The Platinum Collection: A Convenient Proposal: His Diamond of Convenience / The Highest Price to Pay / His Ring Is Not Enough

“Perhaps to you. But I had just demonstrated to the man that I could effectively disable someone with one well-placed hit. I was angry, I didn’t fear pain and I had nothing to lose. I was very close to being an animal. I saw no reason not to jump at the chance to escape from Russia, to escape from the hell that I was living in. A chance to fight for more than pocket change and a bed for the night? It was another choice. After years of feeling as though I had none. I was intrigued.”

“I can imagine.” Although it was very difficult.

Victoria’s life had always been very shiny. Very ornate. She lived with the weight of expectation, yes, and it had been far from perfect. Just as she had been. But it was nothing like what Dmitri described. Cage fighting in bars. There was something about the way he said it that was very bleak. Well, she imagined that it was a reality that could sound nothing but bleak. Especially by comparison to her own well-appointed upbringing.

“The first place we went to in London was the gym that you met me in.” The gym that had, to Victoria, seemed very low scale.

“It was a palace to me,” he said, as though he had just read her mind. “After the stench in those bars, after the mildew and dampness of the rooms in the cellars and above the places where we fought, where we would sleep with nothing more than a cot and a thin blanket, the accommodations that Colvin offered were nothing short of luxurious. I thought no matter whether or not he made us rich, whether or not he made me famous, I could do no worse than where I already was.”

“It must’ve been...” Victoria searched for the proper words and found she didn’t have any. She had no experience in such things, no experience of life under those circumstances. She couldn’t imagine viewing the hovel of the gym back in London as though it were a mansion. But Dmitri had. And the realization twisted something inside of her, made her stomach feel tight and strange. Made it feel as if she could scarcely breathe.

“In the beginning it was very frustrating. I expected to be fighting. I expected to be doing more of what I was already doing. But from the first moment I arrived in London, he kept me inactive. At least, to my view. He had me doing training exercises. Basic forms and martial arts. All this stuff that seemed very much like a waste of my time. I used to ask him if he was some kind of ninja master.” He laughed at his own memory. “I didn’t know very much English when I came to him, but I learned insults very quickly got the point across in any language.”

“He trained you in martial arts first?”

“I already had the brute strength down. Already had that cage fighting sensibility. But I lacked in form and technique. And what I lacked in most of all was control. When he introduced me to martial arts I learned that there were better ways. That anger makes an opponent weak. That a lack of form betrays your next move. That by watching those who had inferior technique to myself I could guess where they were going to go next. That’s the chess game.”

“You told me chess wasn’t enough,” she said, thinking back to the conversation they’d had in his office. Of course, thinking of that made her think of the moment when he touched her hair. More than touched her hair...caressed it. Ran his fingers deep through it.

She tried to ignore the rising tension in her body.

“It isn’t. That’s why Colvin reminded me to keep with me what I already had. My gut. Intuition. Training combined with raw talent made me an unstoppable fighter in the ring. And from there I got my sponsorships.”

“How does a boy from the streets of Moscow go from fighting in bars to owning one of the largest conglomerates of retail shops in the world?”

“From my sponsorships came modeling opportunities. Which, as you can guess, weren’t really my thing. But that gave me the opportunity to work very closely with the owner of an athletic wear company, Sport Limited. I gave him some suggestions on how to tweak some of the gear we were using. I ended up with my own line. He told me I had a good head on my shoulders, that I had a good mind for business. So, I took some of the money I had been earning in my fights and started taking classes. When Hugh was ready to sell Sport Limited, I had the money and the know-how to take it over. From there, I started buying out more places. Failing retail lines that I felt that I could revamp.”

“You ended up with London Diva,” she said, an empty statement of fact that served very little purpose. Just a reminder for her. Of why she was here. Of the real point of his story, of all of this.

“Yes. For a while I bought up everything I possibly could. And it turned out I had an eye for where to place certain stores, and for what the next high-demand items might be. I have done well. My world expanded after Colvin took me in, after he taught me and trained me. I began to think about more than just where my next meal might come from, or where I might sleep that night. It changed everything for me. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

“I want to do that for these children who might come into my gym. Into these gyms that will hopefully be established by the foundation. I want to provide not only training, but the kind of emotional support that I received. It changed who I was. I was fueled by anger when I lived in Russia. The path I was on was narrow. And it had one end. But when I went to England? That was when I saw all the different directions that path could turn. And it all started with a simple bit of training that I resented so much at first.”

“It’s an amazing story.” Victoria swallowed hard. “One I feel people cannot help but be moved by. You should tell it when you give your speech at the charity gala this week.”

“You want me to speak?”

“Well, it is your charity.”

“Didn’t you get a celebrity emcee?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I did, but I think you’ll find it will be much more powerful for you to share your personal story. Celebrities are only marginally impressed by other celebrities.”

He titled his head to the side, one dark brow lifting. “You may not realize this, but some people find me off-putting.”

She raised her brows and gave him her best surprised look. “Indeed. I guessed something like that.”

“I thought you might have. Though, most women are much more fond of me than you seem to be.”

Victoria’s cheeks heated “Well, most women are after something different than I am. Which is the source of many of your issues with the press. Seeing as you are a...let me see if I can call up some of the finer terms used to describe you... A manwhore. A home wrecker. A corruptor of innocents.”

“I’ve never corrupted an innocent in my life,” he said, his tone casual. “The rest of it is probably true.” He shifted in his seat, one long leg bent at the knee, his elbow resting on it, his chin resting on his hand. He looked too large to be contained in such a small space, too feral to be enclosed in something so luxurious. Reflecting on the time since she’d met him, Victoria decided he was a man who never seemed to fit into his surroundings. Not entirely at the gym, and not entirely here, either. There was something more to him, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Something intriguing, which made it dangerous. Because she should not be intrigued by him. Not now, not ever. He was simply a means to an end; he was nothing to get excited about.

She cleared her throat. “Either way, I think you will be well served to share your story. I found it inspiring.”

“Did you, Victoria? If so, I’m surprised.”

“Why is that?”

“You don’t seem the type to be moved by human interest pieces.”

Victoria wasn’t quite sure how to take that. “I’m not sure what you mean. I have been celebrated for my work in charity.”

“I fail to see what charity work has to do with the way things actually make you feel. You seem a woman more motivated by the bottom line than by altruism.”

She made an indignant sound. “I love altruism. I’m a huge fan of it. I also like people to be fed. I like them to have shelter. I don’t think I like the personality that you seem to be ascribing to me.” His words stung a bit. But it wasn’t as if she was doing a good job of being honest with him about how much her charity work meant to her. But it was personal, and she didn’t like to share personal.

In her experience, sharing personal pieces of herself only led to rejection. It was one thing to risk that for her father, or for the man she’d thought herself in love with. She saw no point risking that with Dmitri.

“Do not be offended. I am merely saying it as I see it. I am not a man given to sentimentality, either. Except in this case. Except where Colvin, and his legacy, are concerned. Because of what he did for me personally I want him remembered, what he did remembered. And more importantly, I want the essence of who he was to keep living.”

Well, now she felt slightly guilty for withholding honesty since his response was completely genuine. She cleared her throat. “Good. Channel all of that into a speech about how incredibly your life changed because of your experiences with martial arts and the opportunities the mind-set opened up to you.”

The scenery had started to change, the buildings growing older as they went deeper into the city. A track line for trolleys ran through the center of a busy street, lined with large hotels, fast-food restaurants and upscale boutiques, as though everything had sort of crashed into each other and settled like this.

They turned off the main drive, all of the architecture here reminiscent of things more commonly found in Europe than in the United States. But there was something else, too. An open friendliness to go with the stateliness that was unlike any place she had ever been before. Magnolia trees grew on the sidewalks, large white blossoms punctuating the dark green leaves, strands of colored beads trapped in the branches, like Christmas decorations that had been left behind.

The buildings were connected, tall and narrow, made from stone with ornate iron balconies that wrapped around the facades. And every few feet there were signs hanging down from the balconies, advertising rentals that came in two varieties: haunted and non.

“I forgot to ask about ghosts.” She was trying to lighten up the topic of conversation now. Trying to move it away from his personal take on her as a human being, which she was almost certain she didn’t like it all. “It appears there are ghostly options here. I hope very much I have not put us on the wrong side of those options.”

He waved a hand. “It’s New Orleans. As far as I know every place has its ghost, and if it doesn’t...the owners are lying.”

“I don’t want any ghosts coming in and spoiling our party.”

“How do you know they would spoil it? They may very well enhance it.”

“For a man who is so confident in his ability to manage the ghosts of the past, you seem open to the idea of them coming into the present.”

“Someone else’s ghosts are fine. It’s my own that I prefer to keep buried.”

That made her laugh. “I’ll drink to that. In fact, perhaps we should, later.”

“An excellent idea.”

The car came to a stop in front of a pink building that wrapped around a street corner. It was three floors high with hanging plants and vines growing over the balconies, doing their part to obscure the windows, and those who might be behind them, from the street below.