Innocent in the Ivory Tower

The boy was with the night nanny, his little face red and screwed up with crying. It had been a long, awful day, but it was the first time Alexei had felt truly hopeless. He couldn’t communicate with Maisy, and he couldn’t protect Kostya from this.

‘Mama!’ He sniffled, big eyes latching onto Maisy and not letting go.

She moved swiftly to him, took the child into her arms and settled into a chair. His cries subsided almost instantly as he buried his hot face in her neck and clung.

Alexei swore softly under his breath. He’d been blind. It wasn’t Anais the boy wanted. It was Maisy. She had taken the role of Kostya’s mother from the beginning.

It had always been Maisy.

It was peaceful in the nursery, but Maisy knew what awaited her outside. She’d forced this confrontation and now she was going to get it. Ready or not.

Alexei was watching them, arms folded over his chest, leaning against the bureau. He hadn’t turned tail and run in the face of the infant’s tears. For a man with no experience of children he’d adapted quickly and irrevocably to the fact he had one in his life. It was clearly just women he had a commitment problem with.

Kostya’s body was sleep-heavy, and Maisy knew the moment had arrived. She moved reluctantly to stand.

‘Here, let me take him.’

Alexei’s deep voice had the volume turned down, but its impact shuddered through Maisy as she gave up the baby to him. He lifted Kostya from her arms with a practised move that caught at Maisy’s raw emotions. His eyes flickered to hers. They had done this so many times, she realized. Like a tag team—like parents. She saw acknowledgement of this in his expression for the first time.

Shaken, Maisy fetched Kostya’s favourite blanket, draping it over his sleeping body, and then without saying a word or sparing a glance for Alexei she slipped outside.

She was halfway down the hall when she heard the nursery door click shut, and then Alexei’s hushed voice whipped her around. ‘Not so fast.’

In that instant Maisy realised she was actually running away from him. She was behaving like a scared little mouse—the timid girl who had started at St Bernice’s all those years ago and looked to Anais to fight her battles. She was a grown woman now, and if anything the past few weeks had taught her she could handle one large, moody Russian male—except this time she needed to do it without sex muddying the waters and confusing the issues.

He stalked towards her, the down lights on the walls throwing his shadow so that he seemed to increase in height as he stood over her.

Maisy’s trembling hands automatically found her hips. ‘If you think I’m going to jump into bed with you and have mad, passionate, angry sex so you can put this behind us and just go on as before—’

‘We’ve done that, Maisy, and moved on from it,’ he interrupted.

The fact that he was on the same page with her brought Maisy up short.

‘What I want to know is what was that about downstairs?’

Testosterone was pounding out of him, and Maisy was so distracted by the urge to press herself up against him she had trouble concentrating.

‘The stuff about the jewellery,’ he clarified, his accent clotting up the words.

Maisy shook herself. She was doing the very thing she had warned him against.

‘I’m sorry for embarrassing you,’ she answered. ‘But I was very angry—’

‘You didn’t embarrass me, Maisy,’ he broke in impatiently. ‘I want to know what it was about.’ He seemed to close in around her. ‘What do you want from me? I’ll bring in a jeweller tomorrow—you can have whatever you want.’

‘I don’t want jewellery!’ she exploded. ‘Oh, how can you be so ridiculously obtuse?’

‘I’m obtuse? You made it very clear in Paris that anything—anything—I bought for you was payment. Can you blame me for being wary about putting anything around your neck?’

‘So it’s all my fault? I don’t know what I’m doing, Alexei. Have you ever thought about that? It’s not like I’ve ever been a rich man’s mistress before. Forgive me if I make mistakes. You never gave me a rule book.’

‘You’re not my mistress,’ he said firmly. ‘I have never, never treated you as a mistress.’

‘You dress me; you chauffeur me around in limos; you keep me separate from your working life. Until now I’ve never met any of your friends. What else am I?’

‘I’m looking after you. You and Kostya. The three of us.’

‘No, Alexei,’ she said softly, sadly. ‘It’s just you.’

Her words fell like stones into the silence. Maisy’s emotions trembled with the weight of the impact of what she had said. He looked so lost, her big, steely take-no-prisoners Alexei. He needs me so badly, Maisy realized, and it gave her the courage to go on.