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  Once there she asked for her bill and proceeded to gather up her coat and her bag. She had shown herself up most dreadfully. She deserved the punishment he had meted out, she told herself. She was just glad that her half-brother hadn’t been there to witness it. Fresh tears blurred her vision.

  Automatically Kiryl tracked her uncoordinated, anxiously urgent movements. Because he wanted to distance himself from her, that was all. And yet his gaze and his senses were somehow reluctant to let her go. Even now, when she was plainly upset, there was still a grace about her, a breathtaking natural sensuality, a pliable softness—from the top of her shining fall of dark blonde hair to the delicacy of ankles so fine Kiryl suspected he could easily close his hand around them—that said the whole of her could be bent to the will of the man who possessed her.

  And did he want to be that man? It wasn’t so much a matter of wanting as of taking advantage of what he was being offered so blatantly. Kiryl shrugged aside his inner criticism of himself. He was, after all, a man—with a man’s needs. And it was obviously what she wanted. She had practically been begging for it, and it would be one way of ridding himself of the anger he felt at having his plans threatened by Vasilii Demidov. He had taken the savagery of the sharp raw edge off it via his mockery of her. He could make amends quite easily. He knew the format. She would initially pretend to refuse to allow him to do so. He would then flatter her and she would give in. It was a game as old as life itself, and an hour or so in bed with her in his suite would surely be enough to satisfy the ache in his groin.

  A brief movement of his hand summoned a waitress. Giving her his instructions, he made his way over to the table.

  Alena was just about to leave, her back to him as she waited for another waitress to bring her bill.

  ‘You didn’t drink your tea earlier, and since I am very much in need of a cup why don’t we share a samovar together? Two Russians together, sharing a tradition from our homeland?’

  The unexpected sound of his voice had Alena spinning round, her shock intensifying when he reached out and closed long fingers around her wrist, his thumb on her unsteady, far too fast pulse.

  His smile was pure megawatt charm. It softened the earlier arrogant harshness of his features and turned him into every woman’s fantasy of a bad boy grown into an adult male. It gave him the sensuality of a Cossack, the romance of a gypsy, the wild devilry of a pirate and the alpha allure of a hero. With that smile he was all of them and more. And she would be a fool to give in to him.

  ‘No, thank you.’ She tried to sound distant and cool, but she knew he had heard the vulnerable huskiness of her voice, the note of doubt and longing that undermined her will-power. Her throat felt dry and raw with emotion and tension. She wanted to wrench her wrist free of his hold but somehow she couldn’t.

  He was smiling at her again, more intimately this time, the malachite eyes darkening and gleaming.

  ‘I was rude and I upset you, and now you are angry with me. You think, no doubt, that I do not deserve your company. And you are right. After all, such a beautiful woman can easily find a far more pleasant and appreciative companion. But I think you have a kind heart, and that that kind heart will whisper to you to take pity on me.’

  Oh, yes, he could be very charming—as well as very cruel. And Alena didn’t need Vasilii to tell her how dangerous that made him. Every woman carried within her DNA the instinctive knowledge of just how dangerous such a man could be. And just how compellingly and demandingly irresistible.

  The smile that accompanied his apology revealed strong white teeth and crinkled the skin around his eyes. Its effect on her locked the breath in her lungs and started a stampede of small butterfly movements of shocked but exhilarating excitement fizzing in her stomach. The hurt he had already caused her had left its mark, though—like a bruise against pale vulnerable skin and her brain warned her to be careful.

  He was massaging her skin, stroking that place where her pulse was thudding so tempestuously, but far from soothing her his touch was only increasing her agitation and her awareness of him. She must escape from him whilst she still could. He was dangerous, and she was not equipped to deal with that danger.

  ‘I must go. I …’

  Her English was refined and unaccented. Despite the samovar he had seen on the table she did not look or sound Russian, except for those silver-grey eyes that reminded him so intensely of the Neva and the city of his birth. And the pain he had known there …

  ‘I have ordered our tea. See—the waitress is bringing it now.’

  Two waitresses were heading for the table—one carrying fresh tea, the other bringing her bill. The waitress with her bill smiled at her and said politely, ‘I am sorry, Miss Demidova. I thought you wanted your bill.’

  She was Russian. She had to be with that surname. And not just any Russian surname either. The irony of her sharing the same surname—a relatively common one in Russia—as his rival for the contract he wanted so badly was not lost on Kiryl. Perhaps it was an omen. The voluntary foster mother or babushka, who had raised him after the death of his own mother, along with several other orphaned and unwanted children, had set great store by old superstitions and beliefs, but he did not. He was a modern man, after all.

  ‘You’re staying here in the hotel?’ he asked, pulling out a chair for Alena with his free hand and firmly guiding her into it, leaving her no option other than to remain at the table.

  He was even more magnificent, more imposing, more heart-stoppingly male close up than he had been at a distance. In the rarefied heated air of the hotel he somehow managed to smell of the clean air of the Russian steppes, with an underlying note of their wildness that brought the tiny hairs up along her skin. Oh, yes—he was dangerous.

  ‘Yes.’ She answered his question. ‘My brother Vasilii has a concierge apartment here in the hotel for when he’s in London on business.’ Her half-brother was something of a nomad, and although he had similar apartments all over the world, and his most permanent address was an apartment in Zurich, there was nowhere that he really called home.

  Alena wasn’t quite sure if she was so pointedly introducing her brother into the conversation to warn Kiryl that she was not unprotected and alone, or to remind herself how Vasilii would judge her own behaviour were he to learn of it. Vasilii, who thought she was safely in the care of the now retired matron of the girls’ school Alena had attended, whom he had hired to stay with her whilst she was away. Poor Miss Carlisle, though, had been rushed into hospital with appendicitis, and was now recovering from an operation in the comfortable nursing home where Alena had insisted she go to to recuperate.

  Her absence was giving Alena a brief period of unexpected freedom, but Alena did feel guilty about the way she had deceived Miss Carlisle by letting her think that the niece she had begged Alena to contact on her behalf was now standing in for her. It wasn’t her fault that Miss Carlisle’s niece had left for New York the day before Miss Carlisle had fallen ill. She should have told Vasilii what had happened, of course, but she hadn’t. Her brother was still under the illusion that Miss Carlisle, who flatly refused to have anything to do with modern technology and thus would not use a computer or a mobile telephone, was staying in the apartment with Alena to look after her.

  Kiryl’s heart had jerked to a standstill, almost cutting off his breath and leaving him feeling almost as though he was at a hangman’s mercy. Surely it was beyond coincidence that there could be two Vasilii Demidovs—both of whom were wealthy enough to maintain a suite in one of London’s most expensive hotels? Perhaps there had after all been some grain of truth in his old babushka’s superstitious beliefs about the workings of fate?

  Kiryl, though, had not built up his business and his own status as a billionaire by making assumptions that were not based on properly sourced fact.

  After waiting for the waitress to pour their tea and then withdraw, he asked casually, ‘Your brother is Vasilii Demidov? Head of Venturanova International?’

 
‘Yes,’ Alena confirmed, a small frown puckering her forehead as she asked anxiously, ‘Do you know Vasilii?’

  Was she concerned—anxious—about the possibility of him knowing her brother? Like all hunters Kiryl had a good nose for vulnerability in his prey.

  ‘Not personally. Although naturally I do know of him and his reputation as a successful businessman. Is he here in London?’ Kiryl knew that he wasn’t, but he wanted to know how much the girl would tell him.

  ‘No. He’s in China. On business.’

  ‘Leaving you, his sister, to amuse herself here in London, enjoying its nightlife?’ he suggested with another smile.

  Immediately Alena shook her head. ‘Oh, no. Vasilii would never allow me to do that. He doesn’t approve of that kind of thing—especially for me,’ she admitted, immediately flushing guiltily. She was saying far too much. Certainly saying and doing things that Vasilii would most definitely not have approved of, because she felt so nervous and so excited.

  ‘He sounds a very protective brother,’ Kiryl told her. A very protective brother who believed in guarding something—someone—who was very important to him. He needed to find out more about her and her relationship with her brother.

  ‘Yes he is.’ Alena answered Kiryl’s question, caught off guard. ‘And sometime …’

  ‘You find that irksome and inhibiting?’ he guessed. ‘You are young. It’s only natural that you want to enjoy the same kind of life as other people. It must be lonely for you—left here on your own here in an anonymous hotel whilst your brother goes about his business.’

  ‘Vasilii is very protective. He doesn’t leave me on my own. At least not normally. This time, though … This time he had to.’ Again Alena felt that pang of guilt she had every time she thought about how she was deceiving her brother. But, much as she liked Miss Carlisle, she was very old and very old-fashioned. Everything had been so different when their parents had been alive. Their father had been so energetic, so filled with an enjoyment of life, and her mother had been so loving, and so understanding. Alena missed them both dreadfully, but especially her mother.

  * * *

  Something was going on here. Kiryl’s sharply keen senses told him that. Some undercurrent the meaning of which with regard to his own plans he had yet to divine and define.

  He lifted one eyebrow and joked, ‘He sounds more like a gaoler than a brother.’

  Alena immediately felt guilty again. She was being horribly disloyal to Vasilii, but at the same time there was a sense of relief and release for her in talking about how she felt. Something about this intense stranger had her opening up about things she’d never confided to anyone before. Even so, her love for her brother insisted that she defend him and correct Kiryl’s misconceptions.

  ‘Vasilii is protective of me because he loves me, and because … because he promised our father when he was dying that he would always look after me.’ She dipped her head. ‘I worry sometimes that it is because of that promise that Vasilii has never married. Because of the business and because he worries so much about me that he has never had time to meet someone and fall in love.’

  Fall in love? What planet was the girl living on if she actually thought that the marriage of one of Russia’s richest men would involve ‘falling in love’? Not that he blamed Demidov for that. When the time came for him to marry himself his wife would be carefully chosen, by a logical process, not by some temporary burn of desire in his loins. Not that he was going to tell Alena that. The more she revealed to him the more convinced he became that this young woman—this girl, really—just might be his rival’s Achilles’ heel.

  Kiryl wasn’t someone who gave in to his own emotions, though. Always back up gut instinct with hard facts before acting—that was his own personal mantra, and he wasn’t going to go against that now, no matter how urgently the voice inside him was demanding that he now secure without delay his bait he might be able to use in a trap set against his rival for the contract.

  Hard facts closed traps. A mixture of gut instinct backed up by hard facts was what he lived by.

  Alena’s emotional defence of her brother had warmed the silver-grey of her eyes. They were like deep clear pools within which he could see each and every one of her thoughts, Kiryl recognised, as she looked at him over the rim of her teacup and then flushed, quickly concealing her gaze with the dark fan of her eyelashes.

  It had been wrong of her to discuss Vasilii with Kiryl. He was, after all, a stranger, and she knew how Vasilii felt both about protecting her and protecting his own privacy. She put down her teacup.

  ‘I really must go.’

  Kiryl nodded his head, and then got up.

  ‘Thank you for the tea,’ Alena told him as he summoned the waitress.

  ‘It was my pleasure—and it was just the first of many pleasures I hope we shall enjoy together, Alena Demidova.’

  Before Alena could guess his intent, he reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth. Just the sensation of the warmth of his breath on her trembling fingers was enough to send hot molten quivers of sensation racing up her arm, making her feel weak with awareness of her vulnerability to him. He was flirting with her, and more than fulfilling the fantasies she had been indulging in ever since she had first seen him with the sensual promise implicit in his words.

  As she moved she caught sight of her watch. Vasilii! There would be e-mails from him and he would worry if she did not reply speedily to them.

  ‘It’s four o’clock. I really must go. My brother …’ ‘Ah, like Cinderella fearing the stroke of midnight you rush to leave me—and without so much as a shoe to trace you by. But we shall meet again. Have no doubt about that. And when we do I shall be tempted to ensure that the promise I have seen in your eyes when you look at me becomes more than just a look.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN THE privacy of his own suite Kiryl telephoned his agent, announcing the minute the older man answered the call, ‘Alena Demidova, sister of Vasilii Demidov—I want to know everything there is to know about her.’

  From the windows of his suite he could look out on the private garden in the square below, where the February light was now beginning to fade. A young East European woman was walking there with two children, both of them wearing the uniform of an exclusive prep school, but Kiryl had no interest in the garden or its occupants. All his intention was focused on the game plan now unfolding inside his head.

  ‘Everything, Ivan—from who her friends are, how she spends her time, to what she eats for her breakfast. I want to know it all. And even more importantly I want to know everything there is to know about her relationship with her brother Vasilii, and his with her. I want to know what he thinks of her and what he plans for her. And I want to know by tomorrow morning.’

  Ending the call before the other man could say anything, Kiryl paced the floor of the sitting room of his suite.

  He could feel his whole body tingling with a potent mixture of excitement, challenge, and the knowledge that he had embarked on a game he would win. Alena was the key to her brother’s downfall. He was sure of it. He could sense it, smell it, and feel it deep down inside himself in the Romany genes given to him by his mother and so loathed and despised by his father.

  Unexpectedly inside his head he had a momentary image of Alena as she had been when they had had tea together—as fragile as a flower a man might pick and then crush in his hand, her emotions and desires plain to see. Something was struggling to come to life inside him—something that had its roots in that brief time he had shared with his mother before she had died, the only time in his life when he had been truly loved. For a moment he hesitated. But he could not afford to be weak—not now. As weak as the mother who had loved his father and conceived him against that father’s wishes. He’d had to be strong in everything he had striven so long and hard for, goaded and driven during his struggle by the memory of the man who had been his father sneering down at him as he pushed him into the gutter before walking away from him.r />
  It was finally within his grasp. And if Alena had to be sacrificed so that he could keep the mental promise he had made his dead mother, then so be it.

  ‘The promise I have seen in your eyes when you look at me.’ In the grey London light of the February morning Alena lay in the bed in her expensively designed and decorated bedroom, cocooned in the highest thread-count sheets that money could buy, but feeling every bit as uncomfortable as though she were that fairytale princess lying on the discomfort of a sharp pea. Fairytales. Wasn’t that what this was all about? A young woman’s fairytale, though, rather than a child’s. A fairytale of a prince who wasn’t just handsome and kind but a prince who was also sensual and sexy—a prince who offered not the experience of a pampered, indulged lifestyle, but the experience of real raw sensuality … the kind of intensely emotional and passionate sex that perhaps was merely a fantasy.

  Was that why she now felt so unnerved and afraid? Because now that she had been given a hint that she could make her fantasy reality she feared that she might discover that being sexually involved with Kiryl would destroy that fantasy? Sex with Kiryl. Intimacy with Kiryl. The intimacy of shared kisses and caresses, her skin shivering with excitement, and the enticement of his hands—his lips—on her naked body. She was shivering with that excitement now, at the mere thought of it. But wasn’t the reality that she needed to put him out of her thoughts and out of her life? That was certainly what Vasilii would want her to do.

  Alena looked at her alarm clock.

  She had an appointment later in the morning at the offices of a charity set up by her mother. Vasilii would prefer her to wait until she was twenty-five to step into her mother’s shoes and fully take over her role at the head of the charity, Alena knew. He felt that even at twenty-one—which she would be in just over fifteen months—she would be still too young for such a responsibility. Alena, though, was determined to prove her half-brother wrong. She had been assiduous in studying the workings of the charity since her mother’s death.