Free Kholodov's Last Mistress by Kate Hewitt Page B

and placed a carrier bag of hand-knit sweaters on the counter. ‘How’s it looking?’ she said with a nod to the books.
    Hannah grimaced. ‘Not good.’ Lisa nodded in sympathy and, smiling, Hannah closed the book and nodded towards the bag. ‘You brought some more sweaters?’
    ‘And some hat and mitten sets. I know it’s nearly spring, but it’s still chilly and some people like to do their Christmas shopping early.’
    ‘Great.’ Hannah rose to look through the merchandise. Lisa Leyland had become a great friend over the last year. She’d sailed into the empty shop one chilly spring morning, several weeks after Hannah had returned from Moscow and had been feeling particularly low. After her husband had been made redundant, Lisa had needed some creative sources of income, and she’d suggested to Hannah that she sell her hand-knit sweaters through the shop and take a fifty-per-cent cut; they were some of the most popular items that Hannah had ever sold. A few months after that Lisa offered to run knitting classes in the evenings, which had brought in a little more business.
    Still, none of it was enough to keep the shop afloat, a conclusion Hannah had been drawing steadily over the last few months. No wonder her parents had racked up such huge bills, she’d realised dismally. The shop had never been a going concern,and her little improvements—the ones she could afford—weren’t making much of a difference.
    She refolded the last of the sweaters and put them to one side for pricing. ‘These are beautiful, Lisa.’
    Lisa nodded her thanks before gesturing once again to the account books lying on the counter. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked quietly.
    Hannah sighed and rubbed her forehead. She felt the beginnings of a headache and an incredible weariness in every joint and muscle. She’d been trying to make this shop work for so long—certainly the last year, and sometimes it felt like her whole life. And she wasn’t sure she could do it any more. She knew she didn’t want to.
    ‘Keep going as long as I can, I suppose,’ she said to Lisa. ‘I don’t know what else I can do.’
    ‘You could sell it.’
    Hannah stilled. This wasn’t the first time they’d talked about this issue, but it was the first time Lisa had said it so directly. Sell the shop. Give up on everything her parents had done, had believed in … or at least she’d thought they believed in.
    Since returning from Russia, she’d sometimes wondered. The things Sergei Kholodov had made her question, the discovery of their deceit she’d made upon her return … they’d changed her. Perhaps for ever.
    ‘I’m not ready to sell it,’ she told Lisa. ‘I’m not even sure there’s a buyer.’
    ‘You don’t know until you try.’
    Hannah shook her head. She wasn’t ready to think like that. This shop—just as she’d once told Sergei—had been everything to her parents, and it was all she had left of them now. Letting it go made her feel both sad and scared—and guilty, because part of her desperately wanted to do it.
    I don’t even know where I would go.
    Funny, and strange, that it had all started with Sergei. Even now she tried not to think of him, but she just couldn’t help herself. He slipped into her thoughts, under her defences. With a few pointed observations—and a devastating kiss—he’d set her doubts in motion. They’d toppled her certainties like dominoes, one after the other, creating an inevitable and depressing chain reaction until her whole world felt flattened and empty.
    Now she wasn’t certain of anything any more. She wasn’t annoyingly optimistic either. Not that he would care. Not that he’d ever given her a thought this last year.
    I don’t do virgins … especially not ones who barely know how to kiss.
    Even now the memory made Hannah cringe. What had she been thinking, telling him she didn’t believe him? Insisting he wanted her? The memory could still make her flush with humiliation.