CHAPTER 2

         Lowell was gone. She was no longer his sole support. And the invisible chains of emotion and longing that had ruled her for so long could no longer keep her here, in this hell. Not now she’d discovered, entirely by accident, what Andrey truly thought of her.

          Andrey Romanoff only watched her now, those dark amber eyes moving over her like the touch of his hands, all fire, and demand. She knew what the man in front of her saw. She had crafted her corporate image specifically to appeal to his particular tastes, to comply, as she always did, to his preferences.

          Addison stood tall before his scrutiny, resisting the urge to fuss with her pencil skirt or the silk blouse she wore, both in the muted colors Andrey Romanoff, her boss, preferred.

          She knew the deceptively simple twist that held her dark brown hair up was elegant… absolutely perfect. There was no bold jewelry that he might find ‘distracting’.

          Her cosmetics were carefully applied, as always, to keep her looking fresh and neat and as if she hardly needed any at all, as if she simply possessed a perfect skin tone, attractively shaded lips, and bright eyes without effort.

          Addison had become extremely good at playing this role, at wearing a mask, at being precisely what he wanted. She’d done it for so long. She could do it in her sleep. She had… For five, long, exhausting years.

          She could see the precise moment he realized that she was serious, that this wasn’t merely a bargaining tactic she was trotting out as some kind of strategic attempt to get something from him. That she meant what she was saying, however impossible he found it to fathom.

          The impatience faded from his clever gaze and turned to something far more calculating, almost brooding. Romanoff lounged back against his massive, deliberately intimidating chair, propped his jaw on his hand, and treated her to the full force of that brilliant, impossible focus of his that made him such a devastating opponent.

          ‘No’ was never a final answer, not to the ‘Russian Lucifer’. It was where he began. Where he came alive. And where she got off, this time. For good. She couldn’t help the little flare of satisfaction she got from knowing that she would be the one thing he couldn’t mogul his way into winning. Not anymore. Not ever again.

“What is this, Miss Bryant?” he asked quietly.

          He sounded perfectly reasonable, having obviously concluded that he could manipulate her better with a show of interest in what she might be feeling than the sort of offensive strategy he might otherwise employ.

“Are you unhappy here, working for me?”

          ‘What a preposterous question…’

          Addison let out a short laugh that clearly hit him the wrong way. In truth, she’d known it would. His eyes narrowed, seeming almost to glow with the temper that would show only there, she was well aware. He so rarely unleashed the full force of it. It normally only lurked, beneath everything, like a dark promise no one wanted him to keep.

“Well… Let’s go with this version… Yes, I’m unhappy,” Addison replied, keeping herself from rolling her eyes by the barest remaining shred of her once iron control. “I have no personal life. As a matter of fact, I have no life at all, Mr. Romanoff, and I haven’t for five years. I was way too busy managing yours instead.”

“For which you are extraordinarily well paid, Miss Bryant” he pointed out, with bite.

“I know you won’t believe me,” she continued, almost pityingly, which made his eyes narrow even further, “and you will certainly never discover this on your own, God knows, but there is more to life than money, Mr. Romanoff.”

          Again, that shrewd amber stare.

“Am I to understand that all this is about a man?” he asked in a voice she might have called something like disgruntled had it belonged to someone else.

          She laughed again and told herself she couldn’t hear the edge in it, that he should hit so close to a bitter truth she had no intention of acknowledging.

“And when do you imagine I would have the time to meet men?” she asked. “In between assignments and business trips? While busy sending farewell gifts to all of your ex-lovers?”

“Ah,” he said, in a tone that put her back right up, so condescending was it. “I understand now…”

          His smile then was both patronizing and razor-sharp. Addison felt it drag across her, clawing deep.

“Very well... I suggest you take a week’s holiday, Miss Bryant. Perhaps two. Find a beach and some warm bodies. Drink something potent and scratch the itch. As many times as necessary. You are of no use to me at all in this state.”

“That is a charming, amazing idea,” Addison replied, something dark and destructive churning inside her, through lips that felt pale with rage, “and I appreciate the offer, naturally. But I am not you, Mr. Romanoff… This doesn’t work for me…”

          She let everything she felt about him burn through her as she stared at him. Every single thing… All these years of longing and sacrifice, all the things she’d thought and hoped, all the foolish dreams she’d had no idea he’d crushed in their infancy until today. Even… Well, yes, even that one complicated and emotional night in Spain, three years ago… A night they never discussed and never would.

“I do not ‘scratch the itch’ with indiscriminate abandon, leaving masses in my wake, like some kind of oversexed King Kong. I have standards...”

          Andrey Romanoff blinked. He did not move a single other muscle and yet Addison had to order herself to stay in place, so powerfully did she feel the lash of his temper, the kick of those amber eyes as they bored into her.

“Are you not feeling well?” he asked with soft menace, only the granite set of his jaw and the deepening of his accent hinting at his mounting fury.

          But Addison knew him. She knew the danger signs when she saw them.

“Or have you completely lost your senses?”

“I’m quite all right. What you hear it’s called honesty, Mr. Romanoff,” Addison replied with a crispness that completely belied the alarms ringing wildly inside her, screaming at her to run, to leave at once, to stop taunting him, for God’s sake, as if that would prod him into being who she’d imagined he was! “I understand that it’s not something you’re familiar with, particularly not from me. But that’s what happens when one is as carelessly domineering and impossible as you pride yourself on being. You are surrounded by an obsequious echo chamber of minions and acolytes, too afraid of you to speak the truth. I should know. I’ve been pretending to be one among them for five years.”

          Andrey went terrifyingly still. She could feel his temper expand to fill the room, all but rattling the windows. She could see that lean, muscled body of his seem to hum with the effort she imagined it took him to keep from exploding along with it.

          His gaze locked on hers, dark and furious. Infinitely more lethal than Addison wanted to admit to herself. Or maybe it was that she was simply too susceptible to him. Still. Always, something inside her whispered, making her despair of herself anew.

“Miss Bryant, I suggest you think very carefully about the next thing that comes out of your mouth,” he said in that deceptively measured way, the cruelty he was famous for rich in his voice then, casting his fierce face into iron. “You may otherwise live to regret it.”

          This time, Addison’s laugh was real. If, she could admit to herself, a little bit nervous.

“That’s what you don’t understand… sir,” she countered and started to slowly shake her head.

          Grief and satisfaction and too many other things stamped through her, making her feel wild and dangerously close to a certain kind of fierce, possibly unhinged joy. That she was defying him? That she was actually getting to him, for once? She had no idea anymore.

“I do not care. I’m essentially bulletproof. What are you going to do? Sack me? Blacklist me? Refuse me a reference? Go right ahead! I don’t need a single thing from you and I’m not afraid of you. I’ve already quit. I do not need this job anymore.”

          And then, at long last, fulfilling the dream she’d cherished in one form or another since she’d taken this horribly all-consuming job in the first place purely to pay for Lowell’s assorted bills, Addison turned her back on Andrey Romanoff, her own personal demon and the greatest bane of her existence, and walked out of his life forever. Just as she’d originally planned she would someday.

          No more ‘Romanoff Group’, no more Andrey Romanoff… The only reason she endured all these five years was now gone and she was finally free. She stayed there because she couldn’t help but love her brother, despite everything and because she was all he’d had, and that had meant something to her even when she’d wished it didn’t.

          The moment she said those words to him, there really should have been trumpets, at the very least. And certainly, no trace of that hard sort of anguish that swam in her and made this much, much more difficult than it should have been.

          Addison was almost to the far door of the outer office, where her desk sat as guardian of this most inner sanctum when Andrey Romanoff snapped out her name. It was a stark command, and she had been too well trained to ignore it. She stopped, hating herself for obeying him, but it was only this last time, she told herself. What could it hurt?

          When Addison looked over her shoulder, she felt a chill of surprise that he was so close behind her without her having heard him move, but she couldn’t think about that… It was that look on his face that struck her, all thunder and warning, and her heart began to pound, hard.