Читать книгу The Ruthless Magnate's Virgin Mistress - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 7

CHAPTER THREE

‘I WASN’T aware that I had been guilty of making any assumption, so your attack is somewhat premature and excessive,’ Nikolai imparted very drily.

Abbey stabbed the air between them with an emphatic finger. ‘I agreed to dine with you this evening—that’s all! Perhaps you feel that you’re entitled to more for a charitable donation of half a million, but my body was never on the table…’

Steady dark eyes rested on her. ‘The table would be a little hard on both of us,’ he murmured with sardonic amusement. ‘Where did you get the impression that I have to buy women into my bed?’

‘You held your donation to Futures over my head!’ Abbey condemned hotly. ‘You told me that you would use any angle to get what you want, didn’t you?’

‘But I don’t pay for sex,’ Nikolai spelt out cool as ice. ‘I don’t ever under any circumstances pay for sex.’

Abbey lost colour, her freckles standing out against her pallor. His conviction washed over her like a bucket of chilling water, dousing her anger and leaving her uncertain of her position. ‘What about the dress, the shoes and the jewellery?’

‘I’m a generous guy. The women I meet enjoy and expect that sort of gesture from me.’

‘You meet the wrong kind of women.’

‘Perhaps. But it is offensive to suggest that I need to use my money to persuade a woman into my bed.’

‘Let’s not get bogged down in the irrelevant!’ Abbey broke in. ‘I heard you dismiss your driver for the evening.’

‘Perhaps I was planning to drive you home later myself,’ Nikolai murmured silkily, although the faintest tinge of dark colour demarcated his high cheekbones, for her assumption about his expectations had been one-hundred-per-cent accurate. He had assumed that she would share his bed that night. Her absolute lack of sophistication and tact on that score amazed him. He had never in his life endured such a clumsy scene with a woman. But then, sex had never, ever been something withheld or denied to him. His healthy libido was unaccustomed to the practice of patience. He thought that she was remarkably naïve for a married woman who might have been expected to know how to handle sexual matters a little more smoothly and without this odd undertone of prudish hysteria.

Abbey went pink at that easy explanation, which should have occurred to her as a possibility but which for some reason had not. ‘It’s just…I hardly know you…’

Nikolai was amused by her embarrassment. Suddenly she seemed much younger than her twenty-five years and almost as awkward as a leggy schoolgirl. His stunning dark eyes unusually warm with amusement and his annoyance evaporating fast, he extended a shapely brown hand. ‘Let’s eat, milaya,’ he suggested.

After tonight, Abbey promised herself that she would never see him again. She didn’t like what he made her feel. She still recalled her first glimpse of Jeffrey at the age of fifteen. Her father had brought him home for dinner one evening and she had been so mesmerised by Jeffrey’s classic blond good looks that she had barely eaten a mouthful. In retrospect she was ashamed of herself—how superficial she had been in those days! That same year Drew had got engaged to Caroline and set a wedding date, so Jeffrey and his parents had become a regular feature at family events.

Abbey had fallen head over heels for the handsome barrister in her father’s chambers, impressed as much by Jeffrey’s keen intelligence and the rumour that his success and reputation in court had already ensured that he was earmarked to become a judge. She had been content to love him from afar and console herself with occasional brief conversations. He had never seemed anything more than polite and pleasant to her until the day he asked her out to dinner, surprising her with that invitation as much as his move seemed to surprise everyone else in their respective families. How many weeks had it been before Jeffrey even kissed her good-night? There could be no comparison between the two men: Jeffrey, who had genuinely loved and respected her, and Nikolai Danilovich Arlov to whom she was simply another potential sexual conquest. How could she have responded to such a man? Where were her pride and self-respect?

‘What are you thinking about?’ Nikolai prompted in the imposing dining room as the first course was delivered, for the faraway look in her face was unmistakable.

Abbey reddened and ducked her bright head and rubbed nervously at her wedding ring with the pad of her thumb. ‘Nothing important.’

But Nikolai had noted that revealing contact with the gold ring on her finger and was convinced otherwise. He sensed that he was in competition with her memories of the very special man she had mentioned. The suspicion that her mind wandered to her dead husband even when she was in Nikolai’s company infuriated him. It was the very first time that he could remember considering or even caring about what a woman might be thinking about when she was with him.

‘What age were you when you got married?’

Abbey gave him a surprised look. ‘Nineteen.’

‘That’s very young.’

‘I was old enough to know what I was doing.’

‘What age was your husband?’

Abbey tensed, reluctant to answer that question. ‘Thirty-nine.’

Nikolai dealt her an incredulous look. ‘He was old enough to be your father!’

‘You’re being very rude,’ Abbey told him curtly. ‘Jeffrey was handsome, successful and very much in demand socially. I think very few women would have regarded him in that light.’

Nikolai shrugged, well aware that some men went for very much younger women. He was only thirty-three years old, but the idea of bedding a giggly teenager with no experience of men or the world repulsed him. He could only think that Jeffrey Carmichael must have been inadequate in some way to choose such an unequal partner as a wife.

‘How long have you been a widow?’ he queried.

‘Six years—’

‘So you couldn’t have been married that long.’

Abbey realised that he didn’t know as much about her as she had assumed. She told him about the sixteen-yearold drunken joyrider who had caused the accident as the wedding party travelled between church and reception.

Nikolai was sincerely shocked by the story. ‘That was tragic—particularly when your sister-in-law was seriously injured as well.’

‘It ripped the heart out of two families. Jeffrey’s parents have both passed away since then and are sadly missed.’

‘And you’re still mourning?’ Nikolai prompted.

Abbey nodded confirmation. ‘You don’t forget a love like that.’

‘But you and your husband were together such a short time.’

‘Time’s immaterial.’

‘Yet you won’t stay with me tonight, even though it’s what we both want?’

A hot rush of pink discomfiture mantling her cheeks, Abbey decided that it would be undignified arguing that point and she began to eat instead. ‘That’s different.’

Nikolai stroked the back of her clenched hand with a mocking fingertip. ‘I know. I’m not asking you to love me.’

Abbey suppressed a shiver of reaction as she recalled the hot hunger of his mouth on hers and the desire he had unleashed inside her. ‘I don’t need the warning.’

Nikolai surveyed her in frustration. ‘So you’ve already made up your mind about me?’

‘That we don’t suit? Yes,’ Abbey admitted.

‘But we share an amazing passion.’

‘That’s not important to me.’

‘It is to me.’

‘But by next week you’ll find it with someone else,’ Abbey told him with a calm insouciance that set his even white teeth on edge.

‘If I thought that I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to persuade you to come here.’

Nikolai made a rare effort to be entertaining by finding out what interested her. He was on his very best behaviour. Checking her watch over the coffee, Abbey was taken aback when she realised just how much time had passed over the delicious meal. He was highly intelligent and excellent company and she was dismayed by how much she had contrived to enjoy herself.

‘I don’t want to be too late tonight because I have an early start in the morning.’

As she rose from behind the table Nikolai followed suit. He pulled her to him with confident hands. ‘You could have an early start with me.’

As she thought of it a tremor ran through her, sexual heat curling low in her pelvis. Desire was in her now like a dark enemy, undermining her defences. She had a dim picture of him lying on tumbled white sheets. She remembered how she had lost her head with him in the limo and knew that he would be utterly irresistible in less inhibiting circumstances. He bent his handsome dark head and took her parted lips with devouring hunger. She quivered against him, her heart racing as fast as the blood in her veins, driven by a heady combination of excitement and longing. Disturbed by the intensity of what she was feeling, she stiffened.

‘I’m going home,’ she breathed when he lifted his head again.

Paparazzi were waiting outside the building when they emerged. Cameras went off even as Nikolai’s security team made the waiting photographers back off and give them a clear passage to the glossy black Ferrari now parked in readiness by the kerb. Her colour high as demands for her name were loudly shot at her, Abbey climbed into the car with her head down, reluctant to give anyone the chance to get a decent picture of her.

‘They’ll follow us back to your apartment so that they can identify you,’ Nikolai forecast.

‘Surely not?’ But even as she spoke she saw two men jumping onto motorbikes across the road and her heart sank. ‘Is it always like this for you?’

‘I hate it,’ he breathed. ‘By tomorrow morning at least one paper will have offered you cash to talk about me.’

‘I won’t do it. Your secrets are safe with me. The colour of your dining-room wallpaper will go to the grave with me,’ she promised him.

He burst out laughing at that sally.

They were tailed all the way back to her apartment block and she didn’t object when he insisted on seeing her indoors, because even before she climbed out of his car she saw several men race across the pavement to lie in wait for them again. But when one of them aimed a camera, Nikolai’s minders stepped in and snatched it away. An altercation broke out between the men as Nikolai urged her through the entrance to the building with a protective arm splayed to her narrow spine.

‘You don’t need to come all the way upstairs,’ she said as the lift doors sprang open beside them.

An ebony brow climbed. ‘I won’t overstay my welcome,’ he declared.

He took the key out of her fingers and pressed open the front door to follow her in. ‘A model castle,’ he said in surprise, crossing the hall to peer into it.

‘It’s a doll’s house. I always wanted one when I was a child but I had to wait until I grew up and could afford to buy my own.’

A moment’s appraisal of his surroundings had been sufficient to assure Nikolai of the modern minimalist nature of her home, so the interior of the fairy-tale castle was a revelation. A red-headed miniature doll in a voluminous white lace nightdress was getting ready to climb into a curtained four-poster bed. Two tiny Siamese cats were curled up by the blazing fire. Every inch of doll’s house space was packed with diminutive antique furniture and every surface was cluttered with books, art and bric-a-brac. Although a little row of beds and a cot in the attic occupied by several weeny dolls testified to the existence of a large family of children, there wasn’t a man in the whole building. He wondered if she appreciated how much that cosy domestic fantasy revealed of her true nature.