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It all happened in a moment. His mouth was gone, his hands were gone, and she was leaning up against her bedroom door, clutching a towel to her near nakedness and staring into the eyes of a man who looked shell shocked.

What in the hell was he doing here? He had twelve security personnel scoping the property, a car waiting and a jet on the tarmac at Heathrow, and he—Alexei Ranaevsky—was seducing the nanny in an upstairs bedroom.

And doing a spectacularly lousy job of it.

‘Maisy.’ He spoke her name abruptly.

‘You haven’t changed your mind?’ she challenged with what nerve she had left, strengthening her voice with the knowledge that Kostya came first. ‘About me coming? With Kostya?’

For a moment he actually looked confused, as if she had said something completely out of left field, when it was the only thing that mattered—wasn’t it? Then he sighed and ran a hand over his unshaven face.

‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ he muttered. ‘God help me, I haven’t changed my mind.’

About the Author

LUCY ELLIS has four loves in life: books, expensive lingerie, vintage films and big, gorgeous men who have to duck going through doorways. Weaving aspects of them into her fiction is the best part of being a romance writer. Lucy lives in a small cottage in the foothills outside Melbourne.

INNOCENT IN THE IVORY TOWER is Lucy’s first book!

Innocent in the Ivory Tower

Lucy Ellis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Martha

CHAPTER ONE

ALEXEI RANAEVSKY strode across the light-filled environs of his floating boardroom and picked up the newspaper one of his staff had been careless enough to leave behind.

He had made it clear he wanted to see no reportage of the Kulikov tragedy, but now the initial shock was wearing off he found himself drawn to what could only be described as the circus that was attaching itself to events. How to dismantle that circus was his current concern.

How to grieve for his closest friend would come after.

Events had moved to the third page. A picture of Leo and Anais at a race meeting in Dubai, Leo’s head thrown back, laughing, his arm welded around Anais’s slender waist. A golden couple. Alongside was exactly what Alexei didn’t want to see: a photograph of the mangled car wreck. The 1967 Aston Martin—Leo’s ‘baby’—nothing more than steel and destroyed electronics. Leo and Anais’s very human bodies hadn’t stood a chance.

The commentary below—because you couldn’t call it news—was adjective-heavy, full of references to Anais’s beauty and Leo’s work for the UN. Alexei scanned it for a few seconds, then sucked in a sharp breath.

Konstantine Kulikov.

Kostya.

There was something about seeing that name in print that made what had felt for days now like a nightmare fiercely, immediately real. At least there was no picture of the boy. Leo had been intensely guarded about their private life: he and Anais had been fair game for the media, but their family life had been off-limits to anyone outside their circle. It was a sentiment Alexei admired him for. It was a rule he laid down in his own life. There was the public man, and the private familya, and the fact that Leo had been that family for him made his grief all the more stupefying.

‘Alexei?’

His head snapped up, jaw hard, eyes emotionless.

For a second her name evaded him. ‘Tara,’ he said.

If she noticed the lapse it did not register on her stunning face. It was a face that was currently making her several million dollars a year in beauty endorsements, in lieu of an acting career that had gone nowhere.

‘Everyone’s waiting, darling,’ she said smoothly, crossing the space between them and pulling the newspaper out of his hands.

It was the wrong thing to do.

He had never struck a woman in his life, and he had no intention of starting now, but every fibre of his body wanted to lash out. Instead he froze. Tara lifted her chin defiantly. She was nothing if not bold—and wasn’t that what had drawn him to her?

‘You don’t need to look at that trash,’ she said harshly. ‘You need to pull it together and get out there and put a civilised face on this whole debacle.’

Everything she said was everything he knew, but something—some important mechanism between his brain and his emotions—had snapped. Many would say he didn’t have any emotions, not real ones. He certainly hadn’t cried for Leo and Anais. He hadn’t even cried for his own dead parents. But there was something surging through him that his brain wasn’t going to be able to control. Something that had its wellspring in that child’s name in black-and-white in newspaper ink.

Kostya.

Orphaned.

Alone.

Tara’s ‘debacle’.

‘Let them wait,’ he said coldly, his English coloured by his Russian accent. ‘And what in the hell are you wearing? This isn’t a cocktail party—it’s a family gathering.’

Tara snorted laughter. It was one of the traits he had once found appealing about her, her lack of self-consciousness—as if her overwhelming physical beauty made it possible for her to say anything, do anything, be anything.

‘Family? Give me a break—those people aren’t your family.’ She reached out and pressed her red-taloned hand to his waist, taut beneath the expensively tailored cream shirt. ‘You have as much family feeling as a cat, Alexei,’ she stated, face upturned, lips wet and red, her hand making its way down the front of his dark trousers. ‘A big, mean, feral cat. Very big.’ Her hand settled on what she found there. ‘Not up to play today, darling?’

His body had begun to respond as long familiarity with the process had taught it, but sex was not on today’s agenda. It hadn’t been on the agenda since Monday, when his right-hand man, Carlo, had brought him the news in the early hours. He remembered the snapping on of the lamp, Carlo’s murmured voice as he laid out the spare, basic facts such as they had been. Then he had been alone in that big flat bed, swimming in emptiness. Tara had been beside him, dead to the world under a blanket of whatever drugs she took to sleep. A body.

He had been alone.

I never want to have sex with this woman ever again.

He grasped her forearm and gently but with leashed force revolved her one hundred and eighty degrees to face the door.

‘Off you go,’ he murmured in her ear, as if imparting an endearment—only his voice was completely dead of feeling. ‘Join them on deck. Don’t drink too much, and here.’ He picked up the newspaper she had dropped on the boardroom table. ‘Dispose of this.’

Tara had been in the wide world long enough to know she was experiencing the infamous Ranaevsky Chill Factor. She just hadn’t expected to feel it herself, or perhaps not quite so soon.

‘Danni was right. You are a cold bastard.’

Alexei didn’t have a clue who Danni was—didn’t particularly care. He just wanted Tara out of the room. Out of his life.

He wanted the people outside off his boat.

He wanted to turn the clock back to Sunday.

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.

‘Good evening, signorina. I apologise for the intrusion. I am Carlo. I work for Alexei Ranaevsky.’

Maisy’s head swivelled back to the younger man. He wasn’t even listening. He had retrieved a phone from his jacket and was reading whatever messages it contained.

This was talking to her?

‘Try Spanish,’ was all he said, in a deep, gravelly voice she hadn’t registered before when he had spoken in Russian.

Maisy sat through Spanish, Italian and interestingly Polish renditions of the same introduction. As the Polish rolled musically on she tried to marshal her racing thoughts. Her gaze kept creeping back to the man who had restrained her. He seemed to be the focus in the room, and he reeked confidence and control. Except when she had been in his arms for a moment there she had sensed something else. Something very much uncontrolled.

Maisy suppressed an involuntary shiver and his head came up, as if sensing her movement. His darkened eyes moved over her, settling on the pulse that was beating wildly at the base of her throat. It held his assessing gaze for a moment. Then he said abruptly, ‘She’s English.’

He despatched the mobile and gave her a measured look.

‘I need to know where the boy is.’

Maisy’s skittering pulse went still. Every hackle in her body rose.

Alexei saw the moment she shut down, and cursed himself inwardly. He didn’t have time for this. When she didn’t answer he lost patience. ‘I’m taking Leonid Kulikov’s son out of here. I need you to take me to him.’

‘No,’ she said.

No? No? Alexei made a soft sound of disbelief.

‘I’m not letting you anywhere near the Kulikovs’ child. Who in the hell do you think you are?’

The kitten could scratch. Despite himself, Alexei felt his libido give a little kick.

‘I’m Alexei Ranaevsky, his legal guardian.’

Her gaze made an involuntary skate over the breadth of his chest and shoulders, then fastened on his face. He had dark hair, curling and close-cropped, and he was about as close to a fantasy as Maisy had ever had.

Yet her stomach twisted, even as she knew she ought to feel relief.

Someone had finally come for Kostya. But because no one was walking Kostya out of this house without her, this man had come for her too. Only he didn’t know it. Something fluttered low in Maisy’s chest and she recognised it was fear—quite different from the terror she had felt when these men had burst in on her. This was fear of the known.

Alexei had apparently said everything he was going to say to her, and turned around and headed for the stairs.

Maisy’s anxious ‘Wait!’ didn’t break his stride.

She chased him up two flights of stairs, all the while babbling about not waking Kostya, but he ignored her completely.

Why isn’t he listening to me?

He’d reached the nursery landing when she launched herself at him physically. ‘Please. Stop.’

Alexei paused midstride as female arms came around his waist. Bumping up against him, she grappled to take hold of his jacket. She was panting, and Alexei looked down to see some of her curls had come loose. With the colour high in her cheeks she was considerably more intriguing than she had been at first glance. She was also clearly very distressed.

But that was not his concern, Alexei dismissed irritably. She knew who he was. She was either trying to garner his attention or behaving irrationally. Either was of no interest to him. He moved and she didn’t, and a very decisive ripping sound rent the air between them.

There was an awful moment as Maisy realised what she had done. His eyes locked on hers, whatever he’d been about to say giving way to a look of complete disbelief. Satisfaction at finally gaining his attention turned up the corners of Maisy’s lips, and his stare dropped to the lush unpainted pink of her mouth and buzzed there.

Disconcerted, she lost her concentration for a moment, and something of this must have communicated itself because an answering smile hovered over his mouth. Struck, Maisy dropped her gaze and, making the most of her advantage in that moment, moved fast, scooting ahead of him and blocking his way as best she could.

‘I am not letting you see Kostya until you tell me what’s going on.’

His gaze ran the length of her, and his tone was an arctic degree cooler than his eyes. ‘You’re in full possession of the facts. I’m his legal guardian. Remove yourself.’

As if that was all he had to say.

‘Or what? You’ll get one of your bully boys to do it for you?’ Maisy challenged. Some part of her brain told her this was not persuading him she was the right person to look after Kostya, but he was making her so angry with his high-handed attitude. It wasn’t his house. Kostya wasn’t his child. And she certainly wasn’t his doormat.

‘Do you cook here? Clean?’ he rapped out. ‘Because, quite frankly, I don’t explain my actions to staff.’

‘I’m the nanny,’ she flung at him—which was close enough to the truth.

He swore under his breath, those blue eyes narrowing suspiciously on her. ‘Why in the hell didn’t you say so earlier?’

‘I wasn’t sure what was going on.’

It sounded lame even as she said it. She couldn’t very well say, You put your arms around me and I felt your body and I got thoroughly distracted, and then I saw your face and you reduced me to a puddle of wanting woman. Because she darn well knew it probably happened to him every other day.

Maisy moistened her lips, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet four inches. ‘I want you to hold on and explain to me exactly what you intend doing.’ Her voice sounded high and breathless, and unlikely to get her a response from this hard man.

He didn’t look ready to explain. He looked as if he wanted to shake her. He looked as if he couldn’t believe he was having this—any—conversation with her. A child’s wail broke the stalemate.

‘Konstantine.’

‘Kostya.’

They both spoke at once. Maisy dared him with her eyes to push her aside and he hesitated, clearly not wanting to let her pass but less sure about how gung-ho he should be with a two-year-old infant.

Maisy seized the opportunity and went first, but she could sense him close behind her all the way. She hesitated at the nursery door, then swung around and almost bumped her nose on his hard chest. His big body tensed and she cringed. She had to stop touching him. He’d think there was something wrong with her. Yet already a reactive shiver of response was running the length of her body and she instinctively took a step back.

‘Listen,’ she said, groping for composure. ‘You will stay out here. He’ll only be frightened if he sees a strange man.’

He inclined his head. ‘I will wait.’

Maisy ducked into the room, dimly lit by a night lamp near the cot. Kostya was standing in the middle of the mattress, face red and wet as his cries died away on a last wail when he saw what he wanted. Maisy. His chubby arms extended trustfully towards her and Maisy closed the distance between them in an instant.

‘Maisy!’ he enunciated clearly.

She struggled with lifting him. He was big for his age, and in another year she would have difficulty carrying him in her arms. She felt for the armchair behind her and slid into it, cradling the warm little body in her arms.

Alexei stood watching them. He hadn’t expected to be moved in any way by the sight of the child in a woman’s arms. She seemed at ease in a way he knew he could never be with such a small child. He supposed it came naturally for some women, being maternal; it had certainly not been a natural function of any of the women he knew. In fact he struggled, now he thought about it, to come up with any woman he’d been with who was comfortable around children.

Which was something he had in common with them. He definitely had no interest in his friends’ kids. He’d been godfather to Konstantine for two years and seen the child once: on the day he’d stood up for him in the Russian Orthodox Church here in London.

‘I didn’t know he would be so … small,’ Alexei said quietly, not wanting to startle the child.

Maisy smoothed her hand over the back of Kostya’s restive head as the little boy peered around to see where the male voice had come from. It was a voice that sounded somewhat like his father’s, Maisy registered. A shade deeper, but with the irregular emphasis on vowels that revealed English was a second language for him.

‘Papa,’ he said uncertainly, in his clear, high child’s voice.

‘No, it’s not Papa,’ Maisy said softly, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

He came slowly towards them and dropped down beside the chair, so that his height and bulk were no longer frightening, and said in a grave voice, ‘Hello, Kostya. I am your godfather, Alexei Ranaevsky.’

Some of the tension Maisy was holding in her body shifted and melted with those words. Kostya’s godfather. Why hadn’t she remembered? The day of Kostya’s christening she had been in bed with a fever, but the au pair girl had brought back a gushing description of the übercool Alexei Ranaevsky, and here he was—in the flesh.

He lifted those megawatt blue eyes to her and said quietly, ‘You will get him back to sleep and I will wait for you outside.’

The velvet of his voice brushed over her. Maisy recognised his words as a directive and wondered if Alexei Ranaevsky ever asked permission for anything.

When she emerged the house felt empty again. The security detail had evaporated, although Maisy doubted they were far away. She stood at the top of the stairwell, listening for movement.

‘Here,’ came a deep voice from across the landing.

Maisy followed it into her own room. She hesitated on the threshold. Alexei was standing by the window, somehow managing to fill the entire room with his presence. Amidst the delicately feminine decor of duck-egg-blue and white he looked absurdly out of place.

‘Sit down,’ was all he said.