planet was the girl living on if she actually thought that the marriage of one of Russia’s richest men would involve ‘falling in love’? Not that he blamed Demidov for that. When the time came for him to marry himself his wife would be carefully chosen, by a logical process, not by some temporary burn of desire in his loins. Not that he was going to tell Alena that. The more she revealed to him the more convinced he became that this young woman—this girl, really—just might be his rival’s Achilles’ heel.
Kiryl wasn’t someone who gave in to his own emotions, though. Always back up gut instinct with hard facts before acting—that was his own personal mantra, and he wasn’t going to go against that now, no matter how urgently the voice inside him was demanding that he now secure without delay his bait he might be able to use in a trap set against his rival for the contract.
Hard facts closed traps. A mixture of gut instinct backed up by hard facts was what he lived by.
Alena’s emotional defence of her brother had warmed the silver-grey of her eyes. They were like deep clear pools within which he could see each and every one of her thoughts, Kiryl recognised, as she looked at him over the rim of her teacup and then flushed, quickly concealing her gaze with the dark fan of her eyelashes.
It had been wrong of her to discuss Vasilii with Kiryl. He was, after all, a stranger, and she knew how Vasilii felt both about protecting her and protecting his own privacy. She put down her teacup.
‘I really must go.’
Kiryl nodded his head, and then got up.
‘Thank you for the tea,’ Alena told him as he summoned the waitress.
‘It was my pleasure—and it was just the first of many pleasures I hope we shall enjoy together, Alena Demidova.’
Before Alena could guess his intent, he reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth. Just the sensation of the warmth of his breath on her trembling fingers was enough to send hot molten quivers of sensation racing up her arm, making her feel weak with awareness of her vulnerability to him. He was flirting with her, and more than fulfilling the fantasies she had been indulging in ever since she had first seen him with the sensual promise implicit in his words.
As she moved she caught sight of her watch. Vasilii! There would be e-mails from him and he would worry if she did not reply speedily to them.
‘It’s four o’clock. I really must go. My brother …’ ‘Ah, like Cinderella fearing the stroke of midnight you rush to leave me—and without so much as a shoe to trace you by. But we shall meet again. Have no doubt about that. And when we do I shall be tempted to ensure that the promise I have seen in your eyes when you look at me becomes more than just a look.’
IN THE privacy of his own suite Kiryl telephoned his agent, announcing the minute the older man answered the call, ‘Alena Demidova, sister of Vasilii Demidov—I want to know everything there is to know about her.’
From the windows of his suite he could look out on the private garden in the square below, where the February light was now beginning to fade. A young East European woman was walking there with two children, both of them wearing the uniform of an exclusive prep school, but Kiryl had no interest in the garden or its occupants. All his intention was focused on the game plan now unfolding inside his head.
‘Everything, Ivan—from who her friends are, how she spends her time, to what she eats for her breakfast. I want to know it all. And even more importantly I want to know everything there is to know about her relationship with her brother Vasilii, and his with her. I want to know what he thinks of her and what he plans for her. And I want to know by tomorrow morning.’
Ending the call before the other man could say anything, Kiryl paced the floor of the sitting room of his suite.
He could feel his whole body tingling with a potent mixture of excitement, challenge, and the knowledge that he had embarked on a game he would win. Alena was the key to her brother’s downfall. He was sure of it. He could sense it, smell it, and feel it deep down inside himself in the Romany genes given to him by his mother and so loathed and despised by his father.
Unexpectedly inside his head he had a momentary image of Alena as she had been when they had had tea together—as fragile as a flower a man might pick and then crush in his hand, her emotions and desires plain to see. Something was struggling to come to life inside him—something that had its roots in that brief time he had shared with his mother before she had died, the only time in his life when he had been truly loved. For a moment he hesitated. But he could not afford to be weak—not now. As weak as the mother who had loved his father and conceived him against that father’s wishes. He’d had to be strong in everything he had striven so long and hard for, goaded and driven during his struggle by the memory of the man who had been his father sneering down at him as he pushed him into the gutter before walking away from him.
It was finally within his grasp. And if Alena had to be sacrificed so that he could keep the mental promise he had made his dead mother, then so be it.
‘The promise I have seen in your eyes when you look at me.’ In the grey London light of the February morning Alena lay in the bed in her expensively designed and decorated bedroom, cocooned in the highest thread-count sheets that money could buy, but feeling every bit as uncomfortable as though she were that fairytale princess lying on the discomfort of a sharp pea. Fairytales. Wasn’t that what this was all about? A young woman’s fairytale, though, rather than a child’s. A fairytale of a prince who wasn’t just handsome and kind but a prince who was also sensual and sexy—a prince who offered not the experience of a pampered, indulged lifestyle, but the experience of real raw sensuality … the kind of intensely emotional and passionate sex that perhaps was merely a fantasy.
Was that why she now felt so unnerved and afraid? Because now that she had been given a hint that she could make her fantasy reality she feared that she might discover that being sexually involved with Kiryl would destroy that fantasy? Sex with Kiryl. Intimacy with Kiryl. The intimacy of shared kisses and caresses, her skin shivering with excitement, and the enticement of his hands—his lips—on her naked body. She was shivering with that excitement now, at the mere thought of it. But wasn’t the reality that she needed to put him out of her thoughts and out of her life? That was certainly what Vasilii would want her to do.
Alena looked at her alarm clock.
She had an appointment later in the morning at the offices of a charity set up by her mother. Vasilii would prefer her to wait until she was twenty-five to step into her mother’s shoes and fully take over her role at the head of the charity, Alena knew. He felt that even at twenty-one—which she would be in just over fifteen months—she would be still too young for such a responsibility. Alena, though, was determined to prove her half-brother wrong. She had been assiduous in studying the workings of the charity since her mother’s death.
It was a big responsibility—a huge responsibility, in fact. The charity handled not only the income from the millions her parents had donated to it, but also the income that came from various sponsors and donors to the charity’s cause, which was the education of children who would not otherwise receive any. How much chance would she have of convincing her half-brother that she was ready to take on that responsibility if he ever got to know of her reckless fantasies and even more reckless behaviour over Kiryl? None at all. He would judge such behaviour as immature and irresponsible.
Her mother had often said that the charity was her ‘thank-you’ to life for giving her the happiness that meeting her Russian husband had brought her. Not even Vasilii, with his often hard-headed attitude towards money and charity, could argue with that motivation. No matter how much she sometimes objected to Vasilii’s control of her and her life, Alena knew full well that he had the power to melt her heart simply because he had loved and valued her mother so much. For such a tough, uncompromising man to be willing to admit that one slim Englishwoman had, through her love for his father and for him, transformed their