The Russian's Ultimatum Read online

  ‘Not at all. I’m just trying to understand why you’re the one doing everything—risking everything: your job, your home—while your brother gets to live his life as normal apart from occasionally acting as a babysitter.’

  She looked as if she’d been punched. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about or what we’ve been through, so keep your opinions to yourself.’

  She left his hut without a goodbye.

  Pascha could have kicked himself. He hadn’t wanted to upset her, but nonetheless he was glad he’d said what he had.

  He would bet every last cent he had that James’s job wasn’t at risk. The man ran his own business, could take all the leave he needed with no one to answer to.

  Emily had been the one to take all the time off, enough to have been given a final warning for it. Emily had been the one to leave her flat and move back into her childhood home.

  James might be the elder sibling but it was the younger of the two who had taken the role of leader.

  It was the younger of the two who’d effectively given up her life for their father.

  CHAPTER TEN

  EMILY SAT AT the table of her hut—which had mercifully escaped the storm with no internal damage—carefully sewing sequins onto the hem of the dress she’d spent the afternoon making, a different dress from the one she’d marked out a couple of days before. So what if she had no mannequin or model? That she was doing something practical was enough.

  She remembered the first dress she’d made. She’d been seven. Naturally, her mother had done the majority of the work, but once the work was done she had let Emily raid her button box. Emily had spent hours sewing all the pretty, sparkly ones all over the dress, being very careful not to stab her seven-year-old fingers too often.

  She’d loved wearing that dress, had got every ounce of wear from it, leaving a trail of fallen-off buttons wherever she went. More than anything, she’d loved the closeness she’d felt with her mum at that time, a special time only for them.

  After her heated exchange with Pascha in his hut, Emily had buried herself in the clean-up, working until long after the sun had gone down, doing everything she was physically capable of. It had been therapeutic. It had left her no time to think.

  Today was different.

  Today, when she’d shown up at the main lodge at the crack of dawn, Valeria had given her a hug and told her there was nothing else for her to do. All that was left was hard manual work.

  Emily had spent the day alone with her thoughts.

  She’d thought about a lot of things, especially about what Pascha had said about James; the truth it contained. And, as she’d thought, she’d wandered back to the waterfall and sat on the ledge, gazing at all the bright colours glistening under the sun.

  She might loathe the colour pink but she’d always adored bright, happy colours.

  When had she stopped designing bright clothes? When had she stopped wearing them? It was working with Hugo, his love for the gothic and theatrical. His control over his designers was absolute. She’d moulded herself into what she believed he wanted her to be and, worse, had let it spill into her private life. Yes, she adored dressing up, loved wearing make-up, but when had she last worn clothes she felt were for her and not some image she was trying to live up to?

  Armed with a determination to fix it, she’d hurried back to her hut, grabbed the roll of Persian Orange cotton, drawn a quick sketch as a guide and got to work.

  So what if the finished product was a shambles?

  So what if it didn’t fit properly?

  This was for her.

  When had she lost the essence of herself?

  Had she ever found it in the first place...?

  A tap on the door caught her attention and she tilted her head to find Pascha standing there. With all the activity involved in fixing and straightening everything affected by the storm, they’d spent hardly any time together since leaving the shelter.

  He’d come to her hut, though, late in the night, so late she’d almost given up hope.

  Not that she’d been hoping. She’d been too angry and hurt by his words about James to want him to come to her.

  She’d been lying in her bed wide awake when he’d tapped on the same glass door he was currently standing at. That one tap had been enough.

  However much she’d wanted to deny it, she’d carried with her a deep, inner yearning, an intense almost cramp-like feeling of helpless excitement.

  He’d stood at her door, hands in his pockets. He’d looked shattered.

  He’d said two words. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She’d been in his arms before he’d crossed the threshold.

  There had been no more conversation. All their talking had been done through their bodies.

  He’d left early.

  Now, he stepped into the hut bringing with him a cloud of citrusy manliness.

  She closed her eyes, hating the way her heart raced just to see him.

  The night was bewitching. Everything felt so different in the daylight, her emotions so much more exposed.

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asked, forcing graciousness as she resumed her sewing.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know—James has called. Your father got out of bed today.’

  She turned her head to look at him so quickly she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d given herself whiplash. ‘You’re joking?’

  His eyes were steady. ‘No joke.’

  While Emily tried to digest this unexpected news, Pascha took the seat opposite her.

  She could feel his stare resting on her but suddenly felt too fearful to return it, too scared of what he would read in her eyes. Scared of what she would read in his eyes.

  Her father had got out of bed. A small step, yes, but one with huge implications. In theory this meant the worst of it was over. She should be celebrating.

  So why did she still feel so flat?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me your father tried to kill himself?’

  The needle went right into her thumb. ‘Ow!’ Immediately she stuck her thumb into her mouth.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ he asked, his eyes crinkled with concern.

  She shook her head before pulling her thumb out of her mouth and examining it. A spot of bright red blood pooled out so she put it back in her mouth and sucked on it.

  She was going to kill James.

  They’d made a promise to each other. Yes, it had been an unspoken promise, but it was an unspoken promise they’d carried their entire lives. They didn’t speak about their father’s severe depression outside the family home, not to anyone. It was kept between them. Their father’s attempted suicide came under that pact.

  So why the hell had James told Pascha Virshilas, of all people?

  ‘Do I take it by the horrified look on your face that you’re angry I know?’ Pascha asked.

  ‘Yes, I am very angry,’ she said, her fury so great she could barely get her words out.

  ‘Why? Are you ashamed of him?’

  ‘Of course not! But when my dad’s well again I know he will be ashamed. He won’t want anyone to know.’

  ‘Has he done this before?’ Pascha asked quietly.

  ‘What? Tried to kill himself?’ Her voice rose.

  ‘I know this is painful for you to talk about but I must know—when did he take the pills?’

  ‘Didn’t James tell you that?’

  ‘No. And, before you turn your anger on your brother, he didn’t tell me, not directly. It was a throwaway comment about stopping his watch on the medicine cabinet. I don’t think he even realised he’d said it.’

  Slightly mollified, Emily put the fabric down and made a valiant stab at humour. ‘Your powers of deduction astound me.’


  To her alarm, Pascha saw right through her attempt to lighten the mood and placed his hand on her wrist. ‘I’d already guessed something bad had occurred. This just confirmed it. Now, please answer my question. When did he take the pills?’

  Finally she met his gaze head-on. ‘When do you think he took them?’

  He sighed heavily, as if purging his lungs of every fraction of oxygen contained within them.

  ‘He tried to kill himself the same day you suspended him on suspicion of theft. Two months to the day after we’d buried my mother.’

  The obvious remorse that seeped out of him as she spoke her words had her feeling suddenly wretched.

  She tugged her wrist out of his strong grip but, instead of moving her hand away, rested it atop his. ‘He was a man on the edge before you suspended him,’ she explained with a helpless shrug. ‘What you did pushed him over that edge, and I’m not going to lie to you Pascha: I’ve spent the past month hating you for it.

  ‘But the truth is, my father had just been waiting for an excuse. James and I knew how bad he was becoming. It’s like watching a child cross a road with a lorry rushing towards them but not being able to run fast enough to push the child away, or scream loudly enough for them to hear. We couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t reach him. I’ve never been able to. The only person who could reach him when he fell into that pit was my mother, but she isn’t here any more.’

  Did Emily realise she had tears pouring down her cheeks? Pascha wondered. Or that her fingers were gripping his hand as if he were the anchor rooting her? His chest hurt to see such naked distress.

  ‘This depression, it’s happened before?’

  She nodded, running her hand over her face in an attempt to wipe her free-flowing tears away. ‘He’s always suffered from it but can go months—years—without succumbing. And I know I shouldn’t say succumbing, as if it’s his fault, because I know it isn’t. He can’t help it any more than Mum could help getting that monstrous illness.’

  Despite her impassioned words, Pascha didn’t think she believed them, not fully.

  He tried to think how he would have felt if he’d been a child and his father had shut himself away for weeks on end. Children were sensitive and felt things more deeply than most adults credited.

  His illness had been devastating for his parents, but they were adults and understood there was nothing they could have done to prevent it. Children were liable to blame themselves.

  Just as he was considering which of his contacts would be best placed to recommend a psychiatrist at the top of their field, his phone vibrated, the Top Cat tune ringing out loudly.

  Emily laughed, tears still brimming in her eyes. ‘I love that tune.’

  He grinned in response and swiped his phone to answer it.

  It was his lawyer, Zlatan.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ he said, disconnecting the call. He got to his feet and looked down at her. She’d stopped crying. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks all blotchy. She looked adorable.

  ‘Are you going to be okay? I need to call Zlatan.’

  She sniffed and nodded. ‘I still can’t believe that’s your ring tone. Top Cat was my favourite cartoon as a child.’

  ‘And mine,’ he admitted. ‘My father got some black market videos of it from one of his clients. When I was too ill to do anything else, I would watch them over and over.’

  Their eyes held and he was taken with the most powerful urge to lean over the table and scoop her into his arms.

  Yesterday he’d sworn to himself that whatever was happening between them had to stop.

  All he could offer her was money. He knew without having to be told that she didn’t want it.

  Emily needed someone to love her—someone who could give her a family all of her own to heap her love on.

  And that was the one thing he could never give her.

  Despite his best intentions, he’d climbed the stairs leading up to her hut in the dead of night, exhausted after the clean-up and little sleep, and found himself rapping on her door before he’d realised his legs had taken him to her door. Even then, he’d tried to convince himself he was there to apologise, nothing else. Certainly not to make love to her again.

  He needed to put some distance between them. Things were becoming too... He didn’t know what the word was to describe the growing connection between them, knew only that nothing could ever come of it. ‘I need to get going. I have a lot of work to do.’

  ‘I’m going to stay in here and finish this off,’ she said, picking up the bright material she’d been working on when he’d walked in. ‘And then I might take another walk to the waterfall.’

  ‘It will be dark soon,’ he pointed out. ‘I would prefer it if you held off until the morning.’

  He was rewarded for his concern with a soft smile. ‘If it makes you feel better, I’ll wait until the morning.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And I’ll hold off jumping into the pool until I can see the bottom.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Not even Emily would be crazy enough to jump into that pool. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  He could feel her eyes following his movements all the way to his own hut.

  * * *

  Emily assumed she would spend the evening in her hut alone as she had the night before. The clean-up was still ongoing, with most of the staff concentrating on clearing the felled trees and other manual jobs.

  When Pascha turned up at her hut not long after sundown, he looked more relaxed than she’d ever seen him, the lines around his eyes and mouth softened. Even his clothes were casual, dressed as he was in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. She would never in a million years have guessed he owned a pair of jeans. Or that they would fit so well...

  ‘We’re eating on the beach tonight,’ he said, not bothering with any preamble.

  On the beach...

  Had it really only been three days since they’d eaten on the beach, her first night on the island?

  It felt a lifetime away. She felt a lifetime away.

  She’d placed the dress she’d spent the afternoon making on a hanger. It wasn’t quite finished; it was missing embellishments she wanted to add to it. But...it was done. A little rough, considering there was no mannequin or model for her to use, but it was done—the only item of real colour in the room.

  She was fed up of the dark.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ she said, yanking the dress off the hanger and diving into her bathroom. In no time at all, she’d stripped off the black vest and black shorts and donned her creation.

  She turned before the mirror, staring critically at her reflection.

  Deviating from her original sketch, she’d made it sleeveless, the bodice smocked and elasticated to hold it in place, the skirt flaring out into a ‘V’ that fell to her knees. She plucked out a couple of loose threads from around the hem then pulled her tortoiseshell comb loose—really, why did she bother with it? Her hair always fell out.

  She dashed back into the main room of the hut. ‘Two secs,’ she said, lunging at the dressing table. Not bothering to sit down, she applied a little eyeliner, some mascara and a dash of coral lipstick.

  There was no need for war paint. Pascha had seen her stripped bare, in all senses of the word. And he’d still wanted her. Just as she’d wanted him. Just as she still wanted him, more than she’d ever dreamed possible.

  When she turned to face him, the grey of his eyes glittered.

  Her thundering heart soared.

  ‘You look...’ He raised his shoulders as if to find the word he searched for. ‘Like a fire opal.’

  Her voice broke. ‘Thank you.’

  He edged back towards the door. ‘We need to go.’

  Her skin dancing, she followed him down the steps to the beach.


  The staff were already there, setting up long bench tables which were being covered with crockery, cutlery and plentiful bottles of wine and beer. Some of the felled trees and branches had been placed in an A shape to make a bonfire a little further down the beach from where they would be eating.

  ‘I thought everyone could do with a night off to let their hair down,’ Pascha murmured into her ear.

  Startled, she tilted her face to look at him. His arms were crossed over his broad chest but there was nothing defensive about his stance. It was more a look of a man surveying all he owned and taking immense pride in it.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ she asked.

  He gave a brief flash of his teeth. ‘You can help me with the barbecue.’

  ‘You’re cooking?’

  ‘We all muck in but the barbecue is my domain.’

  ‘You’ve done this before?’

  He raised a shoulder. ‘A few times.’

  He never ceased to surprise her.

  It wasn’t long before laughter was the predominant sound, laughter and a whole heap of chatter, the two-dozen staff all determined to forget their worries about family and friends on the battered surrounding islands and mainland for one evening. Plates of food and condiments had been brought out and the wine was in full flow. The balmy weather and black sky with stars glittering like tiny jewels only added to the party effect.

  The good humour was contagious and spirits were high. Even Pascha, set apart from the rest of them at the barbecue, had a smile on his face. Emily went backwards and forwards from the industrial-sized barbecue to the tables, delivering trays of ribs, chicken breasts, king prawns, skewer kebabs... The list of food was endless.

  So busy did she make herself, and so many conversations did she strike up, that she spent hardly any time with Pascha. That didn’t stop her awareness of him.

  For a man desperate to get off the island, he was clearly in his element. No one looking at him would think he wished to be elsewhere.

  Noticing his glass of beer was empty, she poured another for him and took it over. ‘Are you coming to sit down?’