Vlad had to admit that in a way, he was glad she’d heard some of his conversation with Yuri. She was angry, and she would keep her distance and that was fine with him. He had far too much trouble keeping his hands off of her. Bringing her out to the house had been a boneheaded move, born of the desire to escape the paparazzi, buy time, and try to pry some information out of her.
Yuri Abromovsky, his personal lawyer and university classmate had advised him to get out of town and wait for the media frenzy to die down. Good advice from one of the only people who knew who he was and who he had been.
But who knew the storm would turn into a hurricane? Who knew that with the power out, they would turn to an age-old form of entertainment?
He had told Yuri the truth. She was hot, but she was not his type, and she was hurting for cash. That added up to a play, some kind of plot to discredit him.
It was an old game. And yeah, he’d seen through her, but nevertheless, it would play particularly well back in Russia. And it would hurt all of those orphaned kids who depended on him and his largesse for the programs of education, care, and adoption he had organized through his charitable foundation.
The Russian authorities were furious that he’d succeeded not only in helping the bastard and forgotten children of his birthplace but in doing it on his own terms.
He called every shot insofar as how the money was spent and how foreign adoptions were carried out. He sought to keep young mothers with their children, where feasible, and treat them for their addictions, provide birth control and education. He did this without ever stepping foot in the country of his birth and with a
U.S. citizenship behind him.
The authorities, the government functionaries took the money he gave but grudgingly adhered to his rules. He knew they would do anything to show that he was morally bankrupt, politically corrupt, and was only sending the money and organizing the programs as some sort of penance for crimes against Russia.
The fabricated story that he was the father of a bastard child, a child his enemies back in Russia claim he failed to acknowledge as his own and abandoned would be the crowning glory in the campaign to discredit him. It was further icing on the cake that they claimed he neglected that child financially and in every other way, and had fathered him with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, a woman just like them. It was a brilliantly trashy lie. The kind of lie that spread like wildfire with the media eagerly fanning the flames. How long before they discovered everything about his sordid beginnings?
How long before the many donors to his foundation decided it was too much of a challenge to put their hard-earned contributions into his charity when there were so many others equally worthy of support and so much more above reproach?
It was a perfect excuse to conduct a war of words in the worldwide court of public opinion. The ideal opportunity to reject his assistance as just dirty money that would sully the very children he sought to protect.
It was too textbook a plan not to have been engineered by the best disinformation network the world had ever known.
Admittedly, the selection of Sabrina had been a masterstroke. She exuded sex appeal in waves. And yet she exhibited just the right amount of innocent responsiveness that would be most apt to get into the psyche of the world-weary cynic he was. No doubt in other circumstances, he could have enjoyed a week’s long interlude with her.
But they were challenging the wrong man. Who knew better than he how to combat these forces? He would win and he’d take out anyone who got in the way of that goal. Even their paid bed warmer.
****
Now that the power was back, now that she’d overheard that hideous phone call, Sabrina was ready to be gone.
As she stuffed her things back into the backpack, Vlad’s chuckle kept reverberating through her head. That kind of boys-will-be-boys laugh guys always used when discussing women. Not my type. Do what I have to do. With those words, Vlad made it clear he’d used the situation, the attraction between them which she’d thought mutual and genuine, as just a way to wear down an opponent to obtain information.
Bedding the enemy? How had she made such an epic fool of herself with such a conceited jerk?
Stupid, stupid, stupid was she and shame on her. He had fired her—he was already the worst kind of arrogant SOB of a boss—but somehow that hadn’t stopped her from falling into his bed like a ripe peach. She’d practically begged him to take her. And wow, had he obliged. So she’d been to heaven and now she was back to less than zero.
He was calling around to the minders of his beautiful house making sure his staff was safe, mobile, and able to get to his property, inspect it, and see to repairing any storm damage.
Sabrina couldn’t wait to depart the scene of her humiliation. By the time he finished the last call, she had already squished her way down to the foot of the driveway and gotten into the backseat of the Navigator. She blinked back useless tears, remembering that not a day ago, he’d picked her up and carried her up the driveway and over the threshold of his home. Her fool’s heart hadn’t been able to resist the Cinderella charm of that moment, and she’d started weaving happy ever after fantasies right then. She was an ass. Oh God, would he get into the car so they could get out of here?
He tossed his bag on the front seat.
“Give me my phone. I want to call Mrs. Egan and talk to Alex.”
“You’re not getting your phone back. But I will call them now.” Vlad behaved as if he were dispensing a very special favor. She wanted to strangle him.
****
He put the speakerphone on and put the call through. He greeted her babysitter, then Sabrina had a conversation first with the older woman and then with her son.
He listened as he drove with care down the rutted lane to the main road, crushing the impulse to gun it, which would only delay them if they came upon an obstacle on the waterlogged terrain. It irritated him that
the little boy called her by her given name, Rina instead of a more traditional maternal name. But it confirmed his opinion that some young women who became pregnant when they were little more than girls themselves wanted to maintain some illusion that they were not, in fact, mothers. His mother had probably been the same way. That’s probably why he knew what his mother’s name was as opposed to recalling his own.
He shoved the observation away. This entire situation was dredging up so many thoughts he hadn’t cared to dwell on in years. Now he was compelled to listen as her voice softened and she patiently answered Alex’s excited questions. That soothing tone with the underlying hint of a smile wrapped warmly inside of it. He had been on the receiving end of it yesterday. He had an inexplicable memory of her voice inside one of his dreams, soothing him that same way. Had he dreamed of her? He pushed that thought away as arrant nonsense.
He was tired. They had done many things last night, but sleeping hadn’t been one of them.