The Russian Rivals

Normally it was to these photographs and this story that Alena’s attention was drawn whenever she entered this room. Her mother had chosen these photographs herself, and every time she looked at them Alena felt almost as though she could feel her mother in the room with her.

Today, though, it wasn’t the photographs that were the focus of her immediate attention. Instead it was the man standing in front of the windows, outlined by the light coming in through them, his features shadowed and hidden. Alena didn’t need to see those features to recognise him. Her body and her senses had recognised him immediately. Kiryl.

CHAPTER THREE

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.