The Russian's Ultimatum(19)

The bathroom was empty. She dived inside and locked the door. A minute   later she stood under the steady stream of the shower. For an age she   did nothing other than let the hot water pour over her body. The same   body that had woken barely two hours before to make love to him all over   again.

She could still feel the press of his lips to hers...

She could still taste him...

A flush swept through her that had nothing to do with the steam of the shower.

Every atom of her body danced with an energy she had never experienced before.

But mixed with the dancing was a deep feeling of dread right in the base   of her stomach, a warning that she had made what could be the biggest   mistake of her life.                       
       
           



       

However much she wanted to, she couldn't hide in the shower for the rest   of her life. She had to face him under the light of day sooner or   later.

Dressing in a clean black bikini and a sheer viridian-green sarong, she   made herself a cup of tea then opened the door of the shelter.

The early heat of the day hit her immediately, warming her skin. She   breathed it in, eyeing her surroundings, looking at the destruction from   the night before. Dozens of trees had been felled, the clearing in   front of the shelter littered with leaves and snapped-off branches. The   shelter appeared to have escaped unscathed. She doubted the lodge had   got off so lightly.

There was no sign of Pascha.

She sat back on the same bench from the night before; it was bone-dry,   as if the rain had never lashed it. In the daylight she saw it had been   welded to the concrete beneath it, a sign of Pascha having taken no   chances, not even with a bench. The thought brought a wry smile to her   lips.

The man thought of everything.

Inhaling deeply, she looked around. All the stars had gone; the sky was   bright and cloudless. For the first time she was able to appreciate the   view, a vista even more spectacular than the one from her veranda. In   the distance were the neighbouring islands cresting out of the calm,   sparkling ocean. She hoped they hadn't suffered too much in the storm.

She sensed rather than heard movement. Holding her breath, she waited as   Pascha sat next to her, keeping a respectable distance between them.   Her heart hammered painfully beneath her ribs.

'What's the damage?' she asked. At least her vocal cords worked. That was something.

'I haven't been to the lodge yet. I was waiting for you to wake.'

She supposed this was her cue to get to her feet and get her stuff together.

Closing her eyes briefly to brace herself, she fixed a nonchalant look on her face and turned her head to look at him.

At some point that morning he'd shaved. His hair had resumed its usual   immaculate state. Somehow the chinos and polo shirt he'd changed into   were properly pressed.

An ache bloomed low in her abdomen, climbing all the way up to tighten in her chest.

Pascha stared at the beautiful face he'd woken up to.

He'd had possibly the worst sleep of his life but also, somehow, the   best. He'd listened in the dark as Emily's breathing had deepened and   slowed into a regular drawn-out beat. At one point she'd turned in her   sleep, her face just inches from his own. He'd gazed at her lips, barely   visible in the darkness, and had pressed the lightest of kisses to   them. His body hardened at the memory of her taste, a sultry sweetness   that fired his loins anew.

Her hair smelt like raspberries.

Everything inside him tightened.

Mingling with his desire was guilt. It plagued him.

If he'd known Malcolm Richardson's wife had died only a few weeks before   the money had disappeared, he would have handled the matter   differently. He wouldn't have suspended him summarily without giving him   a chance to put his side across. He would have been far gentler in his   approach.

Pascha had been so wrapped up in the Plushenko deal that he'd put   everything else on the back burner, including the internal investigation   into the missing money. So wrapped up had he been that not one  employee  who knew Malcolm Richardson had dared tell him of his recent  widowhood.

He put himself in Emily's shoes. If it had been Andrei accused of stealing money...

He would have done anything to clear his name. He would have believed in   his father's innocence every bit as fiercely as Emily believed in   Malcolm's.

'I'm sorry.'

A groove appeared in her brow that he wanted to smooth away. 'I should have known your father had been so recently widowed.'

Her gaze remained steady but something flickered. 'Yes; yes, you should have.'

He sighed heavily. 'I really am very sorry. I wish I'd known about your   mother. I would have handled things a lot differently if I had.'

She nodded and sank her teeth into her lips before saying, 'Please, do   me a favour and clear his name. I know you're going to drop the   suspension and everything, but he still needs to be cleared properly for   his peace of mind. I swear he never took that money.'

'I will get it prioritised.'

'Thank you.' Her eyes held his, something swirling in them that   disappeared before he could read it, and she straightened, as if giving   herself a mental shake-down.

'I'll get my stuff together and we can go back to the lodge.' She didn't   wait for his response before disappearing back into the shelter.

* * *

'What's that place?' Emily asked shortly after they started the walk   back to the lodge, spotting a pretty concrete hut through the foliage.                       
       
           



       

'One of the guest shelters.'

'Like the one we stayed in?' She mentally applauded her outward   nonchalance. So long as she kept the conversation impersonal she would   be fine. Her stomach felt all knotted and twisted, though, and she   inhaled deeply, trying to loosen all the constrictions within her.

She was reading too much into her jumbled emotions. So they'd made love;   that didn't have to mean anything. People made love all the time.  Well,  other people did.

She'd been single for too long, that was her problem. Her emotional   state made her vulnerable too. It was no wonder her heart raced when she   was around him.

'It's identical. There are three of them for guests to shelter in if a storm hits so they can retain their privacy.'

'Why didn't you put me in one?'

He turned his head to look at her. 'I didn't want you sitting through that storm alone.'

The warm glow his words evoked in her made her feel flustered.

Why, oh why couldn't he be the evil monster she'd assumed him to be at the beginning?

But then, if he had been that evil monster, she would never have made   love to him. She would never have clung to him for support and comfort   when her grief had threatened to drown her with its strength.

The further down the trail they went, the more the wreckage from the   storm became apparent. The majority of the pathway was covered with   felled trees, branches and tiny twigs sharp enough to cut into flesh.   Pascha enfolded her hand in his, helping her clear it all, his care   expanding her heart so much it threatened to smother her lungs and stop   them working.

The main house of the lodge appeared to have survived the storm without   any damage. It was lucky. Devastation abounded everywhere else.

Half of the roof was missing from the hut where all the game   paraphernalia was stored, a yellow cordon already erected around it. A   tree had fallen onto the roof of the dining hut and had cut straight   through it like a hot knife slicing through butter. Everywhere the eye   could see lay scattered debris.

But it was at the jetty that the real destruction had occurred. Pascha's   yacht, the beautiful vessel due to take Pascha back to Puerto Rico   later that day, and her ticket home in five days, had toppled over in   the storm and beached on its side.

* * *

Pascha held onto his temper by a thread.

Were the fates conspiring against him? How else to explain the run of   luck, all of it bad, that had blighted him the past couple of days?

Until Emily had stolen into his office, everything had been running   smoothly. Marat had been too taken with the number of zeroes on the   buy-out offer to look closely into the provenance of RG Holdings. Not   that it would have mattered if he had. So complex was the structure   disguising Pascha's involvement, he was certain it would withstand any   vigorous scrutiny. And yet...there was always room for doubt. Marat was   lazy but there was no telling how deep his lawyers would dig.

There always existed the possibility something could go wrong.

Emily, who had kept her distance while he'd spoken to his staff, joined him and gave a sympathetic grimace. 'Is it salvageable?'