Page 59

Abby

I leave Dimitry sleeping and venture out onto the patio. Through a window I can see Leon out on the patio speaking on the phone. He waves and holds up a hand to indicate he’ll be five minutes.

“What would you like to eat?” I spin around, startled, to find a neatly dressed middle-aged Thai woman smiling at me.

Oh, fuck. I glance around nervously. Nobody mentioned staff. I can’t afford to have eyes on me, not anywhere in this region.

“Please.” The woman holds out a placating hand. “I work for Miss Melikov. I understand privacy.” She nods out into the yard. All of the staff are my family. Security, garden, pool—everything.” She smiles gently. “You are safe here.”

I’m still feeling unconvinced when Leon comes out the glass door and addresses the woman in fluent Thai. “Thank you, Dao,” he finishes, after rattling off a request for a series of dishes. The woman smiles at me and leaves.

“Zinaida rescued two of Dao’s daughters from a trafficker several years ago,” he explains when she’s gone. “Dao’s family would literally die before they betray anyone in this house. You’re safe here. Gin?” He holds up a bottle .

Oh, hell yes. I’m sure I will get over the luxury of enjoying a drink at some point, but I’m definitely not there yet, any more than I’m over enjoying a long everything shower or sleeping when I’m tired.

Especially next to Dimitry.

Or rather, not sleeping.

I smile to myself. It’s astonishing that after all that’s happened, and is still happening, I can feel consumed by sheer lust. The fact is that even after our sybaritic interval at the waterside bungalow, I still can’t so much as look at Dimitry’s half-naked body sprawled across the four-poster bed without wanting to press my lips to every part of it.

It isn’t just the sexual thrill, either, although it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a couple days to satiate that particular appetite.

It’s the intimacy.

The delicious familiarity of every scar, every ridge and rope of corded muscle.

The way he reaches for me when he’s still asleep, pulling me hard against him.

The smoky, dusky scent of him, something I could recall the feeling of but never quite capture.

It’s something between a gun fight and cognac, and it makes me feel more alive than any drug ever could.

“Dimitry has crashed.” I accept the glass Leon offers and sit down on a carved teak daybed covered in thick cushions. “I think he’s barely slept since he burst through my hotel door in Bangkok, and he steered the boat all night.”

“I’m sure it’s the best thing for him.” Leon touches his glass to mine.

“I’m very glad he found you, Abby. It was clear how unhappy he was when I met him in London.

” He meets my eyes and his lips quirk, again in a way I find oddly familiar, though I can’t quite place why.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move quite so fast as he did when he received Luke’s call saying you’d been kidnapped. ”

“He was with you when that happened?” I don’t try to hide my surprise. “How did that come about? ”

“Dimitry was in London to return something that belonged to me. Or rather, to my grandmother.”

“One of the Naryshkin treasures from the vault?” Dimitry mentioned that was how they’d met. He left out the part about the delivery being the only time they’d met.

Leon nods, and I look at him curiously. “If you don’t mind me saying, you’re doing a lot for people you barely know.”

Which I have some trouble trusting, given the kind of life-and-death, highly illegal shit we’re talking about here.

“I understand your concerns.” He doesn’t avoid the question, or my eyes.

He’s sitting opposite me, one leg slung over the other, his arm stretched across the back of the carved wooden chair.

I’d place him in his mid-fifties, but he moves like a man twenty years younger than that, and his face has the same slightly hard edge I’ve come to associate with men in Dimitry’s line of work.

Which is interesting, since he’s supposedly an art dealer.

“Dimitry and I discovered we had quite a lot in common, not least a genuine love of art. I suspect he has the latter thanks to you, no?” His eyes crinkle at the edges as he raises his glass in my direction. “He told me that you paint and study art.”

He’s smooth. Leon’s expert pivot of the conversation doesn’t go unnoticed, but I’ll play along.

For now.

“I did study art, yes.” I return his practiced smile.

“I also dragged Dimitry around the Prado in Madrid more times than he would probably like to remember, as well as use him as my study partner for my art exams. I guess that worked in his favor when he wound up in Miami, working with the Naryshkin pieces.”

“Definitely.” He pushes a plate of nuts toward me. “Although I’d say his knowledge goes considerably past that at this stage. Impressive, given his lack of formal education.” He studies me with that same half smile. “You seem surprised, Abby.”

“I am, I guess.” I take a handful of nuts.

Like I was when Dimitry started using Greek mythology as an analogy.

Or by the fact that my father seems to actually like him—or at least respect him.

Let’s face it—from the moment Dimitry burst into that hotel room, I’ve been forced to rethink quite a few of the assumptions I previously had about him, not least the one where he gave undying allegiance to Roman Stevanovsky.

“If you will forgive me,” Leon says, as if he’s read my mind, “I think you might find that Dimitry is a rather changed man from the one you knew back in Spain.” He takes a mouthful of his drink.

“Heartbreak has a way of doing that to a person,” he says quietly.

“It focuses the mind. Makes clear what is important and what isn’t.

Ah!” He smiles as Dao brings out a variety of plates, all of which look delicious, from the papaya-and-prawn salad to a coconut-and-lemongrass soup that smells divine.

“Please.” He gestures to the plates. “Eat.”

I do, savoring every divine mouthful. The events that followed my initial time in Thailand clouded my better memories, many of which revolved around the exquisite food.

I eat with unadulterated pleasure as Leon and I talk easily about art, his London business, and the many places he’s traveled.

I tell him about my parents and my recent stay back in Australia.

We skirt around the trickier issue of why, exactly, he felt compelled to leap on a plane at short notice to help a man he barely knows out of a highly dangerous situation.

It’s only my loyalty to Dimitry, and faith in his judgment, that stops me from asking Leon some very hard questions. That doesn’t stop me from stiffening when his phone rings just as we’re finishing up eating.

He smiles when he sees the number on the screen.

“Zinaida,” he greets the caller. “Yes, she’s right here.

” I stiffen even more when he holds the phone toward me.

“It’s for you,” he says, still smiling. “Please,” he adds, when the color drains from my face and I don’t move.

“Trust me. This is a call you’ll want to take. ”

I stare at the phone like it’s a viper waiting to strike, unsure whether to throw the remains of my food in his face and run or to scream for Dimitry. Then a familiar voice comes tentatively through the speaker.

“Abby?”

Tears spring into my eyes, and my throat closes over so much I’m not sure I can speak even if I try.

“Abby,” Darya says softly, “please pick up. I’m on a secure phone, and Roman isn’t here.”

I snatch the phone out of Leon’s hand. “ Darya? ” My voice is a rough whisper.

“Oh, thank God, it’s true! It’s really you?” She sounds as shaky as I feel. Vaguely I’m aware of Leon discreetly closing the glass doors behind him, but my vision has blurred so much I can’t see anything clearly.

It’s a moment before I realize I’m nodding instead of speaking, and I struggle to find my voice.

“It’s really me.” My voice is barely there, and it physically hurts to try to speak.

“I’m so sorry, Darya. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when Alexander was born—or afterward—Oh, God, I’m so sorry for everything—”

“Shut up. Just shut up, Abs.” Her voice is equally quivery. “I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is that you’re alive. I knew you hadn’t just cut us off. I told Dimitry—and Roman—I’m so sorry that I couldn’t make them believe me.”

“No more sorrys .” I smile through my tears as I hear Darya’s sob of laughter at our old joke.

“It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.

” Tears are running down my face, and I can’t stifle my own sob as I catch my breath.

“I wanted to call you so much. I just didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to put you in danger. ..”

“Oh, because I’m such a safety girl?” Her dry tone makes me smile even more.

I give a choked laugh. “Bitch, you’re the original beacon for chaos. Not sure what I was thinking.”

“Damned straight. Don’t think you’re taking my crown, either, abductions or not. Now, tell me everything .”

My smile fades. “I can’t tell you all of it, or not yet, anyway. And before I say anything, where are you calling from? Doesn’t that psycho Zinaida live in London? What are you doing there instead of Spain?”

Darya gives a gurgle of laughter. “Yes, she does. And Zin’s not a psycho, not when you get to know her.

She’s also got an absolutely amazing women’s club, which is where I’m calling from.

It’s got a secure room that Mak set up, with an encrypted private line,” she goes on, “and she told me Leon’s line is secure as well, so nobody is listening.

Well, except the little tyrant currently sleeping beside me, but Alexander will keep our secrets, I promise. ”

I shake my head, smiling wryly despite the tears still rolling down my face.