living all the way out here alone?’ Peter Gregory interrupted to ask Kat abruptly. ‘Are you a widow?’
‘I’ve never been married,’ Kat replied evenly, all too accustomed to being asked that kind of question by her guests. ‘My father left me this house and turning it into a guest house made sense at the time.’
‘So, is there a man in your life?’ Peter prompted with an assessing, too familiar look that she didn’t appreciate, particularly not now that Mikhail had put her on her guard.
‘I think that’s my business,’ Kat countered, feeling that politeness only went so far.
Another man? Why hadn’t that possibility occurred to him? She might be attracted to him but she had backed off because she had someone else in her life, Mikhail reflected in an increasingly aggressive mood that was steadily beginning to knock him off balance. He felt angry, edgy, quite unlike himself, his vibrant energy too confined by the walls threatening to close up around him. Being cooped up was giving him cabin fever, he decided broodingly. He had always taken his space, his privacy and his complete freedom for granted. In a sudden movement he plunged upright.
‘I’ll walk back to the car and collect our phones. Leaving them behind wasn’t such a good idea, Luka,’ he told his friend shortly.
Kat blinked in astonishment at that declaration.
‘You can’t go back out there,’ Luka objected in dismay. ‘There’s a blizzard blowing and the car’s miles away.’
‘I would have returned to it earlier if you hadn’t been hurt,’ Mikhail replied drily.
‘I’d really like my phone back,’ Peter Gregory said cheerfully.
Kat turned her attention to Mikhail for the first time since he had entered the kitchen. It had taken considerable control to stave off her insatiable need to look at him again but genuine concern now gripped her. After an instant of hesitation, which gave him time to don his waterproof jacket in the hall and open the front door, she jumped up and chased after him.
The snow was falling thick and fast, the road beyond her gates so deeply engulfed with furrowed drifts of snow that she could no longer see it. A split second before Mikhail stepped off the doorstep with the casual confidence of a male about to go for a stroll in a sunlit park, she shot out her hand and closed it around his arm to stop him. ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ she exclaimed, shivering violently in the freezing air. ‘Nobody risks their life to go and collect phones—’
‘Don’t call me an idiot,’ Mikhail growled in rampant disbelief at her interference, his handsome features clenched with derisive incredulity. ‘And don’t be a drama queen … I am not risking my life if I choose to take a walk in little more than a foot of snow—’
‘Well, if I didn’t have a conscience I’d be happy to leave you to die of frostbite and exposure in a drift somewhere down the road!’ Kat let fly back at him, her temper breaking through. Of all the stupid male macho idiots she had ever met, he surely took the biscuit.
‘I am not about to die,’ Mikhail fielded with sardonic bite, black eyes full of arrogant scorn. ‘I am wearing protective clothing. I am very fit and I know exactly what I’m doing in such terrain and weather—’
‘I’m afraid that’s not a very convincing claim coming from a guy who had to have me show him where this house was on the map!’ Kat whipped back at him without an ounce of hesitation. ‘Use the landline here and be sensible.’
Mikhail gritted his perfect white teeth, caught out by the reminder of the little game he had played with her. He gazed down at her in furious frustration, her bossiness an unwelcome surprise. She was virtually shouting at him as well and that was a novelty he had never met with before and liked even less in a woman. But her green eyes still gleamed like the richest emeralds in her heart-shaped face while the breeze whipped her torrent of curls round her narrow shoulders and made of skim her pale cheeks. She provided an alluring vision, even for a male who had long since decided that, like children, he pretty much preferred women to be seen and not heard. And that fast Mikhail switched from wanting her silence into an infinitely more intoxicating mood, all conscious thought suspended while his body thrummed taut with powerful sexual need and tension.
Later, Kat would tell herself that he behaved like a caveman and that the way she found herself staring up at him had nothing to do with the manner in which, black predatory eyes glittering, he hauled her up against him with alarmingly strong arms and kissed her. And then the memory of what happened next went completely hazy because she fell into that kiss and almost drowned in the overpowering onslaught of the hungry passion he unleashed. Full of virile masculine power and devouring demand, his hard lips captured hers and thrust them fiercely apart so that he could penetrate the tender interior with his tongue and with a shockingly erotic thoroughness that racked her slender body against his with a helpless shudder of response. All control vanquished, she let the excitement rage over her and through her, tightening her nipples into bullet points, while flashing a jolting sensual wake-up call to her core. She shook in reaction, icy snowflakes melting on her cheeks in contrast to the smoulderingly hot burn of his carnal mouth on hers. It was a connection she had never made before and it was inexplicably and all at once wonderful, magical and terrifying.
‘I’ll be a couple of hours, milaya moya,’ Mikhail imparted thickly, staring down into her dazed face with the strongest sense of satisfaction he had experienced in a long time because she was finally behaving the way he wanted her to. ‘May I hope that you’ll wait up for my return?’
And just as quickly, in receipt of that manipulative invitation that naive sense of wonder and magic that had briefly transformed Kat into a woman she didn’t recognise shrivelled up and died right there and then on the doorstep.
‘Not unless you’ve got a death wish,’ Kat countered tartly, rubbing at her swollen lips with the back of her hand as though he had soiled her in some way, making his stunning dark eyes blaze like fireworks all over again above her head. ‘When I say no, Mr Whoever-you-are, I mean it and the answer hasn’t changed—’
‘You’re a very strange woman,’ Mikhail gritted, outraged by her and yet curiously drawn by the challenge of her defiance.
‘Because I’m not saying what you want to hear? Well, do I have news for you?’ Kat told him angrily. ‘I’m not the Sleeping Beauty and you’re not my prince, so the kiss was a waste of effort!’
Kat watched him stride off in the snow and she stalked back into the house and shut the door with the suggestion of a slam. Wretched, stubborn, stupid man! She turned and saw Luka staring at her wide-eyed from the lounge doorway as if she were an even stranger creature than his friend. His mouth curved with sudden unmistakable amusement. ‘Mikhail has done trekking in the Arctic and in Siberia,’ he delivered in a I-know-this-is-going-to-embarrass-you tone of apology.
Freakin’ typical, Kat thought tempestuously, her face colouring at the information: macho man had genuine grounds to believe that he was a superior being in the fitness field. The Arctic? Wincing, she went back into the kitchen to tidy up. That kiss? Her first in over ten years? No way was she going to think about that for even ten seconds! That would be awarding the Russian the kind of importance that he already so clearly believed to be his due and she had more backbone than that!
While Kat cleared the dishes from the kitchen table, Peter Gregory talked continuously about his big city apartment and the size of his last whopping banking bonus while dropping the names of several well-known clients, which she vaguely recognised from magazines. Grudgingly she conceded that he was so conceited that he made Mikhail look and sound positively humble.
KAT WAS PEERING round her bedroom curtain when she finally saw Mikhail returning, ploughing through the snow with his long powerful stride. He was safe. She had not been able to sleep for worrying about him and now, although she no longer had an acceptable reason to hover