The Russian's Ultimatum(15)

Rolling his eyes, he got himself a bowl, sat down and methodically scooped some ice-cream into it.

'Is that all you're having?' she asked with incredulity. He'd only put two scoops into his bowl.

He quelled her with a look. 'It's hardly a healthy food.'

'It's ice-cream. It's not supposed to be healthy. It's supposed to be comforting.'

'I'll be sure to tell my arteries that.'

They ate in silence but, unlike over dinner, this silence didn't have an   uncomfortable edge to it. Probably because no one could be   uncomfortable whilst eating divine vanilla ice-cream. The sweetness was   soothing.

While they ate, Pascha checked his phone.

'Did you manage to get hold of your lawyer?' she asked.

'Just. The battery died after a couple of minutes.' He gave it a shake, as if hoping it would miraculously charge itself.

'You do realise you're torturing yourself by checking it?' she said.

He pursed his lips. 'It's pointless, I know. I just find it incredibly frustrating.'

'Have some more ice-cream.'

'Will that help?' he asked mockingly.

'Nope. But it will make the frustration taste a bit sweeter.' To make her point, she put a delicious spoonful into her mouth.

His lips twitched.

She grinned to see him scoop a little more into his bowl, but only a little. 'Have you always been a control freak?'

His eyes narrowed a touch. 'I like to control the environment in which I live,' he answered slowly.

'We all do that to an extent,' she agreed. 'But you seem to be quite extreme about it.'

He put his spoon down. 'I had leukaemia as a child,' he said simply.

Startled, Emily felt her eyes widen.

He'd had leukaemia...?

'Being so close to death so young...' He raised a shoulder. 'It shapes you. It shaped me.'

'I don't know what to say,' she said starkly. 'Are you okay now? I mean...'

'I know what you mean and, yes, I am in good health.' He hadn't escaped   unscathed, though, Pascha reflected with a trace of bitterness. Five   years of chemotherapy and all the other associated treatments had given   him a future but had also come with one particular cost, a cost that no   amount of money could ever fix.

'But I do not take my good health for granted. I freely admit I like to   take control of my life, but when you have spent five of your formative   years with no control over your body or your treatment, and no control   over how it affects those you love...' He shook his head and scraped  out  the last of the ice-cream in his bowl. 'Now I am in control. Just  me.  To use business jargon, I will not outsource it.'                       
       
           



       

Emily had stopped eating, her spoon held in mid-air. 'I'm so sorry.' She   shook her head, a dazed expression on her face. 'That must have been   awful for you. Terrifying. And your poor parents. It doesn't bear   thinking about, does it? It's hard enough watching your parents suffer   but when it comes to your own child...' Her words tailed off and she   seemed to give herself a mental shake, sticking her spoon back into the   tub.

'Yes, it was hard for them,' he agreed, his voice dropping, his mind   wandering back to a time when his mother had seemingly aged overnight.   One minute she'd been a young mother with an easy laugh, the next a   middle-aged woman with lines on her face.

The memories had the power to lance his guts.

His mind drifted back to those-literally-dark days, when they'd been so   poor his parents could only afford to heat his bedroom. That had been   when Marat's disdain for his younger, adopted brother had turned ugly.   How clearly he recalled Marat whispering to him when their parents had   been out of earshot, 'Why don't you just die and save us all this   trouble, Cuckoo?' Pascha might have been only seven years old but he'd   known his brother meant it.

'Cuckoo': Marat's secret nickname for him.

He looked down at his empty bowl.

To hell with it.

He could allow himself one night of sweetness.

He stuck his spoon into the tub and ate straight from it.

Something flickered in Emily's eyes as she did the same, their spoons clashing as they dived into the tub a second time.

The flickering darkened and swirled, their eyes locked.

She really was incredibly beautiful. And incredibly easy to talk to.

With a stab, he realised he'd shared more of his past with her this   evening than he had ever done with anyone. His childhood illness was   history, not something he talked about.

He looked at his watch. 'Half an hour.'

A groove he was starting to recognise formed on her brow. 'Half an hour...?'

'That's how long it's taken us to finish this tub of ice-cream. You said ten minutes.'

'Too much talking, not enough eating. And it's not finished.' She yanked   the tub up and peered into it. 'There's at least a spoonful left.'

'You finish it.'

'How very magnanimous.'

He watched as she seemingly scraped out every last drop of the by now melted remnants.

His blood thickened at witnessing her pink tongue dart out to lick the spoon.

Mentally taking a deep breath, he got to his feet. Tonight he was also   going to say to hell with his strict diet and limited alcohol   consumption. 'How about we open another bottle of wine?'

'Why not?' she agreed, pushing the tub away from her. 'It's more   exciting than milk.' She placed a hand on her middle. 'Do you think it's   any good for stomach-ache?'

Why did that action automatically make him think of a pregnant woman rubbing her swollen bump?

He blinked the image away, unsettled at the imagery.

'Has someone eaten too much ice-cream?'

'Mmm...maybe,' she said, elongating the first syllable.

'I hate to say I told you so...'

She pulled a face. 'I know, I know, too much ice-cream is unhealthy. That didn't stop you from eating half of it.'

'Not quite half,' he said with a wry smile, pushing his chair back. He'd   eaten more ice-cream in one sitting than he'd consumed in the past   decade.

Emily was right. It made bitterness much easier to swallow.

Or was it that she was such a good listener that it made it easier to spill the secrets of his past?

When he sat back down with the bottle and two clean glasses, she leaned   forward and rested her chin on her hands. 'Being stuck in here with me   must be a nightmare for you. First the engine of the yacht breaking,   then the storm... It must be driving you mad, all these things occurring   that are out of your control.'

He laughed. 'I'm coping.' To his surprise, he realised, he was coping remarkably well.

Under normal circumstances, an event like this would elicit a vigorous   amount of pacing the room, waiting for the danger of the storm to pass.   But instead he was content to sit back, relax and just...talk.

When had he ever taken the time just to talk?

No wonder he wasn't going mad when he had Emily to distract him, something she managed to do effortlessly.

He gripped the stem of his glass, fighting a sudden compulsion to reach   over and touch her hair. She'd left it loose. Her curls had dried since   her shower, a mass of long ebony ringlets springing here, there and   everywhere.

What did that gorgeous hair smell of? he wondered. What, he wondered,   would she do if he were to capture one of the locks and wind it around   his finger?                       
       
           



       

Every sinew in his body tightened.

He took a large swallow of his wine, watching as she reached for her   glass and did likewise, running a finger over the flesh of her bottom   lip to wipe a drop away.

He took another swallow and forced a smile at her questioning look.

He wished there was another tub of ice-cream in the freezer. Maybe he   could spoon it straight onto his lap and kill the heat simmering in him.

* * *

Emily sat curled up in the armchair she'd dragged over to the wall so   she could peer out of the porthole-like window. Only the dim glow from   the outside lights enabled her to see the trees bending under the   assault of the wind. Rain lashed down like a sheet, more powerful than   anything she'd ever witnessed.

She shivered.

'Are you cold?'

She shook her head, keeping her face pressed to the window.

'I'll get you a blanket.'

'I'm not cold.' It was looking at the storm that had made her shiver.   All the same, when Pascha gave her the soft fleece blanket, she wrapped   it around her shoulders with gratitude, murmuring her thanks.

By the time they'd finished their wine, the atmosphere between them had   shifted. A growing charge had sent her away from the dining table to   where she was now, holed up by the window.

If she couldn't look at him, she couldn't notice how utterly gorgeous he was.

If she couldn't talk to him, she couldn't feel the richness of his voice seeping through her veins...

How long would the storm go on for? It seemed interminable.

They'd been in the shelter for six hours. The time was really stretching   now, and so was the tension brewing between them. She could feel it   with every breath. And what made it worse was that she knew he felt it   too.