Love Storm (49 page)

"Do you really care?" Yuri inquired huskily in her ear as his embrace tightened.

"Not if you don't," she smiled sweetly.

"You'll always look good to me, Rosie, figure or no figure. We'll sit on the veranda of our home in the Ukraine and watch our crowd of children grow."

Amalie visualized the idyllic picture. She had always wanted children and deeply regretted the loss of her daughter. Necessity had decreed she give Betsy up, but she had somehow never been able to consider having children by Boris. Not only was he physically unattractive, but the cruelty and viciousness he displayed dismayed her. What if her child would inherit those qualities?

Yuri was lazily nibbling on her ear as his hands stroked and caressed each voluptuous curve. As his fingers reached up and began unbuttoning the neckline of her dress, he whispered softly, "And if you become plump, my sweet, after all our children, I'll just have more to love."

Amalie wrapped her arms around Yuri's powerful shoulders, and one hand slid up to caress the back of his neck where his long, golden hair fell in soft curls.

"Will you take me home, Yuri," Amalie breathed happily. "Can we really go back?"

"I'll take you home, my darling, and never let you go."

The next morning Alex and Zena received a telegram from Yuri.

Alex, Zena, and the children were outside on the terrace overlooking the sea. Zena was resting on a wicker chaise lounge, the baby sleeping in her lap. Bobby was riding his tricycle up and down the marble floor at breakneck speed. Alex, seated next to Zena, smiled as he read the lengthy telegram.

"Yuri and Amalie are getting married," Alex explained, "and Yuri says Amalie apologizes for all the discourteous behavior to you." Laughing softly, he raised his brows sceptically and said, "Can the Golden Goddess really sheath her claws? I wonder."

"I'm happy for her anyway, Sasha," Zena said. In the utter bliss of her own unparalleled happiness she benevolently wished the whole world well. "But what an odd match."

"Not actually," Alex declared. "Amalie and Yuri grew up together on adjoining estates in the Ukraine. Almost like brother and sister, but with the usual experimental lovemaking in adolescence."

Zena opened her eyes in astonishment.

Alex responded to the surprise. "It's really quite commonplace, my pet. You just never had any cousins or young friends around. Amalie had to marry for money. Yuri has tolerable wealth, but not unlimited funds like Boris. I don't think either one of them really realized their attachment was more than old friendship. They scrapped and bickered like family. Yuri consorted with the usual variety of women but never seemed to find anyone that mattered enough to marry."

Alex cast a rueful smile at Zena. "We both felt that way, love, felt we were too young to consider marriage. All that debauchery beckoned. I think with my leaving, Amalie and Yuri were probably thrown in each other's company more and
voila!
I'm happy for them. Yuri always used to tell me I didn't understand his Rosie, and I guess he was right. I never saw that side of her character It was concealed too well for anyone but an old childhood friend like Yuri to see." Alex grinned boyishly. "Yuri says to expect to be a godfather in nine months. They're moving back to the country."

"I wish them happy," Zena sighed felicitously. "They'll have beautiful children."

"They already have a daughter. A very pretty little blonde girl almost ten now."

Zena looked up in amazement.

"So they had more than an old friendship to draw them together," Alex drawled.

"They must have both been very young," Zena said.

"Very young," Alex agreed. "Yuri's raised his daughter alone and has done a marvelous job of it."

Glancing at the fair-haired baby sleeping on his wife's lap, Alex remarked mockingly, "If I didn't know better, I'd say Yuri had a hand in this one, too." He was teasing, but underneath a tiny, nagging doubt wouldn't be stilled.

"Sasha, what a thing to say."

"Well, it seemed Yuri was always underfoot."

"But you were there, too."

"How do I know what happened after I passed out? I was more drunk than sober most of the time, and I've known Yuri too long to be under any illusions about his moral character."

"What about my moral character?" Zena asked, mildly affronted.

"Well, sweet, since you ask. . . ."

"Sasha!"

"Really, my dear, consider," he said crushingly. "I picked you up on the street, had my way with you in mere hours, and settled you in as my latest mistress within a day. Hardly the virtuous conduct of a paragon of womanhood I would be apt to trust with a practiced rake like Yuri."

"Do you believe me when I say you're the only man I've ever made love to?" Zena disallowed the Arab's rape, feeling that being tied, gagged, and sexually molested hardly constituted making love.

"If you say so."

"Sasha!"

"Of course, my love, I believe you," he soothed chivalrously. Whether he did or did not mattered infinitely less to him than having Zena back. And cruel suspicion aside, he was prone to believe her more than to disbelieve. But considering the prince's broad and varying experience with women, one must allow his cynical demon.

The dark, wolfish, swarthy Kuzan physical attributes had, after all, been amazingly dominant through the male line for generations, but Alex had decided on the day of the baby's birth, after the first staggering sight of the fair child, that regardless of patrimony, his or not, he'd love the boy because it was Zena's. She was more important to him than all the children in the world, and they could have other children later if he could ever repress the terrible memories of Zena's travail. Consideration of the possibility of losing her in childbirth was too agonizingly real to contemplate. The feeling of utter helplessness that had overwhelmed him as he sat impotently and watched her in labor was both unique and unnerving.

"My father had blond hair and blue eyes, and so do many of the tribesmen in my mother's aul," Zena said tranquilly.

"Of course, dear," Alex smiled reassuringly, determined to never again so much as intimate his uncertainties. "You're absolutely right." His love for Zena was the first and only strong passion he had ever known, and all else paled before its urgency.

Zena was the only woman he had ever wanted, and nothing must come between them. He couldn't take a chance of damaging their new happiness. The joy they shared was too hard won and too fragile to chance any arguments over the baby. He couldn't stand the thought of losing her again. He set his teeth, determined never to allude to his son's coloring again. The subject was closed.

Later that evening as they enjoyed a quiet supper
à
deux,
Bobby in bed and the baby sleeping, two more telegrams arrived.

"Good God," Alex exclaimed as he was handed the missives. "Is there somewhere in this world we could go for some peace and quiet?"

Ripping open the first one, he swore several times as he read through it. He silently handed it to Zena while he opened the second one.

Zena swiftly read the warning sent by Katelina. Katelina's husband upon returning once more from Europe had reacted violently to the knowledge of his wife's friendship with Wolf. He was threatening to take the children away; Wolf was threatening to take Katelina
and
the children away and gratuitously kill the husband to boot. Katelina had prevailed upon Wolf to desist at least temporarily from his savage plan and was simply relating the story to Alex in the event Wolf should come to him for help. Wolf had left in a fury, and she didn't know where he had gone.

"Interesting family," Zena smiled impishly.

"Père
will see to everything, never fear, he always does. But it burns me to see Katelina at the mercy of that cad of a husband she has." He made a face of mild distaste. "I agree with Wolf there, a nice swift bullet would ease the world of an unnecessary burden.

"In the meantime, more family, dear." He handed her the second telegram.

"Congratulations," Nikki had written. "Your mother seems to think she should see her grandson. Be down in a week."

"Let's get the hell out of here," Alex said tersely. The thought of his parents' faces when they saw their blond blue-eyed grandson discomfited him.

"Should we, Sasha, with your parents coming? It wouldn't be very polite."

"Let's take the
Southern Star
out, just to get away from all these people for a while. I suppose we can come back in a week. They won't be here before then." He'd have to confront it eventually, might as well get it over with. No one would say a word, of course. Everyone would be too polite. But the prospect galled him nevertheless. Was this what was commonly called one of fate's little ironies? For someone who had all the illegitimate children he could wish for, all disturbingly and unquestionably Kuzans, when he finally had a legitimate heir, the child wasn't even his. A strange feeling of ruffled disquietude appeared in his heart.

Several days later as they lay under an awning on the
Southern Star,
letting the light sea breezes wash over them, Zena finished nursing the baby and rose to change into something cooler. The afternoon was becoming warm.

"Sasha, will you hold Apollo while I go below and change?"

Their child had been named Apollo not because of Alex's teasing but because Zena had found the name so startling appropriate. Alex had acquiesced to his wife's wishes on the name as he had lightly promised so many months before.
To
Zena the fair, bright, golden child had seemed the perfect embodiment of the name Apollo—the Sun God.

"Just put him in his basket, love. He'll be more comfortable in this heat."

Zena had become disturbingly aware as the days passed that Sasha took very little interest in his son. At first she thought perhaps it was simply normal for a first-time father. Sasha was still young, and maybe the conception of fatherhood sat ill with him. But as time passed, she noted with baffled dismay that it wasn't simply that he took little interest in the child; rather he actually studiously avoided any contact with the baby.

Zena was correct in her assumption. Alex was very scrupulously avoiding any contact with Apollo. Despite his best efforts every time he saw the light blond child, his stomach tightened in frustrated anger, and a tic would appear high on his cheekbone. If Alex had been less prone to his morbid jealousy and looked closely at the child, he would have noted, as had Zena, that Apollo's eyes slanted upward at a slight angle just like his father's. His faint, downy, dark brows winged aloft, framing those elongated oval eyes exactly like his father's. Instead Alex nursed his miserable suspicions and fell occasionally into his melancholy fits of old.

This time, Zena thought with asperity, you're not going to dismiss your child so easily. Her temperament was as capable of volatile moodiness as Alex's.

"You can hold Apollo for a minute while I go below," she insisted peevishly and placed her young son in Alex's lap.

For the first time since his birth Alex was forced to look closely at this heir of his. Glancing down at the little, chubby form making wordless soft noises as he lay looking serenely up at his father, Alex's indifferent gaze changed suddenly into a startled expression of amazement.

From under delicate, wispy brows and lacy, fine lashes sparkled golden, tawny eyes caught up in the corners like little cat's eyes, golden cat's eyes, the powerful mark of Kuzan blood through the centuries.

"Zena!" Alex screamed, arresting her descent below. "Apollo's eyes are gold!"

Zena had noticed the change beginning days ago as the blue eyes common to all babies at birth had begun lightening with gradually increasing flecks of gold. As she returned to his side at the joyful shout, Alex whispered with great emotion, "A Kuzan without question." The prince gently cradled the little golden-haired baby who was his son, and the harsh-featured face lit with an eager, proud jubilation.

Bewildered but gladdened by the sudden, elated interest in his child, Zena said teasingly, "Did you ever doubt it?"

Alex paused for a second as he looked at his beautiful precious wife, and then he grinned effervescently.

"Never, darling," he lied gallantly, "not for a minute."

In the following months, while Alex conducted himself like a devoted husband and father, Zena would occasionally chide, "I can't believe this is the same man who firmly declared just short months ago that he wasn't interested in a wife and children."