The Most Coveted Prize(3)

Alena was just about to leave, her back to him as she waited for another waitress to bring her bill.

"You didn't drink your tea earlier, and since I am very much in need of a  cup why don't we share a samovar together? Two Russians together,  sharing a tradition from our homeland?'

The unexpected sound of his voice had Alena spinning round, her shock  intensifying when he reached out and closed long fingers around her  wrist, his thumb on her unsteady, far too fast pulse.

His smile was pure megawatt charm. It softened the earlier arrogant  harshness of his features and turned him into every woman's fantasy of a  bad boy grown into an adult male. It gave him the sensuality of a  Cossack, the romance of a gypsy, the wild devilry of a pirate and the  alpha all ure of a hero. With that smile he was all of them and more.  And she would be a fool to give in to him.

"No, thank you.' She tried to sound distant and cool, but she knew he  had heard the vulnerable huskiness of her voice, the note of doubt and  longing that undermined her will-power. Her throat felt dry and raw with  emotion and tension. She wanted to wrench her wrist free of his hold  but somehow she couldn't.

He was smiling at her again, more intimately this time, the malachite eyes darkening and gleaming.

"I was rude and I upset you, and now you are angry with me. You think,  no doubt, that I do not deserve your company. And you are right. After  all, such a beautiful woman can easily find a far more pleasant and  appreciative companion. But I think you have a kind heart, and that that  kind heart will whisper to you to take pity on me.'

Oh, yes, he could be very charming-as well as very cruel. And Alena  didn't need Vasilii to tell her how dangerous that made him. Every woman  carried within her DNA the instinctive knowledge of just how dangerous  such a man could be. And just how compellingly and demandingly  irresistible.                       
       
           



       

The smile that accompanied his apology revealed strong white teeth and  crinkled the skin around his eyes. Its effect on her locked the breath  in her lungs and started a stampede of small butterfly movements of  shocked but exhilarating excitement fizzing in her stomach. The hurt he  had already caused her had left its mark, though-like a bruise against  pale vulnerable skin and her brain warned her to be careful.

He was massaging her skin, stroking that place where her pulse was  thudding so tempestuously, but far from soothing her his touch was only  increasing her agitation and her awareness of him. She must escape from  him whilst she still could. He was dangerous, and she was not equipped  to deal with that danger.

"I must go. I  … '

Her English was refined and unaccented. Despite the samovar he had seen  on the table she did not look or sound Russian, except for those  silver-grey eyes that reminded him so intensely of the Neva and the city  of his birth. And the pain he had known there  …

"I have ordered our tea. See-the waitress is bringing it now.'

Two waitresses were heading for the table-one carrying fresh tea, the  other bringing her bill. The waitress with her Bill smiled at her and  said politely, "I am sorry, Miss Demidova. I thought you wanted your  bill.'

She was Russian. She had to be with that surname. And not just any  Russian surname either. The irony of her sharing the same surname-a  relatively common one in Russia-as his rival for the contract he wanted  so badly was not lost on Kiryl. Perhaps it was an omen. The voluntary  foster mother or babushka, who had raised him after the death of his own  mother, along with several other orphaned and unwanted children, had  set great store by old superstitions and beliefs, but he did not. He was  a modern man, after all.

"You're staying here in the hotel?' he asked, pulling out a chair for  Alena with his free hand and firmly guiding her into it, leaving her no  option other than to remain at the table.

He was even more magnificent, more imposing, more heart-stoppingly male  close up than he had been at a distance. In the rarefied heated air of  the hotel he somehow managed to smell of the clean air of the Russian  steppes, with an underlying note of their wildness that brought the tiny  hairs up along her skin. Oh, yes-he was dangerous.

"Yes.' She answered his question. "My brother Vasilii has a concierge  apartment here in the hotel for when he's in London on business.' Her  half-brother was something of a nomad, and although he had similar  apartments all over the world, and his most permanent address was an  apartment in Zurich, there was nowhere that he really called home.

Alena wasn't quite sure if she was so pointedly introducing her brother  into the conversation to warn Kiryl that she was not unprotected and  alone, or to remind herself how Vasilii would judge her own behaviour  were he to learn of it. Vasilii, who thought she was safely in the care  of the now retired matron of the girls' school Alena had attended, whom  he had hired to stay with her whilst she was away. Poor Miss Carlisle,  though, had been rushed into hospital with appendicitis, and was now  recovering from an operation in the comfortable nursing home where Alena  had insisted she go to to recuperate.

Her absence was giving Alena a brief period of unexpected freedom, but  Alena did feel guilty about the way she had deceived Miss Carlisle by  letting her think that the niece she had begged Alena to contact on her  behalf was now standing in for her. It wasn't her fault that Miss  Carlisle's niece had left for New York the day before Miss Carlisle had  fall en ill. She should have told Vasilii what had happened, of course,  but she hadn't. Her brother was still under the illusion that Miss  Carlisle, who flatly refused to have anything to do with modern  technology and thus would not use a computer or a mobile telephone, was  staying in the apartment with Alena to look after her.

Kiryl's heart had jerked to a standstill, almost cutting off his breath  and leaving him feeling almost as though he was at a hangman's mercy.

Surely it was beyond coincidence that there could be two Vasilii  Demidovs-both of whom were wealthy enough to maintain a suite in one of  London's most expensive hotels? Perhaps there had after all been some  grain of truth in his old babushka's superstitious beliefs about the  workings of fate?

Kiryl, though, had not built up his business and his own status as a  billionaire by making assumptions that were not based on properly  sourced fact.

After waiting for the waitress to pour their tea and then withdraw, he  asked casually, "Your brother is Vasilii Demidov? Head of Venturanova  International?'
                       
       
           



       
"Yes,' Alena confirmed, a small frown puckering her forehead as she asked anxiously, "Do you know Vasilii?'

Was she concerned-anxious-about the possibility of him knowing her  brother? Like all hunters Kiryl had a good nose for vulnerability in his  prey.

"Not personally. Although naturally I do know of him and his reputation  as a successful businessman. Is he here in London?' Kiryl knew that he  wasn't, but he wanted to know how much the girl would tell him.

"No. He's in China. On business.'

"Leaving you, his sister, to amuse herself here in London, enjoying its nightlife?' he suggested with another smile.

Immediately Alena shook her head. "Oh, no. Vasilii would never allow me  to do that. He doesn't approve of that kind of thing-especially for me,'  she admitted, immediately flushing guiltily. She was saying far too  much. Certainly saying and doing things that Vasilii would most  definitely not have approved of, because she felt so nervous and so  excited.

"He sounds a very protective brother,' Kiryl told her. A very protective  brother who believed in guarding something-someone-who was very  important to him. He needed to find out more about her and her  relationship with her brother.

"Yes he is.' Alena answered Kiryl's question, caught off guard. "And sometime  … '

"You find that irksome and inhibiting?' he guessed. "You are young. It's  only natural that you want to enjoy the same kind of life as other  people. It must be lonely for you-left here on your own here in an  anonymous hotel whilst your brother goes about his business.'

"Vasilii is very protective. He doesn't leave me on my own. At least not  normally. This time, though  …  This time he had to.' Again Alena felt  that pang of guilt she had every time she thought about how she was  deceiving her brother. But, much as she liked Miss Carlisle, she was  very old and very old-fashioned. Everything had been so different when  their parents had been alive. Their father had been so energetic, so  filled with an enjoyment of life, and her mother had been so loving, and  so understanding. Alena missed them both dreadfully, but especially her  mother.