Not Just the Boss's Plaything(27)

That Nikolai had told her the night he'd met her that it would end in teeth. And tears.

The charity Christmas ball was the following night, where he would have    that conversation with his ex-wife at last, and after that it wouldn't    matter how perfect Prague looked, how achingly lovely its cobbled    streets or its famous bridges bristling with Gothic saints. It didn't    matter how golden it seemed in the winter sunset, how fanciful, as if it    belonged on a gilded page in an ancient manuscript. She would leave    this city as she'd found it, and this agonizing charade would end.    Nikolai would get what he wanted and she would get her life back.

She should want that, she knew. She should be thrilled.

If she stuck her head out her door she could hear the low rumble of    Nikolai's voice from somewhere else in the great, ornate hotel suite    he'd chosen, all golds and reds and plush Bohemian extravagance. He was    on a call, taking care of business in that ruthless way of his.  Because   he didn't allow distractions-he'd told her so himself.

Not foreign cities that looked too enchanted to be real. Certainly not her.

And Alicia was in a room that was twice the size of her flat and a    hundred times more lush, one deep breath away from losing herself    completely to the things she was still afraid to let herself feel lest    she simply explode across the floor like that bottle of wine,  practicing   her prettiest smile against the coming dark.

None of this was real, she reminded herself, tracing her finger across the cold glass of the window. None of this was hers.

In the end, none of it would matter.

The only thing that would remain of these strange weeks were the    pictures in the tabloids, stuck on the internet forever like her very    own scarlet letter. There would be no record of the way she ached for    him. There would be no evidence that she'd ever felt her heart tear    open, or that long after he'd left that night, she'd cried into her    mountain of frilly pillows for a scared little boy with bright blue eyes    who'd never been lucky or safe. And for the girl she'd been eight   years  ago, who only Nikolai had ever tried to defend from an attack she    couldn't even remember. No one would know if she healed or not,   because  no one would know she'd been hurt.

There would only be those pictures and the nonexistent relationship    Nikolai had made sure they showed to the world, that she'd decided she    no longer cared if her father knew about.

Let him think what he likes, she'd thought.

Alicia had taken the train out for his birthday dinner the previous    week, and had sat with her sisters around the table in his favorite    local restaurant, pretending everything was all right. The way she    always pretended it was.

But not because she'd still been racked with shame, as she'd been for    all those years. Instead, she'd realized as she'd watched her father not    look at her and not acknowledge her and she understood at last what   had  actually happened to her, she'd been a great deal closer to   furious.

"Will you have another drink, love?" her mother had asked her    innocuously enough, but Alicia had been watching her father. She'd seen    him wince at the very idea, as if another glass of wine would have    Alicia doffing her clothes in the middle of the King's Arms. And all of    that fury and pain and all of those terrible years fused inside of  her.   She'd been as unable to keep quiet as she'd been when she'd told   Nikolai  about this mess in the first place.                       
       
           



       

"No need to worry, Dad," she'd said brusquely. "I haven't been anywhere    close to drunk in years. Eight years to be precise. And would you like    to know why?"

He'd stared at her, then looked around at the rest of the family, all of them gaping from him to Alicia and back.

"No need," he'd said sharply. "I'm already aware."

"I was so drunk I couldn't walk," she'd told him, finally. "I take full    responsibility for that. My friends poured me into a taxi and it took   me  ages to make it up to the house from the lane. I didn't want to  wake   anyone, so I went into the garden and lay down to sleep beneath  the   stars."

"For God's sake, Alicia!" her father had rumbled. "This isn't the time or place to bring up this kind of-"

"I passed out," she'd retorted, and she'd been perfectly calm. Focused.    "I can't remember a single thing about it because I was unconscious.   And  yet when you saw Mr. Reddick helping himself to your comatose   daughter,  the conclusion you reached was that I was a whore."

There'd been a long, highly charged silence.

"He tried it on with me, too," her older sister had declared at last, thumping her drink down on the tabletop. "Vile pervert."

"I always thought he wasn't right," her other sister had chimed in at    almost the same moment. "Always staring up at our windows, peering    through the hedge."

"I had no idea," her mother had said urgently then, reaching over and    taking hold of Alicia's hand, squeezing it tightly in hers. Then she'd    frowned at her husband. "Bernard, you should be ashamed of yourself!    Douglas Reddick was a menace to every woman in the village!"

And much later, after they'd all talked themselves blue and teary while    her father had sat there quietly, and Douglas Reddick's sins had been    thoroughly documented, her father had hugged her goodbye for the first    time in nearly a decade. His form of an apology, she supposed.

And much as she'd wanted to rail at him further, she hadn't. Alicia had    felt that great big knot she'd carried around inside of her begin to    loosen, and she'd let it, because she'd wanted her father back more  than   she'd wanted to be angry.

She'd have that to carry with her out of her fake relationship. And    surely that was something. Only she would know who had helped her stand    up for herself eight years later. Only she would remember the things    he'd changed in her when this was over. When the smoke cleared.

That was, if the smoke didn't choke her first.

"It's not even real," Alicia had blurted out one night, after a quarter    hour of listening to Rosie rhapsodize about what a wedding to a man   like  Nikolai Korovin might entail, all while sitting on the couch   surrounded  by her favorite romance novels and the remains of a box of   chocolates.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's not real, Rosie. It's for show."

Alicia had regretted that she'd said anything the instant she'd said it.    There'd been an odd, twisting thing inside of her that wanted to keep    the sordid facts to herself. That hadn't wanted anyone else to know   that  when it came down to it, Nikolai Korovin needed an ulterior motive   and a  list of requirements to consider taking her out on a fake date.

Not that she was bitter.

"You're so cynical," Rosie had said with a sigh. "But I'll have you know    I'm optimistic enough for the both of us." She'd handed Alicia a    particularly well-worn romance novel, with a pointed look. "I know you    sneak this off my shelf all the time. I also know that this tough,    skeptical little shell of yours is an act."

"It's not an act," Alicia had retorted.

But she'd also taken the book.

If she'd stayed up too late some nights, crouched over her laptop with    her door locked tight, looking through all the photos of the two of  them   together online, she'd never admit it. If she'd paused to marvel  over   the way the tabloids managed to find pictures that told outright    lies-that showed Nikolai gazing down at her with something that looked    like his own, rusty version of affection, for example, or showed him    scowling with what looked like bristling protectiveness at a    photographer who ventured too close, she'd kept that to herself, too.    Because if she'd dared speak of it, she might betray herself-she might    show how very much she preferred the tabloid romance she read about to    what she knew to be the reality.