Innocent in the Ivory Tower

Mostly he wanted his control back. Control over the situation.

‘How in the hell are you going to raise a child?’ Tara snarled as she strutted out through the door.

Control. His dark eyes fixed on the Florida coastline, visible through the wraparound windows. He would begin by doing what he needed to do. Speaking to the people outside. Speaking to Carlo. Most of all speaking to Kostya, a two-year-old infant. But first he needed to fly across the Atlantic to do it.

‘“The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat,”‘ sang Maisy in a soft contralto, her body arced over the small boy curled on his side in the crib. He had been sucking on the plump flesh of his fist, but as sleep claimed him his pink mouth closed and presently his barrel-shaped chest rose and fell beneath the delicate ribbed cotton singlet he wore.

She had been singing to him for a while now, after a full half-hour of reading, and her throat felt dry, her voice slightly hoarse. But it was worth it to see him like this, so peaceful.

Standing up, she scanned the room, checking everything was in its place. The nursery was as it had always been—a place of womblike security—yet everything outside it had changed. For this little boy, for ever.

Tiptoeing out, she closed the door. The baby monitor was on and she knew from experience he would sleep now until after midnight. It was her chance to get some food and then some sleep herself. She’d been awake so much of the past thirty-six hours she couldn’t even gauge how much sleep she’d had.

Two floors down, the kitchen was dimly lit. Valerie, the Kulikovs’ housekeeper, had left the spotlights over the benches on for her, and they cast an almost ghostly glow. Valerie had also left a dish of macaroni and cheese in the fridge to be reheated, and Maisy silently thanked her as she slid the bowl into the microwave.

The older woman had been a godsend this week. When the news had come through of the crash Maisy had been in her room, packing for a vacation that was due to start on Tuesday. She remembered putting down the telephone and sitting by it for a full ten minutes before she even thought of what to do next. Then she had rung Valerie and life had resumed movement.

She and Valerie had both expected Leo and Anais’s families to sweep in, but the house in the private London square had remained silent. Inside, Valerie continued to do her hours and return to her family at night, and Maisy cared for her charge and waited for the plea that had not yet come. I want Mama.

The press had been there for a couple of days, pushing up at the windows, clambering over the iron railings to drop to the basement. Valerie had kept the blinds drawn, and Maisy had only taken Kostya out once, to the private garden across the road. Maisy had worked for the Kulikovs since Kostya’s birth, and lived in this house all that time. Leo and Anais had travelled frequently. Maisy was accustomed to being alone with Kostya for weeks at a time. Yet there was something—empty—tonight. The house felt too quiet, and Maisy found herself jumping as the microwave pinged, pressing open the door with a hand that trembled.

Get a grip, she told herself sternly, using an oven mitt to carry the bowl over to the big French provincial table. She didn’t bother to turn on the main light. There was something comforting about the darkness.

Steam rose off the macaroni. She ought to be hungry, and she needed to keep her strength up. Her fork made a cruise around the edges. In her mind’s eye she could still see Anais in this very room a week ago, laughing in that full-throated way at a drawing Kostya had done in crayon on the floor tiles of a giraffe with a head like his mummy’s. Anais had been almost six feet tall, and mostly legs, which had been the focus of her modelling career. It was clearly how her little son had seen her from his diminutive position.

Maisy remembered the first time she had met Anais. She had been a small, dumpy swot, detailed by her headmistress to introduce the skinny, impossibly tall Anais Parker-Stone to the rituals of St Bernice’s. Anais hadn’t known then that Maisy Edmonds was a charity girl, her place in the very exclusive girls’ school arranged for her on a government programme. When she had found out, Anais hadn’t changed her allegiances. If Maisy had been ostracised for her background, Anais had been victimised for her height.

For two years the girls had been close friends, until Anais dropped out at sixteen and four months later had started modelling in New York. Two years later she was famous.

As Maisy had matured she’d lost her puppy fat, gained a waist and some length in her legs, and her curves had become an asset. She had gone on to university but dropped out before the first term had even begun. Her only contact with Anais had been via the glossy magazines Anais stalked through. When Maisy had run into her at Harrods it had been Anais who’d recognised her—probably because she had hardly changed, Maisy thought ruefully.

Anais, all sleek blonde bob and three-inch heels, had shrieked with joy, thrown her skinny arms around Maisy’s small shoulders and jumped up and down like a teenage girl. A teenage girl with a baby bump. Three months later Maisy had been ensconced in Lantern Square, with a newborn baby in her arms and a completely overwhelmed Anais weeping and threatening to kill herself and trying to escape the house every chance she could. Nobody had ever told her motherhood wasn’t a job she could walk away from, that it was for life.

A far too short life, as it had turned out, Maisy thought heavily and stopped pretending to eat. She pushed the plate away. She had cried for her friend, and she had cried for tiny Kostya. She imagined at some point those tears would dry up. Right now it seemed they had.

She had more pressing considerations.

Any day now a lawyer for the Kulikovs, although more likely for the Parker-Stones, would land on the doorstep. People who would take away Kostya. Maisy knew nothing about the Kulikovs other than that Leo had been an only child and his parents were deceased. But she remembered Arabella Parker-Stone, who had seen her grandson once, a few days after his birth. It had been a brief visit, involving calla lilies and harsh words between Anais and her mother.

‘I hate her, I hate her, I hate her,’ Anais had wailed afterwards into a sofa cushion, whilst Maisy rocked Kostya in her arms.

Arabella had upset everyone. But her mind was failing and she was now in a nursing home. Kostya would not be going to live with his grandmother.

Nor will he be living with me.

Maisy didn’t know how she was going to hand Kostya over to strangers. Wild thoughts of simply absconding with him had crossed her mind yesterday and today. It all seemed possible, with the world ignoring them, but once it paid attention how on earth would she manage it? She was jobless and her only skill was as a carer for the infirm, the elderly, or the very young. Her vocation was loving that little boy upstairs. He had become her family—but, more painfully, she was his. Somehow she had to find a way to stay with him. Surely whoever stepped forward would need a nanny? Would not be so cruel as to separate them … ?

Maisy took a deep breath and pushed the hair out of her face. She reeled her bowl back in and, head resting on one hand, picked at a first mouthful of pasta, munching by rote. She needed sustenance; this would give it to her. Tomorrow she would have to go through Leo’s office and phone people. Such had been his mania for privacy, very few outsiders had been in this house. Anais had never complained—she had merely gone out. Another excuse to leave her son. Maisy had never understood Anais’s inability to bond with Kostya, but she had excused it.

And now it just didn’t matter any more.

It was a movement, not a sound, that pulled her out of her miserable thoughts with an abrupt jab of adrenaline. Something shifted at the corner of her vision and her head jerked up, her shoulders pulling tight as twine.

Someone was in the house.

She froze, listening intently.

In that moment two men stepped out of the pooling darkness beyond the island bench, and as she processed their presence the room filled up with men. Three more came rushing down the stairs, and another two bursting through the garden entrance. That they all seemed to be wearing suits brought Maisy no comfort as the spoon dropped from her hand and she stumbled backwards out of her chair.

The shortest of the thugs came towards her and said, ‘Hands behind your head. Get on the floor.’

But a bigger man—taller, leaner, younger—brushed him aside and said something brusquely in a foreign language.

Maisy stared open mouthed at him, shock rooting her to the spot and he swore.

‘English, Alexei Fedorovich,’ said another of the men, almost as terrifying with his height and bulk.

Oh, God, it was the Russian mafia.

The hysterical thought coincided with the younger man making a sudden movement towards her, and Maisy’s body reacted to protect itself.

She grabbed the chair and threw it with all her might at him. Then she screamed.

CHAPTER TWO

‘ALEXEI,’ said a voice at his elbow. ‘Perhaps we should wait.’

Alexei barely spared a glance for his factotum Carlo Santini. He didn’t do waiting.

The first thing he’d noticed about the house was that the security code hadn’t been changed. Clearly no one was in charge. The second had been the almost abnormal silence of the house. It was close on midnight, but there was a closed-up feeling to the rooms. His hackles raised, he’d headed towards a pale light gleaming from the stairwell leading downstairs into the basement. His godson had been alone for four days, and he wanted to see for himself the situation he was walking into. Although his security would move up through the house from basement to attic, he knew it would be easier to cut to the chase himself.

He had spotted her immediately—a shapeless figure hunched over a bowl, sitting in the dark. Good—staff. As he’d walked across the room she had seemed to sense him, because her head had come up and for a moment he’d been thrown by the vulnerability that softened her dimly lit features as she’d sought to make sense of his presence. He’d had a further impression of fragility and femininity, despite the clothes that enveloped her.

In that moment the French doors had exploded open in front of him and more personnel had come thundering down the stairs behind him. The woman had reacted like a loaded gun. They were protecting him, but she wasn’t to know that.

The trigger for this overreaction had heaved her chair and dived under the table, rolling herself into a ball. Now, Alexei cursed and shoved the table over a few feet, hauled her up into his arms, registering her real terror as she began to kick and struggle against him. Better him than one of his security detail, who would be less inclined to go gently with her.

His muttered imprecations and rough assurances of, ‘I am not going to hurt you,’ did little to stem her reaction—until he realised in his exhausted state he was using Russian. ‘Calm yourself,’ he said distinctly in English. ‘No one wishes you any harm.’

Maisy jerked her head sideways and her eyes welded to his. They were deep blue, heavily lashed and stunning. His cheekbones were like scimitars, and she recognised that faint upsweep of his bone structure as Slavic.

He clearly hadn’t shaved in many days, but otherwise he smelled good. Maisy’s body recognised this as her mind struggled to keep up. His cologne filled her nostrils, along with the subtler but more enticing smell of him—warm, male flesh. She could feel the fight slipping out of her body as her senses told her this man truly meant her no harm, even as those same senses began to be overloaded with other messages.

Alexei sensed the change in her. She was no longer a victim fighting back but a woman in his arms, waiting for him to make a move. He reluctantly set her down, but kept one hand fastened over her shoulder, holding her in place. He didn’t want his security detail marching her off, possibly manhandling her. He didn’t question why other men touching her filled him with the primitive urge to protect her. He was tired, and he hadn’t had sex, and he was in the mood to tear down the house if he didn’t get that child.

‘Talk to her,’ he said, the weight of his hand lifting from her shoulder.

Feeling suddenly adrift, Maisy looked up to face another man—shorter, slighter, perhaps a decade older and sharply dressed—who stepped forward and inclined his head rather formally.