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.
It was just past midnight. A brand-new year. As he traveled out into the countryside, towards the dacha, he should have been feeling triumphant. His brother had no idea he was about to lose his company, his lover, everything.
Bring the signed document to my house in Marrakech within three days, Kasimir had told Bree coldly.
She’d answered, And if I fail?
He’d given her a cold smile. Then you’ll never see your sister again. She’ll disappear into the Sahara. And be mine. Forever.
Now, Kasimir clawed back his hair as he stared out the window at the moonlit night, with only the occasional lights of a town to illuminate the Russian land in the darkness.
In seventy-two hours, Bree would meet him in Marrakech and provide him with a contract, unknowingly signed by Vladimir, that would give him complete ownership of Xendzov Mining OAO. He should have been ecstatic.
Instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about how Josie had felt, soft and breathless, in his arms all night, as the hot desert wind howled against their tent, and they slept, naked in each other’s arms, face-to-face, heart-to-heart. Her reckless, fearless emotion had saturated his body and soul. He couldn’t forget the adoration in her eyes last night—and the shocked hurt in them today.
His hands shook at the thought of the conversation he’d soon have with his wife. Looking down, he realized he was twisting the gold ring on his left hand so hard his fingertip had started to turn white. He released the ring, then exhaled, leaning back in the leather seat. The last lights disappeared as they went deeper into the countryside. Dawn was still hours away on the first of January, the darkest of deep Russ
ian winter.
The car finally turned down a quiet country road surrounded by the black, bare trees of a snowy forest. Past the empty guardhouse, the car continued down a road that was bumpy and long. The trees parted and he saw a large Russian country house in pale gray wood, overlooking a dark lake frosted with moonlight.
The limo pulled in front of the house and abruptly stopped. For a moment, he held his breath. The chauffeur opened his door, and Kasimir felt a chilling rush of cold air. Pulling a black overcoat over his tuxedo, he stepped out into the snowy January night.
As he walked towards the front door, the gravel crunched beneath his feet, echoing against the trees. In the pale gleaming lights from the windows, he could see the icicles of his breath.