The Only Woman to Defy Him

CHAPTER TWELVE


IT WASN’T THAT Nadia was naked that froze Alina, instead it was the look, or rather the non-look, she briefly gave her.

Dismissive, just so, so dismissive.

Without so much as a word Nadia told Alina that she didn’t factor a jot in this.

‘Demyan, ya khochu—’ Nadia started.

‘It isn’t about what you want!’ Demyan both shouted and translated. ‘You will speak in English in front of Alina.’

It was perhaps the polite thing to do but Alina rather wished she’d never had to hear it.

‘I want us to be together again—a family,’ Nadia rasped. ‘I think I’ve made the most terrible mistake...’ She started sobbing. ‘Demyan, what I said about Roman, it was a lie. I wanted to make you jealous, hell, I wanted you to react...’

‘You come here to tell me you lied?’ His voice was clipped but his breathing ragged. ‘You show up here in my bedroom... How the hell did you get the code?’

‘Roman,’ Nadia said. ‘Roman gave it to me because he wants us to get back together too, Demyan...’ She continued, ‘I don’t want to take Roman from you. This way we can be together.’

It was too much for Alina, and with a sob she turned to run.

‘Alina!’ he called. ‘Alina,’ Demyan roared as she fled down the stairs.

He caught up with her in seconds.

‘If we have any chance, you have to hear this...’

‘I shouldn’t have to hear this,’ Alina flared. ‘I shouldn’t have to see this. You’ve been divorced for years.’

‘You know the reasons why she’s here, though.’ Alina was the one person he had told, and his eyes demanded that she understand. ‘You need to hear it firsthand.’

‘Demyan, your ex-wife is naked in your bedroom...’

‘This has nothing do with Nadia,’ Demyan said, and to prove it he picked up the clothes Nadia had strewn on her ascent up the stairs.

‘Get out,’ he said to her. It was a voice only a fool would argue with and Nadia, Alina knew, was no fool. Her beauty mocked Alina over and over as she dressed, her confidence, her absolute assuredness that Demyan was hers taunting Alina as she walked past.

‘I fly tomorrow,’ Nadia said, and blew him a kiss. ‘Come and say goodbye if you choose.’

* * *

Alina went upstairs and retrieved her bra and she turned from him as she put it on.

‘We need to talk.’

‘Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,’ she said.

‘We need to talk,’ Demyan said again.

‘Then answer this—have you thought about getting back with her?’ She turned and looked into eyes that looked straight into hers as his mouth lied to her.

‘No.’

‘I hate that you just lied.’

‘I hate that you gave me no choice but to lie. If I’d said yes you’d have run off before I’d even finished the sentence. What are you running from, Alina?’


‘You!’ Alina shouted. ‘All this. I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it.’

‘I tell you why you run from me. I make you be yourself. When you run from me you are running from you. Why are you dressing in a suit, trying to be a PA...?’

‘Trying?’

‘You’re actually not very good!’

‘Bastard.’

‘Of course I am, but if I said that about your artwork, you’d have slapped me.’

Colour scalded her face. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘No, you want it hidden in a wardrobe, or hung on a wall in someone’s home when you should be showing it to the world.’

‘Actually, you’re wrong. I’ve just booked a stall at the market.’

‘Market...’ Alina could not possibly have chosen a filthier word for Demyan. His mind flicked back thirty years to a life that every day, every hour, every minute he did his best to forget. To hunger and filth and the tricks his mother had been reduced to just to make the rent. ‘You won’t be working in a market. Your work should be in a gallery. I can—’

‘You’ll buy me a career, will you?’ She didn’t want to hear it, he turned everything on to its head. ‘You’ll give me everything and then leave me with...’ She was almost gagging, trying to hold back tears, because he was offering more and then he would leave.

‘I’m not your father, Alina.’

‘Don’t even go there.’ Her face twisted in suppressed rage. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’

‘Talk to me...’ Demyan urged. ‘Alina, please...’ He was locked in urgency; the whole of Sydney glittered behind her shoulders, and it was a view that almost soothed him. ‘Alina, I am trying to make the biggest decision—’

‘Get on your knees, Demyan.’ She hurled his crude words back at him, assumed he was talking about Nadia, and right now she would prefer torrid sex than confrontation, but he gave just a wry smile because on his knees he wanted to be...

...in proposal.

‘Talk,’ Demyan said. ‘Row if we must but I’m not the only one who has stuff to sort out, Alina.’

‘Then sort it,’ she said. ‘But, please, do it well away from me. She shook her head. He was just way, way too much for her. ‘I want my life back, Demyan.’

‘Alina...’

‘I mean it, Demyan. I want my life back. I want to go home.’

‘No, you don’t,’ He was sure of it. ‘Come on, Dorothy, click those heels...’

‘I don’t want your black brick road, Demyan.’ She didn’t, she wanted safe, she wanted this done, she wanted this over, so she could commence her healing now rather than later.

He would be gone, Alina knew.

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Very.’

‘I don’t nag.’

‘Beg,’ Alina corrected.

‘I don’t do that either.’

He wanted to call her back but stood there. For a small moment he had glimpsed a different world and he truly did not know if he was capable of it, this home filled with laughter and fat babies and telling Roman at the airport tomorrow that he always had a home here, in Sydney, with him and Alina...

He looked out of the windows at a view that had for a second again soothed him, but the magic was gone now.

Fool to think it could be different.

Alina was right: she was better away from him.