‘I’m leaving,’ she told him flatly while she fought harder than she ever had in her life to rescue some kind of composure. After quivers of reaction were still travelling through her treacherous body, while she tried not to question her total loss of control, keen not to think along such demeaning lines in his presence.
Nikolai sprang off the bed, shoving his shirt back below his belt. ‘I’ll follow you back.’
‘Follow me where? What are you planning to do?’
‘Ease your move to London.’
‘Don’t you dare go near my family!’ Ella warned him furiously. ‘You’re a stranger to them.’
‘But I won’t be a stranger for long,’ Nikolai asserted, picking up a jacket.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing. They’re not stupid. They’re never going to believe that I’ve been seeing some man in secret!’ she told him with scorn.
Nikolai elevated a fine black brow. ‘People believe what they want to believe and they’ll be relieved that you’ve started living again.’
Ella’s face shuttered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m not stupid either. You’re a woman and most women are dramatic. I bet you swore you’d never love again after your fiancé died. I bet you’ve hugged your grief to you like a security blanket ever since,’ Nikolai opined.
Ella had turned white as bone. She flung him a look of loathing. ‘How dare you drag Paul into this? How do you even know about him?’
‘I know enough about you to make an educated guess or two,’ Nikolai drawled coolly.
‘Well, you got it wrong, badly wrong,’ she assured him, but she was lying because although she would never have admitted it he had got it all frighteningly right. In fact his accuracy was both uncanny and mortifying. She had sworn that she would never love again, that she would never date another man after Paul. Her grief had been so great that she had voiced bitter self-destructive sentiments that had contained little common sense. The last thing she needed to hear now was Nikolai Drakos implying that she had acted like a drama queen craving sympathy and attention.
‘So, quite naturally, your family will be delighted to believe that you have moved on after your loss and their pleasure in that reality will help them gloss over any inconsistencies in our story. They will want us to be real,’ Nikolai declared with a sardonic smile. ‘Your only role is to act happy about moving to London to see more of me.’
Something akin to panic assailed Ella’s breathing process, tightening her chest, closing her throat. Act happy? She wasn’t sure she knew how to do that. Life had been too challenging in recent years to offer many such opportunities but she had learned to smile and fake it for her family’s benefit. No, it was the idea of moving to London and an unfamiliar environment to be with Nikolai that shocked and dismayed her most. And the concept of living with a man, being intimate with a man like Nikolai Drakos utterly unnerved her. Yet if she didn’t agree to Nikolai’s demands her family’s life would be ruined. And after the setbacks and upheavals her father and Gramma had already lived through, how could they possibly cope with more at their age?
Almost three hours later, Ella let Gramma herd her into the kitchen for a private chat. She went reluctantly because she was straining to eavesdrop on the conversation that Nikolai was having with her father in the dining room the older man had long used as an office. The men’s voices rose and fell, Nikolai’s deep-pitched drawl soothing the rising note in her father’s audible objections.
‘I want Ella happy and she won’t be happy if she’s worrying herself sick about her family back home,’ Nikolai asserted forcefully.
Ella paled. Nikolai would be saying all the right things and wearing all the right expressions, she reflected bitterly. He was clearly a consummate liar and smooth as molasses in a situation that would have sent nine out of ten men running for the hills. In action he was a breathtakingly quick study. He had arrived just after the family finished dinner and joined them for tea and carrot cake. He had grasped Ella’s hand to declare that they had been seeing each other for months, ever since they had met the night she was parking cars. He had been very convincing, very persuasive and she had little doubt that he would soon crush her father’s protests and persuade him to accept that his debts were being written off.
‘Do you know what surprised me most about all this? Nikolai is so different from Paul,’ Gramma remarked as Ella began to load the dishwasher to keep her restive hands busy. ‘He’s a real man’s man.’
Ella’s soft mouth compressed. The older woman had a traditional outlook. She liked men who could hunt a wild boar before breakfast and reduce a pile of logs to wood chips by dinner time. Paul’s lack of interest in traditional male pursuits had bemused Gramma. She had liked him and treated him like a son but she had never understood him, Ella conceded with regret.
‘I never thought that you would go for someone like Nikolai. Of course, he’s very good-looking and obviously successful. Are you sure you know what you’re getting into with him?’ the older woman pressed. ‘I know living together is very popular these days but I noticed that there was no talk of an engagement in the future or anything like that.’
‘Let’s see how it goes first. We may be too different. It may not work out between us,’ Ella commented, dropping the first hint towards her eventual breakup with Nikolai. ‘Who can tell when we haven’t been able to spend much time together here?’
‘Why didn’t you tell us about him?’ Gramma demanded for at least the third time. ‘Are we so unapproachable?’
‘I said a lot of stupid stuff after Paul died,’ Ella muttered numbly.
‘You were hurt, grieving. It was normal for you to feel that way,’ Gramma assured her. ‘I only want to be sure you’re not leaping into this too fast with Nikolai. You’re turning your whole life upside down for him. I did like the fact though that he said you might choose to pick up and continue your veterinary training again.’
Yes, if there were any right impressive things to say, Nikolai had contrived to corner the market on those sentiments, Ella ruminated bitterly. He came, he saw, he conquered. Her father and her grandmother had sat in awe while Nikolai shared his supposed thoughts. Acting as though he loved her had come so very naturally to him that it had spooked Ella. He had never said the words, but his behaviour had convinced his receptive audience that he cared deeply for Ella and only wanted her happiness.
‘He’s what you need,’ the older woman murmured. ‘A fresh start somewhere new. However, I suspect that this development is going to come as a huge shock to Cyrus.’
‘I expect so,’ Ella remarked uncertainly, thinking that it had come as a huge shock to her as well, although she could hardly admit the fact.
‘You haven’t a suspicion, have you?’ Gramma grimaced. ‘I don’t think Cyrus sees you only as Paul’s former fiancée. In fact I believe his interest is a lot more personal.’
Ella studied her grandmother’s troubled face in consternation and winced. ‘No, you’re totally wrong about that. What on earth gave you such a horrible idea?’
‘It would be horrible to you, then...’ The older woman gathered with a hint of relief. ‘For a while I was a bit worried that his attentions might be welcome?’
‘There hasn’t been any attentions,’ Ella contradicted defensively.
‘The flowers...the lunch dates...that big charity do...him asking you to check his house while he’s away.’
‘For a start, Cyrus has only sent me flowers a couple of times and the charity thing was a special favour. There’s only been a couple of lunch dates and those were only casual catch-ups,’ Ella protested. ‘And me calling in to check his house when he has a resident housekeeper was just Cyrus being plain silly! I think he got all riled up about that spate of country-house robberies last year. Honestly, Gramma, Cyrus has never done or said anything that woul
d give me the idea that he sees me as anything other than his late nephew’s fiancée and a family friend.’
‘Well, I think you’ve missed the signs. I don’t like the way he looks at you and I wouldn’t let your father approach him for a loan because I was worried it might come with strings attached,’ Gramma confided uncomfortably.
Had Ella been in the mood to laugh, she would have laughed then at the irony of her grandmother’s misgivings. Evidently the older woman had misread Cyrus’s motives and distrusted him but she had offered Nikolai and his honeyed hollow lies a red-carpet welcome.
‘Ella...?’ Nikolai called her from the hall.
Grudgingly she went to the doorway. Butch pushed out past her to caper round Nikolai’s feet. From the instant of first laying eyes on Nikolai the tiny dog had been inexplicably smitten and craving his attention.