The Power of Vasilii

Laura nodded her head.

Again she was word-perfect. Not that Vasilii would have expected or accepted anything else.

‘So, we have established that your translation skills are … adequate, but if you know anything about China you will know that there is far more to successful business negotiations with the Chinese than merely having a good grasp of Mandarin.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Laura agreed. ‘Even if they speak another language the heads of Chinese industries and high-ranking Chinese officials often use a retinue of interpreters and PAs because that adds to their status. It is part and parcel of the Chinese way of doing business. Since I know that you speak both Russian and Mandarin yourself, I assumed that it was in part because of the issue of respect that you have decided to negotiate through someone else yourself.’

‘That is correct,’ Vasilii replied, and then looked at her, his eyes slightly hooded and his grey gaze unreadable.

Instinctively Laura knew that his silent assessment of her was both critical and meant to unnerve her.

It would have been so much better, so much easier for her, if she didn’t have that silly teenage crush lodged dangerously in her emotions. Its mere presence was enough to weaken her self-confidence.

When the silence instigated by Vasilii stretched to a length that was beginning to feel uncomfortable he delivered the blow that came from a direction she had not been prepared for. ‘You resigned from your previous employment, I understand—without having secured another post first. Why? It is rather a risk in today’s financial climate.’

CHAPTER TWO

LAURA felt her heart still in fearful recognition.

He couldn’t know. It just wasn’t possible. Summoning all her courage, she told him, ‘I decided to take a sabbatical,’ keeping her tone light and her head held high.

‘Really?’

The cynical look he was giving her warned Laura that he didn’t believe her. But worse was to come when he continued.

‘I understand that you are buying your current property with a mortgage, and that in addition to that financial commitment you also help to pay the fees for your aunt’s sheltered accommodation?’

‘Yes,’ Laura was obliged to confirm. ‘My aunt brought me up after the death of my parents. She’s not been well recently, and only receives a small pension, so naturally I want to do what I can to help her.’

‘You seem very eager to draw a picture of yourself as someone who takes her duties and responsibilities seriously, yet your attitude towards job security, which I would have thought in the circumstances would be extremely important to you, suggests the opposite. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I find it hard to believe that someone with your financial commitments would even think of taking time out for a sabbatical. And I have to say that I find it even harder to believe when I know that you made that decision within a month of being offered a promotion for which you had been personally selected by your mentor—a mentor with whom you have worked for many years.’

Laura’s heart had started to beat with heavy, hammer-like blows of acute dread.

There was nothing he wanted to do more than tell Laura that he had another far more suitable, far more acceptable applicant to fill the vacancy as his PA, Vasilii acknowledged as he watched her, but he couldn’t. Her translations had been faultless and skilled, and he already knew from her CV how highly her previous employers had rated not only her negotiating skills but also her people skills. As Vasilii knew, they were going to be very, very important in securing this particular contract. However, he intended to let her know he was not a man she should cross.

Laura could see that Vasilii was waiting for an explanation, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. Instead she had to appear casual and calmly in control, even if she was sick with anxiety inside, and tell him, ‘The new position I was offered would have entailed a relocation to New York. I resigned because I preferred not to go.’

‘Because you don’t want to travel? But the position as my PA involves a great deal of travelling—and to places rather more far flung than New York.’

Laura’s earlier anxiety had become a clawing sense of impending disaster. Her dread was justified when Vasilii announced, ‘If there is one thing above all else that I demand in my employees, Ms Westcotte, it is honesty and trustworthiness.’ He paused, and then demanded, ‘Isn’t it the truth that you were offered the option of leaving your previous employment voluntarily or being dismissed, because of your affair with your immediate—and affianced—superior?’

‘No!’ Laura denied immediately.

This time it was impossible for her to control her emotions—those feelings that she had kept locked up inside herself since the shocking and humiliating moment when Harold and Nancy had burst into the bedroom of John’s hotel room. And then she’d been summoned to Harold’s office to be accused of having an affair with John—her boss and her mentor, a man she loved and admired. A man she looked up to as a career-related father figure. John was, after all, twenty years her senior. He had been divorced when she had first met him, with two sons he adored, and she had been delighted for him when he had become engaged to a wealthy American socialite, a divorcée of his own age whom he had met in New York, even though she had never actually been able to warm to Nancy herself.

One dark, sardonically arched eyebrow told her exactly what Vasilii thought of her hot denial.

‘Very well—yes. I was offered that choice,’ she felt forced to agree. ‘But I was not having an affair with John. He was my mentor—a father figure to me in many ways. We were not having an affair,’ she stated again fiercely.

‘Your CEO thought you were. In fact he was so convinced of it that he offered you the choice of leaving of your own accord, with the whole matter being kept private, or of being subjected to a very public dismissal, with all the damage that would do to your professional reputation. Harold Johnson has very strong views on the morals he expects from those who work under him. He is also an extremely astute CEO, so I doubt he would make such an accusation against a valued and valuable member of his team if he wasn’t convinced of their guilt. Was he convinced of your guilt, Ms Westcotte?’

Laura exhaled shakily.

‘Yes. Yes, he was,’ she admitted.

‘And he was convinced because he and John Metcalfe’s fiancée found you in Metcalfe’s bed. Isn’t that also the truth?’

‘Yes …’

As the excruciating scene came rushing back, Laura could hear in her own voice the dying of her hopes of Vasilii offering her the job. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the condemnatory look in the flint-grey gaze that right now was clinically ripping her pride to shreds.

Laura didn’t know, but something definitely gave her the determination and the strength to insist, ‘But it wasn’t how it looked. John and I had been working late on a project for a client and the client had taken us both out to dinner, and then a nightclub. There had recently been articles in the papers about young women being at risk in using cabs late at night—especially from nightclubs. We were both tired, and we knew we’d got an early start in the morning, so John suggested I stay overnight in his hotel suite. We’d done it before …’

‘Before? Before he had become engaged? When he was a single man?’

‘Yes. But …’

‘I understand that at the time you elected to share John Metcalfe’s suite he and his fiancée were having relationship problems. She had told him that she believed your feelings for him were not those of a mere work colleague.’

‘I didn’t know about that. John is tremendously loyal. He would never have discussed his relationship with Nancy with me. I had no idea that she had told him that she wasn’t happy about the two of us continuing to work so closely together.’

‘Because she felt that you wanted to usurp her position in his life and become his wife?’

‘That’s what she told Harold,’ Laura was forced to agree. ‘John told me afterwards that she didn’t like the fact that he was having to work such long hours.’

‘But you, of course, were happy to share those long hours—and his bed.’

‘No. I’ve already told you. John and I were close, it’s true, but he was never anything more to me than a mentor and a father figure.’

‘You were discovered in his bed.’

‘Yes, because he’d insisted that I take it. He slept on the sofa in the sitting room of the suite.’

‘A very convenient excuse and one that can’t be proved. Though your willingness to walk away and not fight to prove your so-called innocence speaks volumes.’

Laura closed her eyes. Yes, she had walked away—but only to spare her elderly aunt the stress and upset of watching her niece go through in public what Vasilii was putting her through now.

Vasilii was right in one respect. The fact she had not shared a bed with John could not be proved. But the fact they had never been lovers could—since she was still a virgin. Not, of course, that she was ever going to admit that to anyone—much less this man. It was her embarrassing secret. A woman in her twenties who had next to no real sexual experience because … Because she had been too busy with her education. Because she had simply not met the right man at the right time. Never because of that crush she’d had on the man now standing in front of her with such contempt in his gaze. The very thought of ever being challenged to admit that it was because of Vasilii that she was still a virgin, because her crush on him had been so intense that she had simply never desired anyone else with the same intensity, made her feel weak with angry shame.

But that did not alter the fact that Vasilii was wrong about her and wrong to accuse her as he had. She’d chosen to walk away before, but now she was determined to defend herself—and fully intended to do so.

‘You obviously want to think that.’

The words were out before Laura could silence them. She wasn’t going to apologise for them, though. Not even with Vasilii giving her a look as dangerous as the scimitar swords of his desert ancestor warlords.

‘Meaning?’ he demanded.

‘Meaning that you want to think badly of me,’ Laura told him, standing her ground. ‘Harold and Nancy’s interpretation of what they saw was the wrong one. John and I both told them that, but they didn’t want to listen—just as you don’t want to listen. You’ve judged me already, and on someone else’s assessment of me. I’d assumed from what I’ve read about you that you are a man who makes his own judgements rather than a man who runs with the herd.’