The Millionaire Affair by Sophie Weston

Author:Sophie Weston
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1999-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

Nikolai met Alec Palmer in a City wine bar. It was in the basement of a concrete building but there was sawdust on the floor and men were drinking beer out of copper tankards.

‘Lisa won’t come here,’ Alec said. ‘These days she says it’s too phoney.’

Privately Nikolai agreed. He didn’t say so.

‘So she won’t interrupt us by chance. Useful,’ he observed. He ordered a platter of sandwiches and took a bottle of champagne over to a secluded corner. ‘So what can you tell me about this woman?’ he said, pouring wine into Alec’s glass.

Alec didn’t need to be asked a second time. He was still smarting from his last encounter with Lisa. In a ten-minute diatribe Nikolai heard that she was hard and shallow and used people ruthlessly.

‘She’s on the make,’ concluded Alec simply.

It was only what Nikolai had thought himself. So what demon of perversity made him protest?

‘There’s nothing wrong with trying to improve your life,’ he said temperately.

Alec’s mouth set in a bitter line. ‘Improve, huh! That wasn’t hard. She comes from the bottom of the pile, did you know that?’

The man’s spite was blatant.

Nikolai tried to sound neutral. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘When I first knew Lisa Romaine she was an East End kid who thought fish and chips was the treat of a lifetime. Now she lives on sushi and champagne. But is she satisfied? Is she hell!’

‘Maybe she just wants to experience new things.’

‘Sure. New man, new rung up the ladder. Every move she makes, she gets rid of the last lot of friends. They say that was how she got her start in the first place.’

Nikolai sat very still. ‘Sleeping with the boss?’ he queried. Every bone in his body rejected it.

Alec shrugged. ‘That’s the word. I wasn’t in the City at the time, so of course I don’t know. I do know that everyone in the house said it would be curtains for us when she was promoted. Acton wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t smart enough.’

Nikolai winced. It all sounded horribly plausible. Indeed, it sounded exactly what his grandfather had already worked out, alerted to the situation by Tatiana’s conscientious accountant. And everything Lisa herself had said to him since they met tended to confirm it. Only…

‘She seems so honest,’ he said, almost to himself. Alec looked up sharply. He gave a harsh laugh.

‘You, too, huh?’

Nikolai stared at him, disconcerted.

‘It gets us all that way, mate. You look at the big green eyes and the tatty clothes and you think—there’s something special here, and I’m the only one to see it.’

His hurt was as blatant as the spite. Nikolai looked away. Anything that painful should have stayed private.

‘Only you’re not,’ Alec said, brooding. ‘We’ve all been there. See Lisa. Want Lisa. Take her another rung up the ladder. Say goodbye, Lisa.’ The look he gave the tall man in the exquisitely cut suit was malicious. ‘Welcome to the club.’

‘I do not,’ said Nikolai between his teeth, ‘want Lisa Romaine.’

He was not talking to Alec.

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