‘It drove me crazy.’
‘I was just a teeny bopper when I loved Jeffrey. It was different,’ Abbey admitted ruefully, freeing one of his hands to reach up and trace the angle of one hard masculine cheekbone, rejoicing in her freedom to touch him. ‘You should appreciate the fact that I fell for you, warts and all! You paraded all your faults and I still managed to love you.’
‘What faults?’ Nikolai fielded.
Abbey rested her palm on his shirt front. ‘I don’t think we should go there tonight. You know, I’m not perfect either. I was just trying to point out that even though you bribed me into dining with you on our first date and I knew that was very wrong, I still fell head over heels in love with you.’
Nikolai covered her hand with his. ‘I had to fight just to get time with you and then I took advantage of you that first night and knew I would pay for it-’
‘Of course you took advantage,’ Abbey said ruefully, knowing that Nikolai would always make the most of any opportunity to get what he wanted. He was built that way and aggressively set on winning and nothing would change him.
‘You hated me for it,’ Nikolai growled. ‘It wasn’t worth it.’
‘I have one question I have always wanted to ask. And you must be honest. Sveta, Olya and Darya-what’s the score there?’ Abbey enquired gently.
‘I founded a business school in St Petersburg and I offer jobs to the top graduates. They’re terrific workers. Sveta and I grew up in the same neighbourhood. I have never slept with any of them,’ Nikolai completed with an honesty that she found compellingly attractive.
‘But I’m not sure I could accept them staying with you, because they all want you,’ Abbey responded with equal frankness.
‘I’ll deal with the situation,’ Nikolai asserted. ‘I promise.’
Abbey looked at the ring glittering on her finger and curved her arms round his neck. ‘How long have we got before dinner?’
A wolfish grin slashed his sculpted mouth as he read her expressive face. ‘Long enough,
Happiness was racing through Abbey like an ongoing electric shock. She still couldn’t quite credit the ring on her finger and the idea that she was loved. ‘I thought you only committed to sex-’
‘You made me want much more. I wanted to be the very special guy that you had the worthy, important relationship with. I’m hopelessly competitive,’ Nikolai teased. ‘Why do you think I gave you that file on Jeffrey?’
Abbey stiffened and pulled a face. ‘That was awful, but I was glad I finally found out.’
‘That was the night I realised I loved you, because I felt like such a bastard for hurting you like that. I was really worried about you, as well.’
‘I think I shifted from lust to something more that night as well. You were very caring,’ Abbey confided, planting a kiss on the corner of his mouth as she wrenched off his tie and attempted to extract him from his suit jacket.
‘Is this lust or love?’ Nikolai’s eyes were bright with wicked amusement.
‘Does it matter?’
Just then it didn’t. Nikolai claimed her mouth with feverish hunger and for quite some time there was no sensible conversation whatsoever. Clothes were discarded in careless heaps. Passion blazed between them. He made love to her with all the natural fire of his temperament, but there was a new tenderness in their joining. Afterwards she was in tears of happiness again. Suddenly her whole world seemed drenched in sunlight and she was full of bright hopes for the future.
‘What made you pick Cobblefield House?’ Abbey whispered curiously while she still lay in his arms, but carefully arranged so that she could continue to feast her gaze on her glittering engagement ring.
Nikolai groaned out loud. ‘Didn’t it remind you of anything?’
Bemused by the question, Abbey shook her head.
‘The centre portion looks like your doll’s house…’
Her eyes opened very wide. ‘Oh, my word…is that why?’
‘My inspiration…didn’t you realise that’s where I got the idea that you liked Siamese cats?’
‘Lady,’ Abbey sighed comfortably. ‘She was one terrific present. I love that little cat to bits-’
‘When I saw you with the kitten, I thought you would make an amazing mother,’ Nikolai confessed. ‘For the first time ever, I thought of becoming a father without freaking out and I realised that you were different.’
‘I’m not sure I’m ready to be a mother yet,’ Abbey admitted. ‘I’m only just adjusting to the being engaged, and then getting married and living in a giant castle.’
‘I love you. I’ll wait. Whatever makes you happy,’ Nikolai intoned.
Abbey gave him a radiant smile. ‘
‘Stay still, darling,’ Ophelia Metaxis urged her three-year-old daughter as she adjusted the focus on her camera. ‘I want to get a picture of you beside your baby cousin.’
Little, blond, dark-eyed Poppy was stationed beside Abbey, who was holding her infant son, Danilo, on her lap. The baby, black-haired and blue-eyed, dressed in his magnificent christening robe and shawl, was fast asleep.
‘He really is gorgeous,’ Ophelia remarked and she patted her slightly protruding tummy. ‘I hope my next is a boy.’
At Caroline’s request, Abbey settled Danilo on her sister-in-law’s knee for another set of photos for her side of the family. The DNA tests had been positive: Ophelia and Nikolai were half-brother and sister, the children of the same mother, Cathy. Ophelia had told Abbey about her little sister, Molly, who had been adopted when Ophelia was a teenager. Nikolai was as keen as Ophelia to track down Molly, but so far their enquiries had failed to establish any leads.
Two years had passed since Abbey and Nikolai had got married. Lysander and Ophelia had staged the wedding for them at Madrigal Court, their beautiful Tudor country house, which lay only thirty miles from Cobblefield House. The wedding had been a fantastic day, which had served to wipe out all Abbey’s unhappy memories of her first tragic wedding day. Now she lived very firmly in the present with her attention centred squarely on the husband she adored and her first child.
Caroline and Drew were a good deal happier than they had been, for they had more time to spend together as a family. Nikolai owned a share of Support Systems now, and Olya managed the business, ensuring that expenses never got out of hand and everything ran like clockwork. Darya was based in New York and still working for Nikolai, as was Sveta, who had taken charge of Arlov Industries in London. Nikolai had other very presentable St Petersburg business graduates working for him, but none of them ever seemed quite as dangerously adoring and possessive of their handsome employer as the original threesome.
Abbey’s miniature doll’s house castle had been rear-ranged and refurbished as a more suitable home for a medieval knight. The lady of the house now wore a Tudor bed gown and there was a hip bath by the fire with her fanciable husband inside it. Abbey reckoned that a warrior just home from battle would probably need a good wash. She believed that the moment Nikolai confessed to having attended the Kensington Doll’s House Festival to buy her presents was the same moment that she should have worked out that he loved her.
She was amazed by how well Nikolai had settled down into being married, as she had initially feared that he might find it boring to be with one woman. But she had gradually come to understand that, deep down inside, Nikolai must always have craved the ordinary stability of a home and a family that he could depend on being there for him. She knew that he loved coming home to her at the end of a long day and that he found the household routine soothing after the volatile cut and thrust of the business world. When he had to travel on business, he phoned her continually to keep up with every little detail of her life while they were apart.
‘I never realised how much babies slept,’ Nikolai remarked, leaning down to jiggle his son’s tiny feet in unashamed hope of waking him up.
‘I’m going to put him up to bed for a nap. He’s had so much attention he’s exhausted. If you wake him, he’ll be as cross as tacks and he’ll cry and cry and cry. On your head be it,’ Abbey warned, settling Danilo into his father’s arms.
Looking a touch daunted by that forthright speech, Nikolai carried his four-month-old son carefully upstairs to the nursery with Alice, Benjamin and Poppy all trailing in their wake. The children all liked Nikolai because he played
