Chapter 5
“Everything okay, Talia?”
She glanced across the dinner table at her hostess. “Absolutely fine, thank you.”
“You’ve seemed a little quiet this evening?”
Talia gave Stazzi a reassuring smile. “I’m still a little tired,” she said after feigning a yawn. They had finished dinner now and were at the coffee-and-brandy stage. Talia had every intention of excusing herself and going back to her bedroom at the earliest polite opportunity. “If no one minds, once I’ve finished drinking my coffee, I think I’ll go to bed.”
“You’ve already slept the day away.”
Her smile disappeared, and she looked at Ethan through narrowed lids. “Not surprising after spending hours being jolted about in that machine you call a helicopter.”
His smile was mocking. “Would you have preferred to swim? Because I believe they were your only two choices at the time.”
Talia really wished they were alone so she could wipe that smirking smile off his face. But with the prince and princess also seated at the dinner table, all she could do was smile sweetly. “My hero.”
Ethan had to bite his top lip to stop himself from laughing out loud. Not only had Talia grown up in the last three years, but she had also developed a sharp and sarcastic tongue. A tongue that she was now stroking warily over her bottom lip, as if she wasn’t sure what his reaction was going to be to her comment.
Forget her comment, Ethan just wanted that moist tongue, preferably entwined with his own. Or better yet, licking the length of his cock again.
This idea he’d had of keeping his distance from Talia for her own good was playing hell with his mood and self-control. Especially when she was sitting here beside him, where he could smell her perfume and feel her warmth.
He would have liked nothing better after Talia swore at him earlier in Alexandre’s study than to throw her on top of the desk and pound into her until they were both completely satiated. Instead, he’d forced himself to remain unmoving until she was safely out of the room, after which he’d instead given one of the wood paneled walls in the study a pounding with his clenched fist. His hand had definitely been on the losing end of that fight.
He shrugged. “If you’d wanted a hero, you should have asked someone who isn’t me to help you,” he dismissed. “I’m all out of heroic acts.”
“So I noticed,” she sniped back, the two of them continuing to glare at each other.
“You—” Ethan was saved from continuing by the ringing of Alexandre’s cell phone.
“Darling.” Stazzi gave her husband a disapproving frown at the interruption.
Alexandre grimaced. “I told Ethan to ask Gabriel to ring on this number if he needed to get back to him.” He took the cell phone from his pocket to look at the caller ID on the screen. “It’s Gabriel.” He held the device out to Ethan. “It will be for you.”
“Thanks, I’ll take this outside.” Ethan took the cell phone, deliberately not looking at Talia as he stood up and left the room, nor did he answer the call until he was outside in the hallway. “What do you have for me, Gabe?”
Talia was inwardly furious at Ethan for leaving the room. He had done it deliberately, she was sure, so that she couldn’t even hear his half of the conversation, let alone try to guess the reason Gabriel had needed to get back to him.
Outwardly, she kept a smile on her lips as she half listened to an amusing tale Stazzi related about her young son. Talia even laughed in the right place, but it must be obvious to all of them that the princess was merely filling in time until Ethan returned, and Talia was only humoring her in that attempt.
Luckily, Ethan came back into the dining room before Stazzi felt the need to launch into another story about one of her very cute children.
Talia watched him closely as he crossed the room, his expression giving nothing away of his thoughts or emotions regarding the telephone conversation with his brother. But Talia did see the eye contact between Alexandre and Ethan as he gave the other man back his cell phone, and the barely perceptible nod of Ethan’s head in reply to the other man’s raised and questioning brows.
“Well?” she prompted once he had resumed his seat at the table.
“Well what?” He met her gaze challengingly, the tension deepening between them with every second that passed.
“What have you done to your hand, Ethan?” Stazzi broke in before they could launch into what would probably be a full-scale argument.
Talia had been so busy trying not to look at Ethan during dinner, she hadn’t noticed the bruising and redness to the knuckles on his right hand until now. “Did you do that climbing over onto the balcony into my bedroom earlier?” she challenged, and instantly felt petty for having done so. If they were going to have an argument, they should do it somewhere else. The prince and princess didn’t deserve to be involved in their petty squabbles.
Stazzi raised her brows at Ethan. “You climbed from your balcony onto Talia’s…?”
Talia saw Ethan’s scowl at her having just told their well-meaning but curious hostess exactly what he hadn’t wanted Stazzi to know. Even the polite Alexandre was having trouble holding back a smile at the other man’s obvious displeasure.
Ethan leaned back in his chair. “I did, yes.”
“Might one enquire why?” Stazzi asked.
“One might enquire,” he bit out.
“But one won’t get an answer?” she teased.
“Exactly.” He turned to Talia. “If you’ve finished eating, it’s still a pleasant evening. I suggest we take this conversation outside in the garden.”
Talia would have accompanied him for a midnight swim in the warm waters off the coast of the island if it meant Ethan was going to tell her about the call he had received from Gabriel. Although she had a feeling he had made the suggestion more as a way of stopping her from making any more indiscreet comments.
Ethan’s brooding silence as they strolled away from the palace and through the perfumed gardens seemed to confirm that assumption.
“Okay, I apologize for speaking out of turn just now.” Talia sighed when the silence became too oppressive. “I was annoyed with you, but it was childish of me to tell Stazzi about the balcony incident.”
“I’m past caring a fuck what you do or don’t tell Stazzi,” he assured her harshly.
“That isn’t what you said earlier.”
“It isn’t only a woman’s prerogative to change your mind.”
Ethan was obviously spoiling for a fight as much as she had been earlier. Which wasn’t going to be of benefit to either of them. “What did Gabriel have to say?”
“Get straight to the point, why don’t you.”
“Why are you so angry?” she snapped.
“It seems to be my fallback mood nowadays.”
Talia came to a halt on the pathway as she turned to face him. The sun was going down, making long shadows across the gardens, but she could still see clearly enough to know Ethan’s eyes were that cold hazel green, his jaw set tensely. “This is the third time you’ve said you need to talk to me and then avoided doing so, this time by deliberately antagonizing me into an argument.”
“I didn’t think I needed to do that deliberately,” he drawled. “And I haven’t been avoiding talking to you, damn it. The last two times I allowed myself to be distracted,” he muttered.
Her brows rose. “You call our lovemaking a distraction?”
“You’re a fucking distraction.” He reached out to grasp the tops of her arms. “And the reason I need to talk to you now is because I can’t risk that distraction once I leave here to go look for your father.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re still going to look for him?”
“On condition you stay here, yes.”
“Unacceptable.”
He breathed out his impatience. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“Then you weren’t disappointed.”
“You’ve never disappointed me, Talia,” he assured huskily.
She looked at him searchingly, noting the fevered glitter that had appeared in eyes that seemed to be transfixed on her mouth. A fever that deepened as she moistened those lips with the tip of her tongue. “You want me.”
“Yes.”
“Have you always?” Talia knew she might be opening herself up to humiliation when he said no. But somehow she didn’t think so.
“Yes.”
She breathed out shallowly at the harshly spoken admission. “You said you knew I wanted you five years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you never… If you wanted me then, why did you keep your distance from me?” She could hear the hurt in her voice. She wished she felt differently, but her attraction to Ethan had always been there on her sleeve for him and everyone else to see.
“You were too young.”
“Too young for what?”
“Me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
His nostrils flared. “It means you were nineteen years old back then, and I was thirty-one.”
“So?”
“So I was already jaded and cynical, and you were all brand-new. Too young. Too wide-eyed. Too innocent. Too much of all of that.” His voice rose.
“But now I’m not?” she derided.
“I intended waiting until you were twenty-one—” He broke off. “I thought— Never mind what I thought.” He sighed. “You and your father disappeared, and that put an end to anything I might have intended doing about the attraction.”
“Why did it?” Talia challenged.
“Because— Because—”
“Because you had known who I was for that three years,” she finished for him. “Because I’m Ivan Krechenko’s daughter.”
“That didn’t seem to stop me last night or earlier today,” he said self-disgustedly.
Talia pulled out of his grasp. “Last night I came looking for you,” she accused. “Which was a mistake.”
He tensed warily. “Was it?”
“You’re evading the point I’m trying to make.”
“Which is?”
“You were never going to come looking for me.”
“That isn’t true.”
She snorted. “I don’t believe you. Do what you want, go where you want, I don’t give a damn anymore,” she snapped. “But I am leaving Androcco tomorrow, no matter what you or Prince Alexandre might have decided otherwise. Believe me when I say I’ll find a way to get off this island,” she assured him. “And when I do, I will go and look for my father without you.”
He scowled darkly. “I’ve already said I’m going to find him for you.”
“And I said I no longer need your help.” Her gaze swept over him coldly before she turned and walked away, her head held high.
“Gabriel told me where you father is!”
Talia froze, every muscle and sinew in her body going tense, before she slowly turned to face Ethan. “Where is he?”
“In the US. Florida.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Yes.”
Talia felt weak with relief. “How long have you known?”
“Since Gabriel’s call just now. Zander found the information we needed.”
Her eyes narrowed to accusing slits. “And you didn’t think I had a right to know that? That it should have been the first thing you said to me when you came back into the dining room?”
Of course Talia had a fucking right to know that. Ethan had just known that telling her would result in her insisting on accompanying him when he left Androcco to go and rescue Ivan. Talia’s father, Ivan. Her father.
If anyone had the right to go look for Ivan, then it was Talia. And Ethan had intended denying her that right, because his desire for her was too much of a distraction to him, not because she hadn’t proved she was more than capable of taking care of herself.
He’d fucked up yet again where Talia was concerned.
From the way she’d reacted to knowing he had wanted her all along, he’d done nothing but fuck up since the moment he met her. That particular fuckup, Talia had made it obvious she did not, and would not, forgive him for.
He nodded stiffly. “Okay, you can come with me when I fly to Florida tomorrow in Alexandre’s private jet.” It was a grudging concession at best.
Talia’s glance was scathing. “I don’t need your permission to go anywhere I damn well choose.”
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “No, you don’t, but you do need me to tell you exactly where your father is, who has him, and why.”
Talia knew Ethan was right. As she was also aware she was going to need his help to rescue her father. But that didn’t mean she had to thank him for it.
Ethan had known all along how infatuated she’d been with him five years ago and admitted to returning that attraction, but he’d made the decision for both of them and denied it. Finding out she was the daughter of Ivan Krechenko must have been an unpleasant shock for him. So much so he hadn’t bothered with her again.
“Who has him and why?” she demanded.
“Viktor Antipov, and he wants half the money your father took out of Russia.”
“And who is Viktor Antipov?”
“An old friend of your father’s who left Russia thirty years ago and is now head of the bratva in Florida.”
“An old friend of my father’s?” Talia repeated slowly.
“More of an associate.” Ethan knew better than to try to keep anything else from Talia. “The two of them were in partnership together regarding the money your father siphoned out of Russia. A partnership your father reneged on once he left Russia and took up the identity of Ivor Morris in the States.”
Talia’s frown was pained. “Was this man Antipov responsible for bombing my father’s car three years ago?”
“Yes. Unfortunately for Antipov, the police arrived at the scene before he could get to your father. You know what happened after that.”
“We disappeared.”
He nodded. “But Antipov didn’t stop looking for Ivan. And ten days ago, he found him.”
“So what you’re saying is this man Antipov was in collusion with my father regarding the money he stole from Russia and then my father cheated him out of his share?”
Ethan winced. “No honor amongst thieves?”
Talia loved her father. She did. But right now, she didn’t think she liked him very much.
He was a thief.
A liar.
And a cheat.
Her frown was puzzled. “I’m sure Zander is good at what he does, but how did he manage to find out so much so quickly?”
This woman was too intelligent by half, Ethan acknowledged, proving beyond a shadow of doubt that Talia Morris had completely grown up.
Not that he had ever doubted it after the last twenty-four hours.
Talia was not only intelligent but also resourceful, determined, and sexy as fuck. It was a killer combination to a man who had desired her for the past five years.
Except he now wasn’t free to pursue that desire, hadn’t been for the past six months. Not with Alizoti looking for him.
“When you and your father disappeared three years ago, he left without paying the Knight Security bill,” he replied to Talia’s question. “Zander wasn’t happy about that, so he made it his personal mission to find out everything he could about Ivan Krechenko.”
“The job unfinished.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve known about Antipov all along too?”
He shook his head. “Only since Zander talked to us all about it seven months ago. It’s also how we knew about Nassau and a couple of other places you were before that.”
“Why didn’t he report our whereabouts to the police?”
Too fucking intelligent by half! “Because I asked him not to.”
“Why would you do something like that?” Talia looked at him searchingly. “Because of me,” she breathed softly.
This conversation was getting far too personal far too quickly. It was also completely inappropriate for the situation they currently found themselves in. “Don’t flatter yourself,” Ethan dismissed in a hard voice. “Zander told us the facts. The brothers discussed it and decided none of us were in a hurry to have Knight Security’s name linked to Ivan Krechenko again.”
Talia recoiled as if Ethan had physically struck her. “I may have wanted you once, but the man you are now is not the man I was in love with.”
He glared his frustration. “You were nineteen years old. You had no concept of what love even is.”
“And now I’m twenty-four and I can see you’re just as much of a fraud as my father.”
“In what way?” he snapped. “When did I ever lie to you, damn it?”
“Everything you’ve told me since I came to Majorca has been a lie. By omission, if nothing else.”
“Work it out, goddamn it.” Ethan knew voice had risen a couple of degrees higher, but this was bullshit. He fucking ached for this woman. “It’s seven months since Zander told us where you and Ivan were, six months since Alizoti started hunting me.”
“So you had a whole month to find me if you had wanted to!”
“No, I—” He swallowed down the bile that rose at the back of his throat at the thought of what he had seen and done in that missing month. “All I’ve ever done is try to protect you.”
“Did I ask you to?” she snapped.
“No. But—”
“There is no ‘but’ to this conversation, Ethan. You had your chance, and you blew it.” Talia gave a fierce shake of her head, knowing she was on the edge of bursting into humiliating tears. “I don’t want to talk to you any more tonight. I don’t want to look at you any more tonight.” She only just stopped herself from childishly claiming to hate him right now.
Because she didn’t hate Ethan. She had been in love with him for far too many years to ever be able to do that.
But as with her father, she wasn’t sure she liked him very much right now. Zander had found her, not Ethan. But then why would he, when he had decided not to see her again.
“Good night, Ethan.” She turned on her heel to walk toward the palace. This time, she didn’t turn back, and Ethan didn’t attempt to stop her.