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With satisfaction, Nikolai saw that Ellie did indeed remember what had happened between them that night.
The longing and desire that had been inexorably building in his blood ever since she had opened the door and allowed him into her room increased with the most stunning force.
Exhaling softly, he moved the pad of his thumb from her bewitchingly full lower lip to trace her fine-boned jawline, until finally he cupped it in his hand. Pleasure and need drowned him. The extremely erotic scent she exuded and the warmth from her soft, sweetly curvaceous body had him all but hypnotised. And it only added to the agony of pleasure inside him when he hazarded a guess that underneath her insubstantial robe she was naked.
For a long moment Nikolai’s body and mind were locked in a battle for supremacy over his desire. Primal instinct vied with a logic he really did not want to entertain—and logic was losing fast. The living, breathing reality of this woman was simply too much temptation for one mortal man.
The day Maggie Cox saw the film version of Wuthering Heights, with a beautiful Merle Oberon and a very handsome Laurence Olivier, was the day she became hooked on romance. From that day onwards she spent a lot of time dreaming up her own romances, secretly hoping that one day she might become published and get paid for doing what she loved most! Now that her dream is being realised, she wakes up every morning and counts her blessings. She is married to a gorgeous man, and is the mother of two wonderful sons. Her two other great passions in life—besides her family and reading/ writing—are music and films.
Recent titles by this author:
PREGNANT WITH THE DE ROSSI HEIR
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SECRETARY MISTRESS, CONVENIENT WIFE
BY
MAGGIE COX
MILLS & BOON
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To Conar and Sandy
You mean the world to me, my beautiful boys!
CHAPTER ONE
‘DO YOU remember what happened, Elizabeth?’
His voice sounded as if it came from a long distance away—like a voice in a dream. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Ellie didn’t try particularly hard to stay focused. Somehow the sensation of cotton wool nothingness that had been cocooning her seemed far more appealing right at that moment than anything else. There was a great desire to sink back into its warmth and protection as quickly as possible, and avoid experiencing the all too unsettling wave of discomfort and fear that kept flowing through her like rivulets of ice every time she became conscious.
Something bad had happened. Why was this man forcing her to try and remember it? For a scant moment her eyes fixed on his hard, chiselled face, but she quickly closed them again because studying the unforgiving rigid lines of jaw, mouth and cheekbone that confronted her made her feel bad somehow…as if she’d done something wrong…something really wrong. If only she could remember what it was.
Yet maybe it was best that she didn’t remember. Thankfully, the cottonwool fuzziness returned just in time. No more trying to recall things that might cause pain and distress. She was in hospital. That much she did know. That was quite enough knowledge of her predicament to be going on with…
He cut a sombre, rather intimidating figure in his black suit, and she wondered vaguely if he might be in mourning for someone. Why was he there almost every time she opened her eyes? What was he waiting for?
The tantalising threads of some kind of personal connection hovered frustratingly close, but right then the final link was beyond her. However, the sickening feeling persisted that she had been the cause or at least the catalyst for something dreadful. Deliberately veering her thoughts away from trying to imagine what, she focused on the plain, uninspiring room, with its nondescript oatmeal-coloured walls and the hospital scent that permeated everything around her. She sensed a heaviness in the lower part of her body. Glancing down, she realised for the first time that both her legs were in plaster. Making a little sound of distress, she turned her cheek into the pillow and again shut her eyes…
One day not long afterwards Ellie woke up to a face she did remember…and it belonged to her father.
‘Don’t worry, my girl.’ He patted her hand as though she were a small, defenceless child. ‘Your old man knows what to do. I’m going to take you away from all this just as soon as I can. Tommy Barnes knows a thing or two about how to blend into the background and disappear. I haven’t spent the last twenty years doing what I do without learning a few tricks!’
‘Make-up’s ready for you now, Dr Lyons. Just follow Susie, will you? She’ll take care of you.’
Ellie really couldn’t attest to enjoying being a guest on these anodyne afternoon television programmes. Neither had she particularly taken to the label the London media had dubbed her with ever since she’d helped the drug-addicted son of a high profile politician who had been living on the streets. ‘The pony-tailed psychologist’. It made her feel about fifteen, and Ellie abhorred the idea of ever being that young and inexperienced again. Some things in life did get better with age, she’d found. The path that had led her to where she was now had been strewn with quite a few large rocks, but even so she had managed to survive the journey and make a good life for herself.
And the most surprising thing of all was that her dad had helped—in his own muddled, haphazard, seat-of-the- pants way. He’d come up trumps for Ellie after her accident five years ago, and moving from London to Scotland had been one of the best moves of her life. It had definitely given her added impetus to complete her studies in psychology and qualify for the work she’d longed to do.
About a year ago an opportunity had come for her to return to London and work in the East End at a project that was particularly dear to her heart—the plight of young people sleeping rough on the streets. Knowing something about feeling abandoned and alone, she knew a great urge to help as many of these kids as she could. But for this week at least she was located south of the river—staying at a charming little bijou hotel in Chelsea, not far from the Kings Road, funded by the cable TV company that had hired her to do a week-long special on the troubled teenage offspring of some B-list celebrities.
She could have done without this particular obligation. The small counselling practice she had set up in Hackney was growing, and what with her commitments at the centre for the homeless she needed to be back where she could do the most good—doing the ‘real’ work she’d studied so hard for. But the money for this particular stint was too good to turn down. The profile she’d unwittingly earned was at least helping Ellie to plough some money back into the centre, and she would continue to do whatever she could to help increase the meagre funding the project struggled to get by on.
Back at the hotel, after Ellie had done the show, she was waylaid by the young receptionist, with her perfect plum-coloured crop and smoothly ironed uniform, as she stepped through the revolving door into the foyer.
‘There’s someone waiting to see you, Dr Lyons. I’ve shown him into one of the meeting rooms along the corridor, so that you can have a little privacy. Room number one.’
Immediately wary, Ellie frowned. She couldn’t be too careful in her line of work, she’d found. Because of its nature, people sometimes got angry, and occasionally even tried to seek her out to give her a piece of their mind. It was the last thing she felt like doing—placating some irate viewer, or a relative of someone she’d tried to help or advise.
‘Who is he?’ Ellie enquired. ‘Did he leave a name?’
She tried to stifle a yawn as the young receptionist swept her with a curious, interested glance. Unspoken was her realisation that this was someone seriously impressive— and what had he to do with someone like Ellie?
‘Mr Nikolai Golitsyn,’ she announced, with some authority.
‘Are you sure?’
Ellie’s legs had turned into a river, sucking all her strength down, deep down, into its surging, heaving depths. Her head started to swim and for a moment her gaze went out of focus. Nikolai Golitsyn… It was a name that haunted her dreams and belonged to a man who had caused her more tumult than even her wayward father had done. Although she dreaded seeing him again, underneath that dread was a longing that had not lessened in its emotional intensity over the passage of time.
‘I’m perfectly sure, Dr Lyons!’ The receptionist took umbrage at the mere suggestion she might have got her facts wrong.
No longer tired, but acutely awake and alert as if she dangled off a cliff edge with bloody fingernails and a thousand feet drop below her onto treacherous sharp rocks, Ellie chewed down anxiously on her lip. How had he found her after all this time? Her father had covered their tracks so carefully—even suggesting she take up her mother’s maiden name and shorten Elizabeth to ‘Ellie’. But her reluctant recent high profile had presented the very real possibility that her previous employer would at last discover her whereabouts, and from time to time she had nervously contemplated that.
Touching the tips of her fingers to her neatly tied back wheat-blonde hair, Ellie wasn’t surprised to feel them tremble. The sheer dread that surged through her blood made her feel dangerously weak for a second.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured to the girl behind the desk.
‘You’re welcome!’
All offence at Ellie’s possible doubt in her competence banished—the girl’s answering smile was as bright as a May full moon. It was the smile of someone who’d been raised within the warmth and comfort of loving family, with friends around her to cushion life’s blows. Someone who had yet to learn that life could be hard.
Unable to prevent the wave of envy that washed over her, Ellie patted down some stray fair hairs she’d dislodged from her ponytail, then smoothed down the trousers of her smart black trouser-suit. Trying hard not to feel like a condemned prisoner, she headed down the thickly carpeted corridor to the designated meeting room.
‘Hello.’
The everyday greeting that she automatically offered sounded incongruous even to Ellie’s own hearing.
The man seated at the long, highly polished meeting table—drumming his fingers as though his patience had already been stretched to extreme limits—rose slowly to his feet. At the very first glance he exuded the kind of electricity and energy that made the air feel charged and potent. He was tall and—although lean— clearly packed the kind of toned, ruthlessly honed muscle beneath his clothes that could easily intimidate. In fact that was an understatement. Those broad, iron- hard shoulders nestling beneath the finest bespoke tailoring would surely give an attacking army pause?
The personal emotional threat he represented to Ellie was like a hovering menace that rattled her peace of mind and all that she had worked so hard for, and she sucked in a steadying breath. Seeing his military-cut fair hair and still-chiselled features, her initial assessment of his appearance was that the intervening years had been kind to Nikolai Golitsyn…but the bitterness edging his mouth and the cheekbones that slanted like cruel gashes in his face told a different story.
‘Elizabeth.’
The ice-blue eyes narrowed searchingly, and Ellie sensed the piercing, laser-like quality of them, feeling a helpless shiver of disquiet and fear down her back.
‘I prefer to be called Ellie these days.’ She sounded defensive, and more than a little scared, and she couldn’t help but despise herself for it. Where was her training when she needed it?
‘I am sure you do.’ The Russian’s lip curled cynically. ‘I am sure you would have preferred to remain anonymous for the rest of your life as far as I am concerned— but you should have known that was never going to be remotely possible. And you have helped my case considerably by putting yourself in the public eye. I confess my surprise that you did so, but perhaps you grew too confident that I would have given up my search for you a long time ago? If that it is true then you have only yourself to blame for your arrogance!’
The compelling face before her hardened like a glacier, and Ellie’s stomach plunged like a stone. By now she had hoped to be enjoying a long hot bath in her suite, mulling over the day and the two new clients she had acquired for the programme. Not coming face to face for the first time in five years with the man who had caused her to flee the city she’d grown up in because he’d blamed her for causing his brother’s death!
Her throat felt dry as scorched earth, and Ellie longed for a glass of cool water to ease the discomfort. ‘I have nothing to either hide or run away from any more!’ she declared. ‘The only reason I left like I did was because my father was concerned about me. He wanted to take me to a place where I could properly recover from my injuries and recuperate!’
‘I do not believe that was the only reason you disappeared as you did. Otherwise why the change of name—Dr Lyons?’ Stating her name—her new name—with ironic disdain, Nikolai walked towards her.
Ellie froze, no longer wishing for a cool drink but instead for some benevolent divine force to intercede and suddenly make her invisible. But disappearing was only ever going to be a temporary reprieve. She’d always known that. Much better to stand and confront her demons no matter how intimidating they were!
Garnering all her courage, she schooled herself not to show fear—but it wasn’t easy. Even five years ago—his hair fashionably longer, and the skin across his sculpted features more relaxed, less stretched and spare—Nikolai Golitsyn had made her wary. There’d been something about him…something provocative, enigmatic and powerful…that had made her muscles clench with tension whenever she’d found herself in his company. His brother Sasha had once goaded Ellie with his assertion that Nikolai had a ruthless streak that would shock her to her bones, should she ever have cause to anger him, and that forgiveness just wasn’t part of his make-up. Once you got on the wrong side of him…look out!
But then Sasha would have said that. He had always been jealous of his more successful, enigmatic older brother. His own easy charm had won him many friends, but Nikolai’s dependable solidity and hardworking ethic won him the respect and admiration that the younger man had craved. Ellie had learned that from day one in her role as nanny to Sasha and her sister Jackie’s baby girl, in the imposing Park Lane house where she had agreed to live after Jackie had died in childbirth.
The brothers’ rows had made the walls shake, she remembered. But despite what Sasha had asserted Nikolai had always seemed to be the first to want to heal any rifts.
‘Why did you come to see me?’ she asked now, willing her pounding heart to somehow calm down as Nikolai drew nearer.
‘You can ask me that? After all that has happened?’
He spoke several languages besides his native Russian, and his English was near perfect. But right then his native accent was unmistakable—even pronounced. Beneath it seethed a vast sea of anger and resentment. All directed towards her.
‘What happened to Sasha was the most t-terrible thing,’ Ellie stuttered. ‘I’m willing to talk to you—of course I am—but there’s nothing new I can tell you about what happened, I’m afraid.’
‘Is that so?’
‘I know these years since you lost your brother must have been very hard for you, but my hope has always been that when we met again you would somehow have come to realise that the accident wasn’t my fault, and that we could move away from any suggestion of blame or recrimination.’
‘Is that what you hoped? Well, I have to advise you that such futile hope is both a travesty and a complete waste of time! Instead of talking to me after the inquest, which is what you should have done, or at least seeing for yourself that your niece was all right, you chose to run away with your disreputable father. Since then have clearly made a pleasant and successful life for yourself! Of course you want that to continue! But now you must begin to realise that it might not. Why you agreed to drive Sasha that day in my car, when you had only just passed your test and I had told him to stay put until I returned, has dogged my every waking hour. Trust me when I tell you I will not rest until I finally learn the reason!’
Nikolai had barked that question at Ellie outside the court on the day of the inquest, and her father had put his arm round her and sworn at him in his daughter’s defence.
‘Leave her alone!’ he had cried. ‘Don’t you think she’s been through enough?’
Again Ellie longed for a drink to help lubricate her painfully dry throat.
‘I still can’t tell you the reason. You surely can’t have forgotten that I hurt my head in the accident and lost all memory of what happened that day? In all this time I’m sorry to say it’s never returned. It’s like a lost piece of a jigsaw that I just can’t find…no matter how hard I try. The doctors told me at the hospital that it could return all of a sudden or maybe not at all. I’m sorry if you find that hard to accept, but it’s the truth!’
‘How very convenient for you!’
Experiencing genuine heartfelt anguish at Nikolai’s caustic response, Ellie linked her hands tightly together in front of her. Did he think it was easy for her, losing the memory of a whole day? No matter how terrible it had been? Some might say it was a blessing, but all she knew was that doubt, fear and guilt had lain heavy on her heart ever since—because she couldn’t even remember why she would have got into a car with Sasha and driven when she had barely passed her test.
Although charming, Sasha had been reckless and unpredictable, and losing Jackie had seemed to unbalance him even more. He had made no attempt to bond with his baby daughter at all and, if Nikolai hadn’t stepped in and given her a home the child would have been starved of all the love and affection that was her birthright, Ellie was sure. But it was Sasha’s seriously addictive behaviour that had disturbed Ellie the most, she remembered.
‘It’s not convenient for me in any way! How could you say such a thing? Don’t you think what happened left its scars on me? And I’m not just talking about physical ones!’
‘Yes. You would know all about the psychological scars of such a trauma, would you not, Dr Lyons? Especially the ones associated with extreme guilt!’
Ellie actually stepped away from the man confronting her, because his barely contained fury seriously disturbed her. The smartly furnished conference room suddenly felt like a tomb to her, and she grasped at her rapidly melting composure. But the seams holding back strong emotions from the aftermath of that distressing time were slowly bursting apart.
‘I don’t deny that I have guilt—but that’s because I left Arina, not because I know I caused the accident! How can I admit to such a dreadful thing when I don’t even remember what happened?’ she cried.
‘My brother was only twenty-eight years old, Elizabeth… Too young to die so senselessly. Not to know why he died in such a way means that I cannot simply lay his spirit to rest and forget! What do I tell his daughter when she is grown? Have you ever thought about that?’
Feeling numb, Ellie couldn’t find the words to answer him.
‘The fact that he died is not the worst of it! What I cannot forgive is that when you decided to get into the car with him and take the wheel you also took Arina along for the ride! She was just a baby! What could you have been thinking?’
Ellie knew that Arina had survived the terrible accident that had killed her father and maimed her nanny and aunt without a scratch on her, strapped securely into her baby seat. The collision they’d had mercifully only crushed the front of the car, leaving the back miraculously intact. The Divine had definitely been looking out for the infant that dreadful day, and Ellie had often wept with gratitude. She could never have left if she had known the child was hurt. If she had been killed along with her father, Ellie would have wanted to die too! The thought that the little girl might have been harmed in any way still had the power to give her nightmares…
‘How can I answer that? Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? I took my responsibilities extremely seriously as far as looking after my niece was concerned, and all I know is I would never have done anything to put her in jeopardy!’
‘But you did put her in jeopardy—did you not, Elizabeth? She could easily have been killed along with her father!’ Nikolai threw her the most contemptuous glance imaginable, and right then Ellie honestly did feel like dying.
But she quickly reminded herself she’d suffered enough regret and distress to last her ten lifetimes, and knew it would serve no purpose whatsoever to ceaselessly revisit those debilitating emotions. Life moved on. She had moved on—even if the man in front of her hadn’t. It still appeared that he wanted to punish and blame her for what had happened to his brother.
Hugging her arms over her chest, Ellie moved her head slowly from side to side. ‘I would never have allowed anything or anyone to harm the baby… I adored her! I—I… ’
‘What?’
‘I loved her… I still love her.’
It was obvious that Nikolai was in no mood to listen to reason. But Ellie’s compassion as well as her training told her that she needed to remember he was in pain too. He had lost his only brother, and had suffered the shock of learning that his beloved baby niece had been in the car too. She had to forgive him his anger and resentment, even if it wasn’t in her power to reveal to him what had really happened that day. But he had to accept that five years had gone by. What did he want Ellie to do? Give up on her own future because she had lived and Sasha hadn’t? Was that the punishment he wanted to exact? No doubt he was furious about the perceived success she had made of her life since the accident, and the irony of that was hardly lost on her. She didn’t feel like a success.
‘I understand your need to know what happened. I really do.’ She shrugged sympathetically, and the most illogical hope suddenly surfaced inside her. Could she somehow make contact with the more human side of him? Was she crazy even to try?
Nikolai Golitsyn had always been an enigma to her: reserved, self-contained and sometimes chillingly aloof. When Ellie had first worked for him she had often wondered what it would take to breach those iceberg-like walls he seemed so frequently to retreat behind when in company. Occasionally she had been party to glimpses of intriguing warmth in his character—especially when he’d been around his small niece—and that had provoked Ellie’s helpless interest in the man even more. The idea that there was some softness lurking somewhere inside that intimidating frame of his had been disturbingly appealing.