Chapter Six
Humiliation did not cover what Maddie was feeling right now at this moment. Yet there was also a huge sense of relief in being held so tenderly by Alex as he carried her to the car. Not another word was said about dinner. Although, if he had said something about food, she probably would have hurled again. She just couldn’t seem to get a grip on her stomach. She felt so horribly sick!
The interior of the limo was cool and quiet. Alex set her on the seat and climbed in behind her. She’d heard him ask a waiter to go make his excuses to their dinner companions, and Maddie hoped this episode didn’t harm him in some way with those politicians. It wasn’t as if it was his fault that she’d gotten ill.
“I’m sorry,” Maddie whispered. Her face felt hot, and she pressed it to the leather seat in an effort to gain relief. “I should have told you I was ill and saved you the embarrassment of having to leave in the middle of dinner. I truly apologize.”
“Don’t,” he chided gently. He stroked her back with the palm of his hand. His touch felt like heaven. “Don’t worry about dinner. It hardly matters when you’re obviously so ill. Can I call a doctor? Do you have a midwife or someone looking after you?”
“Not exactly.” She heaved a sigh. “I made an appointment with my regular doctor, but tomorrow was the soonest I could get in. They hardly consider this an emergency.”
“It seems as if it should be.” He actually sounded worried. “You appear to be very ill.”
It was almost cute how he kept saying that. It was as if he were worried and yet was unable to express it adequately. Perhaps he was good with formalities, but horrible at casual relationships with boundaries that were more negligible than strict. It was something to think about when she wasn’t afraid of puking her guts up every second of the day.
“Where is your home?” he asked suddenly. “I’ll have the driver take us there so that you can be comfortable.”
Maddie rattled off her address and then wondered what her neighbors were going to think when a limo pulled up to the curb. Her building in the Village was hardly used to that sort of traffic coming by. Likely they would all think it was one of her clients bringing her home.
Of course, that was better than trying to explain the presence of Russian royalty on her doorstep.
***
THE LIMO STOPPED a short while later in front of Maddie’s building, and Alex gazed outside with interest. He hadn’t exactly known what to expect. When he and Maddie had engaged in their original liaison, it had been in his hotel suite. He hadn’t asked her any details of her life, and she hadn’t offered. Their association was meant to be casual. Now it was more, and he didn’t really know what to do with that change.
He glanced over at Maddie. She was already heaving herself toward the door, obviously preparing to exit the vehicle.
Alex reached over and touched her arm. “Please let me help you inside.”
Her eyes widened, and she actually looked a little panicked. “Oh, you don’t need to do that. Really.”
“Oh, but I want to,” he insisted.
Now he was curious. What was she trying to hide from him? There were any number of possibilities. He was accustomed to people attempting to keep the truth from him. Nobody did clandestine like a tsarist Russian family. Although it disappointed him to think that Maddie was just like the rest of his family.
“All right.” She opened the door and heaved herself out onto the street. “But I’m warning you it’s nothing fancy up there. Nothing that you’re used to.”
He felt his eyebrows go up as he realized that her reticence must come from a fear that he would judge her for her humble surroundings. Nothing could be further from the truth, though he supposed that she would have no frame of reference to believe him anything but an entitled snob. That sort of knowledge about a person came from a lengthy acquaintance.
Alex buzzed his driver through the intercom. “Stay here until I tell you otherwise. I don’t think I’ll be long.”
The response was immediate. “Yes sir.”
He sighed. The driver had been hired by his mother to cart him around New York while he was here lest he sully himself by taking a regular cab. The driver was nice and it certainly made things convenient, but sometimes he longed for a little bit of normal in his life.
“Here,” Alex said quickly. “Let me help you.”
He reached for Maddie and tugged her into his arms. She didn’t fight him, which made him believe that she felt worse than she was letting on. She sort of melted into his embrace as he carried her up a short flight of steps and into her building. The sensation was rather nice. Alex had never spent much time with a woman in a situation that wasn’t formal in nature. This casual sort of contact was—well, it was very satisfying in a whole new way.
“What floor?” he asked as they entered the small, dark foyer.
She didn’t seem inclined to be chatty. She was taking deep breaths as though she might be sick again at any moment. “Second floor. Apartment 2-C.”
***
IT WAS ALL Maddie could do to keep herself from getting sick all over Alex. And there was no way she was going to allow that because she would have been dead right after. The shame would have made her keel over and die. One did not throw up all over a Russian prince. At least not without completely losing any credibility or hope of having one’s dignity restored.
Fortunately the deep breaths helped. By the time they got up the stairs and to her apartment door, she was feeling much better. She dug in her little clutch purse and found her keys. She was about to have him let her down to unlock the door when Alex gestured with the hand that had been holding her up beneath her knees. Surprised, she gave him her keys. Without setting her down, her lowered her enough so he could unlock the apartment door and let them inside as though he did this every day.
“Uh. Thank you?” she managed to stammer. “You didn’t have to do that. I could have managed.”
He carried her into the small front room and then closed the door behind them with his shoulder. Somehow the cozy space that seemed like plenty when it was just her or a few friends was absolutely dwarfed by Alex’s presence. It was like he swallowed up all the space in the room. When he finally let her down, she took a step back to put some distance between them. The air in the room felt heavy. She was so utterly aware of this man, and yet she didn’t really know what that meant yet.
“I’ll be right back,” she muttered, ducking into the bathroom. It was the fastest she’d ever brushed her teeth, surely quick enough to break a world record, if there were such a thing.
When she returned and found him still standing there, relief surged through her.
“Are you going to be all right?” He was looking around her apartment with quick glances that suggested he was taking absolute inventory of her life.
She wondered what he thought of her now. “I’ll be fine. I read online that this is typical of the first trimester. Since I’m less than two months in, I suppose I’ve got some more of this nonsense to deal with. I’m just hoping the doctor can get me pills for this problem.” Her thoughts turned to the party she absolutely had to attend the following evening. “I really can’t afford to be missing so many work functions. It’s not fair to my clients.”
His gaze swiveled around to focus on her once again. “And yet it isn’t fair to you personally to put your health on hold for work.”
“It’s work.” She shrugged. Surely he could understand that. “My career is pretty much all I have going for me, you know?”
“No.” He looked mildly surprised. “I really don’t. I don’t know much about you at all, Maddie, and I feel like I want to change that.”
“You look surprised,” she mused. In fact, his expression was downright flabbergasted. “Haven’t you spent much time getting to know people in your life?”
“Not really.”
Okay. That was weird. He was an important man. He had flown halfway across the world for a business meeting. Surely he had plenty of friends and tons of people around him all the time.
“I suppose,” he began hesitantly. “I have a few people in my life that I feel close to.”
***
ALEX MULLED HER question over in his mind. He was a very private person. That personality trait didn’t lend itself to vast numbers of friends or random conversations with people that resulted in confidences or shared secrets.
“I suppose I have a business associate that I spend quite a lot of time with,” Alex admitted. “Vladimir and I have known each other for decades. We went to school together. He probably knows me better than anyone else does.”
“That’s something, I guess.” She settled herself on her couch. Kicking off her shoes, she grabbed a throw and pulled it over herself. Then she snuggled into the cushions and looked pointedly at Alex. “Are you going to sit down, or would you rather just lurk in my doorway?”
He pulled out his phone. “I suppose I’ll tell my driver to come back in an hour or so.”
“Whatever you want,” she murmured.
He paused. What if she didn’t want him to stay at all? It was impossible to tell from her tone of voice. “Would you rather I go?”
“Not really.” She lifted one narrow shoulder. “I don’t particularly want to be alone, and my friends are at a club downtown tonight.”
“I see.” He sent a quick text to his driver. Then, glancing around the room, he chose a seat on a chair adjacent to the sofa. His reasoning was that he didn’t want her to feel crowded. “Do your friends often go clubbing?”
“We used to go just about every night.” She huffed a little sigh and picked at the throw covering her legs. “It’s part of my job, you know?”
Alex was sort of at a loss. “I’m not exactly certain how your job works. Could you explain it to me? I apologize, but I know next to nothing about the music or celebrity scenes.”
“Which seems rather odd to me since you’re a frequent topic on the gossip blogs,” she mused. Then she pursed her lips and gave a little shake of her head. The gesture was utterly feminine and very beguiling. “My job is to find musical talent. I discover it in clubs or at parties, or sometimes on a street corner near Central Park. More than once I’ve found a really great act because it was recommended by a friend.”
“What happens after you—” He searched for the appropriate word. “—discover these artists?”
“Then I develop them a little bit.” Her smile suggested she liked this part of her job best. “These days it isn’t enough just to have a skill. If you can sing, that’s great. But if you can’t look good on TV, dance, or get recognized by the right people, your skill won’t mean crap. The record label would put out a CD, and nobody would buy it.”
“So you exploit the gossip rags, paparazzi, and social media sites,” he guessed. Actually, it was rather brilliant. It was obvious that she not only enjoyed her work, but that she was good at what she did. He could respect that.
“Considering how annoying those things are to the rest of us, I think I’m just glad they’re useful for something.”
Alex thought of his mother and the fact that she was very likely seeing photographs right now of him carrying Maddie out of a restaurant and disappearing into a limo. Maddie had no idea how right she was, and he wasn’t certain what to tell her when it came to his family and how their expectations and prejudices were likely to start affecting Maddie now that she was going to be the mother of his child. What an absolutely surreal thought.