Then he’d known that it would all soon end.
So let it end, he thought grimly. After returning to Marrakech, and a stop for the necessary travel documents, he’d taken Josie to Russia in his private jet, to this small remote dacha—a luxurious cabin in the forest outside St. Petersburg.
He’d been cold to her. He’d done what needed to be done. He was hanging on to his control by a thread. He knew what she wanted. He couldn’t give in.
He could not let himself care for Josie. He couldn’t listen to her alluring whispers about a different future. She made him feel things he did not want to feel. Uncertain. Raw. With a heart full of longing for a world that did not, could not exist.
It was time to face reality.
Tonight. New Year’s Eve. He would wait until he could speak to Bree Dalton alone, at the exclusive luxury ball at the Tsarina’s palace. He would give her his blackmail ultimatum. Now. Before Josie convinced his heart to turn completely soft.
He exhaled.
And once he’d done it...he would tell Josie the truth about who he was. The kind of man who felt nothing, who got what he wanted at any cost. For once and for all, he would wipe that look of adoration off her face. Because he would not, could not give up his plans for revenge. Or keep Josie from finding out about it. For their time together in the Sahara, he’d been happy, truly happy. But it was all about to end.
So let it end. Now. Before the corrosive happiness of caring for Josie, and knowing she’d soon leave, burned his soul straight to ash.
“Kasimir?” Her sweet voice spoke behind him. “Who were you talking to on the phone?”
He whirled around to face her in the dacha’s dark study. The decor was very masculine. But then, he’d borrowed this country house from an old acquaintance, Prince Maksim Rostov, who was spending the week of New Year’s in California with his wife, Grace, and their two young children.
Kasimir cleared his throat. He kept his voice as cold as he could. “No one that concerns you.”
Josie’s beautiful eyes filled with hurt. “I thought, now we were in Russia, maybe we could talk....”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” He told himself he was doing her a favor. This small hurt would be nothing compared to how she’d feel when she discovered he’d kept her prisoner all this time to blackmail her sister.
Let her learn the truth of his dark heart by degrees.
He had to let her go.
He had to push her away.
Now. Before she made him surrender his very soul.
Kasimir straightened the black tie of his tuxedo. “I have to go.”
Her brown eyes were deep with unspoken longing. “Go where?”
“Out,” he said shortly.
She bit her lip. “In a tuxedo...?”
“Bree and Vladimir will be at the most exclusive New Year’s Eve ball in the city. I’m going to go have a little chat.” He stopped, then kissed her briefly, not on her lips, but on her forehead. He gave her a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Your sister will be surprised to hear we’re married.”
“Take me with you,” she said.
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“I need to explain to her why I married you.” She swallowed. “She’ll be so disappointed in me, that I did it to break my father’s trust....”
“Bree? Disappointed in you?” he said harshly. His eyes blazed. “You gave up everything to save her.” Forcing his shoulders to relax, he pulled a colorful, brightly decorated phone out of his pocket. “And you can explain that.”
She blinked. “What are you doing with my dead phone?”
“All charged up now. I’ll give it to her so she can call you here. Tonight.”
Kasimir could see the emotions fighting for domination in her expression. But what she finally said was, “Thanks. That is very—kind...”
Kind. Again. Scowling, he turned away. “I have to go.”
“Wait,” she choked out.
He stopped at the door. He looked back at her.
Josie’s beautiful eyes were huge, her soft cheeks pale. “Just tell me one thing,” she whispered. “Do you—do you regret taking me to bed last night?”
His eyes met hers.
“Yes,” Kasimir said simply, and as he saw her face crumple, he knew it was true. He regretted that for the rest of his life, he’d be haunted by the memory of a perfect woman he could never deserve. A woman he could never have again. A woman who would despise him forever the instant she heard he’d blackmailed her sister.
“Oh.” It was the kind of gasp a person makes when they’d just been punched in the gut. She blinked fast, fighting back tears. He wanted to comfort her. Instead, he said, “I’ll be back after midnight. Don’t wait up.”
“Happy New Year,” she whispered behind him, but he kept walking, straight out of the house.
As his chauffeur drove him away from the dacha, heading down the lonely road through the snowy forest, Kasimir looked up at the icy moon in the dark sky. His hands tightened in his lap. He missed her. After ten years alone, without ever letting down his guard to another human soul, he missed Josie. He missed his wife.
But his days with her were numbered. They were ticking by with every minute on the clock. And so this had to be done. Although suddenly, even in his mind, he didn’t like to specify what it was.
It was betraying her.
The New Year’s Eve ball was in full swing when he arrived at the elegant palace outside St. Petersburg. Beautiful, glamorously dressed women stared at him hard as he stepped out of the expensive car, and he felt their eyes travel down the length of his tuxedo as they licked their red lips.
In another world, he would have been only too glad to take advantage of the pleasurable services clearly on offer. But not now. Kasimir looked down at the plain gold wedding band on his finger. There was only one woman his body hungered after now. The one woman who would soon leave him, no matter how much he cared. Turning away, he backed into the shadows, avoiding notice as much as he could. Watching. Looking.
“There you are,” Greg Hudson said from behind a potted plant. He nodded towards the dance floor. “Your brother and Bree,” he panted her name, “are over there.”
Kasimir’s lip curled as he looked from the man’s greasy hair to his totally inappropriate sport jacket, which barely covered his pot belly. With distaste, he withdrew an envelope from his pocket.
Hudson’s eyes lit up, but as he reached for the envelope, Kasimir grabbed his wrist. “If you even hint to Vladimir I’m here, I will take back every penny, and the rest out of your hide.”
“I wouldn’t—couldn’t—” With a gulp, the man backed away. “So goodbye, then. Um. Da svedanya.”
Turning away with narrowed eyes, Kasimir looked out at the dance floor. He moved slowly through the people, on the edge of the party. Then he saw his brother.
Seeing Vladimir’s face was almost startling. For a split instant, Kasimir saw him walking ahead in the snow on the way to school, always ahead of him, whether chopping firewood, chasing newborn calves through the Alaskan forest, or fishing frozen lakes for hours through a cut-out hole in the ice. Wait for me, Volodya, Kasimir had always cried. Wait for me. But his brother had never waited.
Now, Kasimir’s jaw set.
In the last ten years, Vladimir had grown more powerful, more distinguished in his appearance and certainly richer. He also now had faint lines at his eyes as he smiled down at the woman in his arms.
Bree Dalton. The older sister that Josie had sacrificed so much, risked so much, to save. And there was Bree, laughing and flirting and apparently having the time of her life in his great-grandmother’s peridot necklace and a fancy ball gown.
Watching them with dark thoughts, Kasimir waited in the shadows until Vladimir left Bree alone on the dance floor. And then Kasimir approached her. He talked to her in low, terse tones. And five minutes later, he left Bree on the dance floor, her face shocked and trembling with fear.
Serves her right, Kasimir thought with cold fury as he left the Tsarina’s palace. Josie had been so desperate to save her, and Bree had been enjoying herself all this time as Vladimir’s mistress. A tight ache filled his throat.
So much for Josie’s sacrifice.
And still, after everything she’d done for Bree, when Josie had briefly spoken to her sister, she’d still tried to apologize.
Kasimir exhaled as his chauffeur turned the black Rolls-Royce farther from the palace and through the snowy, frozen sprawl of St. Petersburg. Letting the two sisters briefly speak on the phone had been a calculated gamble.
Where are you? Bree had gasped. There was a pause, in which Kasimir overheard Josie’s blurted-out apology, begging her sister’s forgiveness for her marriage of convenience. Panicked, Bree had cried, But where are you?
He’d taken the phone away before Josie could blurt out that she was right here, in St. Petersburg, not in Morocco at all. Now, Kasimir silently looked out at the moonlit night, at passing fields of snow, laced with black trees.