Rachael Thomas - A Child Claimed By Gold

There was nothing, not a single trace of him teasing her, and she knew she was in danger of slipping under the spell that the magic of the moment was weaving around them. If they had been in a hotel lounge, talking in front of an open fire as they had done the afternoon she arrived, would he be saying these things to her?

‘I didn’t come here to become mixed up with a man.’ Even as her body yearned for the unknown, her mind kept to the practical issue of keeping her feet firmly on the ground.

‘Do we have to get “mixed up”, as you so nicely put it?’ His voice was deep and laden with a hidden agenda.

She looked away, across the vast, white expanse of the snowy landscape, and asked herself the same question. If she took the kiss she was sure he wanted to give, would that change anything between them? No, because it couldn’t. She had a job to do and then it would be time to move on with her life.

She’d waited in the hope that Richard would move their friendship to something more intimate and now she wondered if that had been wrong. Or was it just Richard who was wrong?

‘No, I guess we don’t.’ She hoped she sounded as though she knew what she was doing, as if she’d been in this very situation many times before. The reality was very different. She’d never had a man look at her with such fierce desire in his eyes, never wanted to feel his lips claim hers.

He responded by moving closer and brushing his lips over hers very gently and suddenly she wasn’t cold any more as heat scorched through her. She moved her lips against his, a soft sigh of pleasure slipping from her, only to be caught by him. What was happening to her?

A jolt threw her away from him and she dragged in a long, cold breath as the restless horses shifted in their harnesses. The driver spoke to Nikolai and she blushed, burying her face deeper in her scarf to hide her embarrassment. What was happening to her?

‘The driver says snow is on the way and suggests we see what is necessary and head back.’ Nikolai hadn’t intended to kiss her like that; he’d just wanted to make her feel special, to give her the fairy-tale ride through the snow to a beautiful location. He’d wanted all that to distract her—at least, he had, until he’d tasted her lips, felt them welcoming him and encouraging him to take more.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ She sounded flustered as she took her camera out of its protective case. ‘I’ll just take a few frames and then you can tell me about it on the way back. I’d rather be in the warm when the snow arrives.’

He pushed back the image of that warmth being his bed and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He had to distract her from the truth of his family history by showing her the façade they had lived behind.

‘This,’ he said as he helped her from the troika, ‘Is where my mother and I spent each summer until we left Russia. In the summer, though, it was much greener and warmer than now.’

He hadn’t thought of those summer days for such a long time, consigning them to the past he wanted to forget, but now, as he began to talk to Emma, it wasn’t nearly as hard to look back on them as he’d always feared.

‘And this was your mother’s family home?’ she asked as she lined up the shot and took a photo of the one place he’d been happy as a child.

‘It was, but I never saw it like this, all covered in snow. It was always summer when we visited and I’d run with the dogs in the orchard, enjoying the freedom.’

It hadn’t been just the freedom of running free in the summer sun, it had been the freedom from the terror of his father: from not having to hide when his filthy temper struck; of not having to worry about his mother as his father’s voice rose to aggressive shouts. It had been freedom from pain—for both of them. He’d realised much later on that his mother’s parents must have known what was going on and it had been their way of offering sanctuary. He just couldn’t understand why his mother hadn’t taken it permanently.

‘And is your grandmother here to talk to us now?’ Hope was shining in her voice. She thought he meant the grandmother who had started this whole nonsense off.

‘No, they passed away before my father. Marya Petrushov is my father’s mother. The one who contacted World in Photographs. She lives in Vladimir.’

‘So we can see her?’

She turned her attention to packing away the camera, obviously happy with the photos she’d taken, and he was glad she couldn’t see his face—because right now he was sure it must be contorted with rage and contempt for the woman who had done nothing to help him or his mother. Instead she’d preferred to make excuses for her son and for that he could never forgive her.

‘Tomorrow. But right now we should return to the hotel.’

Just as he couldn’t put off returning to the hotel because of the impending snow, he knew he couldn’t put off meeting his grandmother again any longer. Maybe facing her for the first time would be easier with someone else at his side. It might also be the worst possible decision he’d ever made.

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