Free Innocent in the Ivory Tower by Lucy Ellis

he thought cynically.
    ‘That dress,’ he said coolly after her. ‘Nice for a nanny. Leo must have paid you well. I expect you’re
very
expensive to keep, Maisy.’
    ‘No one has ever kept me,’ she defended herself over her bare shoulder.
    ‘I bet.’ It was a crass thing to say, and Alexei instantly regretted it.
    His throwaway line hit Maisy square in the solar plexus. He made her feel like a whore in her pretty dress and her make-up. All the
effort
she’d gone to … She spun around, determined not to let him have the last word, only to find he was already on his feet and coming towards her, his expression contrite, as if he’d realised he’d gone too far. But she’d moved too quickly, and her spindly heels wouldn’t support the shift in her weight, and she went sprawling, jarring her shoulder as she tried to break her fall with one arm. Pain speared up her arm, making her cry out, and then she was lying on the ground, holding her arm and sucking back tears.
    Alexei was on his knees beside her instantly, his arms coming around her. But as he touched her shoulder she cried out again.
    ‘Let me help you,’ he said gently, his anger no longer evident.
    Maisy was too shaken up to protest, but as he lifted her she was thrown into immediate physical intimacy with him and it robbed her of breath. She could feel his biceps hard beneath her back, his big hand fastened around her thigh. He had to do these things to carry her, she reasoned wildly, but after the terrible things he had said to her the shivery reaction runningthrough her body felt shameful. She averted her face from him, determined to block him out. If he saw how much he disturbed her it would just be more fuel for his accusations.
    He carried her across the roof to the access door and down the stairs, as if she weighed nothing. Pain was pulsing through her shoulder, but the sheer awfulness of how cruelly his taunts had gone home overwhelmed it. He thought she was a liar, a party girl who spread her legs for anybody with enough cash, and he didn’t want her looking after Kostya.
    She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t show that weakness.
    She had just made the biggest fool of herself in the history of her life, and now a man who couldn’t stand her—moreover a man who was an utter pig of an unreconstructed idiot, who couldn’t see simple truths if they hit him in the face—was carrying her into …
    His bedroom. Maisy’s heartbeat sped up despite the pain.
    And wasn’t this what you were hoping for at the beginning of the night, Maisy Edmonds?
a little voice niggled at her.
    His bed was large and plain and masculine, with expensive dark blue linen. Fresh sheets, she registered. Had he been planning to seduce her here? Everything he had said to her came home, and she knew with every inch of her body she didn’t want to be in here. It was too humiliating.
    She began to struggle. ‘Put me down. Put me down
now
!’
    He was forced to release her and she slid to her feet, holding her arm folded over her chest. It was throbbing, but she had no intention of playing victim.
    Alexei didn’t say a word. He just made a phone call whilst she stood there, not sure what to do. He finished the call. ‘A doctor’s coming up to the house,’ he said heavily. ‘Where is the pain coming from?’
    ‘I don’t know. I think I jarred it,’ she answered, swallowing hard. ‘I’ll go and wait in my room, if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Maisy, you had a nasty fall. Lie down here and let yourself to be checked out, okay?’
    It sounded so reasonable, and the pain was pumping throughher body. But she kept seeing the look on his face when she’d told him the truth about the Kulikovs. It shouldn’t matter so much, but it did.
    In the end the pain won out and she sat down awkwardly on his bed. Alexei did something surprising. He dropped to one knee and reached for her foot, sliding off one shoe and then the other. There was something about seeing him silent on his knees in