With This Secret

Something inside me, something I’d held on to with all my might snapped. My God, if I stayed here any longer I’d become a sniveling fool and start imagining he had feelings for me when he had clearly shown he had none.

I turned away and started to walk away, but I’d only gone a few steps, before I stopped, swiveled around and marched back up to him. “What’s with the Russian guards?” I waved my hand in a wide arc. “And this house? Weren’t you an accounting major at NYU?”

“I graduated,” he responded.

“I know that,” I snapped. Then I shut my eyes to get a hold of myself.

He went on, “The ‘Russian guards’ work for my father. I sought out their help because they are damn good at what they do.”

“You said you’re from Spain,” I said. “You never mentioned anything about Russia.” Ivan the Great suddenly made sense. “You’re Russian, aren’t you?”

“Come in, Bianca,” he urged. “I’ll answer all the questions you need me to, but it’s the middle of the night right now.”

I swallowed hard. Jesus, I wanted to go in with him. All the more reason I shouldn’t. I stayed put where I was. “What about Bogdan? I heard gunshots. Is he dead?”

“Unfortunately, no.” He frowned. “Killing him would have started a war. Even doing what I did was already bad enough, but when I saw you with him, I didn’t think. I acted on instinct.”

I felt fear clutch at my heart. He was still out there and almost certainly fuming that his prey had been snatched right from under his nose. “What happens now?”

“Now that you’re missing he’ll go after everyone and everywhere you could possibly return to. He will not stop until he finds you.”

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I slapped my hand on my mouth. “How can I remain here in safety when everyone else I love could be in danger? My father? Aldie?”

“I’ve sent people to keep an eye on the both of them. Your father is nowhere to be found at the moment, but we have eyes on Aldie. If there is any danger at all, we’ll step in.”

I searched his gray eyes. They were so familiar. I must have seen them a million times in my dreams. “Why did you do this?”

“I couldn’t let him take you. Not him,” he said, running his hand through his thick dark hair.

I scoffed. “That is incredibly hard to believe.”

“Believe it or not, it’s the truth.” Then he turned and walked into the house.

I remained outside, my gaze on the luxurious foyer, inviting me to come and forget the harshness of my ordeal. Don’t go in. It’s a trap. You’ll burn your wings. You know nothing about him. What you remember is a mirage. Worse still, you’ll go and fall in love with him all over again. Then he’ll just walk away … Everything my head was saying was true, but I couldn’t exactly stand out here all night.

I found myself moving over the threshold and shutting the door behind me.

The house was simply magnificent. But I couldn’t fully appreciate all the beauty and luxury as I looked around. I thought a stern butler or housekeeper would appear to tell me where to go but no one did, so I wandered to the right and found what was certainly just one of many living areas in the house.

A television screen bigger than any I’d ever seen, hung from a wall. Probably custom. The furniture, expensive carpets and art pieces, all dripped of surreal wealth and it started to dawn on my shocked, disorientated brain that he was not just another ordinary accounting student who had become a regular at our bakery years ago.

I followed a corridor that opened out to all these fabulous rooms until I stood at the threshold of a massive minimalist kitchen. The ceilings were lofty and it was done up in pure white. The only color in it was a bunch of very yellow bananas hanging from a gleaming metal stand.

It all looked so beautifully perfect, a sigh rose up from deep inside me. This was the exact kitchen I had always dreamed of. Here, I could create little mouthfuls of heaven. I walked into it like someone in a trance.

“Do you want something to eat?” his voice asked from behind me.

I turned around to see him standing at the entrance. “No,” I responded, and watched him. Now that my brain felt slightly less scrambled, I could see him better. Dressed simply in a pair of dark slacks and a white shirt, he looked even more dashing than the man I’d met two years earlier.

I still remember, the first time I saw this man, I’d been so utterly stunned by his beauty, the stainless tongs I’d been holding had slipped out of my suddenly nerveless hands. Confused and red-faced I’d ducked down under the counter to retrieve them and banged my head hard on my way back up.