‘Come on...’ He picked her up, as if she weighed nothing, and Alina didn’t argue, her legs were incapable of walking. She had no idea she was the first woman he had brought up these stairs and to his bed and she lay there watching him shrug off his clothes. He caught her eyes.
‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more,’ Alina said, and Demyan gave a thin smile and climbed into bed.
‘You make a very nice Dorothy,’ Demyan said, and attempted a very brief kiss but it turned into just a little bit more.
‘Sleep,’ Demyan said, pulling back.
Amazingly she did.
He did too but only for a couple of hours. He woke and looked at Alina asleep next to him. His ribs hurt but he moved to his side and looked at her.
Had she not picked him up he’d be back in the cells by now, Demyan knew.
He wanted to kiss her awake, to make very slow love, but he didn’t do that sort of stuff and, anyway, she looked too peaceful to wake.
Instead, he got up and wrapped a towel around restless hips and roamed the penthouse.
Demyan didn’t even bother to put on the lights.
He knew this place like the back of his hand.
It was the only place apart from the farm where he had ever felt settled. Each hotel was the same but different; here had really been a home.
Demyan headed to Roman’s bedroom and hesitated before opening the door.
He’d told Alina he didn’t want to know if she did have it tidied and cleaned. Demyan knew that the superstitions were just that, old tales, but he had been raised on them, brought up to believe that danger beckoned, had had his mother’s mad rambling repeated over and over so much so that he could hear it now.
His brain in business was logical yet he almost folded over in relief when he opened his son’s bedroom door and it was just as he had left it.
Alina had understood how much the small ritual meant. Even Nadia, who was Russian, had laughed when Demyan had asked she keep the room the same when Roman had had a fever and been taken to hospital.
Nadia.
The name made him feel ill.
Demyan sat on the bed and picked up his son’s guitar. He glanced at a picture of Nadia and heard her voice again.
‘My period was already late when I slept with you.’
He could still hear her saying the words, telling him that the sexy young Russian, with a serious future ahead of him, was a more palatable father than the married professor she had been seeing the past few months.
Roman was his, Demyan had been sure of it, not once had he thought otherwise.
He looked at the photos of his son.
The image of Nadia.
Yet he was deep like he himself was. He liked words; he liked to sit in his room and did not desire company at times.
Nature or nurture?
Demyan put down the guitar very carefully and left his son’s room as he had found it then went back to bed, but he did not sleep.