She heard him take a long, slow breath. His fingers slowly moved up her bare arm as they both leaned forward over the table.
There was a hard knock at the door, the sound of it swinging open. “Excuse me, sir, miss?”
Anna whirled around in her chair, blushing when she saw a maid standing in the doorway.
“I have standing orders not to be interrupted in my office,” Nikos said in a controlled voice.
“Yes, sir. But, begging your pardon, it’s Miss Rostoff who’s wanted. Your sister’s here, miss. She’s quite agitated and said if we didn’t get you she’d be calling the police and telling them you were being kept here against your will.”
“Let me go!” Anna heard her sister’s voice, shrill and frantic down the hall. “Get out of my way. Anna? Anna!”
Natalie pushed past the maid, nearly knocking the girl aside. Her linen shift dress was rumpled and dirty, as if it had been slept in.
She stopped abruptly when she saw Anna in her
T-shirt and shorts, sitting casually on the desk near Nikos. Natalie’s jaw dropped, then her eyes blazed through her thick glasses.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she said to Anna. “Do you have any idea what’s going on? I’ve been calling and calling, but you never called back. I thought you were in trouble. I thought he was keeping you prisoner again. And instead I find you lazing in luxury with the man you called your deadliest enemy!”
“Excuse us,” Anna said hastily, and grabbed her sister’s wrist, pulling her out of the office before she could repeat any of the insulting things Anna had once said about Nikos. She couldn’t risk alienating him now—not when they’d finally made a fragile peace and he was actually considering joint custody.
She dragged Natalie into her bedroom and closed the door behind her.
“You’ve gone back to him, haven’t you?” her sister said bitterly, rubbing her wrist. “Even after all the stuff he did. Ruining Father’s company! Abandoning you! Cheating on you! Firing you because you were pregnant—with his baby! That’s blatant sex discrimination. You should sue.”
“Natalie, I’m not going to sue the father of my child.”
“Why, when he’s such a monster?”
Anna took a deep breath. “I blew things out of proportion. And I just found out that what I told you about Father’s company...wasn’t true.”
“What?”
Anna looked at her young, idealistic sister and just couldn’t bear to disillusion her by telling her about their father’s embezzlement. “There were complications and problems that I didn’t know about. Nikos didn’t ruin the company. He was trying to save it when Father made some...bad choices.”
Natalie looked at her keenly. “So if Nikos suddenly isn’t so bad, why are you marrying Victor and moving to Russia?”
“What?”
“You don’t know?” Staring at her in amazement, her younger sister, usually so trusting and sweet, gave a harsh laugh. “No, of course you don’t. I’ve only left ten messages on your cellphone since yesterday. Victor Sinistyn just bought great-grandmother’s palace this morning from Mother. She sold it to him for a fraction of its value—two million off our debt, plus another twenty thousand to her in cash. Which she’s already spent on clothes, of course. Victor is going to raze the old palace and build something new in its place. For you.”
“For me? What are you talking about?”
“Vitya always seemed so strong, so handsome. Even after he quit his partnership with Father so suddenly I thought he was kind. I flew here last night to ask him to leave the palace alone. I thought he’d listen to me.” She shook her head angrily. “But he just laughed. He said that the air in Las Vegas was getting unhealthy, and that he needed to raze the palace immediately because the two of you would be moving to St. Petersburg as soon as you were married.”
“That’s not true!” Anna gasped. “We’re not getting married. He hasn’t even proposed.” At least not lately, she added silently.
“Well, he obviously thinks proposing is just a formality. Any reason why he’d think that?”
Anna paced across the thick blue carpet. “I’ve only seen him once since I got here! And even then it was only because...” Glancing right and left, as if she feared Nikos might be listening from the large walk-in closet or beneath the elegant canopied bed, Anna whispered, “Being Victor’s friend is my only bargaining chip against Nikos to get joint custody. So I can leave here. So I can be free.”
Natalie eyes widened, looking owlish beneath her glasses. “And you asked Vitya for help? When I went to his club I saw the kind of man he really is. He isn’t our friend. If he were, he wouldn’t have been loaning our parents money at that huge interest rate. I thought he was trying to help us. But now I think he only went into business with Father in the first place to be close to you. After you left to work for Nikos he dissolved the partnership and started loaning Father money instead.” She took a deep breath. “I think since you wouldn’t agree to marry him he’s been drowning our family in debt to force your hand.”
“It can’t be true,” Anna gasped. All right, so Victor had made advances the whole time she’d been his secretary. He’d chased off other suitors. He’d pressured her to marry him. He’d even gotten her father to try to use his influence over her. But Victor would never have deliberately hurt her family just to possess her.
Would he?
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Natalie pressed. “Why else does he keep loaning Mother money? He knows we have no way to repay it.”
Anna rubbed her head wearily. “I don’t know. But I’ll figure it out. I’ll handle this, Natalie, don’t worry. As soon as I get custody of Misha I’ll return to New York and find a job—”
“You still think he’ll let you repay the money?” Natalie interrupted, looking at Anna as if seeing her for the first time. “If you think he’s gone to all this trouble to let you set up some kind of payment plan, you’re as delusional as Mother. Who’s happy to take his money, by the way, because she’s sure you’ll marry him. Which you probably will. You always have to sacrifice yourself, don’t you? Even when it does more harm than good. You’ll reward him after he’s destroyed our family to get his hands on you.”
“You don’t know that’s really true!”
“I don’t?” Natalie shook her head. “You need to grow up and see the real world.”
Her baby sister was telling her to grow up? “I do see the real world—”
“My whole life I’ve thought you were some kind of saint, you know? Sacrificing your own future to take care of us. When I wanted to study accounting so I could get a good job to help support our family you insisted I major in art instead—”
“I knew art was your passion!” Anna said, stung.
“Maybe.” Natalie snorted derisively. “But it’s no way to make a living. The truth is, you didn’t want my help. You always have to be the one to do everything. God forbid you ever depend on someone else.”
“I was trying to do the right thing for you!”
“Then why didn’t you stand up to Victor ages ago and tell him to back off? Instead of running away to work for someone else? Why did you get pregnant by Nikos, then run away? Why are you still so desperate to run away from Nikos now? You’re keen to stand up for others, but when it comes to yourself you just run away.”
Anna stared at her, breathing heavily. “Natalie, please...” she whispered.
Natalie’s eyes were hard. “You want to be strong? Fine. You got yourself in your mess. With Victor. With Nikos. Get yourself out of it. Just don’t kid yourself that your choices are for us. All you’ve done is make things worse for us. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Turning on her heel, she went for the door.
“Natalie!” She grabbed her sister’s wrist. “Don’t leave like this. Please.”
“Let me go,” Natalie said coldly. Her sister wrenched her arm away, and this time Anna released her.
After she left, Anna slowly sat down on the bed in the cool darkness of her room, still shocked by Natalie’s attack. Her sister had always been the one person Anna could count on. She hadn’t asked any questions when Anna had appeared on her doorstep in Russia, but had simply taken her in her arms and let her cry on her shoulder. She’d fought Nikos’s armed henchmen to try to keep Misha safe.
Heartsick, Anna left her room and realized she’d blindly gone to Nikos’s office to seek comfort. But his door was closed. She stared at the door, longing for him to take her in his strong arms and tell her everything would be okay. She would almost believe it if he was the one who said it. No doubt another example of her being delusional.