.

be back in London by lunchtime,’ Luka was saying with satisfaction.

      ‘Are you sure you want to leave so soon, Mikhail?’ Peter Gregory enquired in a salacious tone of amusement. ‘Isn’t our hostess hottie waiting up for you? Bet you five grand you can’t get her into bed before tomorrow!’

      Wishing she hadn’t chosen to eavesdrop, Kat turned paper pale and her stomach lurched. In haste, she closed her bedroom door softly shut, afraid that the smallest sign that she was still awake might be taken as proof of some sleazy invitation. There was no doubt about it: men could think, talk and behave like repellent beasts, she thought in disgust. Peter Gregory and his dirty mind certainly fitted into that category. Were the three men really agreeing a bet on the odds of her sleeping with Mikhail tonight? Clearly that kiss had been witnessed and misunderstood. A rolling riptide of shame and mortification assailed Kat. She had never been more aware of how inexperienced she was in the field of sex. A truly confident woman would have overheard that bet being proposed and sauntered downstairs to make a smart comment that would deflate Peter’s ego and show how little she cared for such coarse sexist nonsense. But Kat just felt hurt and humiliated and, unable to think of a smart comment, she paused only to turn the key in the lock before scrambling into bed.

      And that was when she thought about that kiss; the recollection of her foolish surrender to it hit her like a slap in the face. She had let him kiss her, hadn’t made the slightest attempt to prevent him. Even worse, she had revelled in every insanely exciting second of his mouth on hers. Maybe all the years of self-discipline and repression had left her sex-starved and pitifully vulnerable to such an approach; maybe she was every bit the spinster figure of fun that she had feared she was, she conceded wretchedly. She tensed as she heard a slight noise outside her door, her imagination making an unpleasant deduction as a light knock sounded on her door. She froze in an agony of shame, did nothing, said nothing, her face burning as though it were on fire. It crossed her mind that she was being very heavily punished for allowing a single kiss and that she was old-fashioned and badly out of touch with modern mores not to have appreciated that even that small amount of intimacy had evidently encouraged expectations she would never have dreamt of fulfilling.

      The following morning that restive night of self-recrimination and regret had etched shadows below her eyes and left her pale and out of sorts with the world in general. She rose early to prepare the full breakfast her guests would expect. She heard Mikhail’s deep drawl before she saw him and busied herself by the stove, the nape of her neck prickling, stark tension leaping through her slim, taut length.

      A hand touched her arm and she jerked her head around, colliding with his stunning dark eyes.

      ‘I expected to see you last night,’ Mikhail informed her with a candour that disconcerted her.

      ‘Sorry, you lost your bet,’ Kat framed with dulcet scorn.

      His level black brows pleated and he swung back to her, surprisingly light on his feet for all his size. ‘What bet?’ he shot back at her.

      Her cheeks flamed. ‘I overheard your friend offering you a bet last night—’

      ‘Oh … that,’ Mikhail breathed with a sardonic tightening of his handsome mouth, his spectacular dark eyes meeting hers without a shade of discomfiture. ‘I’m a little too mature to bet on such outcomes.’

      Kat glanced past him to note that only Luka was at the table while Peter Gregory was still chatting on his phone in the doorway. Kat moved a step closer to Mikhail and lowered her voice. ‘You knocked on my door,’ she murmured that dry reminder, pleased that she managed to achieve a tone of complete unconcern.

      A sardonic laugh was wrenched from the tall, powerfully built Russian. ‘So?’ he challenged. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

      Kat dealt him a cold appraisal and without another word whisked the hot plates out of the warming oven in the range to serve the breakfast.

      ‘Ne ponyal … I don’t get it,’ Mikhail extended impatiently, determined to win a response.

      Kat planted a rack of toast on the table along with a pot of coffee and stood at the window, watching Roger Packham drive a tractor in the field beyond her garden, only vaguely wondering what he was doing there in the snow while she struggled to keep a hold of her temper. She didn’t care whether Mikhail got it or not. Thankfully he was leaving and she wouldn’t have to see him again and recall how degraded he had made her feel. He had assumed that she was so easily available, so free with her body that she might invite him into her bed within hours of meeting him, and that was an insult. He would have slept with her too, had she been willing, Kat thought grimly, and that told her all that she needed to know about him and his outlook on life. Most probably, he was what Emmie called a ‘man whore’, the sort of guy who slept around, who probably kept a tally of his sexual scores and prided himself on his high success rate with women.

      In the continuing silence, Mikhail ground his teeth together. She infuriated him without even trying. ‘I want to see you again,’ he said flatly, not an ounce of appeal or gentleness in that statement.

      ‘No!’ Kat told him sharply, her soft full mouth rounding on the vowel sound in a manner that sent his hormones jumping.

      ‘And that is all you have to say to me?’ Mikhail growled, outraged by her attitude, luminous black eyes glittering like falling stars.

      ‘Yes, that is all I have to say to you. I’m not interested,’ Kat completed with a little toss of her head that sent her fiery curls snaking round her taut cheekbones.

      ‘Liar,’ Mikhail contradicted with complete derision and the thwack-thwack noise of a helicopter coming in low above the house almost drowned him out.

      But Kat heard him and squared up to him, antagonism splintering from her. ‘You really do think you’re God’s gift to the female sex, don’t you?’ she condemned, her scorn unhidden. ‘I’m not interested and I can’t wait for you to leave!’

      ‘Never thought I’d see the day that you got the brush off,’ Peter Gregory murmured somewhere in the background while Luka, glancing in every direction but at Mikhail, urged his future brother-in-law to keep quiet.

      In a rush, Kat served the breakfast. Two helicopters were engaged in landing in Roger’s field beyond her garden. The older man must have been clearing the snow for them to land. She turned back to discover that Mikhail had still not sat down.

      ‘Eat,’ she urged him.

      ‘I’m not hungry,’ he breathed curtly, colour scoring his exotic cheekbones to accentuate the clean sculpted lines of his darkly beautiful face.

      An unexpected stab of remorse assailed Kat, who wondered if she had been unreasonably outspoken and spiteful. Hadn’t she made assumptions about him in the same way she assumed that he had made assumptions about her? What if she was wrong? But she had not been wrong in her conviction that he had knocked on her bedroom door the night before, she reminded herself impatiently, wondering where that inappropriate attack of conscience had come from. Soft pink mantled her cheeks just as a loud series of knocks sounded on the back door. Mikhail opened it and suddenly her kitchen was awash with large men in overcoats all speaking Russian at one and the same time. An older man with greying hair greeted him with perceptible warmth and relief. In the free-for-all of competing male voices, Kat concentrated on offering everyone coffee and biscuits.

      Evidently, Mikhail was important enough to have a helicopter sent to pick him up to facilitate his swift return to London. Two helicopters? Had he arranged that means of transport the night before? Was he a flash high-earning banker like Peter Gregory? Or some big businessman with more money than sense?

      Luka was digging through his pockets to extract money to settle the itemised bill she had left on the table. Mikhail swept the bill up, glanced at it and shot Kat a sardonic look. ‘You don’t charge enough,’ he told her forcefully, digging the bill into his pocket, leaning down to thrust his friend’s money back into his hand. He tugged out his own wallet and slapped several banknotes on the table.