Читать книгу The Russian Rivals: The Most Coveted Prize / The Power of Vasilii - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 9

AFTER the initial shock, which had frozen her to the spot, a feeling not unlike that she had felt as a child experiencing her first rollercoaster ride raced through Alena, leaving her powerless. Excitement and fear gripped her insides in equal measure, horrified dread fighting with exhilaration as her heart plunged downwards and then soared up again.

Was it merely a coincidence that Kiryl was here? Her heart spun dizzily like a plate spinning clown or a magician. Calm down, she warned herself. Of course it was a coincidence. She wouldn’t be doing herself any favours as the adult she wanted to be if she allowed herself to think otherwise. Kiryl simply wasn’t the kind of man who would try to impress a woman in such a way. Every instinct she had told her that. It was simply coincidence that he was here.

She didn’t know whether telling herself that made her feel better or worse. The truth was that she no longer knew what to feel. Or what she actually did feel. He moved slightly, so that the light now fell on him. His expression was unreadable, his green eyes gleaming, and the movement of his body as he came towards her reminded her of the deliberate stalking of a powerful, sleek-muscled hunting animal before it made a controlled leap on its chosen prey.

‘Alena, this is Mr Andronov,’ Dolores began formally.

‘I …’

I know, Alena had been about to say, but Kiryl forestalled her, saying politely, ‘Miss Demidova, thank you for finding the time to see me. I appreciate it.’

She felt faint, dizzy, light-headed—as though her body and her senses had been whirled about in a giant fairground machine and then flung into freefall.

Kiryl was reaching for her hand. She had a reactive, defensive, almost childish desire to hide her hands behind her back, so that he couldn’t touch her, such was her immediate and intense awareness of what any kind of physical intimacy between them might do to her. Was it only this morning that she had sworn to herself she was in control of her own reactions to him? How deluded she had been.

Dolores was watching her, waiting for her to shake Kiryl’s hand. Reluctantly she extended her own, shielding her eyes from his inspection as she did so, not wanting him to read the vulnerability she feared they would betray.

His hand engulfed hers, his fingers strong and warm, curling round it, holding it and her captive. Against her will her body remembered how he had held her the previous day, seeking out the pulse in her wrist and then …

Swallowing quickly against the heady fizz of sensual excitement rushing up inside her, she spoke. ‘Dolores tells me that you are considering becoming a donor to our charity.’ It was all Alena could manage to say. She must be sensible and mature. She must think not just first but only of her mother’s charity, and the debt of responsibility she owed it.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed increasing the tension she was already feeling when he went on, ‘I thought we could discuss the matter over lunch.’

‘I …’ On the point of saying that she had another engagement, Alena saw the hopeful and pleased look in the gaze Dolores had fixed on her, and remembered that she had told her CEO that she had a completely free day.

‘It would give me an opportunity to learn more about the charity and its work—and about your commitment to it. It would be a shame if you were unable to spare the time, as I shall be leaving the country very soon on business.’

Was he testing her? Daring to suggest that she wasn’t committed to her mother’s charity?

‘Yes, of course.’ She gave in, adding quietly, ‘I am free to have lunch with you.’

‘Excellent. I took the liberty of assuming your acceptance and have arranged things accordingly—if you are ready?’

Ready for what? A business lunch, or …? Stop thinking like that, Alena warned herself. She must think of this purely as a business exercise—a means by which she could show her half-brother that she was capable of controlling her inheritance. The fact that Kiryl could affect her so dangerously, so sensually, was a vulnerability she must conceal from both him and her brother.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m ready,’ she agreed, giving Dolores what she hoped was a calm and reassuring smile as Kiryl held open the boardroom door for her. She could see that Dolores looked relieved by her acceptance of Kiryl’s request that she have lunch with him. The CEO had indicated that Kiryl’s donation was likely to be an extremely generous and ongoing one, and one that they could not afford to risk losing.

To walk through the door she had, of course, to walk past him. The discreet scent of his cologne couldn’t mask the scent of him—at least not from her. Her body reacted immediately and intensely to it, her nipples rising into hard peaks of sexual arousal to push impatiently against the constriction of her pretty satin and lace bra. For a dangerous heartbeat she almost lifted her hand to cover her own betrayal, her face flooding with colour as she recognised how easily she could have given herself away.

What was it about this man and only this man that gave him the power to affect her as no other man had ever done? She could feel the wild, reckless surge of her own desire to know the answer to that question, and was equally aware of the far more cautious and conservative side of her nature that urged her not to get involved in a situation that instinct told her she could not control.

It was just a lunch she had agreed to, she reminded herself as Dolores escorted them both to the lift. Nothing more. And a business lunch at that. The fact that he was considering making a donation to her mother’s charity was merely a coincidence.

But, despite telling herself that, once they were alone inside the lift an impulse she couldn’t control had her asking shakily, ‘What made you choose my mother’s charity for your donation?’

The uncertainty in her voice, combined with the colour coming and going in her face, pleased Kiryl—although of course he was not going to let her see that. It confirmed what his male instincts had already told him, and that was that she was vulnerable to him as a woman. He liked that. He liked it very much indeed. It was time to play with her a little now—to unsettle and unnerve her whilst holding out a tiny piece of bait to tempt her closer.

‘You are taking it for granted that I will make a donation—even though I’m sure your CEO has made it clear to you that I am simply contemplating doing so. Isn’t that rather dangerous?’

Caught off-guard, Alena could only protest. ‘No. I mean, I wasn’t taking it for granted. I just meant … I was just curious about why you had chosen my mother’s charity.’

‘Were you? Or were you perhaps hoping that I had chosen it because of you? Because I wanted to … please you?’

‘No!’

The lift had come to a halt and the doors were opening. Hot-faced, Alena was glad of the fact that several other people were waiting to get in. Blindly she stepped out of the lift, her head down, feeling both embarrassed and exposed, stripped bare of her defences. She felt somehow as though he could see right through into the vulnerable heart of her. His penetrating green gaze was far too keen and astute. But then it had probably looked upon many women who had been as sensually aware of him as she was now. Many, many women. For her, though, all this was very new—taking her up to the heights and then plunging her down into the depths until she was so shaken up that she felt in danger of losing the power to reason.

Instinctively heading for the main doors to the building, she was brought to a halt when Kiryl reached for her arm, holding it in a firm grip and half turning her towards him. He was standing so close to her that she could feel the power of his male sensuality engulfing her. Like a force-field it surged round her, locked round her effortlessly, holding her captive.

‘I am considering your charity because of my own mother.’

His words were so unexpected that it took Alena several seconds to grasp their meaning. Her lungs greedily sucked in the air she had briefly denied them before she was able to question, ‘Your own mother?’

Good—he had her hooked now. But then, given what he knew about the close relationship she had had with her own parents—especially her mother—it had been a foregone conclusion as far as Kiryl was concerned that to bring his own mother into any conversation he had with her was bound to elicit both her interest and ultimately her sympathy. Right now, though, having piqued her interest, it was best to keep her guessing a little, so Kiryl shook his head.

‘This is not the time for such a discussion,’ he told her. ‘It is something better discussed over lunch. Do you mind riding back in a taxi? Only when I’m in London I prefer to use taxis rather than to have a car and driver following me around. I like the freedom it gives me.’

‘No,’ Alena assured him, forced into a small self-conscious half-laugh as she admitted, ‘I love London taxis. And I’d much rather use them than have a car and driver too.’ She pulled a small face. ‘Vasilii doesn’t understand that, and doesn’t really approve.’

It was a small thing to know that he too loved the freedom that being in London gave her. A small thing, and yet immediately it made her feel more relaxed in his company—as though they shared something.

Watching her, Kiryl smiled secretly to himself. He knew perfectly well, from the information garnered by his agent, every single like and dislike Alena possessed. His goal now was to disarm her to such an extent that she ended up trusting him.

Once they were inside a taxi he told her, ‘I thought we’d have lunch back at your hotel.’

Alena nodded her head. The hotel did have an excellent restaurant, she knew. The kind of restaurant where important business was conducted on a regular basis. A man’s restaurant, Alena often felt, with a menu that was heavy on traditional gourmet meat and fish dishes and portions which she found far too generous. It was silly of her to feel disappointed. This was, after all, a business lunch and not a date. Kiryl was obviously a busy man, just like her brother, and she knew that in similar circumstances Vasilii would have done exactly the same thing.

The reminder to herself that their lunch was a business lunch had her sitting up straight on her own side of the shiny leather taxi seat as she automatically adopted what she hoped was the right pose for a businesswoman.

From his own side of the seat Kiryl, who had relaxed into the darker shadows of the corner of the seat refused to allow himself the mistake of looking at her. Not yet. That would come later. As a boy, running wild with other boys like himself—poor, ragged, half-starved boys, living hand to mouth under the aegis of their elderly foster grandmother, some of them lucky enough to have mothers who worked—he had learned to fish. Sometimes the fish he’d caught had been the only meal there was, so he had had to learn how to take his time and to wait for the right moment to catch his prey unawares.

He knew his silence now was bound to add to the tension he could see Alena was already feeling, and that suited him. Fate had handed the very best wild card he was ever likely to get when it had brought Alena Demidova into his life—without her brother.

The traffic was building up; one of London’s many sets of roadworks had brought their taxi to a standstill. Kiryl looked from under his lashes at Alena. His agent had done his work well, and Kiryl knew everything there was to know about her—from the fact that her brother believed her to be currently under the safe care of an elderly ex-matron of an exclusive girls’ school to the fact that she was probably still a virgin. He knew all about her parents’ marriage, and her English mother’s passion for her charity, just as he knew to the last pound how many millions of pounds there were in her trust fund, and how many shares in the businesses of her late father and her half-brother would come into her control when she reached twenty-five.

She was a valuable asset—a valuable pawn, indeed—to the man who controlled her future, and it was no wonder that her half-brother was so protective of her and of her eventual inheritance. With such an asset as his half-sister to barter Vasilii Demidov had a great deal of persuasive power at his command. Via her marriage Vasilii would be able to broker even more power for himself than he already had. There would be many, many men who would want to form an alliance with him via marriage to her. It wasn’t her virginity that would be important, either to her brother or the man who married her. It was the power of the alliance that would be created.

He most certainly did not want to marry her. He did not want to marry anyone. But he was quite prepared to let Alena think that he did to win her over.

What he really intended to do was seduce her into falling for him—which would be easy, given the susceptibility to him he had already seen in her and her innocence—and then offer to end their relationship provided her brother backed off from the contract they were competing for. Kiryl’s assessment was that he was the last person her brother would want as a brother-in-law—a man born not just on the wrong side of the tracks but brought up in the gutters of those tracks. In his judgement her brother would far rather lose one contract than a pawn as valuable as a sister who, married to the right man, would bring far more assets into the family than merely one contract.

He wouldn’t like what Kiryl was doing, of course. He wouldn’t like it one little bit. But he would have to accept it, because his sister’s vulnerability to Kiryl was his Achilles’ heel. Kiryl had no doubts about that. No man would guard his sister as Vasilii Demidov guarded his unless she was extremely important to him.

And Alena herself … She would have the sexual pleasure those longing looks she had been giving him said she wanted. And when her brother exchanged her hand in marriage for an increase in his power and wealth she would be able to remember that pleasure when she lay in the arms of a husband she might not particularly want.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, inside his head he could see an image of his mother’s face—the anguish in her eyes when she had told him about how she had trusted his father and how he had deserted her and refused to recognise Kiryl himself. He dismissed it as swiftly and ruthlessly as he always despatched any kind of emotional weakness he found within himself.

The taxi pulled off the main road and into the designated drop-off area outside the main entrance to the hotel. Whilst Kiryl paid the driver, a uniformed doorman opened Alena’s door for her and helped her out. Following her into the hotel, Kiryl tipped him generously. The man would no doubt remember seeing him with Alena—and that would add further reinforcement to his eventual challenge to her brother either to back out of the contract race or risk seeing his besotted sister marry him.

‘This way,’ he told Alena, taking a firm hold on her upper arm to turn her in towards the lifts, when she would have walked past them towards the entrance to the hotel’s restaurant.

Taking advantage of her confusion, when the lift doors opened he guided her inside it, ignoring the faint resistant stiffening of her body.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘I thought we were supposed to be having lunch together?’

‘We are,’ Kiryl agreed equably. ‘But not in the restaurant. I thought it would suit us both better if we had lunch in my suite.’

Suit them both better? What exactly did he mean by that? Alena could feel guilty, excited heat flooding swiftly through her body. Even her face felt as though it was burning with her awareness of how the thought of such intimacy with him was affecting her. And very concerned and wary of that feeling she ought to be, Alena reminded herself as the lift rose swiftly upwards.

Impulsively, her actions driven by sudden apprehension and the frantic pounding of her heart, she turned to him and told him unsteadily, ‘I’m not sure …’

‘You’re afraid to be alone with me? You think I might try to seduce you?’ he guessed. ‘Or is it more that you have been wondering what it would be like if I did try?’

‘No!’ Alena denied immediately.

The lift had stopped. The door was open. He was looking at her with an expression that was a mixture of amusement and something else that re-ignited the desire she had felt earlier.

‘Good,’ he told her as he guided her out of the lift. ‘Because I can assure you that for me this lunch will be strictly business.’

That much was true—even if he had no intention of allowing her to know what exactly that meant.

Torn between relief and embarrassment that he had guessed what was going through her mind, Alena reminded herself that for her the only purpose of this lunch must be the fact that she would be able to claim to Vasilii later that she had secured Kiryl’s donation to the charity, and that it proved she was mature enough to step into her mother’s shoes.

The thick pile of the carpet in the corridor muffled their footsteps as Kiryl guided her towards one of a mere handful of doors in its length, opening it on his suite and indicating that she should precede him into it.

Opposite the entry door to the small rectangular lobby in which she was now standing was a pair of double doors, which Kiryl went to open for her. The sight of natural daylight coming in through the tall windows of the suite’s sitting room brought a welcome easing of the tight constriction of her throat, which she was trying to insist to herself had come from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the small windowless space of the lobby.

The decor of the suite’s sitting room was familiar to her from staying in exclusive hotels all over the world. Luxuriously comfortable, the room contained everything a demanding guest might need—from a faux fireplace with two small sofas either side of it, through to a desk and the large cupboard which she suspected contained a concealed TV set and a mini-bar, and dining chairs placed neatly against one of the walls. The col our scheme of creams and greys was very ‘boutique hotel’, the fabrics and carpet obviously expensive.

‘I’ll ring down for our lunch. I hope you’ll like what I’ve ordered. Oh, and there’s a guest bathroom through the door off the lobby,’ Kiryl informed her.

Alena nodded her head. She was glad about that, of course. She wouldn’t have wanted to have to walk through his bedroom to find its en suite bathroom. Of course not. She wouldn’t have wanted to do that at all. Because if she had she might have looked at the bed—Kiryl’s bed—and once she had done that she might have started imagining him lying on it … naked … the magnificent body her senses insisted on repeatedly telling her lay beneath his clothes exposed to her hungry gaze.

By the time she reached the relative sanctuary of the guest bathroom Alena was breathing so heard, her heart pumping so frantically, that she had to lean on the door once she was inside and slowly count to ten inside her head in an effort to calm herself down.

Pulling away from the door, she ran cold water over her wrists to cool her overheated skin, reminding herself of just why she was there. The charity and Kiryl’s donation to it. That was the only pairing she should be thinking about, she warned herself, quickly reaching for one of the immaculate white linen towels to dry her wrists and hands when she heard the buzzer to the suite and guessed that it was announcing the arrival of their lunch.

And what a lunch!

Alena’s eyes widened when one of the two waiters who had wheeled in a hot trolley, along with a table already dressed with a starched white cloth and all the accoutrements one would expect from the most prestigious of restaurants, pulled out her chair for her. The other did the same for Kiryl, and then placed her first course in front of her. Her favourite, she realised as she looked down at the serving of warm pear and goat’s cheese salad.

‘Thank you—we shall serve ourselves from here.’ Kiryl dismissed the waiters with a discreetly given tip, before getting up once they had gone to say, ‘A drink first, I think—our national drink to start with.’ He removed a bottle of chilled vodka from the ice bucket and poured it into two waiting shots glasses.

‘Vodka?’

He was holding one of the glasses out to her across the intimacy of the small table, which was also set with wine glasses, giving her no real option other than to take it. Her fingers had to curl around his as she did so. Why had she never known before this intense difference between her own flesh and that of another? The sensation of his cool, firm skin against hers seared her senses, flooding them with the most acute awareness of him. She could smell the subtle expensive scent of his cologne, fresh and yet somehow at the same time powerfully erotic. He was so close to her that she was sure she could see the dark shadow of the body hair on his chest beneath the fine cotton of his white shirt.

She hadn’t taken so much as a sip of her vodka yet, and already she was beginning to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Because she knew how important this meeting was—for the charity and for her. Her hand started to shake, and then her body, but to her relief he didn’t appear to notice, releasing the glass into her shaky hold before reaching for his own, and toasting her.

‘Za vashe zdorovye—your good health,’ he said, before emptying the glass in one swallow.

Alena knew that she was expected to do the same. It was the tradition to do so. But even though she managed to return the toast, she could only manage to sip at the fiery ice-cold liquid.

‘They say it is less intoxicating if you drink it down in one, but I can see that you are a woman who likes to draw out and enjoy her sensual pleasures. And drinking vodka slowly is a very particular sensual pleasure for those who can bear it. One has to withstand its icy cold and then endure its burning heart. Not a task for the faint-hearted—but then I already know that you have a very brave and reckless heart indeed. You have already proved that to me.’

He was smiling at her, his gaze trapping hers and holding it easily with the same strength with which she suspected he would hold her body between his hands if he chose to do so. And surely worse than being trapped was the feeling that in his compelling dark green gaze was a knowing glint that suggested …

Alena didn’t want to risk thinking about what it was telling her.

She couldn’t help wondering feverishly if his words could really mean that he wanted to remind her of his earlier suggestion that she was afraid to be alone with him, when she had denied that suggestion.

‘I am referring, of course, to your bravery in meeting the challenge inheriting responsibility for your late mother’s charity must place on you.’

Of course he was. Why must she keep on putting a personal slant on everything he said to her? And, even worse, dragging it into the far too overheated sensual awareness of him she should be resolutely ignoring rather than encouraging. He himself was making it plain that his interest in her was not personally biased at all. Was it because she wanted him to have a personal interest in her? Because she wanted him to desire her and, desiring her, show her that desire? No. No—a thousand times no.

‘I am proud to take on that responsibility,’ Alena assured him, finishing her vodka so that she could break the eye contact he was maintaining with her, hoping she sounded suitably businesslike.

Gesturing towards her starter, Kiryl said, ‘I hope the food I have chosen will be to your liking?’

‘This is my favourite starter,’ she admitted.

Of course it was, Kiryl thought inwardly with cynical satisfaction. He had left nothing to chance about this lunch. He knew exactly what her favourite dishes from the restaurant’s menu were.

‘You mentioned your own mother when I asked you what had drawn you to my mother’s charity,’ Alena reminded him, having told herself yet again that this was a business lunch—no matter how intimate it might seem. Talking about the charity would help her to focus on that reality. So she wasn’t asking him about his mother because she desperately wanted to know more about him. She wasn’t.

‘Yes, I did,’ Kiryl agreed, reaching into the second ice bucket and removing a bottle of white wine, telling her, ‘Try this. I discovered it the last time I stayed here and I rather like it.’

Wine on top of the vodka she had already had to drink; was that really a good idea? For a moment Alena hesitated. It was very flattering to be asked her opinion on a bottle of wine. She wasn’t a big drinker—her mother hadn’t been, and Vasilii deplored the growing modern trend for young women to drink heavily.

Quickly she placed her hand over her empty wine glass and shook her head, telling him, ‘No, thank you. I’m not much of a drinker, I’m afraid. Especially at lunchtime.’

Kiryl put down the bottle and gave her another of those searching looks that seemed to probe the depths of her being.

‘Was that decision your own or your brother’s?’ Kiryl asked.

He was smiling at her again. His smile said that she could feel safe with him, but his words had sliced to the heart of her own growing awareness that a byproduct of Vasilii’s protection of her was a certain immaturity when it came to experiencing the things that other girls her age had experienced. Was that how he saw her? As someone immature and inexperienced? A girl rather than the fully sensual and adult woman a man like him was bound to prefer?

‘My own,’ she answered him. ‘Vasilii does not make my decisions or choices for me—nor would he want to do so.’

‘So why not allow me to convince you that this wine will greatly enhance your enjoyment of our time together today?’

Her heart was skittering around inside her chest. Another, more experienced woman would know whether or not Kiryl was indulging in flirtatious banter with her with words that were mundane on the surface and yet somehow held a teasing note of a deeper sensuality, but she did not. So surely it would be better to play it safe and assume that it was merely her own over-active imagination that was deepening them with a sensual promise that did not exist?

No sooner had she made that decision than the calming effect it had had on her was ripped away, when Kiryl stood up and came to her side, gently lifting her hand away from her wine glass and continuing to hold it whilst he poured her the merest half a glass of pale straw-coloured wine, before filling his own glass and then returning the bottle to the ice bucket. All the while he continued to hold her hand. And not just hold it. He was touching her fingers, stroking them lightly and almost absently.

‘You’re trembling,’ he told her.

Of course she was. He was touching her. No, not just touching her, caressing her, and because of that she was trembling—from head to toe—her heart thudding frantically.

‘Your brother must be a very stern protector if the thought of having half a glass of wine without his approval can have this effect on you.’

He thought she was trembling because she was afraid of Vasilii? By rights she ought to defend her loving halfbrother and tell him truthfully that never once in their lives together had she ever, ever had any need to fear him, that it had always been Vasilii to whom she had run with all her troubles, to be comforted by his big-brotherly love for her. But if she did tell him that then he might ask her exactly why she was trembling—and she couldn’t possibly tell him that. All she could do was make a mental apology to her brother and try to control the jagged exhaled breath of relief that shuddered through her body when Kiryl let go of her hand and returned to his own chair, lifting his own wine glass to his lips.

‘So, tell me more about your mother’s charity,’ he said.

‘You were going to tell me about your mother,’ Alena reminded him.

For a moment Alena thought he hadn’t heard her. He seemed to be looking past her into some dark place that only he could see, a fixed expression on his face.

Was that merely a shadow darkening his eyes, or was it really the ice cold look of anger it seemed?

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised uncomfortably.

‘For what? Asking about my mother?’ Kiryl gave a small shrug, his gaze hardening still further. ‘There is no need to be. It is no secret, after all. The reality of my mother’s life has been well documented by those who do not thinking it fitting that the son of a homeless Romany should become successful, because that challenges their prejudiced belief in their own superiority and the inferiority of those they choose to label in such a way.’

And that labelling, that rejection and cruelty, had hurt him badly. Alena could tell. Her tender heart immediately ached for him, and for his mother.

‘It is true that as a child she did not receive the education afforded to the more privileged in society, but that was not her fault. My father was happy to sleep with her—the beautiful gypsy girl he had seen dancing in a café in Moscow frequented by the wealthy—but the minute she told him that she was pregnant, carrying me, he deserted and denigrated her, saying that she was lying about their relationship and that he had not fathered me. He told her he would rather smother me at birth than acknowledge that he had fathered a child with Romany blood.’

Alena couldn’t hold back her gasp of emotion.

‘Your mother told you about your father’s cruelty to you both?’ she asked.

A shuttered darkness claimed the light from Kiryl’s eyes.

‘No. She died when I was eight years old. But prior to that she told me that she wanted me to know how important love was and how much she loved me. How love could bring the greatest happiness life could hold and the sharpest pain. She wanted me to be proud of what and who I was, even though we were living in the meanest kind of poverty.’

His mother had been a fool—too weak to stand up to his father and demand that he did the right thing by them both. All her talk of love and being proud of himself had meant nothing in the real world—the world that was ruled by men like his father, successful, wealthy men who controlled their own destiny and made the rules by which others had to live. As far as Kiryl was concerned it was far better to focus on that reality than to follow his mother’s advice about the importance of love. Look what it had done to her, and through her to him. No, there was no place for love in his life. Love only weakened those who were foolish enough to allow it into their lives.

‘So how do you know—I mean about how your father felt about your mother?’ Alena asked, wondering if perhaps he had misunderstood the situation. After all, surely no father could ever be so cruel to his child?

‘How do I know? I know because my father told me himself, when I finally tracked him down after the woman who fostered me told me the story my mother had told her before she died. My father was a rich man—a powerful and respected man. He told me the truth and then he threw me out on the street outside his grand mansion—like unwanted rubbish, to be swept away out of his sight. I swore then that one day—’

Kiryl stopped speaking, frowning as he recognised how much he had said to Alena. He had never intended to say it, and certainly had never said to anyone else. It was because he wanted to draw her into his plan by eliciting her sympathy towards his mother and making her believe that he had a genuine reason for choosing her charity for his donation, that was why. It certainly wasn’t because something in her expression and that shocked gasp she had given had somehow unlocked a door within him he had thought safely barred against the burned-out ashes of the pain he kept caged behind that door. It was impossible for any living human being to re-ignite those ashes. They belonged to the promise he had made himself when he had lain in the gutter outside his father’s house—that he would prove his superiority by becoming more successful and more powerful than his father had ever been.

His father was dead now, his empire squandered by the second husband of the young wife he had married to provide him with the son she had never conceived for him—the son he had told Kiryl would be the only son he would ever acknowledge.

With the acquisition of this new contract Kiryl would finally succeed in reaching the goal he had set himself as the fifteen-year-old who had gone to Moscow to look for his father and been rejected. That goal had been to create a business empire that was both larger, more profitable and more securely stable than that of his father. Only Vasilii Demidov now stood in his way.

He looked across the table at Alena.

‘When I heard about your mother’s charity I knew immediately that it was something I wanted to be involved with as a donor.’

That was certainly true. He had known immediately he had read about the charity and Alena’s desire to become more involved in it just what a useful tool it would be in winning her trust.

‘I know how much work the charity does to help girls have the opportunity to gain an education. I admire you for wanting to take on that responsibility. Many young women in your situation would have handed that responsibility over to someone else.’ He flattered Alena warmly.

‘I could never do that. The charity was so close to my mother’s heart.’ She paused, and then said emotionally, ‘It must have been so hard for you, growing up without your mother and—’

‘According to my father I was lucky that she died, and that I was fostered by a family without the taint of Romany blood.’

Alena felt her throat clog with emotional tears. Within her head she could see that poor baby, and felt a female ache to have been able to hold and protect it. Poor, poor baby to be so cruelly treated by life.

‘I was very lucky in having the parents I did,’ was all she could manage to say.

‘But unlucky, perhaps, in having a brother who is so determined to control your life?’

‘Vasilii only wants what’s best for me.’ She defended her half-sibling quickly.

‘For you and for himself, I dare say,’ Kiryl responded, adding before Alena could question his words, ‘We’d better have our main course before it gets cold. I hope you like Dover sole.’

‘Yes, it’s another of my favourites,’ Alena began as Kiryl reached over to remove her starter, and then guessed, ‘You knew that, didn’t you? And that’s why you’ve chosen the meal you have?’

So she wasn’t entirely without either intelligence or the ability to reason analytically, Kiryl acknowledged. He gave her a small smile and told her, ‘Very well—I confess that I did ask the restaurant what your favourite dishes are. I wanted to make a good impression on you.’

Alena couldn’t look directly at him. Her heart was singing with delight and disbelief at the thought of Kiryl actually wanting to impress her, and yet at the same time his words had brought her a certain amount of self-consciousness that was making it impossible for her to look at him.

‘I’m the one who should be trying to impress you,’ she managed to tell him, albeit slightly breathlessly, her voice soft and husky with all that she was feeling. ‘After all, I’m the one who has the most to gain from our lunch.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Kiryl told her softly as he placed her main meal in front of her and removed the cover. ‘There is a great deal that I am hoping to gain from our relationship, Alena.’

As he spoke he was looking at her mouth, and as though his look was communicating an unspoken command Alena could feel her lips softening and parting as deliciously sensual ribbons of desire unrolled to flutter inside her with the movement of her breathing.

‘Tell me more about your mother,’ he invited her, abruptly bringing her back to reality, and the fact that this meeting was about her mother’s charity and not about the effect he was having on her.

‘She was a very special person,’ she answered, her voice soft with love for the mother she had loved so much. ‘Everyone thought so.’

‘Including your half-brother? After all, she was his stepmother.’

‘Vasilii loved her very much. He was fourteen when my parents met in St Petersburg, where my mother was working as an English Language teacher at a school there. Vasilii’s own mother died when he was seven. He wanted them to marry before they knew that they wanted to marry themselves, so he always says, although my mother used to say that she knew the first moment she met him that she loved my father.

‘My mother loved St Petersburg. She and my father used to take me there every winter. It’s such a romantic city. A fairytale city with the Neva frozen and the lights of the older quarters twinkling on the snow. It’s almost possible to think you’re back in the days of dashing young men in the uniform of the Imperial Guard driving their troikas, pulled by a team of three matching horses along Nevsky Prospect, ready to race one another in the morning after spending all night dancing. And then in the summer, when the sun never sets, people flock to party on the islands of the delta. I had dreamed …’

‘That you might find love there yourself?’ Kiryl suggested.

Alena shook her head.

‘I am not such a dreamer that I expect to find love there just because my mother did, but I do think that it would be a very special place to go with … with someone special to me.’ That was as close as she was able to get to saying what she meant. Somehow just to speak the word ‘lover’ in Kiryl’s presence was to run the risk of betraying her vulnerability to him, or having him guess that when she said ‘lover’ she meant Kiryl himself.

Kiryl knew the St Petersburg to which Alena referred—the St Petersburg of the rich and privileged. After all, he was one of them. But he also knew another St Petersburg. The St Petersburg of his own childhood poverty and his rejection by his father. He had turned his back on Russia just as his father had turned his back on him. Kiryl considered himself to be a citizen of the world, not of one part of it.

Not that he was going to say that to Alena. He wanted her to believe that he understood and empathised with her.