it. He didn’t want to hear how his half-brother had suffered so.
‘Has Belenki been back to Australia?’
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘But he has been talking daily with Nina. They are coming up with new ideas all the time.’
Why, Aleksi begged himself, did that name strike fear inside him?
He tried to pull up the man’s image—yet, like so much else in his mind, it was a blur…as if it had been pixilated…like the many other shadowy areas in his mind that he must allow no one else to know about.
‘Nina will run the House of Kolovsky into the ground—she cannot run it,’ he declared.
‘Who else is there?’
‘Me,’ Aleksi ground out. ‘I will be back at my desk on Monday.’
‘Aleksi!’ Kate’s voice was exasperated. ‘I didn’t ring for that; I just rang because you made me promise to keep you informed. It’s way too soon for you to return. Look…’
She lowered her voice and he could just picture her leaning forward, picture her finger toying with a curl of her hair as she tried to come up with a solution, and despite the direness of the situation the image made him smile. The sound of her voice soothed him, and it moved him too, in the way it sometimes did—never more so than now.
‘I can ring you every day…’
He stared down at the sudden, unexpected passionate reaction of his body and did not answer.
‘Can you hear me, Aleksi?’
‘Go on.’
‘I can ring you all the time…tell you things…and then you can tell me what to do.’
He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted her to tell him things. Hell, how he wanted at this moment to tell her exactly what to do. He didn’t want to think about the House of Kolovsky and his family, didn’t want to face what he was trying to forget. How much nicer would it be to just lie here and let her tell him things that he wanted to hear?
‘Kate…’ His voice was ragged. He wanted her on a plane this minute—he wanted her here, wanted her now—but instead he forced himself to sit upright, to ignore the fire in his groin and concentrate on what was necessary. ‘I’ll be back on Monday. Don’t tell anyone, don’t act any different. Just go along with whatever Nina says.’
It wasn’t her place to argue, and she didn’t.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to organize—?’
‘I’ll sort everything out from this end,’ Aleksi interrupted. ‘Kate…?’
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’ He clicked off the phone and tried to keep his mind on necessary business. Turned on his laptop and raced through figures. He knew only too well that the House of Kolovsky was on a collision course and that he was the only one who could stop it.
He just couldn’t quite remember why.
And for the first time in ages he didn’t try to. The figures he was analysing blurred in front of his eyes, so instead he clicked on company photographs—a who’s who of the House of Kolovsky.
Ivan, his deceased father; Nina, his mother; Levander, his half-brother, whom his parents had conveniently forgotten about and left in an orphanage in Russia when they fled to Australia; Iosef, his twin, and his sister Annika. Then Aleksi clicked on his own image, saw his scowling, haughty face before hurriedly moving on. Finally, for the first time in weeks he allowed himself the respite of her face.
Kate Taylor.
Smiling, her face round and shiny, dark hair curling under the heat of the photographer’s lights, nervous at having her photo taken—though it was just a head-and-shoulders corporate shot.
He must be losing his mind.
Imagine that bulk on his healing thigh, he told himself, trying to calm his excited body. He tried in vain to reel in his imagination—except he just grew harder at the thought of Kate on top of him…
He had the most beautiful women on tap—warm, eager flesh on the other side of his bedroom door—yet all he could think of was that in a week he would again see Kate.
‘Aleksi?’ The nurse knocked, her voice low, the door opening just a fraction. ‘Is there anything at all you need?’
‘Not to be disturbed,’ he growled, and as the door reluctantly closed he turned off the computer and lay in the darkness, willing sleep to invade. Then he gave in.
Once, he decided.
Just this once he would allow himself to go there—to think about Kate and imagine himself with her. Or rather, Aleksi corrected as his hand slid around his heated length, just one last time.
Just one time more.
Chapter Two
‘YOU look pretty!’ Georgie said as Kate sliced off the top of her boiled egg.
‘Thank you,’ Kate replied with a half-smile. After all, Georgie was her number one fan, and it was a compliment that was regularly given.
‘Really pretty.’ Georgie frowned. ‘You’re wearing lots of lipstick.’
‘Am I?’ Kate said vaguely.
‘Is that new?’ Her knowing little eyes roamed over Kate’s new suit.
‘I’ve had it for ages.’ Kate shrugged, adding two sweeteners to her cup of tea and wishing, wishing, wishing she’d kept to her diet. She’d consoled herself that it would be another two months at least before he came back, and now, thanks to the lousy Nina, Aleksi would be back in the office today!
‘Is Aleksi coming back today?’ Her daughter’s shrewd eyes narrowed.
‘I’m not sure…’ Kate was at a loss as to what to say, stunned at the mini-witch she had created. She half expected her to wrinkle up her nose and cast a spell—but then Georgie liked Aleksi.
No, Georgie adored Aleksi.
Kate had thought that day at the hospital would be the last time she would see him—had almost managed to put him to the far recesses of her mind, where he would have stayed had the occasional card not arrived from him.
The occasional hotel postcard, from far-flung places around the globe, in less than legible writing.
The odd, completely child-unfriendly toys for Georgie—like a set of Russian dolls when she was eighteen months old, and a jewellery box with a little ballerina. Oh, they’d been few and far between over the years, but, given Aleksi’s communication was only slightly more erratic than Georgie’s father’s, they had lit up the little girl’s day when occasionally they came.
Kate had struggled through part-time jobs, watching the unfolding saga of the Kolovskys in all the magazines, and when Ivan had died and Levander had renounced the Kolovsky throne the news that Aleksi was moving back to Australia had had Kate on tenterhooks—until finally, finally, long after his return, he had called and offered her a job she couldn’t refuse.
And such was the nature of the job she had been unable to refuse, despite thorough prior negotiation that she could only work school hours, sometimes Georgie could be found in the early hours of a Sunday morning sitting by Kate’s desk at work, with a takeaway breakfast in her lap, as Kate gritted her teeth and worked on the latest crisis that had erupted.
‘I like Aleksi!’
‘Well, you would,’ Kate said drily. ‘He’s always nice to you.’ Even when he was at his meanest, even when Kate had somehow managed to erase six months of figures and had tearfully been trying to retrieve them as he hovered like a black cloud over her shoulder one very early morning, still he’d managed a smile and an eye-roll for Georgie.