Modern Romance June 2016 Books 5-8. Tara Pammi

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      ‘Tell me about her,’ Anya said.

      ‘No,’ Roman said. ‘Tonight you need calm.’

      ‘I’m ready to hear. I need to know, Roman, I know I get jealous...’

      ‘I don’t want to hurt you Anya,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you speaking badly of her.’

      ‘I will try not to.’

      Roman nodded. He did not want to upset her further tonight, but maybe the decks needed to be cleared.

      ‘What do you want to know?’

      ‘All of it,’ she said. ‘I want to know why you were looking for a wife.’

      ‘Just as I was about to leave, some friends showed me an advert. It was a joke at first...’

      ‘What did the advert say?’

      ‘Just that she wanted company—someone to go to the theatre with and things like that.’

      ‘And to share her bed?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I want to know what the advert said.’

      ‘She said that her father was dying and he had wanted to see her married. Celeste had given up on love but she wanted to make her father happy. She hoped the marriage would last for two years. She spoke of the ballet and theatre, and that she liked to cook but preferred to eat out.’

      ‘Roman?’ Anya pushed.

      ‘She wanted someone good looking, preferably younger than her...’

      ‘Roman?’ Anya pushed again. ‘Did the advert imply sex?’

      He told her but he was not cruel.

      She had a performance tomorrow and to mention adventurous would provoke the screams of Firebird being plucked alive.

      ‘She said that as well as all that, she wanted a sexual partner.’

      ‘So you were just a sex toy.’

      ‘Yes,’ Roman said, and he could leave it there but it would be a lie and a cop-out and Celeste deserved better than that. So too did Anya. They needed the truth if they were to survive so he amended, ‘At first.’

      His words cut like a knife, because him as a sex toy she could almost, almost, deal with, but never his affection for another woman, never that it might have turned to love.

      ‘Do you want to hear this?’ he checked. ‘Are you sure you need to hear this tonight?’

      Anya nodded and then shook her head. ‘You could have come to Saint Petersburg and been with me,’ she said. ‘You say you were rich by then, whereas I was barely making ends meet...’

      ‘Anya, if you want to hear this then you need to listen properly. I never intended to come and find you.’

      ‘But why not?’

      ‘Pride,’ he said.

      ‘Foolish pride.’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I would do it all again because the man I was would not have sat back and let you do what you had to to get by in the dance world. Celeste taught me patience.’

      ‘No, that was me,’ Anya said, and she remembered the burn of their first time, how he would have had her in a moment and that she had slowed him down.

      ‘She taught me manners,’ Roman said.

      ‘No,’ Anya refuted. ‘That was also me.’

      ‘I’m not talking about please and thank you in the bedroom...’ Roman countered.

      Anya was.

      ‘And what else did Saint Celeste teach you?’ she asked with a sneer, but her face soon crumpled and she knew he would terminate the conversation. ‘I am trying...’ she pleaded.

      ‘I know,’ he said, and instead of telling her off he took her hand.

      Roman had known this would be a difficult conversation, which was why he hadn’t wanted to go there tonight. His reaction would be just the same if Anya spoke of Mika or another lover she’d had.

      Soon it would be his turn, to sit lacerated as she told him about Mika, and so for now he kept it at Celeste.

      ‘She taught me how to hold a fine china cup and how to sit in a restaurant...’

      And she winced because their last night had been spent in a restaurant.

      ‘Remember how I embarrassed you.’

      ‘You did not.’

      ‘But I did,’ Roman said. ‘Decorum was part of your curriculum...’

      ‘I could have shown you,’ she pleaded.

      ‘But I didn’t want you teaching me.’

      ‘You let her, though!’

      ‘Because I did not care for her then. Celeste and I had a deal, two years together, and I intended to use them wisely.’

      ‘So you answered the ad...’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And you made love to her.’

      ‘Sex,’ Roman said.

      ‘With affection?’ she asked, and then changed her mind. ‘I don’t want to know.’

      ‘You do need to hear this, Anya,’

      Roman had decided.

      It was time.

      ‘I was locked in the secure unit for four years. I had no social skills, it is not a part of the orphanage’s curriculum.’

      His words were cutting and she nodded her understanding that it still hurt him to recall those times and Roman continued.

      ‘I remember when I went first to her home. I had never been inside one, not a proper home.’

      And she thought how bleak his life had been at the bedsit that he had tried to make presentable for her.

      ‘Was that the first time you saw her?’

      ‘Yes, we had exchanged photos and spoken on the phone, but that was our first meeting. Celeste too was shocked,’ Roman recalled. ‘She said, “You look like your picture...”’

      And Anya smiled for the first time about the subject.

      ‘Did you sleep with her that day?’

      ‘No,’ Roman СКАЧАТЬ