Cait London - Instinctive Male

Ellie smiled slightly. “Tanya was amazing, beautiful and I wanted her more than anything I’d wanted in my life. I wanted to adopt her. I chose to marry Mark, because I had this plan that two parents were better than one. He came from a good family. He wanted me—or rather he wanted a Lathrop heiress bred for the life he wanted—and I wanted Tanya. I was used to business deals, teethed on them, and marriage to Mark seemed sensible. I liked him. We were very compatible. We—we filled each other’s needs. I wanted marriage, a home and the idea of a real family. I’m used to making trade-offs, Mikhail. I’ve made them all my life. I knew that I was exactly what Mark wanted, more of a business partner to make him look good. That was the master plan, to give Tanya a good home and a good father.”

She looked so weary and pale, and Mikhail’s instincts were to tell her to rest. But he recognized that she had fought hard and now defeated, baring herself and her pride to him, that she needed to take these last steps by herself.

Ellie was quiet and then another blast of rain against the windows seemed to rouse her from her thoughts. “Tanya was just six months old when I married Mark. We had talked about adoption prior to the wedding. He had agreed…and then he changed his mind. Someone had mentioned genetic defects to him, and he was afraid she’d—I spent the next six months trying to convince him that we needed to adopt Tanya. One of his ridiculous reasons not to adopt was that with Hillary’s frequent changes in lovers, Tanya could have inherited any disease, he said. Basically, he wouldn’t even bring up the subject to Paul. I did…I had to. My father can be…horrible. He believed that someday Hillary would marry and settle down and make a fine mother. So, I divorced Mark and adopted Tanya when she was two years old. Correction—I bought her from Hillary with everything I owned, and then I adopted Tanya legally. Tanya is my child—legally,” Ellie repeated, clenching her fists until the knuckles glowed white beneath the skin.

To Mikhail, the thought that a woman could reject her own child was unthinkable—but then so was the fact that his ex-wife had an abortion rather than have their child. His child. The past bitterness went tearing through him again, unexpected and dark and hurting. He remembered his ex-wife’s words. “You chose the Amoteh and this godforsaken piece of sand. On those terms, I chose not to be a mother, not to be stuck in this wasteland. When we moved here, I thought it was only for a short time, that you needed to make your mark in the industry and then we would move to civilization. I simply changed my mind about having a baby, and that’s that,” JoAnna had said.

Mikhail pulled himself back from that stormy, primitive edge, that anger and sense of defeat—because his marriage was a failure and divorce the conclusion. To be truthful, perhaps he was as cold and boring as JoAnna had claimed. Perhaps he hadn’t given her what a woman needed. Perhaps that was why his lovemaking had left her cold, why he felt empty and frustrated later.

He sorted through the years since he’d sent that crystal vase to Ellie as a wedding gift. With no word of Ellie’s escapades, he’d thought that marriage had settled her. Paul had stopped speaking of his daughters. Meanwhile, she’d been divorced and had adopted her niece. “And the problem? Why do you think you need me?”

When she looked at Mikhail, Ellie’s eyes were filled with tears. Her hand trembled as she lifted it to dash them away. “To Hillary, Tanya is just a…a thing to use. At first, Hillary hated her because childbirth had left stretch marks, and she’d lost her shape. I found Tanya, in her crib, alone at five months—though the nurse carefully locked the door before she went out with her friends. I vowed that would not happen again. Hillary was off somewhere, playing with another man, and she wasn’t concerned at all. After that, I was around even more. I basically took Tanya to live with me, and Hillary didn’t miss her at all.”

Mikhail remembered Hillary—wealthy, spoiled and willful, like Ellie. But there was a basic difference. Hillary acted and looked cheap. Paul actually paid her to stay away from business and social functions, but he wanted Ellie at his side to smooth any waves he created with his aggressive manners.

Except for the disaster of the botched real estate deal, Ellie was his little fix-it person—when she wanted. But if Paul and Ellie crossed swords, she was his personal disaster.

Mikhail did not want to share Paul’s fate; he had already been cursed by one sharp-tongued, willful woman.

The woman curled in the huge chair was soft and vulnerable, and a mother fighting to protect her child. She turned to Mikhail, her eyes huge and sad. “A year ago, Hillary said she wanted Tanya back to impress her new boyfriend. He thinks Hillary just had that one affair and excuses her for being too young to handle a Romeo type. He’s wealthy and family-minded and Paul is delighted. He wants this marriage. He’s obsessed by the idea of getting a Wall Street power broker into the family. This man’s first wife wasn’t fertile and he wants children—the complete family-man picture, you know…proving his manhood and healthy sperm count, and the family image for business, yada, yada, yada. He’s ready to claim that Tanya is really his love child. Hillary and Paul will support him.”

Ellie shuddered and spoke quietly. “I’ve used and sold everything I can to fight them legally—jewelry, stocks, wedding gifts, clothes—and six months ago, I started running. My father is a powerful man. He can make things…difficult. He sent men with Hillary to collect Tanya at the day care center—that’s why she has nightmares of ‘the big scary men’ trying to take her away. Hillary came with them. She looks enough like me, and like Tanya, to pass as her ‘aunt,’ and that was when I knew we weren’t safe at all. I was working at an insurance office, and I left as soon as the day care center called me to double-check releasing Tanya without written permissions—and we moved that night. Tanya still remembers that awful scene—when Hillary is angry, she can be violent…abusive.”

Ellie stood slowly as though she had come too far and could go no farther. She stood in front of him with the air of making a formal, desperate plea. “Mikhail, you are the only man who can help us. Will you?”

Because he knew the players, Mikhail understood the dynamics perfectly. Ellie was a fighter for causes she felt deserved help, and he knew Hillary’s selfishness and Paul’s determination to get his way, no matter who suffered. Now a child was endangered—if Mikhail could trust Ellie to portray the situation correctly. From his experience, she knew how to wrangle her way. “How do you see my part in this? Why am I the only person who can help you?”

She smiled briefly, sadly, and stood like a warrior with all her defenses shed. “Because you are the one man who can match my father’s power, and he respects you. In short, I need an ally—someone to hold him off until I can get back on my feet. I’ve picked you.”

Mikhail tried not to notice the dark peaks of her nipples, pressed against the white of his shirt. He stood abruptly, and went to the window, considering the sleet and snow with his hands thrust into his pockets. “You’re asking me to protect you and the child. Correct?”

Her voice was too soft over the crackling of the flames, the howling of the wind, and the rain against the glass. And yet, he heard her perfectly. “Only my daughter, Mikhail. Do it for her.”

“You realize what you’re asking? Your father is not an easy man.”

“Neither are you. That is why you work so well together. You’re not his usual ‘yes’ man. He respects you for it. He needs Tanya to portray the happy grandfather image to Hillary’s new man, to look like she’s a perfect mother. She may play the part for a while, but when she’s done, Tanya will be tossed aside. Don’t let that happen, Mikhail.”