He picked up the rag-doll and swallowed the constriction in his throat. He could sense Ella’s shock, and knew she was struggling for something to say. But there was nothing to be said. Irina and Klara were gone, and no amount of words would bring them back.
Ella’s throat ached with tears, but she forced herself to speak. ‘When?’ she whispered.
‘Ten years ago.’ His mouth twisted into a grimace. ‘Today would have been Klara’s fifteenth birthday.’ The memories had been agonising today, but he had suppressed his pain in the same way that he always did, and had arranged to socialise with friends to prevent himself from dwelling on the past. But now the evening was over, and he could no longer banish the images in his head of his angelic-faced little girl.
‘I suppose your…wife…’ Ella stumbled slightly over the word ‘…had taken your daughter to visit her parents.’ She fell silent, finding it impossible to imagine how terrible it must have been for Vadim when he’d heard news of the disaster.
Vadim stared silently across the dark garden, reliving those harrowing hours and days when he had joined the search teams and dug through the snow until his shoulder muscles had burned with his frantic efforts to find Klara, so that he could place her body with Irina’s in the mortuary. Even after ten years, the memory of finding his lifeless daughter still ripped his heart out.
He didn’t understand why he suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to confide in Ella. All he knew was that somehow she had crept beneath his guard, so that for the first time in a decade he found himself contemplating a relationship that encompassed more than mindless sex.
Ella looked ethereal and achingly fragile, with her silver-grey gown fluttering gently in the breeze and her pale gold hair streaming like a river of silk down her back. But her loveliness was more than skin-deep. He had discovered that she was funny, witty, fiercely intelligent, and she possessed a depth of compassion that he had never found in any other woman. He admired her strength of will as she fought her nerves to pursue her career as a soloist, and he recognised the vulnerability she tried so hard to disguise. She needed-deserved-more than he could give her. He had failed in one relationship, and that failure had resulted in unimaginable pain. He could never risk failing again.
‘If you want the truth, Irina was in Rumsk because she had walked out on our marriage,’ he told her savagely, the familiar feeling of self-loathing rushing over him. ‘I had been away on yet another business trip, and on my return I found a note from her explaining that she felt I didn’t love her, and that she was taking Klara to stay with her parents. I knew Irina had been upset that I spent so much time at work,’ he admitted heavily. ‘I was determined to reassure her that she and Klara were more important to me than anything, and I raced after them, but I reached Rumsk after the avalanche had hit.’#p#分页标题#e#
‘Oh, Vadim.’ It was a cry from the heart, torn from Ella when she glimpsed the agony in his eyes. There was no thought in her head to judge him. She flew across the terrace, uncaring that she was in danger of revealing how she felt about him, intent only on trying to comfort him.
He had risen to his feet, and stiffened when she flung her arms around his waist. ‘You have to understand I was not a good husband,’ he said roughly. ‘I was obsessed with work and establishing my company, and I did not spend enough time at home-even when Irina pleaded with me to devote more time to her and Klara.’ His jaw tightened as he fought to control the emotions surging through him. ‘Irina accused me of not loving her. She was wrong; I did love her-but I didn’t value what I had until she had left me, and she and Klara were killed before I had the chance to tell them both what they meant to me.’ He drew a ragged breath. ‘I should not have married. I was selfish and driven by my determination to succeed. I put my interests first, and in that respect perhaps I am not so dissimilar to your father,’ he finished grimly.
‘You are nothing like my father.’ Ella fiercely refuted the suggestion. When she had first met Vadim she had believed he was a man like her father, a heartless playboy who only cared about himself. But since they had become lovers he had treated her with kindness and respect, as if he valued her as a person and did not regard her merely as a form of entertainment in his bed.
But thoughts like those were dangerous, she conceded bleakly. Vadim might have a depth to him that she would not have believed in the early days of their relationship, but he had made it clear that an affair was all he would ever want from her. Lena Tarasov had stated that he would never fall in love again, and now she knew why. He was still in love with his dead wife, and consumed with guilt that he had somehow failed Irina and his little daughter. Falling in love with him would be emotional suicide, warned a voice in her head. But in her heart she knew the warning was too late. She loved him, and learning about the tragedy of his past made her love him more.