Читать книгу The Most Coveted Prize - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 2

Alena’s brother turned back to him. ‘I am prepared to withdraw from the contest between us for the contract,’ he told Kiryl, ‘but only if instead of giving up Alena, you marry her.’

Alena made a small, agonised sound of protest and denial. This could not be happening. To listen whilst Kiryl revealed the truth about their relationship and his plans for her had been bad enough, but now to hear her beloved brother offering her to him in marriage was more than she could cope with. Vasilii couldn’t mean what she had just heard him say. He couldn’t.

‘I heard everything, Vasilii.’ She was deliberately keeping her back to Kiryl, unable to endure the thought of looking at him. ‘All of it—every single word.’

From somewhere she managed to drag up out of her pain a lifeline of anger for her to cling on to.

‘You might think now that you have succeeded in your plan to use me to blackmail Vasilii into letting you win the contract, but you haven’t,’ she told him fiercely. ‘And as for marrying you—I’d rather stay single all my life.’