The Most Coveted Prize(10)

With the acquisition of this new contract Kiryl would finally succeed in  reaching the goal he had set himself as the fifteen-year-old who had  gone to Moscow to look for his father and been rejected. That goal had  been to create a business empire that was both larger, more profitable  and more securely stable than that of his father. Only Vasilii Demidov  now stood in his way.

He looked across the table at Alena.

"When I heard about your mother's charity I knew immediately that it was something I wanted to be involved with as a donor.'

That was certainly true. He had known immediately he had read about the  charity and Alena's desire to become more involved in it just what a  useful tool it would be in winning her trust.

"I know how much work the charity does to help girls have the  opportunity to gain an education. I admire you for wanting to take on  that responsibility. Many young women in your situation would have  handed that responsibility over to someone else.' He flattered Alena  warmly.

"I could never do that. The charity was so close to my mother's heart.'  She paused, and then said emotionally, "It must have been so hard for  you, growing up without your mother and-'

"According to my father I was lucky that she died, and that I was fostered by a family without the taint of Romany blood.'

Alena felt her throat clog with emotional tears. Within her head she  could see that poor baby, and felt a female ache to have been able to  hold and protect it. Poor, poor baby to be so cruelly treated by life.

"I was very lucky in having the parents I did,' was all she could manage to say.

"But unlucky, perhaps, in having a brother who is so determined to control your life?'

"Vasilii only wants what's best for me.' She defended her half-sibling quickly.

"For you and for himself, I dare say,' Kiryl responded, adding before  Alena could question his words, "We'd better have our main course before  it gets cold. I hope you like Dover sole.'

"Yes, it's another of my favourites,' Alena began as Kiryl reached over  to remove her starter, and then guessed, "You knew that, didn't you?

And that's why you've chosen the meal you have?'

So she wasn't entirely without either intelligence or the ability to  reason analytically, Kiryl acknowledged. He gave her a small smile and  told her, "Very well -I confess that I did ask the restaurant what your  favourite dishes are. I wanted to make a good impression on you.'

Alena couldn't look directly at him. Her heart was singing with delight  and disbelief at the thought of Kiryl actually wanting to impress her,  and yet at the same time his words had brought her a certain amount of  self-consciousness that was making it impossible for her to look at him.

"I'm the one who should be trying to impress you,' she managed to tell  him, albeit slightly breathlessly, her voice soft and husky with all  that she was feeling. "After all, I'm the one who has the most to gain  from our lunch.'                       
       
           



       

"Oh, I wouldn't say that,' Kiryl told her softly as he placed her main  meal in front of her and removed the cover. "There is a great deal that I  am hoping to gain from our relationship, Alena.'

As he spoke he was looking at her mouth, and as though his look was  communicating an unspoken command Alena could feel her lips softening  and parting as deliciously sensual ribbons of desire unrolled to flutter  inside her with the movement of her breathing.

"Tell me more about your mother,' he invited her, abruptly bringing her  back to reality, and the fact that this meeting was about her mother's  charity and not about the effect he was having on her.

"She was a very special person,' she answered, her voice soft with love  for the mother she had loved so much. "Everyone thought so.'

"Including your half-brother? After all, she was his stepmother.'

"Vasilii loved her very much. He was fourteen when my parents met in St  Petersburg, where my mother was working as an English Language teacher  at a school there. Vasilii's own mother died when he was seven. He  wanted them to marry before they knew that they wanted to marry  themselves, so he always says, although my mother used to say that she  knew the first moment she met him that she loved my father.

"My mother loved St Petersburg. She and my father used to take me there  every winter. It's such a romantic city. A fairytale city with the Neva  frozen and the lights of the older quarters twinkling on the snow. It's  almost possible to think you're back in the days of dashing young men in  the uniform of the Imperial Guard driving their troikas, pulled by a  team of three matching horses along Nevsky Prospect, ready to race one  another in the morning after spending all night dancing. And then in the  summer, when the sun never sets, people flock to party on the islands  of the delta. I had dreamed  … '

"That you might find love there yourself?' Kiryl suggested.

Alena shook her head.

"I am not such a dreamer that I expect to find love there just because  my mother did, but I do think that it would be a very special place to  go with  …  with someone special to me.' That was as close as she was able  to get to saying what she meant. Somehow just to speak the word

"lover' in Kiryl's presence was to run the risk of betraying her  vulnerability to him, or having him guess that when she said "lover' she  meant Kiryl himself.

Kiryl knew the St Petersburg to which Alena referred-the St Petersburg  of the rich and privileged. After all, he was one of them. But he also  knew another St Petersburg. The St Petersburg of his own childhood  poverty and his rejection by his father. He had turned his back on  Russia just as his father had turned his back on him. Kiryl considered  himself to be a citizen of the world, not of one part of it.

Not that he was going to say that to Alena. He wanted her to believe that he understood and empathised with her.





CHAPTER FOUR


IT WAS gone three in the afternoon-over an hour since they had finished  their lunch and Kiryl had invited her to sit down on the sofa opposite  him. Now, as she stood up ready to leave, Alena was feeling dizzy from a  combination of the excitement generated inside her at the sheer amount  of the donation Kiryl had told her he was going to make to the charity,  and the glass of champagne he had insisted they drank to cement that  gift.

"You've been so generous,' she told him, wobbling slightly on her  heels-no doubt because of the speed with which she had stood up, she  assured herself, and not the fact that Kiryl was now standing right next  to her, his hand resting supportively beneath her elbow as he walked  with her towards the door.

Kiryl had insisted on telephoning the CEO of the charity himself to tell  her of his wonderfully generous donation, before instructing his bank  to make the necessary transfer, and since that had somehow or other  necessitated the drinking of a second glass of champagne it was perhaps  no wonder that she felt a little unsteady and very, very euphoric. But  what about those other feelings, clear and sharp, definitely not due in  the slightest to her intake of champagne but most unmistakably caused by  Kiryl's proximity?

They must be ignored, Alena told herself sternly. They belonged to the  rather reckless young woman who had seen him in the foyer and let her  hormones dictate her reactions, not the far more sensible businesswoman  she had now decided she wanted to be.

Alena started to make a move to the door to the hallway, but Kiryl's hold on her elbow tightened just enough to stop her.

When she turned to him to ask him why he forestalled her, bending his  head towards her. Time seemed to stand still, whilst the earth surely  rocked beneath her feet. His breath was a warm, sensual touch that  caressed her vulnerable flesh. Rivers of sensation flowed from that  caress, like the many streams that came with the thawing of Russia's  winter, to bring the frozen earth to life once more, freeing it from the  icy spell it had been under, melting away its resistance.                       
       
           



       

"Do you remember saying when we arrived here that you weren't afraid to be alone with me?' Kiryl was asking her.

"Yes  … ' Her voice turned her confirmation into a small soft moan of  self-betrayal. She was standing on the edge of something so very  dangerous, and yet so very tempting.

Helplessly her gaze-the gaze she had so determinedly kept removed from  his, knowing what she could betray to him if she looked at him-

searched for and clung to his. The green eyes were dark with the  knowledge of a thousand sensual mysteries that were unknown to her.

"Perhaps you should have been a wise virgin and been afraid after all.'

The sound of his voice-deeper, rougher, strained with something  elementally male, his words containing an intimate knowledge of her that  she had not thought anyone else shared-made her whole body jerk visibly  in response.