The Most Coveted Prize(26)

"I've got some news for you,' Vasilii continued. "Although it won't be  announced officially yet, it's been confirmed that Kiryl has won the  contract. I had a telephone call from the head of the company this  morning to tell me. By now I expect Kiryl will have heard the good news  himself.'

Alena pulled away from her brother's hold.

"You might call it good news, Vasilii,' she told him, "but for me it's the worst possible news there could be.'

She saw her brother shake his head, as though impatient with her words,  but what she had said was the truth as far as she was concerned.

Now, with his goal achieved, Kiryl would be fully turned into a man just  like his father. She was in love with a man who simply did not exist-an  image she had created inside her own head-and surely knowing that  should have made it easy for her to cease loving him?

It had been a real man, though, who had touched her flesh and brought  her body into singing, longing life. The real Kiryl who had kissed her  and caressed her, taken and possessed her, until her senses and her body  were totally in thral to him-then, now and for ever, Alena admitted  helplessly.

In the sitting room of his St Petersburg hotel suite Kiryl stared  unseeingly at the painting on the wall above the desk where he was  seated.

He had won the contract.

Where was the triumph? The sense of achievement and pleasure in having finally reached his goal and bested his father?

Where was the euphoria of victory? The sensation of standing over the fall en body of his enemy, slain by his own superiority?

Why couldn't he even manage to summon up the mental image of his father  standing over him so contemptuously, as he had done so many times over  the years, to increase the burn of his bitterness and to fuel his own  private hunger to inflict his chosen punishment on his parent?

Why, instead of that image, was the only one that filled his senses one  of Alena? Alena lying in his bed, her hair spread around her, her eyes  warm and liquid with her love for him. Alena crying out in shocked  pleasure as he taught her all that pleasure was. Alena holding him safe  when he succumbed to his own need and his own release from it.                       
       
           



       

Alena.

He hadn't had a full night's sleep since she'd walked out on him at the  house in London. He'd been angry then-angry with himself for wanting her  so much that he'd broken all the rules he'd ever made for himself and  then some by allowing his aching need for her to overwhelm his will  power. A need that only she had aroused in him, and a need which he  suspected only she would ever be able to arouse in him. He had wanted to  make her desire him because of his own desire for her, but his success  had backfired on him-because in gaining her response he had lost his own  ability to control his reaction to her.

Acknowledging that had made him very angry with himself. He had, after  all, far more important things to think about than his inconvenient and  unwanted physical vulnerability to Alena.

Only he also had to acknowledge that he wasn't just physically  vulnerable to her. He was emotionally vulnerable to her as well. As he'd  held her in his arms before she had run away from him, what he had most  wanted to hear her say wasn't that she wanted him but that she loved  him.

Pacing the floor of his bedroom later that night, he had felt all the  things she had said to him earlier in the day about his father and about  himself come back to him. There hadn't been a day since then-or a  night, and the nights were the worst-when he hadn't examined her words  over and over again.

And now, when everything he had worked for was finally in his grasp,  when he had achieved the goal he had worked so hard towards for so long,  Kiryl felt that in reality he had nothing of any true value.

"Is this what your mother would have wanted for you?' Alena had asked.  "Is this the way she would want you to represent the love she had for  you?'

For years he had deliberately stopped himself from thinking about his  mother. Her pain, her humiliation at the hands of his father, had  diminished her-and would diminish him if he allowed himself to recognise  it. That was what he had told himself. Instead of being proud of her he  had allowed his father to make him feel ashamed of her. All these years  when he had thought he was being strong.

Rubbing eyes that were dry from lack of sleep, Kiryl pushed his hand  into his hair and then grimaced. Vasilii had phoned him earlier, to  congratulate him on winning the contract. This evening he would be  escorting Alena to what would be one of the major social events of the  season. There would be plenty of people there willing to congratulate  him on getting the contract, and many of them would remember his father  and how he had rejected him. The thought of the sweetness of that  triumph had been the lodestar that had enabled him to work so tirelessly  to overcome all the obstacles and the hardships he had faced. With the  contract secured-and through his marriage to Alena his connection to  Vasilii secured-he would have everything he had believed he would ever  want.

Everything but Alena's love-that infinitely precious gift he had valued  so little and then discarded, and for which he now hungered so much.

Kiryl closed his eyes against the burning ache of his own emotions and  then opened then again. He had things he had to do-and do now.

Alena was just on the point of going to her room to get changed for the  evening's event when a courier arrived from the St Petersburg branch of  one of the world's most famous jewel ery houses. The maid who had  answered the door to his knock was looking far more excited than Alena  felt when she brought her a discreetly monogrammed carrier bag  containing beautifully gift-wrapped boxes-four of them in all.

Taking them to her room to unwrap and open them, Alena thought ruefully  that her half-brother had obviously decided she had to have jewel ery to  wear tonight, even if he had to buy her some so that she could do so.

Perhaps another woman's heart would have lifted at the thought of new  jewel ery, but nothing could lift her heart, Alena knew. However, when  she opened the first and largest of the leather boxes she had to admit  that the beauty of the necklace inside it did make her catch her breath.  In fact Alena didn't think she had ever seen something so exquisitely  lovely and elegant, each diamond so pure that the light reflecting from  it made her blink. Completely the opposite of ostentatious, this piece  of jewel ery was deliberately simple and understated, and designed by a  master craftsman.

For a moment a tremulous smile touched her mouth. Vasilii obviously  understood her far better than she had realised to have given her this.

Everything about it said that he knew the way she thought and, more  importantly, the way she felt. There was even a small note inside the  box, confirming that the diamonds were ethically sourced.                       
       
           



       

Inside the other boxes were a pair of bracelets to match the necklace,  and delicate drop earrings in the final box completed the set.

It had been thoughtful of Vasilii to take time out of his busy schedule  to choose such a lovely gift for her, but the only gift she really  wanted from her brother was to be freed from a marriage which she knew  would destroy her, Alena thought with a heavy heart. How could she live  side by side with Kiryl, day after day, knowing she loved him, knowing  he would never return that love, and worst of all knowing what he could  have been but had chosen not to be?

The silk evening dress she was wearing was a soft shade of lilac, its  silk swathed and draped by its designer so that it hinted at the curves  of her body rather than deliberately outlining them. High-necked and  long-sleeved, the dress was semi-sheer almost to the waist at the back,  and, whilst it was discreetly sensual rather than deliberately  provocative, Alena was still glad that it had a matching wrap to go with  it, should she feel that it was more revealing than she felt  comfortable with.

In order to show off her new earrings to advantage she'd put her hair  up, securing it with a pair of antique silver combs that had been one of  her father's gifts to her mother. She'd finished the outfit with a pair  of silver high heeled sandals and a matching silver clutch bag.

She had just spritzed her favourite scent into the air and walked into  it, so that it would create a delicate cloud of scent around her as she  moved, when after a brief rap on her door Vasilii opened it and walked  in, dressed in the formality of a dinner suit and looking extremely  handsome if somewhat formidable. Her halfbrother was a very good-looking  man, Alena thought ruefully. But he was also one whose autocratic  manner often meant that others held him in some awe.