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“Why extend your takeover to include me?” Clair asked, in a voice more husky than full of the disparagement she was aiming for. “Didn’t you get enough out of scooping up the firm from a dead man?”
“He was still alive when I started proceedings and, no, I didn’t get anything near what I wanted. Don’t make out like you’re some kind of prey just because you’re used to being the predator. You get to keep the money,” Aleksy taunted softly.
“No matter what?”
The jerky toss of her head was supposed to convey brash confidence. The question was real, though. She couldn’t help being seduced by the prospect of running the foundation her way, without needing approval on every detail. Without having to reveal that each of those details touched her personally and that was why she was fighting so hard for them.
“I’m not into anything kinky,” she warned. “If you’re looking for someone to spank you, move along to the next girl in the secretarial pool.”
“I’m not the submissive in any relationship,” he assured her dryly. “I like straight sex and lots of it. I don’t hurt women—ever—if that’s what you’re dancing around asking. I might play with dominating her, controlling her …”
He flexed his hands on her elbows, making her breasts press into his chest. Excitement returned with a spear of pleasure straight into her loins. She gasped.
“If she likes it,” he murmured.
This story has a history as long and colourful as the country it’s set in.
Clair is a heroine I lived with for at least a decade before I properly wrote her story. I knew she was pretending to be mistress to an impotent man—one who was using her to hide his criminal activities—but I had her paired with one wrong hero after another. At one point he was a CIA agent, another time he was a New England playboy. For a while she was an accountant, and in one version she asked the hero for an affair, rather than being acquired as a mistress as she is by Aleksy.
Aleksy, with his scar and his very dark past, is the perfect contrast to the flawless and aloof appearance that disguises Clair’s surprisingly sensitive personality. What I love most about Clair is her ability to bring Aleksy back to the man he was meant to become. He, in turn, gives her the promise of the family that she truly deserves.
I hope you find their story as satisfying to read as it was for me to finally write it.
Dani
The Russian’s Acquisition
Dani Collins
DANI COLLINS discovered romance novels in high school and immediately wondered how a person trained and qualified for that amazing job. She married her high school sweetheart, which was a start, then spent two decades trying to find her fit in the wide world of romance writing, always coming back to Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance.
Two children later, and with the first entering high school, she placed in Harlequin’s Instant Seduction contest. It was the beginning of a fabulous journey towards finally getting that dream job.
When she’s not in her Fortress of Literature, as her family calls her writing office, she works, chauffeurs children to extra-curricular activities, and gardens with more optimism than skill. Dani can be reached through her website at www.danicollins.com
To the editorial team in London, especially Suzy Clarke and Laurie Johnson.
Suzy because she fell for Aleksy early and told me to keep him on the back burner (that’s why he smolders), and Laurie because she fell for him as soon as she met him (and then told me how to make him even more brooding and irresistible).
Thanks, ladies!
Contents
I miss waking up with you.
THE NOTE STRUCK a pang of wistfulness in Clair Daniels’s chest. She wondered if anyone would ever write something so romantic to her. Then she