The Platinum Collection: A Convenient Proposal. Maisey Yates

in Russia?” He simply stared at her, his dark eyes impassive, his chiseled jaw set. He was far too handsome for his own good. For her own good. Really, it was gratuitous. “You realize Russia’s a very big country.”

      “I do.” He smiled, somewhat ruefully. “Moscow. I was fighting in bars at the time. Cage matches. Very unsophisticated, very few rules. Lots of blood.”

      “Oh.”

      “Yes. I spoke little English, beyond a few foul swearwords. And Colvin spoke no Russian. But he knew potential when he saw it, and he offered me some very good vodka when I desperately needed some, so we sat down to try to have a chat. He was there talent scouting, looking for actual trained fighters. And he wandered into a bar the night that I fought a particularly crushing victory. He told me I had potential, which seemed laughable when I had just left a man stone-cold unconscious in the middle of the cage. In my mind, I was unstoppable. But he told me he would bring me back to London and teach me how to fight for real so that we could both make a whole lot more money.”

      “And you just went with him? Just like that?”

      He lifted his shoulder. “What did I have to fear?”

      “I don’t know. Going off with a stranger seems rather dangerous.”

      “Perhaps to you. But I had just demonstrated to the man that I could effectively disable someone with one well-placed hit. I was angry, I didn’t fear pain and I had nothing to lose. I was very close to being an animal. I saw no reason not to jump at the chance to escape from Russia, to escape from the hell that I was living in. A chance to fight for more than pocket change and a bed for the night? It was another choice. After years of feeling as though I had none. I was intrigued.”

      “I can imagine.” Although it was very difficult.

      Victoria’s life had always been very shiny. Very ornate. She lived with the weight of expectation, yes, and it had been far from perfect. Just as she had been. But it was nothing like what Dmitri described. Cage fighting in bars. There was something about the way he said it that was very bleak. Well, she imagined that it was a reality that could sound nothing but bleak. Especially by comparison to her own well-appointed upbringing.

      “The first place we went to in London was the gym that you met me in.” The gym that had, to Victoria, seemed very low scale.

      “It was a palace to me,” he said, as though he had just read her mind. “After the stench in those bars, after the mildew and dampness of the rooms in the cellars and above the places where we fought, where we would sleep with nothing more than a cot and a thin blanket, the accommodations that Colvin offered were nothing short of luxurious. I thought no matter whether or not he made us rich, whether or not he made me famous, I could do no worse than where I already was.”

      “It must’ve been...” Victoria searched for the proper words and found she didn’t have any. She had no experience in such things, no experience of life under those circumstances. She couldn’t imagine viewing the hovel of the gym back in London as though it were a mansion. But Dmitri had. And the realization twisted something inside of her, made her stomach feel tight and strange. Made it feel as if she could scarcely breathe.

      “In the beginning it was very frustrating. I expected to be fighting. I expected to be doing more of what I was already doing. But from the first moment I arrived in London, he kept me inactive. At least, to my view. He had me doing training exercises. Basic forms and martial arts. All this stuff that seemed very much like a waste of my time. I used to ask him if he was some kind of ninja master.” He laughed at his own memory. “I didn’t know very much English when I came to him, but I learned insults very quickly got the point across in any language.”

      “He trained you in martial arts first?”

      “I already had the brute strength down. Already had that cage fighting sensibility. But I lacked in form and technique. And what I lacked in most of all was control. When he introduced me to martial arts I learned that there were better ways. That anger makes an opponent weak. That a lack of form betrays your next move. That by watching those who had inferior technique to myself I could guess where they were going to go next. That’s the chess game.”

      “You told me chess wasn’t enough,” she said, thinking back to the conversation they’d had in his office. Of course, thinking of that made her think of the moment when he touched her hair. More than touched her hair...caressed it. Ran his fingers deep through it.

      She tried to ignore the rising tension in her body.

      “It isn’t. That’s why Colvin reminded me to keep with me what I already had. My gut. Intuition. Training combined with raw talent made me an unstoppable fighter in the ring. And from there I got my sponsorships.”

      “How does a boy from the streets of Moscow go from fighting in bars to owning one of the largest conglomerates of retail shops in the world?”

      “From my sponsorships came modeling opportunities. Which, as you can guess, weren’t really my thing. But that gave me the opportunity to work very closely with the owner of an athletic wear company, Sport Limited. I gave him some suggestions on how to tweak some of the gear we were using. I ended up with my own line. He told me I had a good head on my shoulders, that I had a good mind for business. So, I took some of the money I had been earning in my fights and started taking classes. When Hugh was ready to sell Sport Limited, I had the money and the know-how to take it over. From there, I started buying out more places. Failing retail lines that I felt that I could revamp.”

      “You ended up with London Diva,” she said, an empty statement of fact that served very little purpose. Just a reminder for her. Of why she was here. Of the real point of his story, of all of this.

      “Yes. For a while I bought up everything I possibly could. And it turned out I had an eye for where to place certain stores, and for what the next high-demand items might be. I have done well. My world expanded after Colvin took me in, after he taught me and trained me. I began to think about more than just where my next meal might come from, or where I might sleep that night. It changed everything for me. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

      “I want to do that for these children who might come into my gym. Into these gyms that will hopefully be established by the foundation. I want to provide not only training, but the kind of emotional support that I received. It changed who I was. I was fueled by anger when I lived in Russia. The path I was on was narrow. And it had one end. But when I went to England? That was when I saw all the different directions that path could turn. And it all started with a simple bit of training that I resented so much at first.”

      “It’s an amazing story.” Victoria swallowed hard. “One I feel people cannot help but be moved by. You should tell it when you give your speech at the charity gala this week.”

      “You want me to speak?”

      “Well, it is your charity.”

      “Didn’t you get a celebrity emcee?”

      She lifted a shoulder. “I did, but I think you’ll find it will be much more powerful for you to share your personal story. Celebrities are only marginally impressed by other celebrities.”

      He titled his head to the side, one dark brow lifting. “You may not realize this, but some people find me off-putting.”

      She raised her brows and gave him her best surprised look. “Indeed. I guessed something like that.”

      “I thought you might have. Though, most women are much more fond of me than you seem to be.”

      Victoria’s cheeks heated “Well, most women are after something different than I am. Which is the source of many of your issues with the press. Seeing as you are a...let me see if I can call up some of the finer terms used to describe you... A manwhore. A home wrecker. A corruptor of innocents.”

      “I’ve never corrupted an innocent in my life,” he said, his tone casual. “The rest of it is probably true.” He shifted in his seat, one long leg bent at the knee, his elbow resting on it, his chin resting