Claimed For Makarov's Baby

But none of this mattered. Not really. Only Leo mattered and she didn’t dare put his livelihood at risk. A mother being dragged in front of the courts for participating in a sham marriage could not really be deemed a fit mother. Imagine the shame and the terror and the very real threat of a fine—or even jail. Her mouth set into a determined line, because nothing like that was ever going to impact on her beloved son. Wasn’t she only doing this to guarantee him a secure future and the feeling of safety which had always eluded her?

‘I’m afraid it does look as if we might have to postpone the wedding,’ she said, as apologetically as she could—though nothing in her vocabulary seemed a suitable response for such a bizarre situation. What could she say? She looked around nervously, like a stage compère facing a hostile audience. ‘Dimitri is—’

‘The only man she really wants—as her public capitulation has just proved,’ said the Russian with cool arrogance and an even more arrogant smile, which only emphasised the rage in his eyes. ‘Isn’t that right, Erin?’

And now she saw something more than danger in his eyes. She saw the dark flicker of knowledge and Erin’s heart twisted with pain. He did know! He must know. Had he somehow found out about Leo?

Her instinct was to get away from him and she wondered what would happen if she just picked up the skirts of her long dress and ran as fast as her feet could take her. The anonymous grey of the autumnal London day would swallow her up, leaving Dimitri far behind. She could take her wedding dress back to the same thrift shop from which she’d bought it. She could pick up Leo from school herself and tell him that Mummy wasn’t going away on holiday after all and that they wouldn’t be moving to a big house in the country.

If she ran away from him, she could cope—somehow. True, none of her immediate problems would have been solved, but she felt as if she could deal with anything as long as it wasn’t beneath the Russian’s unforgiving scrutiny and the fear of what he might or might not know.

But he had placed his hand at the small of her back—a light but proprietorial gesture which somehow managed to send out conflicting reactions of desire and dread. And she knew she wouldn’t be running anywhere, any time soon.

‘I’m sure this kind of thing happens all the time,’ he said smoothly. ‘The bride getting cold feet when she realises she’s making a big mistake.’

The registrar put her pen down. ‘Perhaps you would all like to leave the building,’ she said quietly, ‘and sort out your problems somewhere else?’

‘My sentiments entirely. Do you happen to have a room we could use to talk in private?’ questioned Dimitri in a pleasant tone which didn’t quite conceal the steely note of determination. And then he smiled and it was like the moon appearing from behind a dark cloud. ‘Please?’

The registrar looked up at him, her disapproving expression melting away beneath the sensual impact of that unexpected smile.

‘There is somewhere you can use,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But please don’t be long.’

‘Oh, we won’t be long. It won’t take long for me to say what I need to say,’ said Dimitri softly, his hand still at the small of Erin’s back. ‘That I can promise you.’

‘Come with me, then.’

They all followed the registrar out into the corridor and the two witnesses who’d been plucked from the street shrugged their shoulders and headed for the exit, probably to the nearest pub. Erin saw the shell-shocked expression on Chico’s face as Dimitri ushered her past and her feelings of powerlessness only increased.

The registrar was opening the door to a featureless-looking room, but now that some of the initial shock was leaving her system Erin started to recover some of her equilibrium. Remember why you were doing this, she reminded herself fiercely. There were good, solid reasons why you did what you did.

And out there stood a confused man who had never been anything but a good friend to her.

Pulling away from Dimitri, she glared at him. ‘I have to go and talk to Chico. I have to explain what is happening,’ she said, even though she wasn’t entirely sure herself. ‘Wait here for me.’

But he caught hold of her wrist, his fingers vice-like against the frantic hammering of her pulse. ‘Okay, speak to him if you must—but make it brief. And just make sure you come back, Erin,’ he said, his voice cold. ‘Because if you try to run away I will find you. Be in no doubt about that.’

She pulled away from him and went to find Chico, trying to explain why there wasn’t going to be a wedding, her heart twisting with distress as she saw his face crumple. But by the time she returned to the featureless room where Dimitri was waiting, her distress had turned into anger and she was shaking with rage as she shut the door behind her. ‘You had no right to do that!’ she flared.

‘I had every right,’ he said. ‘And you know it. And what is more—you didn’t fight me very hard, did you? If you don’t want a man near you, then you shouldn’t kiss him as if you want him to do it to you right then and there.’

‘You bastard.’

‘Is that what I am, Erin?’

‘You know you are!’

‘Shouldn’t you think very carefully about applying that particular word as an insult?’

His loaded words precipitated something—it must have been shock—for why else would her teeth have started chattering so violently? She made one last attempt at rebellion. He has no real hold over you, she told herself fiercely. He’s not your guardian or your keeper, or your boss. ‘I’m going now,’ she said, meeting his eyes with a defiant stare. ‘I want to go home.’

He laughed very softly and the sound filled her with dread.

‘Please don’t be delusional,’ he said. ‘We both know you aren’t going anywhere—at least not until you and I have had a little talk. So sit down.’

Part of her wanted to object to the masterful way he sat her down on a nearby chair, but in truth she was grateful because her knees felt as if they might give way at any minute. But any feeling of gratitude was soon forgotten when she looked into the determined set of his face. She’d forgotten just how ruthless he could be. How he moved people around as if they were pawns on his own personal chessboard. As his secretary she’d been granted the rare gift of immunity to his whims, because once he had liked her and respected her.

Once.

Sitting huddled in her too-big wedding dress, she stared up at him. ‘Now what?’

‘Now you tell me all about your Brazilian lover,’ he drawled. ‘Is he hot between the sheets?’

‘He isn’t...’ She hesitated, wondering how much he already knew. ‘Chico isn’t my lover—as I suspect you may have worked out for yourself, since he’s gay.’

His mouth twisted. ‘So it isn’t a love match?’

‘Hardly.’

‘You’re marrying a gay man,’ he said slowly. ‘Who I suspect is paying you for the privilege. Maybe he needs a visa, or a work permit.’ His icy eyes glittered. ‘Am I right, Erin?’

Did her face give her away? Did guilt wrap itself around her features so that he was able to give the smug smile of someone who’d just had his hunch confirmed?

‘And that—as we both know—is against the law,’ he continued softly.

Shaking herself out of her stupor, she glared at him, telling herself that attack was the best form of defence. ‘Is that why you turned up out of the blue today, to point out the finer points of the law?’ She willed herself not to show fear even though inside her heart was pumping like a piston. Brazen it out, she told herself. Just brazen it out. ‘Is that what this is all about, Dimitri—are you about to report me to the authorities?’

Suddenly, his face changed and Erin knew that when he spoke his voice would be different, too. It would be steely and matter-of-fact instead of mocking and casual. He was bored with playing games and was about to cut to the chase. She knew him much too well.

‘But you already know the answer to that question, Erin. You’ve known since the moment you turned round and saw me. You just haven’t had the guts to come out and admit it.’ In the featureless room with the blinds drawn down to block out the outside world, his eyes glittered like shards of blue ice. ‘Or maybe you were intending to keep my son hidden from me for ever—was that your plan?’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4c501946-2364-52e4-b133-002f14f7d15e)

DIMITRI SAW ALL the colour drain from Erin’s face and felt a beat of something which felt very close to satisfaction. He watched as she leaned her head back against the wall—as if the weight of her head were too much for that slender neck to support—and looked at him warily, her green eyes slitted. He didn’t know what had hurt the most. No, not hurt. He didn’t do hurt. Mentally, he corrected himself. What had angered him most. The fact that she hadn’t told him, or the fact that she had lied to him, when once he would have counted Erin Turner as about the only truly honest person he’d ever known. She was still trying to lie—he could see it in the sudden whitening of her face and the way she was nervously licking her lips. He found himself thinking that she would make a useless poker player.

‘Your son?’ she said, as if it were a word she’d never heard before.

Her disingenuous question sealed his rage and Dimitri tensed, not daring to respond until he had his emotions under control, because not once in all his turbulent thirty-six years could he ever recall feeling such anger. Not even towards his cheating mother or crooked father. Instinct made him want to lash out at her. To haul her towards him and hurl his accusations straight into her lying face. To ask why she—of all people—would have betrayed him. But he had been successful for long enough to know that it was far more effective to hide the edge of anger beneath the velvet cloak of smoothness, even if Erin was one of the few people who would know how angry he really was.

‘Oh, come on, Erin,’ he said silkily. ‘Please don’t try to assume the role of innocent, because it insults my intelligence. You should have had an answer to this question by now because you must have been expecting that I would turn up and ask it at some point. Or did you really think I would never find out? Maybe not this year, or even next—but surely you must have anticipated that one day I would be confronting you like this to ask you about your son. My son.’

He thought she looked like a textbook study of guilt. She was looking from side to side, like an animal which had been cornered, and it was difficult for Dimitri to reconcile himself with this new version of her. The white-faced woman in the ill-fitting wedding gown was nothing like the Erin he’d known. The smart and straightforward woman who had worked by his side for years, ever since she’d left secretarial college. Who, unlike every other woman on the planet, had never flirted with him and had thus earned his grudging respect. She was the person who’d been given unprecedented access to all areas of his life and affairs. The one person he had trusted above all others. And yes, sleeping with her that one time had been a mistake. Definitely. It had quickly become apparent that things could never be the same between them afterwards—but even so how dared she keep the consequences of that night from him for all these years?

How dared she?

‘You aren’t going to deny it, are you, Erin?’ he continued mockingly. ‘Because you can’t.’

Her lips opened and she shivered and, powered by an instinct he wasn’t sure he recognised, Dimitri removed his jacket and draped it around her narrow shoulders. The suit’s grey jacket swamped her and made her complexion look even more waxy than it had been before and his mouth hardened. Was she opening those green eyes as wide as a kitten and thinking he would take pity on her? Because if that was the case—she was wrong.