large boxes tied with peach ribbons awaiting me.

“Take your pick tonight and keep the rest,” he threw over his shoulder as he exited my room.

I unboxed the dresses, at first without interest, but they were so extraordinarily beautiful I couldn’t help but be seduced by how gorgeous they all were. I chose a white silk dress with spaghetti straps and a slit that shot all the way to the middle of my thighs. It was one of those dresses that was so simple and classic you knew the moment you saw it, it must have cost the earth itself. A stylist would have recommended peach or apricot lipstick, but I went for bold red. I pulled my hair back into a high ponytail on my head and finished off the look with an emerald choker that had been my mother’s. Then I closed my safe, and quickly slipped into a pair of white strappy sandals.

As I came down the stairs I knew I looked the part, but when I saw Elena’s eyes widen with surprise, I realized I must look better than what I thought.