Dealing Her Final Card(51)
Seeing that boyish, vulnerable smile, her heart twisted. “No. We don’t want to miss that.”
He picked up her silk ball gown from the bed, and she stepped into it. As he pulled it up around her, she felt his fingers brush against her spine. She looked back at him with an intake of breath. His gaze was hungry, his eyes dark as the midnight sea. She should expect more than just a kiss to celebrate the New Year.
She wasn’t his girlfriend. She wasn’t his wife. But perhaps...
Her fingertips ran softly over the necklace that had once belonged to a Russian princess, and a green stone that two hundred and fifty years ago had landed in Siberia from the farthest reaches of space. Perhaps he did care for her, after all.
Could that caring ever turn to something more? To love?
I cannot love. She heard the echo of his hard voice. That ability is no longer in me. It died a long time ago.
As Vladimir finished zipping up the ball gown, he turned her to face him. Brushing tendrils of hair from her face, he looked down at her with electric blue eyes. “Are you ready?”
Looking up at his handsome face, Bree tried not to feel anything. But her heart slammed against her ribs.
His forehead furrowed. “Bree?”
She turned away with a lump in her throat. “I, um, need some lipstick.” Going to the mirror, she made her lips bright Chanel red. Lifting the silk hem of her gown, she stepped into her expensive shoes with sparkling crystals decorating the four-inch heels, and took a deep breath. “Ready.”
Downstairs in the foyer, Vladimir took a sharply tailored black coat from the closet, wearing it over his tuxedo. Then he removed a black hanging bag from the closet. He unzipped it. In dismay, Bree saw white fur.
He noted her expression. “Don’t worry. It’s fake.”
Dubiously, she reached out and stroked the soft white fur. “It seems real.”
“Well.” His lips curved in amusement. “It’s very expensive. Twice the price of the real thing.” Lifting the white fur coat from the bag, he wrapped it around her bare shoulders. “I can’t have you getting cold, angel moy,” he said softly.
“What does that mean?”
“My angel.”
She bit her lip, faltering. “I’m nobody’s angel.”
He smiled. Pulling her close by the lapels of the white faux fur, he looked down at her. His blue eyes crinkled. “Wrong.”
Bree’s heart squeezed so hard and tight she couldn’t breathe. Still smiling, he held out his arm and led her outside into the cold, frosty night.
The limousine whisked them to a small town on the edge of St. Petersburg, to a palace that had once belonged to a Romanov tsarina three hundred years before. Bree’s eyes widened as the road curved and she got her first view of it. With a gasp, she rolled down the window for a better look.
Beneath the frosted winter moon, she saw the palace that had once been a summer getaway for the Russian royal family. The elegant structure, wide and sprawling, looked like a wedding cake, decked with snow. The limo drove up the avenue, past a wide white lawn lit up by flickering torches.
The limo stopped, and a valet in breeches and an eighteenth-century wig opened Bree’s door and helped her out. Feeling the shock of cold, bracing air on her face, she looked around in awe. She touched the green peridot against her skin, beneath her white fur. Standing in this courtyard, she could almost imagine herself as the princess of an ancient, magical land of eternal winter.
She could almost imagine she was a Russian prince’s bride.
His bride. As Vladimir took her hand in his own, smiling at her with so much warmth she barely even needed a coat, she could not stop herself from wondering, just for an instant, what it would be like to be his wife. To be the woman he loved, the mother of his children.
“Are you still cold?” he murmured as they passed the bowing doormen.
She shook her head.
“But you’re shivering.”
“I’m just happy,” she whispered.
Stopping inside the palace doors, he pulled her into his arms. Kissing the top of her hair, he looked down at her with a smile.
“At last,” he said softly. “I have what I wanted.”
Searching his gaze, Bree sucked in her breath. That smile. She couldn’t look away. It was so open. So...young. He looked exactly like the young man she’d first fallen in love with, so long ago.
The man she’d never stopped loving.
As he took her hand to lead her down the elegant hallway, Bree nearly stumbled in her sparkling high-heeled shoes.
She was in love with him.
She could no longer deny it, even to herself.
Vladimir took her into the ballroom, and Bree barely noticed the exquisite, lavishly decorated space, the gilded walls or the crystal chandeliers high above. She barely spoke when he introduced her to acquaintances. As he led her out onto the dance floor, she didn’t see all the gorgeous people all around them.