Kholodov's Last Mistress by Kate Hewitt Read Free Book Online

to singe her senses. This was a smile of genuine humour, and she was glad. It made her grin right back. ‘I wish they were,’ he said.
    ‘I’m sure,’ she replied tartly. ‘It must be so very tedious to fight all these women off. How do you make it down the street?’
    ‘With difficulty.’
    ‘Poor you.’
    Still smiling, he poured her more wine. Wine she shouldn’t drink, because she was already feeling rather delightfully light-headed. ‘In any case, we were talking about this trip of yours. Why did you want to travel so much?’
    ‘Because I never had before,’ Hannah said simply. ‘I’ve spent my entire life in upstate New York—’
    ‘What about university?’
    ‘I went to the state university, in Albany, just an hour away.’
    ‘What did you study?’
    ‘Literature. Poetry, mainly. Not very practical. My parents wanted me to take a degree in business.’ She swallowed, remembering how they’d wrung their hands and shaken their heads.
Literature won’t get you anywhere, Hannah. It won’t help with the shop.
    The shop. Always the shop. The stirring of resentment surprised her. Why had she never thought this way before? Because she’d never met someone like Sergei before, asking his questions, making her doubt. And thrilling her to her very core.
    ‘But you kept with literature?’ Sergei asked, and Hannah jerked her unfocused gaze back to Sergei’s knowing one.
    ‘I left.’ She shrugged, dismissing what had been a devastating decision with a simple twist of her shoulders. It was a long time ago now, and she’d never regretted it. Not really.
    ‘Why?’
    She looked up, saw that telling shrewd compassion in his narrowed gaze, and wondered how he was able to guess so much.
Know
so much. ‘My father had a stroke when I was twenty. It was too difficult for my mother to cope with him and the shop, so I came home and helped out. I intended to return to school when things got settled, but somehow—’
    ‘They never did,’ Sergei finished softly, and Hannah knew he understood.
    She lifted her shoulders in another accepting shrug. No point feeling sad about something that had happened years ago, something that had been her choice. ‘It happens.’
    ‘It must have been hard to leave university.’
    ‘It was,’ Hannah admitted. ‘But I promised myself I’d go back, and I will one day.’
    ‘To study business or literature?’
    ‘Literature,’ Hannah said firmly, a little surprised by how much she meant it.
    Sergei’s mouth curved into a smile. ‘So you do have your own dream after all.’
    Hannah stared at him. ‘I guess I do,’ she said after a moment. ‘Although I’m not sure what I’d actually do with that kind of degree. I took an evening course back home, on Emily Dickinson, an American poet. But …’ She shrugged, shookher head. ‘It’s not like I’m going to become a poet or something.’
    Sergei’s smile deepened. ‘And here I thought you were an optimist.’
    She let out a little laugh. ‘Yes, I am. So who knows, maybe I’ll start spouting sonnets.’
    He pretended to shudder. ‘Please don’t.’
    Hannah laughed aloud, emboldened by that little glimpse of humour. She propped her elbows on the table and hefted her wine glass aloft. ‘“I bring an unaccustomed wine,”’ she quoted, ‘“To lips long parching, next to mine, And summon them to drink.”’
    The words fell into the stillness, created ripples in the silence like wind on the surface of a pond. The intimacy of the verse seemed to reverberate between them as Sergei’s heavy-lidded gaze rested thoughtfully on her and he slowly reached for his wine glass. ‘Emily Dickinson?’ he surmised softly, and Hannah nodded, too affected by the lazy, languorous look in his eyes to speak. Obviously she’d had too much wine if she’d started quoting poetry. Slowly, his gaze still heavy on her, Sergei raised his glass and drank. Unable—and unwilling—to look away, Hannah drank too.
    It wasn’t a toast, it