The Mistresses Collection. Оливия Гейтс

than just a few paltry words in his third language. “And neither does anyone else.”

      He heard a sound that was like a sob, and it broke what was left of his useless old heart into a thousand pieces. He pulled himself up into sitting position, but he didn’t go to her, though every part of him wanted to. He watched her delicate head, bent over her knees. Watched her lithe body shake slightly. Listened to the way she breathed, ragged and shallow. And he waited.

      Outside, the afternoon wore on. The light thinned, the shadows began to form. The wind picked up, making the palm trees dance slightly. And still he waited.

      Eventually, she lifted her head, her face wet with tears and her eyes, those beautiful, defiant eyes, too wide and much too troubled. He hated it. He wanted her dark, clever jade. He wanted that green flash of outrage, that dazed black of passion. Not this.

      “This is all I have,” she told him, her voice harsh and tight with emotion. She brought up one hand and held it against her forehead, the side of her face, indicating the whole of her head as if she was no more than a brain in a jar. “This is all I have. I can’t … I don’t …”

      “You did.”

      Her eyes streaked to his, and she swallowed hard. “You don’t understand.”

      “Then tell me.”

      “How can you think this is safe, Ivan? You’re the least safe person I could possibly imagine—”

      “I keep having to remind you that I am widely considered to be the greatest fighter of all time,” he said, cutting her off, his gaze intent on hers. “I still train every day with my brother, who did things so secret and so terrible in the Russian army that they dare not speak his name aloud. And I could beat him with my eyes closed.” He let that sink in. Then continued in the same quiet tone. “This is what I do. There is no power on this earth that can get to you through me, Miranda. Not one.”

      She looked away, out across the vast living room toward the sea that glimmered through the glass walls on three sides. That deep, brooding Pacific blue. Ivan thought he’d lost her, and he couldn’t understand the way that felt, the things that surged in him, outraged and very nearly frantic at the very idea. He refused to accept that he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t help her. That whatever had done this to her could best him, too.

      He refused to think about all the reasons why he shouldn’t be reacting this way. About how he was supposed to be breaking her apart, not building her back up.

      Breathe, he ordered himself, and it took a lifetime of training, of battles hard won, to simply do it. To let her gather herself, swipe her hair back from her face and then begin to speak, as if she was talking to the ocean and he wasn’t there at all.

      “He beat all of us,” she said in a low voice. “My mother. My brother. Me. We all lived in terror of setting off one of his moods, of triggering one of his rages, and it didn’t occur to me until much later, when I escaped, that there was no behavior good enough to please him—that he couldn’t be pleased, ever. That he wanted to do the things he did, or he would have stopped. He didn’t stop. He never stopped.”

      “Your father,” Ivan indicated when she didn’t, and wondered why he’d imagined that money protected anyone from anything. When people remained people, and bullies remained bullies. He should know. He’d fought so hard to get away from his uncle only to find the world was filled with monsters just like him.

      She nodded jerkily, still staring out the windows, her pretty face haunted.

      “He was the most physical man I knew,” she whispered. “He was so big. He broke things with his hands. And he was always touching me. My head, my back, my arms—little reminders when we were out in public. That no matter how many times he smiled in church or joked around while he was coaching my brother’s soccer games, he could turn on us in an instant. And he did.”

      Ivan still didn’t speak. She turned to face him then, her dark eyes searching his face as if looking for something. Disbelief? Pity? He didn’t know, and so he only gazed back at her, knowing nothing showed on his face but calm, easy compassion, no matter how it killed him to stay so quiet when what he wanted to do was find whoever had done this to her, the man who should have loved her the most, and break him into pieces. With his own big hands.

      “I had one date,” she told him, her voice a painful little whisper in the quiet room. “I was sixteen. I’d decided early on that there was only one way out of there, and I was determined to take it. I studied like a maniac. I skipped two grades in school. But there was this boy.” Her smile was so sad it made his heart twist hard in his chest. “We saw a movie the week after we graduated from high school. He drove me home in his car and then he kissed me. It was my first. I forgot myself completely.” She pressed her lips together, hugged her legs tighter to her torso. “And when I walked into the house, my father called me a whore and beat me up so badly I had to stay in bed for three weeks.”

      Ivan couldn’t help the sound he made then. He shook his head when she looked at him, so very carefully, as if she was waiting for him to turn on her. Which, of course, she was. And you will in the end, won’t you? a small voice inside of him asked. If you keep to the plan … But he shoved that aside.

      “You are not talking about a man, Miranda,” he said quietly. “You must know this. A creature who would do such things is the worst kind of coward. My uncle was the very same sort.”

      “But you fought him.” Her voice was bitter. A slap of pain, of self-recrimination. “You stood up to him.”

      “I was six feet by the time I was twelve. What do you imagine you could have done? What use would fighting have been to you when he could break your bones? Where was your brother?”

      She shook her head, her eyes a misery, and again, it hurt him not to reach for her, not to try to soothe her with his hands—as if that would help.

      “At my college graduation, I was ready for them,” she said after a moment. She swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I’d been accepted into my graduate program. I had housing, a stipend. A job to help pay the bills. So I finally stood up to him.” Her eyes swam with tears. “I told him he was an abusive bully who’d made all our lives hell and I wanted nothing more to do with him. I thought my mother and my brother would applaud.”

      Ivan sighed, knowing where this was going. “Miranda …”

      “My father walked out of the restaurant,” she said very precisely, as if careful enunciation might keep her from crying. “I thought my mother would choose me but instead she told me I was dead to her, and I haven’t spoken to either of them since.” She let out a sound too hollow to be a laugh, and a tear traced a sluggish path down her cheek. “My brother thinks I’m delusional. He sends me hateful emails when he sees me on television. He thinks I need a strong hand to keep me in my place. I got a few messages from him when I was in New York and guess what? He thinks you can do the job nicely.”

      Ivan sat forward slightly, and waited until her eyes met his.

      “Come here,” he said. Very quietly.

      She shivered, and not entirely in fear, he thought. But then she shook her head, tears swimming in her eyes again.

      “I can’t. I just can’t. You make me …” She dragged a hand through her hair, scraping her hair back from her face. “You make me forget myself again, and I can’t, Ivan. I can’t.”

      “You can.” He opened up his hands and laid them, palms up, on his knees. “Just as soon as it occurs to you that you have already said far nastier things to me and about me than you have ever said to a man like your father, and I have yet to harm you in any way. Just as soon as that marvelous brain of yours analyzes what that means. What it suggests about how safe you are here. With me.”

      “Ivan—”

      “I have very strong hands,” he said in the same tone, flipping them over on his knees, then back, inviting her