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but apparently that wasn’t done. Instead
she and Leo sat together at one end of the outrageously long table.
The ornate gilded table and lavish Venetian glass mirrors rendered
an air of opulence designed to impress. Vries, however, was far
more interested in the food.
    “You said, ‘That’s what they all say,’” he
said quoting her.
    “Did I?” Vries frowned. “I have no idea what
I meant. Does it matter?”
    “Of course it matters. I saw you with all
those men around you last night. They call you The Goddess of
Milan.”
    “Good grief, Leo. You’re not jealous are you?
They’ve called me that since I was a girl forever ago. Besides you
don’t have anything to be jealous of. It’s not like we are in a
relationship or anything.”
    “I realize that and would like to rectify
it.”
    Vries picked up her mug of strong Russian
tea. Pasha served it all day long and Vries had developed a
definite taste for it. “As you said last night, but right now I
don’t really want to talk about it.” She picked up another blini.
“I just want to enjoy your company as much as possible.”
    “I have no objection to that as long as
getting to know me includes you being in my bed.”
    “You don’t let up do you?” Vries said as she
took a bite out of the blini.
    “I didn’t get where I am today by letting up.
I doubt you did either,” he said.
    “Clarise Johnson from Dawsonville,
Georgia?”
    “You changed your name?”
    “Of course I did. You forget, I came out
right after Tyra and Naomi, not to mention Cesaré. Clarise wasn’t
going to cut it. I needed to be different, exotic. Nobody knew
where I was from, at least not until I opened my mouth, but a
dialect coach fixed that. No, letting up was never an option. I had
to build Vries St. John from the ground up.”
    “As did I. I think that’s part of my
attraction to you. You’re a woman who understands what it is to
work hard to create something out of nothing. We were born in a
world where no one had any expectations of us. I could have wound
up a drunken longshoreman like my father. Certainly no one expected
anything more.”
    Vries nodded. She’d felt that fellowship with
him as well.
    “So now some things in my life are changing,
and I refuse to wait any longer to be with you if it can be
helped,” he said.
    “What’s changing?”
    “I will have to return to Russia in a couple
of weeks to take care of a...business problem. It will probably be
a while before I can return.”
    Vries took another sip of tea. And that was
probably as far as he would go in explaining what was going on in
his life. For a moment she was tempted to push the issue, just to
see his reaction, but really there was no point. After all, she
already knew far more about his business than she was entitled to
know.
    “So basically you want to have a fling for a
couple of weeks before you return to your life in Russia?” Vries
asked. She had no idea why the suggestion hurt so much. She knew
what was going on in his life. Still she hated the idea of being
his short-term fling.
    “I never said such a thing. I’ve been wanting
you for a long time. It never seemed the time was right. If I come
back... when I come back from Russia I want to take up where
we leave off.”
    If he came back...she shivered at the
bleakness of his tone. Obviously he had revealed more than he
intended, but she decided to ignore his slip of the tongue. “That
being the case, I don’t see why this can’t wait until you return.
After all, we’ve waited this long.”
    He pursed his lips, then shook his head with
a quick snap. “You’ll just have to trust me when I say it can’t
wait.”
    Vries inhaled sharply, then covered it with a
cough. He knew exactly how dangerous his situation was and he
didn’t expect to return from Russia. Then why the hell was he
going? With his money he could afford to live pretty much anywhere.
Hell, with his money she could think of several entire countries he could have just