Sarah Holland - An Obsessive Love

Natasha just stared at him in disbelief. ‘Your mother ?’

‘I understand you wrote to her a month ago.’

‘I wrote to your mother?’ she echoed, baffled.

‘Yes. Xenia Valevsky. Countess Valevsky. The author.’

She caught her breath, mind reeling as everything slotted into place. Xenia Valevsky was her favourite author, and had been for seven or eight years. She wrote intricately detailed books on imperial Russia, some set in the time of Peter the Great, some Catherine the Great, some leading up to the revolution, but all deeply embedded in Russian life, folklore, language, and richly encrusted with the extravagance of the aristocracy and Imperial families.

Natasha had read every single one of her books, some several times over, and felt deeply connected with her because of it. Eventually, she had written a long fan letter, telling Xenia Valevsky how she admired her, and mentioning that she currently worked for Thorne Industries.

‘I have your letter here.’ Dominic reached behind him on to the desk, picked up a black file, extracted the piece of paper.

Natasha took it and stared at her own handwriting. ‘Xenia Valevsky is your mother…?’

‘She has been for some time,’ he drawled sardonically, blue eyes glittering, and Natasha felt her pulses race, because he really was wickedly attractive.

‘But why the different name? I thought she really was a Russian countess, that her name really was Valevsky.’

‘Yes, but it’s her maiden name. She married my father, remember, an Englishman called Jack Thorne. As for the title, it’s genuine all right, and inherited from her parents. But the land that goes with it is in Russia and now the property of the state, which renders the title almost defunct.’

Natasha nodded, fascinated. ‘I’m amazed to discover I’ve been working for her son all this time without realising it. It’s never been mentioned around the office, or in the Press.’

‘Well, I’m proud of her, of course, but she prefers to keep her English identity—that of Xenia Thorne, my mother—reasonably quiet. Her public image is so strong. Tragic Russian countess turned best-selling novelist, parents escaped during the revolution, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a great image and it sells.’ He laughed drily. ‘Much more romantic than being born in London, marrying my father, Jack Thorne, an industrial factory owner.’ He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘And of course, although I’ve rebuilt the company since my father’s death, it nevertheless remains a basically British firm, for all its international tentacles. So she keeps me out of the imagepicture, too.’

Natasha stared. ‘But—but I would have thought you’d enhance her sales.’

He laughed again. ‘How on earth could I do that?’

Unguardedly, she blurted out, ‘Because you’re so good-looking and so successful!’

His dark lashes flickered, and the blue eyes gleamed as he smiled, a smile so charming that it made her temporarily breathless. ‘Why, thank you, Miss Came.’

A slow burn turned her face a delicious shade of pink. ‘At any rate—what exactly will this job with your mother entail?’

‘Taking dictation, answering the phone, typing up notes, helping with research.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘The usual secretarial bit. But there’s rather more to it than that, particularly at this point. You see, you will be expected to go to Russia with her.’

Natasha caught her breath with excitement.

‘To St Petersburg.’

Her green eyes glittered like emeralds in her white, Slavic face, and she had no idea how beautiful she looked in that moment, how Russian, how feminine, how completely romantic: strange almond eyes shining with excitement, dark red mouth curved radiantly, long red hair spilling around her porcelain skin.

Dominic Thorne stared at her, smiling too, looking suddenly as though what he wanted most in the world was to fall into her eyes.

Natasha blushed again, astonishingly, and said in a strange, husky voice, ‘I—I don’t know what to say. I’ve wanted to go to St Petersburg since I was born. It’s the most magical-sounding name in the world to me.’

‘Then you want the job?’

‘Oh, yes, of course! I’d do anything to get it!’

‘Good.’ He smiled long and slow, his eyes moving over her face, then said, ‘Because you seem perfect for it, and I’m certain you’ll get on famously with my mother. I had you checked out, you understand. An elementary precaution.’

‘You had me checked out…?’

‘Yes.’ He picked up the black file again, flipped it open, reading aloud. ‘Your grandmother was one Anastasia Malakova——’

Natasha gasped.

‘Born April 7, 1913 in St Petersburg, the illegitimate daughter of Marie Malakova, a ballerina at the Kirov and your great-grandmother, and her long-term lover, Prince Sergei Kallensikov——’

‘How did you get all that information?’ Natasha could hardly believe her ears as she heard him reading out the details of her grandmother’s birth. ‘My God, I haven’t told anyone in this office that my grandmother was illegitimate! Let alone the illegitimate daughter of a ballerina and a prince of Russia!’

‘I had you traced back to the village in Kent you were born in,’ Dominic said coolly, and then nearly jumped out of his skin.

‘How dare you?’ Natasha shouted, leaping to her feet, eyes blazing like a tempestuous Russian princess’s. ‘How dare you investigate me like that? Going back to my home town, digging up dirt, making me——’

‘Now, just a minute!’ he bit out forcefully, standing up and dwarfing her with his extraordinary height. ‘I had to have you checked out if I was going to agree to hire you to——’

‘You had no right to go to my home town!’ Her voice shook with appalled emotion. ‘What else did you find out about me? Come on! Tell me! They all talked their heads off, didn’t they? Everyone in that stupid little town! They told you all about Tony Kerr, didn’t they?’ She tried to grab at the black file on the desk. ‘Let me see it! Let me see what lies they’ve——’

‘Who the hell is Tony Kerr?’ he demanded, slamming a strong hand on the file to stop her picking it up, his eyes blazing furious blue. ‘And who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like this?’

Natasha’s heart was pounding violently with rage and fear. The thought of him knowing something about Tony Kerr, about the way she’d fallen so obsessively in love with him, humiliated herself in front of the town—well, it was a nightmare even to think about.

‘Answer me!’ Dominic Thorne bit out harshly. ‘Who is Tony Kerr?’

At once, she looked away, breathing hard. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He clearly didn’t know, and if she had any sense she wouldn’t push it, or he might just decide to find out.

‘It obviously matters a great deal to you.’ He watched her with narrowed eyes. ‘Who is he? What has he done to make you react like——?’

‘Nothing.’ Her face was tight with emotion. ‘Anyway—I need to know the details of this job with your mother. When would I go to St Petersburg?’

He watched her for a long time, eyes shrewd, and he was clearly aware of her deliberate change of subject, also of the way she was struggling to remain calm in the face of what was clearly extreme provocation.

Suddenly, he seemed to come to a decision to let it slide. ‘You’ll go to St Petersburg in two weeks,’ he said briskly. ‘But first, you’ll have to meet my mother for a preliminary interview. Shall I arrange it for tomorrow morning, eleven sharp?’

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Very well. Be at this address——’ he handed her a

business card ‘—at eleven tomorrow.’