Chantelle Shaw: Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence

Flushing guiltily, she quickly dropped the photographs into her lap. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,’ she mumbled. ‘I was putting the necklace away when I saw the pictures…and I was curious.’ Vadim’s silence was unnerving; the expression on his hard face unreadable, and her hands shook slightly as she handed the doll and photos to him. ‘Cute little girl,’ she commented, striving to sound normal as she got up from the bed.

‘Yes.’ He finally spoke, and gave a faint shrug of his shoulders, his eyes veering from her face to the pictures. ‘They’re friends-in Russia.’

Ella nodded. ‘I see.’ She picked up her robe and headed swiftly for the en suite bathroom. She was not one of Vadim’s closest friends; she was the woman he had sex with. There was no reason why he would confide in her, she reminded herself.

In the bathroom she removed her make-up, washed her face and released the pins from her chignon, pulling the brush through her hair with automatic strokes until she could not put off returning to the bedroom any longer. Thank God she’d made the excuse about having a headache earlier, she thought bleakly. She knew she was being stupid, but she could not bear to make love with Vadim tonight, when his lie about the identities of the woman and child in the photographs emphasised how unimportant she was to him.

He had switched off the lamps so that the room was shadowed; fingers of silvery moonlight were glimmering through the windows. Vadim had stepped outside onto the terrace. She could see him sitting on the garden bench, his shoulders slumped in an air of such utter loneliness that instead of sliding into bed she was drawn towards the open doors, her grey silk gown rustling as she hurried down the steps.

He looked up as she approached, and she caught her breath at the expression of haunted agony on his face.

‘The woman in the photo was my wife,’ he said harshly.

Ella’s eyes flew to the photographs in his hands, and her heart contracted when she saw him stroke his finger lightly over the face of the little girl.

‘And this was my daughter-Klara.’ The silence trembled between them before he added in a tightly controlled voice, ‘They’re both dead.’

He passed his hand over his eyes, and the betraying gesture tore Ella’s heart to shreds. She was stunned to see this powerful man suddenly so vulnerable. She wanted to go to him, hold him, but fear that he would reject her sympathy held her immobile.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She didn’t know what to say, and the words seemed desperately inadequate. When Lena Tarasov had revealed that Vadim had been married, she had been bitterly hurt that he had never spoken about his past to her. But now, as she witnessed his raw pain, she hated herself for having been so childish. He had clearly been devastated by the loss of his wife and daughter, and who could blame him if he found it hard to talk about their deaths?

‘What…what happened?’ she asked huskily.

His throat worked, and his lashes were spiked with moisture when he lifted his head and met her startled gaze. ‘They were killed in an avalanche which hit Irina’s parents’ village,’ he explained harshly. ‘Most of Rumsk was wiped out.’ He stared down at the photos in his hand. ‘My parents-in-law lived on the lower slopes of the mountain, and when hundreds of tons of snow hurtled down the mountainside no one in the house stood a chance. It was three days before the rescue team found Irina, and another two before they reached Klara.’ His voice cracked with emotion. ‘Of course it was too late. When they found Klara she was still holding her doll.’

He picked up the rag-doll and swallowed the constriction in his throat. He could sense Ella’s shock, and knew she was struggling for something to say. But there was nothing to be said. Irina and Klara were gone, and no amount of words would bring them back.

Ella’s throat ached with tears, but she forced herself to speak. ‘When?’ she whispered.

‘Ten years ago.’ His mouth twisted into a grimace. ‘Today would have been Klara’s fifteenth birthday.’ The memories had been agonising today, but he had suppressed his pain in the same way that he always did, and had arranged to socialise with friends to prevent himself from dwelling on the past. But now the evening was over, and he could no longer banish the images in his head of his angelic-faced little girl.

‘I suppose your…wife…’ Ella stumbled slightly over the word ‘…had taken your daughter to visit her parents.’ She fell silent, finding it impossible to imagine how terrible it must have been for Vadim when he’d heard news of the disaster.

Vadim stared silently across the dark garden, reliving those harrowing hours and days when he had joined the search teams and dug through the snow until his shoulder muscles had burned with his frantic efforts to find Klara, so that he could place her body with Irina’s in the mortuary. Even after ten years, the memory of finding his lifeless daughter still ripped his heart out.

He didn’t understand why he suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to confide in Ella. All he knew was that somehow she had crept beneath his guard, so that for the first time in a decade he found himself contemplating a relationship that encompassed more than mindless sex.

Ella looked ethereal and achingly fragile, with her silver-grey gown fluttering gently in the breeze and her pale gold hair streaming like a river of silk down her back. But her loveliness was more than skin-deep. He had discovered that she was funny, witty, fiercely intelligent, and she possessed a depth of compassion that he had never found in any other woman. He admired her strength of will as she fought her nerves to pursue her career as a soloist, and he recognised the vulnerability she tried so hard to disguise. She needed-deserved-more than he could give her. He had failed in one relationship, and that failure had resulted in unimaginable pain. He could never risk failing again.

‘If you want the truth, Irina was in Rumsk because she had walked out on our marriage,’ he told her savagely, the familiar feeling of self-loathing rushing over him. ‘I had been away on yet another business trip, and on my return I found a note from her explaining that she felt I didn’t love her, and that she was taking Klara to stay with her parents. I knew Irina had been upset that I spent so much time at work,’ he admitted heavily. ‘I was determined to reassure her that she and Klara were more important to me than anything, and I raced after them, but I reached Rumsk after the avalanche had hit.’

‘Oh, Vadim.’ It was a cry from the heart, torn from Ella when she glimpsed the agony in his eyes. There was no thought in her head to judge him. She flew across the terrace, uncaring that she was in danger of revealing how she felt about him, intent only on trying to comfort him.

He had risen to his feet, and stiffened when she flung her arms around his waist. ‘You have to understand I was not a good husband,’ he said roughly. ‘I was obsessed with work and establishing my company, and I did not spend enough time at home-even when Irina pleaded with me to devote more time to her and Klara.’ His jaw tightened as he fought to control the emotions surging through him. ‘Irina accused me of not loving her. She was wrong; I did love her-but I didn’t value what I had until she had left me, and she and Klara were killed before I had the chance to tell them both what they meant to me.’ He drew a ragged breath. ‘I should not have married. I was selfish and driven by my determination to succeed. I put my interests first, and in that respect perhaps I am not so dissimilar to your father,’ he finished grimly.

‘You are nothing like my father.’ Ella fiercely refuted the suggestion. When she had first met Vadim she had believed he was a man like her father, a heartless playboy who only cared about himself. But since they had become lovers he had treated her with kindness and respect, as if he valued her as a person and did not regard her merely as a form of entertainment in his bed.