A Champagne Christmas. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ quietly to himself, he’d known it would lower Grace’s defenses to meet his family. She would think she could trust him. Another lie.

      The only thing that wasn’t a lie: he wanted her.

      “Are you, Maksim?”

      He focused on her. “Am I what?”

      She looked up at him as he led her by Charing Cross station. “Are you my friend?”

      He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. He felt her shiver beneath the brush of his lips against her skin. “No,” he said in a low voice. “I’m not your friend, Grace.”

      They passed down a slender street full of restaurants and pubs, crowds of young people and a few Chelsea football fans in blue-and-white scarves celebrating loudly over a pint. He took her hand and led her down to the embankment by the river. As they walked, they passed a dark garden.

      “I don’t want your friendship,” he said. “I want you in my bed.”

      The intimacy of his words, as they passed the quiet darkness of the park drenched in crystalline moonlight, was perfect. She looked up at him, her mouth a round O. A mouth made for kissing. A mouth he wanted to feel under his.

      Right now.

      But as he stopped, leaning down to kiss her, she suddenly turned away, her pale cheeks the color of roses in the moonlight.

      “Did you learn to flirt like that in Russia?” she whispered. She gave a sharp, awkward laugh and started walking again. “You have some skills.”

      So his beauty wished to wait? He would be patient. “I grew up here.”

      Her eyes went wide. “London?”

      “And other places.” He shrugged. “We moved around. My father couldn’t keep a job. We were poor. Then he died.”

      “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “My father died five years ago, too. Cancer.” She swallowed, looked away. “My mother has yet to recover. She almost never leaves the house. That’s why…” She looked away.

      “Why what?”

      She turned back, blinking hard.

      “I’m sorry I misjudged you,” she said. “Thinking you’d never known what it was like to struggle or suffer just because you’re a prince.”

      “Yes, a prince,” he said acidly. “Distantly in line to a throne that, if you haven’t noticed, stopped ruling Russia nearly a hundred years ago.”

      “But still…”

      “Prince of nothing and nowhere,” he said harshly. “Money is all that matters. Only money.”

      “Oh, Maksim.” Tears filled her eyes as Grace shook her head. “Money isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s the way you love people. The way you take care of them.”

      “And you take care of them with money.”

      “No. Like your sister said, she didn’t need more expensive things, she wanted you. Your time and—”

      “A lovely sentiment,” he said sardonically. “But my sister is too young to remember how we nearly starved and froze to death the winter we lived in Philadelphia. After that, I made sure I could support us. I made sure no one and nothing could ever threaten my mother and sister again.”

      “You protected your family.” Her eyes suddenly glittered, and her hands clenched into fists before she stuck them in the pockets of her designer coat. “I should have stayed in California,” she said softly. “I never should have left my mother alone.”

      A hard lump rose in Maksim’s throat. “Being with the people you love doesn’t always save them. I made my first million when I was twenty, but it couldn’t save my mother from dying.”

      “Oh, no,” she said softly. “What happened?”

      “Brain aneurysm. She died without warning. I…I couldn’t save her.”

      He stopped, choking on the words. He had never spoken about his mother’s death to anyone—not even Dariya, who’d been barely nine when it had happened.

      Maksim waited for Grace to expose the weakness in his argument. To point out that, by his own admission, money was indeed not everything in life.

      Instead she reached up to stroke his cheek. The first time she’d deliberately touched him.

      “It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly. “You took care of your family. You protected them. You tried to save your mother. You did everything you could.”

      A tremble went through him, and he involuntarily turned his face into her caress. He closed his eyes briefly, taking a deep breath.

      “You’re a special woman, Grace Cannon,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve never met your equal.”

      She gave a short laugh and looked away. The street-lights shone a plaintive blurry light on the dark, swift river beneath the bare trees of the embankment. “I’m not special. I’m completely ordinary.”

      “You’re special.”

      “It’s the clothes.”

      “It’s the woman inside them.” He looked down at her. “Grace. You are just like your name. Grace.” His eyes narrowed. “And did you say your middle name is Diana?”

      “Don’t laugh.”

      “Your mother believed in fairy tales.”

      “Yes.” She shook her head. “But her two favorite princesses didn’t live happily ever after, did they?”

      “What about you, solnishka mayo?” he whispered. His eyes drifted to her lips. “Do you believe in fairy tales?”

      She briefly closed her eyes. “I used to believe in them. I used to believe with all my heart.”

      “And now?”

      Their gazes locked, held in the moonlight. Her pupils dilated as she looked down at his lips, then licked her own.

      An invitation no man could resist.

      Taking her in his arms, he lowered his mouth to hers. Kissing her was heaven. He was intoxicated by the taste of her. The feel of her. His whole body tightened and he drew back to stroke her face, looking down into her eyes. “Tonight,” he said hoarsely. “Tonight you must be mine.”

      He saw her dreamy expression suddenly change to shock. She shook her head hard, as if clearing the cobwebs from her mind.

      She hesitated, licking her lips. Then she pulled away from him. “Please. Don’t.”

      He reached for her. “Grace—”

      “I can’t,” she whispered, backing away from his reach. “Please don’t.”

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