Innocent in the Ivory Tower Read Online Free PDF Page B

position of having to choose. Dan had worked at something in the music industry that apparently involved twiddling knobs, but he had been gentle and self-effacing and would sit up talking to her in little cafes until dawn drew her back to Lantern Square and Anais’s barrage of delighted interrogation.
    She had finally gone back to his flat near Earls Court and slept with him. It had seemed the right thing to do, moving the relationship along, except it hadn’t quite turned out that way. She remembered lying there on his hard bed, staring at the pattern of cracks in the ceiling as Dan pushed into her virgin body, feeling self-conscious about their nakedness and wondering if she was doing something wrong. It had been quick and painful and messy, and not something she particularly wanted to repeat with him, and with that thought had came the utter certainty she had made a mistake.
    She hadn’t shared this with Anais—she hadn’t told anybody. And a few days later, after an awkward coffee with Dan and an invitation to spend the weekend with him on a working trip, she’d ended it. The fact that he hadn’t seemed too bothered had made her wonder if she was the only girl in his life.
    Within weeks Anais had gone into labour, and Maisy’s life as she’d begun to live it had been over. From then on, for two years, she had been the mother of a demanding baby boy.
    It would have been impossible to make Alexei Ranaevsky understand the complexities of her relationship with Anaisand Kostya last night. He probably would have been even less inclined to take her along. ‘A friend of Anais’s’ sounded insubstantial—and, knowing many of Anais’s girlfriends, she wouldn’t have left a pot plant in their care, let alone a two-year-old.
    No,
nanny
sounded sensible and professional and
useful
.
    He needed a nanny, not a flighty girl with her head in a fashion magazine and her body on a beach in Ibiza. Yet deception did not sit easily with her. She wanted to be herself, not an imitation of whatever was expected of a nanny in this man’s home. She hadn’t even asked him if he had a partner or children. It would be shocking, given his actions last night, but not unheard of. Maisy had lived long enough in Anais’s world to know adultery was a common coin and nobody blinked an eye.
    What had happened tonight made no sense to her—from his perspective at least. He must have read signals into her behaviour, and she thought guiltily about the way she had visually eaten him up. She was less irresistible to him. He had been far more in control than she had. It had been he who had stopped it, owned it for a mistake.
    He was clearly exhausted. The shadows under those beautiful eyes … the lines carved around his sensual mouth. Running on empty, Leo would say. Maybe she’d been available fuel, a willing female body. And she
had
been willing—shamingly willing. She had never felt that instant drench of attraction in her life. She still couldn’t look at him without wanting to touch him, feel the solid heat of his body pressed up against hers. It was
wicked
.
    She rolled onto her back, staring up at a ceiling starred with dozens of tiny pinpricks of light. Was this how Anais had felt about Leo? Was this like the wellspring of her friend’s uninhibited passion for her husband, which had manifested itself as a longing for him whenever he was absent and a great deal of time spent in the bedroom, or the library, or on the kitchentable—much to Maisy’s embarrassment as she’d come home unexpectedly one afternoon?
    This
was what she had been looking for, Maisy realised with a start. This passion. This excitement. This much man.
    Except he was the wrong man.
    Just as she was the wrong woman. The nanny.
    Dawn was breaking over Naples when they hit the tarmac. Maisy had never travelled in a private jet, and the waiting limos were another shock to her system.
    Alexei Ranaevsky was seriously loaded.
    He was also not coming with them.
    In the