Behind the Palace Walls Read Online Free PDF

back to my hotel,” she said with as much dignity as she could summon. “Chad has a very important meeting tomorrow, and I have to be there. He needs me. And Emma will be wondering where I am by now.”
    Alexei shoved a hand through his thick hair—black, not brown, she realized. “You will not be going anywhere tonight.”
    “I want to see my sister,” she insisted. “You have no right to keep me here.”
    His gaze sharpened. “Your sister is busy, Paige. I doubt she will want to be disturbed. Though perhaps you did not know you were sharing your lover with her?”
    Everything inside her went cold and still. “My lover?” she said numbly.
    “You never give up the pretense, do you?”
    She ignored him, her mind beginning to work overtime. Emma and Chad? They’d met once or twice when Emma had come to the office, but Chad hadn’t shown any particular interest in her sister.
    Or had he?
    She remembered Emma’s flirtatious giggle, Chad’s megawatt smile, Emma’s declaration later that night that Chad was probably amazing in bed. She’d thought the same thing herself, but she figured she’d never know.
    She just hadn’t realized that Emma might actually find out.
    Chad had suggested she bring Emma along on this trip when Paige expressed disappointment she would be gone for her sister’s twenty-first birthday. She’d thought he was being kind. She’d refused at first until he insisted it would be fine, that he wouldn’t hear of them being separated for Emma’s birthday.
    And now this.
    Paige put a hand on the bookcase to steady herself. Rage, disappointment, betrayal—they whirled inside her like a hurricane, spinning her in a vortex of emotion. She’d thought he was interested in her, when all along it had been Emma! She’d been so stupid, so blind.
    Chad and Emma. Her boss and her sister. Making love while she searched the icy Moscow streets in a panic. Making love while she nearly got assaulted by a group of drunken men.
    Her sister making love with the man she wanted, the man she’d secretly been in love with forever.
    Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. She would not let them fall, not now. Not here, not in front of Alexei.
    “Paige,” he said, taking her arm.
    She jerked away and hugged her arms tightly around her body. “Leave me alone.”
    “I apologize if this news hurts you.”
    She speared him with a glare. A blurry glare, since her eyes were swimming in moisture. “You don’t care, so spare me your insincerity. Besides, how do I know you’re telling the truth? How could you possibly have found Emma if she’s in Chad’s room?”
    What if he’d made the whole thing up? Though why he would do so, she couldn’t say, but surely it was a possibility.
    “My head of security used to work for the secret police,” he replied softly. “Yuri knows people, and he knows how to get things done. But I can certainly prove where your sister is if you wish. My men have audio of her with—”
    “Stop,” she blurted, turning away, her body trembling with anger and pain. Her intuition had told her all along he was telling the truth, which was why she’d reacted, but that hadn’t stopped her from grasping at straws. The last thing she wanted to hear was Chad and Emma whispering together in bed. Or worse.
    Before she realized what Alexei was about to do, he wrapped her in his embrace, his hand pressing against the back of her head so that her cheek was flush against his bare chest. Briefly she considered struggling—but gave up the idea as his other hand rhythmically rubbed her back.
    It’d been a long time since anyone had comforted her. She was always the one doing the comforting, the one who’d sacrificed everything to raise her little sister, never complaining when Emma got the best of everything. Paige had been proud that her hard work enabled Emma to have a normal life, that Emma was able to be a cheerleader and a homecoming queen and a beautiful, successful young woman with a