‘I expected to see you again before the wedding.’

‘I’m sorry—I’d like to spend some time at home before I go to Russia.’ Pale and taut, Alissa collided head-on with smouldering dark golden eyes heavily fringed with lush black lashes.

‘You make it sound so reasonable, milaya.’ Sergei reached out and closed a hand round hers as she brushed a skein of gold silky hair back from her brow. He eased her inexorably closer. ‘But you know that’s not what I want.’

‘Surely there’s some part of the day when I can have my own free time?’ Alissa queried, throwing her blonde head high, a gleam of challenge in her bright eyes.

‘Your own free time?’ Sergei countered, his lean dark features tensing.

‘Isn’t this a job? I can’t be on duty twenty-four-seven.’

Sergei froze, all warmth ebbing from his gaze, leaving it winter-dark and cold. ‘I don’t think you can have read the small print on your contract,’ he breathed, in an icy, cutting tone of distaste. ‘From the moment you wear my wedding ring, you will be on duty twenty-four-seven.’

Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife

By

Lynne Graham

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

OIL billionaire, Sergei Antonovich, travelled behind tinted windows in a big black glossy four-wheel drive. Two car-loads of bodyguards flanked him, in front and behind. Such a sight was worthy of note en route to a remote Russian village like Tsokhrai. But everyone who saw the cavalcade pass knew exactly who it was, for Sergei’s grandmother was well known locally, and her grandson always visited her on Easter Day.

Sergei was looking at the road that he had turned from a dirt track into a broad highway to facilitate the transportation needs of the coach-building factory he had set up to provide employment in this rural area. In the winters, when once he had lived here, the road had been thick with mud and often impassable by anything more sophisticated than a farm cart. When it had snowed, the village had been cut off for weeks on end. Sometimes even Sergei still found it hard to believe that he had spent several years of his adolescence in Tsokhrai, where he had suffered the pure culture shock of an urban tearaway plunged into a rustic nightmare of clean country living. At the age of thirteen, he had been six feet tall, a gang member and embryo thug, accustomed to breaking the law just to survive. His grandmother, Yelena, had been barely five feet tall, functionally illiterate and desperately poor. Yet Sergei knew that everything he had become and everything he had achieved in the years since then was down to the indefatigable efforts of that little woman to civilise him.

The convoy came to a halt outside a humble building clad in faded clapboards and sheltering behind an overgrown hedge. The bodyguards, big tough men who wore sunglasses even on dull days and never smiled, leapt out first to check out the area. Sergei finally emerged, a sartorial vision of elegant grooming in a silk and mohair blend suit that was superbly tailored to his broad-shouldered powerful physique. His ex-wife, Rozalina, had called this his ‘annual guilt pilgrimage’ and had refused to accompany him. But his visit was enough reward for the elderly woman who would not even let him build her a new house. Yelena, Sergei reflected grimly, was the only female he had ever met who wasn’t eager to take him for every ruble she could get. He had long since decided that extreme greed and an overriding need to lionise over others were essentially feminine failings.

As Sergei strode down the front path towards the dwelling, villagers fell back from where they were gathered in its doorway and an awe-inspired silence fell. Yelena was a small plump woman in her seventies with bright eyes and a no-nonsense manner. She greeted him without fuss, only the huskiness of her voice and her use of the diminutive name ‘Seryozh’ for him hinting at how much her only grandchild meant to her.

‘As always you are alone,’ Yelena lamented, guiding him over to the table, which was spread with a feast of food to satisfy those who had just finished practising a forty-day fast in honour of the season. ‘Eat up.’

Sergei frowned. ‘I haven’t been—’

His grandmother began to fill a large plate for him. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

The bearded Orthodox priest sitting at the table, which was decorated with flowers and painted eggs, gave the younger man who had rebuilt the crumbling church tower an encouraging smile. ‘Eat up,’ he urged.

Sergei had skipped breakfast in anticipation of the usual gastronomic challenge that awaited him. He ate with appetite, sampling the special bread and the Easter cake. Throughout, he was approached by his grandmother’s visitors and he listened patiently to requests for advice, support and money, because he was also the recognised source of philanthropy in the community.

Yelena stood by watching and concealing her pride. She was wryly aware that her grandson was the cynosure of attention for every young woman in the room. That was understandable: his hard-boned dark features were strikingly handsome and he stood six feet three inches tall with the lean powerful build of an athlete. As always, however, Sergei was too accustomed to female interest to be anything other than indifferent to it. His grandmother had a fleeting recollection of the lovelorn girls who had dogged his every step while he was still a boy. Nothing had changed; Sergei still enjoyed an extraordinary level of charisma.

Sergei was mildly irritated by his female audience and wondered how much Yelena had had to do with the surprising number of attractive well-groomed young women milling about. His concentration, however, had only to alight on his grandmother, though, for it to occur to him that she looked a little older and wearier every time he saw her. He knew she was disappointed that he had failed to bring a girl home with him. But the women who satisfied his white-hot libido in his various homes round the world were not the type he would have chosen to introduce to a devout old lady. He recognised that she was desperate to see him marry and produce a family. It would have surprised many, who saw Sergei solely as an arrogant, notoriously cold-blooded businessman, to learn that he actually believed that he owed it to Yelena to give her what she wanted.

After all these years, what thanks had Yelena yet reaped from taking a risk on her once foul-mouthed and defiant grandson? While her guardianship had turned Sergei’s life and prospects around, life for her had remained very tough. His immense wealth and success meant virtually nothing to her, yet he was her only living relative. Her husband had been a drunk and a wifebeater, her son had been a car thief and her daughter-in-law an alcoholic.

‘You worry about Yelena,’ the priest noted sagely. ‘Bring her a wife and a grandchild and she will be happy.’

‘If only it were so easy as you make it sound,’ Sergei quipped, averting his gaze from the excess of cleavage on display as a nubile beauty hurried forward to pour him another coffee.

‘With the right woman it is that easy!’ The priest laughed with the pride and good humour of a family man who had six healthy children.

But Sergei harboured a deep abiding aversion to the matrimonial state. Rozalina had proved to be a very expensive mistake. And, more significantly, even a decade after the divorce he could not forget the child she had aborted to protect her perfect body. He had never told Yelena about that, as he had known it would have broken her heart and troubled her dreams. He also knew, noting the depth of the lines on her creased and weathered face, that she was on the slippery slope of life and that time was of the essence. Some day there would be no one left to tell him that the noise of his helicopter landing nearby had traumatised her pig and stopped her hens laying. It was a bleak thought that made his conscience stab him. Who had done more for him and who had he rewarded least? If any woman deserved a bouncing baby on her lap, it was Yelena Antonova.

Sergei was still mulling over the problem that afternoon when his grandmother asked him if he ever ran into Rozalina. He managed not to wince. He was a loner, he always had been, and he found personal relationships a challenge. He loved the cut and thrust of business, the exhilaration of a new deal or takeover, the challenge of cutting out the dead wood and increasing profit in the under-performers, the sheer satisfaction of making a huge financial killing. If only marriage could be more like business with clear-cut rules and contracts that left no room for misunderstandings or errors!

An instant later, his high-powered brain kicked up a gear and he thought, Why not? Why the hell shouldn’t he choose a wife and get a child by the same means in which he did business? After all, trying to do it the old-fashioned way had been catastrophic.

‘Is there anyone?’ Yelena asked with a guilty edge that told him she had been holding back on that question about his private life all day.

‘Perhaps,’ he heard himself say, holding out a thread of hope or possibly a foundation for a future development.

And, that fast, the plan began forming. This time around, Sergei decided, he would take the professional practical approach to the institution of marriage. He would draw up a list of requirements, put his lawyers in charge and urge them to use a doctor and a psychologist to weed out unsuitable applicants for the role he envisaged. Of course the marriage would be short-term and he would retain custody of the child. He immediately grasped the dichotomy of his preferences. He didn’t want a wife who would do anything for money, but he did want one prepared to give him a child and then walk away when he had had enough of playing happy families for Yelena’s benefit. But somewhere in the world his perfect matrimonial match had to exist, Sergei reasoned. If he was specific enough with his requirements he would not even have to meet her before the wedding. Energised by that prospect, and once back behind the privacy of the tinted windows of his four-by-four, he began to make bullet points on his notebook computer.

When Alissa saw her sister, Alexa, climbing out of a totally unfamiliar fire-engine-red sports car, she was filled with a lively mix of exasperation, bewilderment and impatience. Even so, a strong thread of relief bound all those disparate emotions together and she hurtled downstairs, a tiny slender blonde with a mass of silvery pale hair and clear aquamarine eyes.

She flung open the front door of the cottage and the questions just erupted from her in a breathless stream. ‘Where have you been all these weeks? You promised you’d phone and you didn’t! I’ve been worried sick about you! Where on earth did that fancy car come from?’

Amusement gleaming in her eyes, Alexa strolled forward. ‘Hi, twin, nice to see you too.’

Alissa hugged her sister. ‘I was going out of my mind with worry,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Why didn’t you phone? And what happened to your mobile phone?’

‘It broke and I got a new number.’ Alexa wrinkled her nose. ‘Look, things got very complicated and I kept on deciding to wait until I had something more concrete to offer you-and then when I finally did have it, I thought it would be easier to just come home and tell you face to face.’

Alissa stared at her sister, not understanding and not expecting to, either. It had always been that way because, although the girls had been born identical, it had been clear from an early age that below the skin they were two very different personalities. Alexa had always been the single-minded, ambitious one, quick to fight and scrap for what she wanted, and she made enemies more easily than she made friends. Alissa was quieter, steadier, occasionally tormented by an overdeveloped conscience and altogether more thoughtful. At twenty-three years of age, the sisters were less obviously twins than they had been as children. Alexa wore her long silvery blonde hair sleek, layered and shoulder length while Alissa’s was longer and more usually confined in a ponytail. Alexa wore fashionable, often provocative clothing and revelled in the attention men awarded her, while Alissa dressed conservatively and froze like a rabbit in headlights when men homed in on her more understated charms.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Alexa asked, flinging her coat down in a heap and walking into the kitchen.

‘She’s at the shop. I came home this afternoon to do the accounts,’ Alissa confided, putting the kettle on to boil. ‘I gather you got a job in London.’

Alexa gave her a rather self-satisfied smile and leant back against the kitchen counter. ‘Of course I did. I’m a whizz at selling luxury cars and I’ve earned a lot of commission. How’s Mum?’

Alissa pursed her lips. ‘As good as she’s ever going to be. At least I don’t hear her crying at night any more—’

‘She’s getting over it? About time,’ Alexa pronounced with approval.

Alissa sighed. ‘I don’t think Mum’s ever really going to get over it—particularly not while Dad’s parading his fancy piece round the village. Or with all this debt still hanging over her, not to mention having to sell her home into the bargain…’

Alexa gave her a wide smile. ‘Well, I was going to ask you whether you wanted the good or the bad news first. On the way here I stopped off at the solicitor’s and told him to go ahead and agree a financial settlement for the house. I also gave him enough money to settle the bills. Prepare yourself for a surprise: I’ve got the cash to pay off our bastard of a father!’

‘Don’t talk about Dad like that,’ Alissa said uneasily while she struggled to accept the dramatic assurance that the other woman had just voiced. ‘Although I agree with the sentiment.’

‘Oh, don’t be so mealy-mouthed!’ Alexa urged tartly. ‘Mum loses her son and my boyfriend in a ghastly accident, nurses Dad through his cancer scare and what’s her reward? Dad takes off with a hairdresser young enough to be his daughter!’

‘You just said you’ve got enough money to pay off Dad and more for the bills—how is that possible? You’ve only been away three months.’ Alissa was frowning. She wanted so badly to believe it was possible, but her native wit was telling her that even though Alissa was a terrific saleswoman she still didn’t have that kind of earning power.

‘You could say that I went for a new job with a big cash payment up front. As I said, there’s enough to settle all Mum’s bills and pay off Dad,’ Alexa repeated, keen to make that salient point again.

Alissa was wide-eyed with disbelief. ‘As well as enough to buy that car outside and renew your designer wardrobe?’

Alexa’s smile evaporated as she gave her twin a cool accusing scrutiny. ‘You’ve already noticed the label on my new coat?’

‘No, it just has that look. That sophisticated look that expensive clothes always seem to have,’ Alissa advanced ruefully. ‘What kind of a job pays that much money?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I told you?’ Alexa demanded thinly. ‘I’ve saved our bacon—I have enough money to sort out all Mum’s problems and give her back her selfrespect and security.’

‘That would take a miracle.’ Alissa was convinced that her sister was wildly exaggerating the case.

‘In today’s world, you have to compete and work very hard and make sacrifices to bring about a miracle.’

At that reference to making sacrifices from a young woman who had never demonstrated the smallest leaning in that direction, Alissa stole a troubled glance at her sister. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘As I said, it’s complex. For a start I’m afraid I had to sort of borrow your identity.’

Alissa froze at that announcement. ‘Borrow my identity? How?’

‘You’re the one with the university degree and I needed to use it on my application to meet the criteria,’ Alexa revealed, lifting her chin in defiance of her twin’s shaken stare. ‘And because I had used it to make myself look educated I had to use your name as well. When they checked out my claims they’d soon have discovered that I was lying if I’d applied under my own name.’

Alissa was very shocked at her sister’s casual attitude to what she had done. ‘But that’s…that’s fraud, cheating…’

Alexa’s indifference to what she clearly saw as a minor detail was striking. ‘Whatever. I thought it was worth a try and so it proved, but then I started seeing someone.’

‘You’re dating again?’ Alissa gasped in surprise and excitement. After her sister’s boyfriend, Peter, had died in the same car crash that had taken their brother’s life—a tragedy that had soon been followed by their father’s shocking defection—Alexa had become so angry and bitter that she had sworn off all men. Alissa had understood the level of her sister’s heartbreak for, as their next-door-neighbours’ son, Peter had been as much a part of their lives as any member of the family. ‘Were you too busy looking at the coat to notice this?’ Alexa extended a hand on which an opulent ruby and diamond ring glowed on her engagement finger.

Alissa gaped. ‘You’re engaged…already?’

‘And preggers,’ Alexa confided.

‘Pregnant as well?’ Alissa stared as her sister turned sideways but it was evidently early days for her stomach still looked perfectly flat. ‘My word, and you never said a thing about all this until now?’

Alexa grimaced. ‘I told you that things had got complicated. I was in the running for that job and I didn’t want to tell Harry about it…yes, that’s his name. He’s quite well off—a gentleman farmer who runs his family estate. They’re thrilled about me and the baby, not a bit bothered that I’m not one of the county set. But neither he nor his family would understand what I signed up for before we met…or that I could have accepted all that money for the right reasons.’

Her smooth brow furrowing, Alissa stared. ‘Alexa, what are you talking about? This job? What money did you accept?’

Alexa sat down at the kitchen table and sipped her tea before she replied. ‘I never thought I’d get it. I went through the whole application process out of curiosity. Strictly speaking, it’s not really a job,’ she admitted in an undertone.

Alissa sank down into the chair opposite. ‘Then what is it? It isn’t anything, well…immoral, is it?’

‘Before I tell you, you think very carefully about what that money will do for Mum,’ her sister urged sharply. ‘It’s her only hope of rescue and I’ve already paid out most of it on her behalf. All I had to do to get it was agree to marry a very rich Russian and act like his wife.’

‘But why would any man want to pay you for doing that? These days I thought most rich Russians were beating off gold-digging women with sticks,’ Alissa remarked drily.

‘This guy wants it all done on a business basis, with money paid up front, signed contracts and a settlement agreed for the divorce at the end. He wanted an educated attractive Englishwoman and I stepped forward. I almost told his lawyers that he could have two of us for the price of one!’

Alissa wasn’t amused by that rather tasteless joke. ‘So, let me get this straight—you decided you were willing to marry this man just for the cash?’

‘For Mum!’ Alexa contradicted loudly. ‘I was only ever willing to do it for her sake.’

Alissa sat there tautly and thought about this explanation. Everything she herself had done of late, from resigning from her comfortable librarian’s job in London to coming home to help out as best she could, had also been done for her mother’s sake. Both young women adored their parent, who was currently stressed out of her mind and desperately depressed, a mere shadow of the cheerful and energetic woman she had once been.

A kinder and more loving and supportive parent or wife than Jenny Bartlett would be hard to find. Unfortunately, over the past two years, the twins’ once close and contented family circle had been cruelly smashed by a series of disasters. The death of their brother, Stephen, and of Alexa’s boyfriend, Peter, in a car crash one wintry evening had only been the first calamity to strike them. That storm had barely been weathered before their father’s cancer was diagnosed. Long months of anxiety and debilitating medical treatment had followed. Throughout all those events their mother had been the strongest of them all, refusing to allow her family to sink into despair. She could never have guessed then that, within months of his recovery from cancer, her husband of thirty years would desert her for a much younger woman and then claim half of their home and business to finance his new lifestyle. Watching those awful proceedings unfold from the sidelines, Alissa had felt her heart break alongside her mother’s.

Alissa had learned a new insecurity when she had finally realised that she could not even trust her father to be the honest and decent man she had always believed he was. Although he was an accountant on a good salary, he was pursuing his wife for a share of the home that had originally belonged to her parents and of the small business that she had set up and ran entirely on her own. Money and the lust for more of it, Alissa thought fearfully, could turn people into strangers and make them do inexcusable things. Now it seemed to her that Alexa had got caught up in the same dangerous toils.

‘Pay the money back,’ Alissa urged tightly. ‘You can’t marry some foreigner you don’t even know for money.’

‘Well, I can’t marry him now, can I? I mean, I’m carrying Harry’s baby!’ Alexa pointed out flatly. ‘And Harry wants us to get married in the next couple of weeks.’

Alissa nodded, unsurprised by that sudden announcement. Alissa always did everything at supersonic speed. That she had fallen in love and fallen pregnant within months and was racing equally fast into marriage was the norm for her. She had never learnt patience and if common sense threatened to come between her and her goals she would ignore it.

‘You must go ahead and marry the Russian in my place,’ Alexa continued, ‘or I’ll be forced to consider an abortion…’

Shattered by that announcement, Alissa pushed her chair noisily back and leapt upright. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Me marry this weird guy? An abortion? Is that what you want?’

A petulant expression traversed Alexa’s face. ‘No, of course it’s not what I want, Allie, but what choice do I have? I signed a legal binding contract and I accepted a huge amount of money on the strength of it. Most of the money has been spent so I can’t give it back. So where does that leave me?’

Alissa was once again aghast at that admission. ‘Spent?’

‘Mostly on Mum. Okay, so I bought the car and a few other little things. At the time I thought that with the sacrifice I was making in agreeing to marry the guy, I had the right to spoil myself a bit. After all, it was me, not you, riding to Mum’s rescue!’ her twin vented, treating her sister to a scornful appraisal. ‘I mean, here you are, acting all shocked at what I’ve done. But what have you done, but sit here wringing your hands and checking bank statements? It took me to take action, so don’t you dare look down on me for being willing to marry a stranger for money. Money and lots of it is the only real cure for the problems here!’

The louder Alexa’s angry voice got, the paler Alissa became and she sat down heavily again. ‘I’m not looking down on you in any way. You’re right. You have pulled off something that I couldn’t have and, yes, we are desperate for money—’

Her sister clasped her hand in a fierce plea for understanding. ‘Don’t I deserve to be happy?’

‘I’ve never doubted it.’

‘But I never thought I’d be happy again after Peter died. I thought my life was over, that I might as well have died in that car with him and Stephen,’ Alexa confided in a pained tone. ‘But now I’ve met Harry and everything’s different. I love him and I want to marry him and have my baby. I’ve got my life back again and I want to enjoy it.’

Touched to the bone by that emotive speech, Alissa clasped both her hands round her sister’s in a warm gesture of understanding. ‘Of course you do…of course you do…’

‘But Harry won’t want anything more to do with me if he finds out what I signed up for-it will destroy us!’ Alexa sobbed, swerving from furious defensiveness and drama to a noisy bout of self-pitying tears. ‘He would never understand what I’ve done or forgive me for being so mercenary. He’s a very straightforward, honest man.’

All of a sudden, Alissa was feeling as though she was on old familiar ground. When they were children, Alexa had often got into tight corners and Alissa had usually got her out of them. More than once Alissa had shouldered the blame for Alexa’s wrongdoing, as even then she had dimly grasped that she might be the less adventurous twin but she was the stronger and the least likely of the two to break down when life became difficult. Alexa might be more daring, but she was also surprisingly fragile and could never cope once she made a mess of things.

‘Surely Harry doesn’t have to know about all this?’ Alissa said, even though she felt guilty for suggesting that Alexa keep secrets from her future husband.

‘Listen, Allie,’ Alexa breathed. ‘If I don’t show up and marry the Russian, I’ll have to repay the money and I can’t. Do you honestly think a guy like Sergei Antonovich is going to let me get away with defrauding him of that amount of cash?’

‘Sergei Antonovich? The Russian billionaire?’ Alissa queried in consternation. ‘He’s the guy who wants to hire a wife? For goodness’ sake, he’s always knee-deep in supermodels and actresses. Why would he have to pay a woman he doesn’t know to marry him?’

‘Because a long time ago he was married and it didn’t work out. This time around he wants a marriage of convenience on a strict business basis. I don’t know any more than that,’ Alexa replied, her eyes swerving abruptly from her sister’s questioning gaze to rest fixedly on the table instead, her whole face taut and shuttered. ‘That was what the lawyer told me and he said I didn’t need to know any more and that it was just a job; maybe a little different from other jobs, but a job nonetheless.’

‘A job,’ Alissa repeated, widening her expressive eyes in emphatic disagreement.

‘If you marry Antonovich instead, I’ll be able to go ahead and marry Harry, we’ll keep the money and Mum’s life will go back to normal. You know, the Russian hasn’t met me yet, so he won’t know we’ve switched and he’s never going to guess that you’re not the woman who was selected—’

‘It doesn’t matter…it’s crazy and I couldn’t do it,’ Alissa framed unevenly, feeling the weight of the pressure her twin was heaping on her shoulders and firmly resisting it.

‘I applied in your name,’ her sister reminded her. ‘It’s you the lawyers will come after if you don’t follow through on that contract.’

Alissa, usually slow to lose her temper, was finally getting angry. ‘I don’t care what you did—I didn’t sign any contract!’

‘Well, you might as well have done because I forged your signature,’ Alexa informed her wryly. ‘I’m sorry, but we’re both involved in this up to our throats. Short of a lottery win, we can’t return the money and why would you want to anyway? We’ve no other way of saving this house for Mum. At the moment, it’s impossible to get a loan—’

‘But Mum couldn’t have afforded to pay it back anyway. And now there’s not even anything left to sell,’ Alissa acknowledged.

The few valuable pieces of furniture and jewellery that had been in the family had already been sold to shore up her mother’s finances. The cottage had long been mortgaged up to the hilt when Jenny had borrowed against the property to buy premises in the village and open up a coffee and craft shop there. Although the cottage was currently for sale, there had been few viewers and little interest shown; times were hard and the property was definitely in need of modernisation.

In the uncomfortable silence that stretched, Alissa stood up. ‘It’s raining—I promised I’d pick Mum up if it was wet.’

Alissa climbed into the elderly hatchback car that belonged to her mother and drove off. As she pulled into a parking space outside the shop, she saw a curvaceous brunette emerging and unfurling a bright yellow plastic umbrella. She wore a skirt short enough to shock a burlesque dancer. At the sight of her, loud alarm bells rang with Alissa because the woman was her father’s girlfriend, Maggie Lines. As Maggie sped on down the street Alissa scrambled out of the car in haste and knocked on the shop door when she found it locked.

‘What was that woman doing in here?’ she demanded of the small blonde woman who let her in.

Her mother’s eyes were reddened and overbright, her level of stress palpable in her fearful expression and trembling hands. ‘She came to talk to me. She said she didn’t like to come to the house and at least she waited for closing time—’

Alissa was rigid with outrage on her gentle mother’s behalf. She felt that it was bad enough that her father had had an affair but it was unspeakably cruel that he should allow his partner in crime to harass the wife he had deserted. ‘You don’t need to talk to Maggie. She’s Dad’s business, not yours, and she should keep her nose out of what doesn’t concern her!’

‘She says that fighting it out between the lawyers is only increasing our legal bills,’ Jenny muttered tautly.

‘What did she want?’ Alissa prompted, carefully removing the dishcloth that her mother was twisting between her nervous hands.

‘Money. What she said is your father’s due,’ the older woman explained in a mortified undertone. ‘And although I didn’t like hearing it, what she said was right. It is the law that he has to get his share of everything, but there’s not a lot I can do when we haven’t even had an offer for the house, is there?’

‘She shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have to speak to her.’

‘She’s a very determined young woman but I’m not scared of her, Alissa. And you shouldn’t be getting involved in all this. Your father may well marry Maggie and start a second family with her. It happens all the time, so it would be wiser if you didn’t take sides right now.’

Her troubled eyes glistening with tears, Alissa gripped the older woman’s hands tightly in hers. ‘I love you so much, Mum. I hate to see you being hurt like this.’

Jenny Bartlett attempted a reassuring smile. ‘In time I’ll get over it, “move on” as Maggie likes to say. But right now it’s all too fresh. I still love him, Alissa,’ she muttered guiltily. ‘That’s the worst thing about all this. I can’t seem to switch off my feelings.’

Alissa wrapped her arms protectively round her slight mother. Her own heart felt as if it were breaking inside her as a swell of memories from happier times engulfed her. It was not right that the mother who had loved and supported her all her life should lose her home and business as well, for it would leave the older woman with absolutely nothing to survive on. ‘Alexa’s home, Mum, and she’s got good news: she’s met a man and it’s serious—’

The older woman turned startled eyes on her daughter. ‘Has she…really?’

‘Yes, and Alexa and I have sorted out something on the money front too,’ Alissa heard herself say with deliberate vagueness. ‘You may not have to sell the house after all.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Jenny exclaimed.

‘Miracles do happen,’ Alissa commented, thinking up fantastic stories of special financial arrangements that could be made and secured on her and her twin’s earning power.

And she was stunned by her own audacity. She was the sensible twin, the one who was never impulsive and didn’t take risks. But family came first and she was desperate to help and bring the ghastly divorce settlement to a dignified conclusion for her mother’s sake. She watched the older woman lock up. So, did that mean she was willing to marry Sergei Antonovich? Or had she just been guilty of offering her mother false hope? During the short drive home Alissa tussled mentally with herself.

A few minutes after she walked through the front door, however, Alexa helped her to make a final decision. ‘I got a call from the Russian’s lawyer while you were out,’ her twin whispered in Alissa’s ear while Alissa was busy preparing supper. ‘Sergei Antonovich has decided to meet me before the wedding. You have to decide whether you’re going to help Mum or not!’

Put on the spot, Alissa thought first about the baby that her twin was carrying and doubted Alexa’s readiness to continue that pregnancy if her relationship with the father ran into trouble. In comparison Alissa had no relationship that such a marriage could interfere with.

A long time ago, she had suffered considerable heartache when she’d secretly fallen for Alexa’s boyfriend, Peter. Since then she had made occasional forays onto the dating scene, only to retreat when she met up with the impatient sexual expectations of the modern male. Those who had failed to press her panic buttons on that score had signally failed to impress her on any other level. Unlike Alexa, who scalp-hunted with almost masculine enthusiasm, Alissa preferred quality over quantity and was more often alone than involved in a relationship.

Indeed her family meant much more to Alissa than anything else in her life. Having had to stand by powerless while that same family had all but disintegrated had tortured her. But now Alexa had put the power to alter that situation into Alissa’s hands. Did she have the strength to go against her every principle and make a mockery of marriage by using it as a means of making money? Did the fact that she had no plans to profit personally make it any less of a sin? And now that she had that option, could she honestly turn her back on the only chance she was ever likely to get to settle most of her mother’s problems?

On the other hand, Alissa reasoned, money would not bring her father home or cure her mother’s pain, but it would certainly help the older woman to adjust to her altered future if it allowed her to remain in her childhood home and retain her business. On that optimistic thought, Alissa squashed the doubts bubbling up frantically to the surface of her mind. Pretending to be some man’s wife would be a challenge, but the return of some semblance of normality to her mother’s life would be worth it. On reaching that conclusion, Alissa came to a swift decision and gave Alexa the answer she most wanted to hear…

Chapter Two

FROWNING, Sergei surveyed the studio photo for at least the tenth time that morning. Taken feature by feature, Alissa Bartlett was very attractive but regrettably she didn’t do anything for him.

Sergei, who had never suffered from indecision, was fighting a galloping attack of cold feet. Having noted that his lawyers hadn’t done much research into his bride-to-be’s background, he had already resolved to have that omission rectified before he went any further. But, if he was honest, his main objection to her was a good deal more basic: in a nutshell, the skinny blonde turned him off big time.

He had read the transcripts of her interviews and studied her psychological profile and, the more he found out about her, the less he wanted to marry her, even temporarily. The trouble was that she did tick all the boxes he had demanded be ticked. In that respect, his staff had done an excellent job. He could not deny that she was attractive, educated, sophisticated and elegant. But then he had failed to lay down the right criteria for the role. He had thought too much about what was on the outside and not enough about what was on the inside, for it was plain Alissa was also selfish, extremely vain, rather stupid in spite of that education and cold as ice in the emotional department.

However, since when had he wanted emotion involved in a relationship with a woman? Sergei asked himself with derision. But then, never before had he been confronted in advance by so many unpalatable facts about a woman’s character. Furthermore, Yelena was nobody’s fool and was almost certain to spot the ugly truth below the pretty surface show of such a wife. That was why Sergei had decided that he had to meet his chosen bride in the flesh rather than risking compounding his mistake by marrying her sight unseen in a week’s time. He didn’t want to leave anything to chance. He could always cancel the contract if she didn’t come up to scratch in the flesh. He cursed under his breath, wondering if all his carefully laid plans were about to come to nothing…

‘This just isn’t me,’ Alissa sighed, studying her reflection in the mirror with critical and uneasy eyes.

‘You’re not supposed to be you, you’re supposed to be me—at least to look at!’ Alexa argued vehemently. ‘And you can’t show up in some cut-price dreary outfit when I was supposed to choose a new wardrobe in time for the wedding and given the money to do it. I’m going to have to give you almost all my clothes to go through with this masquerade.’

Recognising the resentful note in her twin’s voice, Alissa breathed, ‘I don’t want your clothes because they’re not my style—’

‘You don’t have a style,’ her more fashionable sister retorted tartly. ‘You wear cheap comfy clothes and that’s not what a rich man expects. If you’re going to carry this pretence off, you have to get the image right.’

‘If you added a set of wings I’d look just like a fairy off a Christmas tree!’ Alissa exclaimed in mortification, twirling so that the short skirt of the black dress flew out and exposed the cerise-pink layers of net edged with lace beneath. The net was scratchy and uncomfortable and the towering pink peep-toe shoes she also wore forced her to walk in little mincing steps. Plus, she was a good deal curvier than her sister and her breasts were straining against the snug fit of the bodice. ‘This dress is too small for me!’

‘It’s fine. I have a much slimmer figure. You can’t expect the dress to look anything like as good on you as it does on me. Try to remember that it’s not cool to stuff yourself if there’s food around,’ Alexa reprimanded her. ‘You’re welcome to my clothes. After all I am pregnant and they won’t fit me much longer. Make sure you don’t lose that coat by leaving it down somewhere. There are thieves everywhere.’

A towering man, who was as tall as he was broad, came to the door of Alexa’s apartment to announce that a car was waiting downstairs for Alissa. Alexa was careful to stay out of sight. He had a heavy accent and minimal English at his disposal, so Alissa’s initial chatty efforts to find out what his name was, how long he had worked for his employer and where she was going fell on stony ground. During the journey, however, he turned in the front passenger seat, eased open the partition and pointed carefully to himself. ‘Borya,’ he told her, having worked out what she wanted to know.

‘Alissa,’ she responded cheerfully, striving not to surrender to the nervous chill steadily spreading through her.

The vehicle came to a halt outside a nightclub where a sizeable gathering of stylish people were already queuing for entry. A protective presence by her side, Borya swept her in past the doormen. Mindful of her twin’s strictures about the coat she wore, Alissa came to a halt at the cloakroom check and removed the garment, determined to take no risks with it. Borya broke into a voluble speech but she was none the wiser as to what he was telling her and she passed over the coat.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked the attendant, who was coughing into a handkerchief and shivering in the corner behind the counter.

‘I’ve got a rotten cold and it’s freezing in here,’ the girl spluttered miserably and Alissa felt desperately sorry for her; while she had been a student she had often worked in low-paid part-time jobs to make ends meet.

Surrounded by his aides and his entire security team, Sergei was in a private room watching football on a giant wall television plasma screen. But the instant his bride-to-be walked through the door backed by Borya, he shook himself by totally forgetting the game. Indeed unfamiliar words like exquisite and dazzling briefly shone a glow of inspiration over Sergei’s more usually prosaic thoughts. He was initially off-balanced by the reality that Alissa did not seem to bear much resemblance to her photo. In the flesh she was so much more than merely attractive. In fact she was incredibly feminine with a beautiful heart-shaped face, delicate features and aquamarine eyes as blue-green and mysterious as the sea. Long golden blonde hair tumbled halfway down her back. She was also tiny, the dress drawing attention to her minuscule waist and the pouting upward swell of the surprisingly full curves above it. His attention rested on her lush Cupid’s bow mouth and the firm rounded globes of her breasts. The tightness at his groin shifted into the heaviness of solid arousal and his galloping attack of cold feet just vanished there and then. Somehow the photo had lied: she was gorgeous and very beddable.

When Alissa saw the big dark male sprawled on the sofa, she fell still and had to be urged forward. In slow motion he came fluidly upright, well over six feet of long, lean, powerfully built masculinity unfolding before her intimidated gaze. He was a stunningly handsome guy. Black hair was brushed back from his lean bronzed face, which was dissected by the arrogant blade of his nose and complemented by high carved cheekbones and an aggressive jaw line. Her ability to swallow and breathe was arrested while she stood there staring. He was blatantly male in an age when that primal attribute was becoming more and more rare. Glittering, very dark eyes flared down into hers and her heart succumbed to a nervous bounce behind her ribcage.

‘Come and sit down,’ Sergei murmured, his accent purring over syllables that took more concentration than usual to pronounce. ‘I’m watching my club play. Do you follow football?’

‘No, not at all,’ Alissa admitted, scanning his appearance. He wore a black striped designer shirt, the sleeves of which he had pushed up his arms, and well-cut black trousers. The jacket of his business suit lay in a heap and his silk tie was in the process of falling off the coffee table onto the floor. She could tell at a glance that he was untidy and that he most probably had a low tolerance threshold for any kind of restriction. His tightly leashed energy hummed in the air like a building storm while he automatically took up a strong stance of authority.

Sergei, who was accustomed to women who raved about football for his benefit, was stunned by that careless response. ‘You don’t like football?’ he repeated, giving her another chance to reconsider and ingratiate herself.

‘I’ve never thought about it one way or the other. I wasn’t one of the girls who wanted to play it at school anyway,’ Alissa confided as she lifted his jacket, folded it and set it neatly aside so that she could sit down. The tie on the floor irritated her but she struggled not to pick it up. After all, she wasn’t his maid. ‘I wasn’t the sporty type.’

She was small-boned and fragile and the idea of her on a football pitch struck him as ludicrous. He snapped imperious fingers like a potentate presiding over a court and the waiter hovering by the door hurried over to take his order for pink vodka. A tall bottle arrived and drinks were poured. Alissa accepted a glass and wished she were able to ask some of the dozen questions brimming on her lips, but she could not afford to expose her ignorance and risk blowing her cover. Trying not to wince at the strong taste of the drink, she sipped.

‘You don’t like vodka either?’ Sergei quipped, wondering why she was so uptight, sitting perched on the very edge of the sofa and maintaining a careful distance from him.

At that comment, which strongly suggested that she was not meeting his expectations, Alissa deemed it wisest to tip her head back and down what remained in the glass in one go. It was like swallowing flames and she thought her burning throat would never be the same again. Another bottle arrived with a fresh pair of glasses.

‘Try this one and see if it is more to your taste-it’s made in Scotland,’ Sergei informed her lazily.

‘I’m okay—I don’t drink an awful lot.’ Alissa continued to clutch her empty glass to make it easier to avoid the offer of another.

‘You should enjoy alcohol while you still can,’ he told her.

Alissa wondered what on earth she was supposed to make of that piece of advice. What did he mean? That if she signed on the dotted line as his wife she would no longer be allowed to drink? The sudden outcry from the men in the room accompanied by a full-throated roar from the spectators of the game on the television stole her attention.

‘Oh, someone’s scored, have they?’ she commented brightly, forgetting that odd remark of his in her eagerness to make conversation. Nobody needed to tell her that her sister, Alexa, would not have been sitting there by his side as quiet as a little mouse. ‘How exciting…’

‘Alissa,’ Sergei said gently, ‘it was the other team, not mine, which scored.’

Colour flamed in her cheeks. ‘Oh, dear…’

Sergei closed long fingers round the small hand curling into the sofa by her side and used that connection to propel her across the space separating them.

‘What are you doing?’ Alissa gasped, instant panic flooding through her.

Unperturbed, Sergei drew her right up to him and brushed the golden hair back from her cheeks with confident fingers. All big eyes and fluctuating colour, she was breathing rapidly. It was not the flirtatious or amused reaction he expected to receive from an experienced woman and he was intrigued. ‘What do you think?’ he mocked.

She collided with dark eyes flaring lustrous gold and a tight clenching sensation in her pelvis made her shift uncomfortably in her seat. She gazed up at him, terrified that any attempt to go into retreat or call a halt would have the same provocative effect on his intrinsically dominant nature as a gauntlet thrown down in challenge. As her nipples tightened into stinging prominence she sucked in a ragged breath and pressed her thighs tensely together. She knew what was happening to her and she didn’t like it at all. Her body was attracted to him, not her brain, she told herself angrily. Her brain had nothing to do with the desire that was assailing her in a seductive tide.

‘You’re very sexy,’ Sergei husked, a long finger tracing the voluptuous raspberry-tinted curve of her lower lip while his hungry body reacted with almost painful enthusiasm to the sensual pull of her fragrant body so close to his. ‘Come home with me tonight. Why should we wait?’

Her aquamarine eyes flew even wider and she lowered her lashes hurriedly in self-defence. They had only met a few minutes ago and he actually thought she would be willing to sleep with him tonight? He expected her to sleep with him? He could only be asking why they should wait for the wedding. If Alexa had been sitting beside her at that moment, Alissa would definitely have strangled her twin. Exactly what kind of an arrangement had Alexa signed up for with this man? And how could Alissa challenge his assumptions without revealing her ignorance and running the risk of being unveiled as an impostor?

The atmosphere vibrated like a tautly strung musical instrument. In the midst of the frantic thoughts racing inside Alissa’s head, Sergei tugged her to him and brought his wide shapely mouth crashing hungrily down on hers. It was sweeter than sweet in intensity and hotter than flames. Fireworks of response were set off like a chain reaction of energy snaking through her slender body. She had never before got a charge like that from a kiss and the power of it shocked her. He parted her lips with his tongue and delved sensually deep in the moist interior of her mouth and she shuddered with the wicked, wanton pleasure of it. The smouldering prickle of heat between her thighs raised her temperature even more. Her fingers were lodged in the luxuriant thickness of his black hair, but she craved much closer contact than she already had. She wanted to press herself fully against his lean, hard body.

‘Enough, milaya moya.’ Sergei set her back from him with urgent hands while he scanned her hectically flushed face and the lack of focus in her eyes with satisfaction. She was seriously hot and passionate. He liked a woman who could forget herself so totally in his arms. He was already picturing that tiny lush body splayed across his bed, and the wedding he had begun to dread finally acquired a strong source of appeal. Getting his wife pregnant did, at the very least, promise to be a highly entertaining pursuit.

Disorientated, Alissa blinked, not quite ready to accept that she could have let him kiss her breathless while making no attempt to end their embrace. She was in a state of complete bewilderment.

‘The game,’ Sergei murmured succinctly as if it was the only thing in the world that mattered at that moment.

Alissa almost lifted one of the bottles off the table and brained him with it. He was talking about football! The football was more important than she was? Her soft swollen mouth snapping shut like a steel strap, Alissa murmured sweetly, ‘I like a man who has his priorities in the right place.’

Sergei would have suspected sarcasm if it were not for the fact that women were invariably too busy trying to impress him to snipe at him. He turned his attention back to the television screen. ‘I’ll take you down to the nightclub when the game is over.’

The colour in her cheeks high, Alissa stared at the television screen and childishly hoped his team would lose. She had let him kiss her in front of a room full of men. She had completely forgotten where she was, who she was with and who she was supposed to be pretending to be. How could she have behaved like that with a man she barely knew? And would he just have pushed Alexa away and gone back to watching his stupid game? Why, all of a sudden, was she thinking like a jealous insecure teenager? Wouldn’t she be better engaged wondering why Sergei Antonovich had suggested she spend the night with him? Most jobs, even unusual ones, were conducted in a more professional and considerably less intimate manner.

Sergei could feel her boredom and it irritated him. It was bad enough that his team was losing. Indeed, in spite of the millions he had poured into his football club, it was a bloodbath on that pitch! He began to explain the game to her, astonished by a level of ignorance that ensured that she even had to ask the meaning of the simplest of terms. No, she definitely wasn’t sporty and she had clearly made no effort to discover his interests and prepare for them so that she could be a good companion. He was annoyed that she had been so lazy. No Russian woman would have made such a cardinal error when it came to pleasing a man. On the other hand he was convinced she would please him very much in bed and he was strong enough to mould her like wax into what he wanted in every other field.

Alissa accompanied him into the lift. ‘This place is enormous.’

‘I extended it to provide VIP rooms. It’s very popular. The staff are trained to deliver the service that Russians expect,’ Sergei advanced, taking advantage of the mirrored walls to study her from all angles and finding no view that disappointed him. There was no denying that she was little, but in all the right womanly places she was deliciously rounded, which compensated for her lack of height.

‘You own this club?’ Alissa said in surprise.

‘Yes. There wasn’t a club in London able to offer the level of facilities that I expect.’

She had never met a man of such blazing assurance. She sensed that that confidence defined him. He expected the very best and refused to accept less, which was why he had bought his own nightclub and personalised it to suit his needs. So demanding and confident a male must have found an unsuccessful first marriage intolerable. Did that explain why he had chosen to opt for a businesslike approach for his second marital venture? It was unlikely, Alissa decided when she recalled the salient fact that this proposed marriage was only to last a couple of years at most. Normal marriages didn’t take off with the divorce date already in place. So, why was he bothering to get married?

‘You’re very quiet,’ Sergei commented as the lift doors purred open, letting in a flood of voices and pounding music.

From that point, there was no further opportunity for speech. Men she recognised now from his security team were standing by an empty table, keeping it reserved for their employer. But no sooner had Sergei stepped onto the dance floor to approach that table than the frontrunners in a surge of excited women engulfed him.

Alissa had never seen anything like it. She was nudged back by the tide, pushed aside, left standing while various women giggled, reached out to try and touch him and performed dance steps as though they were auditioning for Sergei’s benefit. It was no wonder that he exuded the air of a man accustomed to being the centre of attention for he very definitely was, just as there was no doubt that he could have walked away from his admirers had he so desired.

Alissa lifted her head high and left him to it, taking a seat behind the table where Borya was stationed. With two beautiful women on either side of him and visibly hanging on his every word, Sergei appeared to be in his element. And he was, Alissa acknowledged, because Sergei Antonovich was a notorious womaniser or, depending on one’s outlook, a famous connoisseur of her sex. Over the years he had appeared in a lot of tabloid pictures, always with a different gorgeous woman clinging to him as he emerged from nightclubs, stood on yacht decks or posed in front of the impressive Antonovich building that housed his business empire in London. Although he was not known for fidelity or for the longevity of his affairs, a long list of fabulous beauties had still accepted him on those demeaning terms.

Sergei looked around for Alissa and could barely credit that she had simply walked off and sat down. In all his life a woman had never treated him to such a display of indifference and it infuriated him. They were getting married in a week! He had just organised the publicity release on that score and there was his bride ignoring him, demonstrating her inability to meet the demands of the role she had been hired to play. No normal woman in love with a man would leave him with a bevy of willing and seductive beauties milling around him.

Stony-faced and unimpressed, Alissa sipped vodka through compressed lips while Sergei danced and flirted with the collection of truly shameless and determined women. There was the fatal flaw in all that wealth, power and potent male beauty, Alissa reflected with simmering scorn. Sergei Antonovich had no manners and not the smallest idea of how to behave in public with the woman he was planning to marry. That was undoubtedly why he had to pay a woman to take on the job. No woman with any pride or dignity would tolerate such treatment, not to mention the arrogant assumption that she would be happy to watch a bunch of footballers chasing a stupid ball round a muddy pitch at their very first meeting. If it had been a real date, Alissa would already have labelled him a loser and headed for home. Now she was wondering how long she was obligated to sit in public letting him make a fool of her while he dallied with the deferential type of oversexed woman he clearly preferred.

Alissa’s fingertips began to drum a little tattoo on the table top while she watched Sergei and she decided that she was leaving within the next ten minutes. She was irritated when someone blocked her view and she glanced up in surprise as a handsome blond man in a suit spoke to her in spite of Borya’s attempts to head him off. He was asking her to dance. Well, why not? Why should she sit bored, like a prisoner at her guarded table? Alissa rose from her seat, slid out from behind the table and off she went.

Sergei, who had little experience of women who fought back on his own level, was astounded to be forced to witness the reality that his future wife could dance in a very suggestive manner with another man. Dark eyes colder than a Siberian winter, he watched Alissa wriggle her curvaceous hips and turn, short skirt flying up to reveal the pink lace-edged net and a pair of very shapely, slender legs. He strode across the floor and, with an aggressive jerk of his head at her partner, he cut in, lifting his hands to rest them on her slight shoulders.

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he demanded rawly in the interval when the music paused before coming back again on an even more deafening beat.

Alissa was stunned by the level of aggression in his behaviour and was not at all surprised that the man she had been dancing with beat a safe sensible retreat, for she suspected that Sergei was quite capable of getting physical. In an abrupt movement that took him by surprise she shrugged off his hands and stalked off the floor. She was going home and she didn’t care how he felt about it. She wasn’t prepared to spend one more minute in a domineering brute’s company!

Sergei’s anger was laced with outrage and a profound and lingering sense of disbelief because her defiant refusal to conform to his expectations was the direct opposite of the treatment he was used to receiving from a woman. He strode off in her wake, snatching out his cell phone to answer it when it buzzed. It was the owner of the firm he used to do background screening calling to tell him that it would take much more time than was available before the wedding to do the usual full in-depth check on Alissa. Sergei studied the tiny stalking figure ahead of him, the swirl of her short skirt, the defiant angle of her little shoulders, and told his caller to forget about the check altogether. Just then he knew that, whatever happened, he intended to have her in his bed and to hell with the risk!

Alissa stopped at the coat-check facility, for she had no intention of drawing down Alexa’s ire by abandoning her sister’s much-prized coat.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sergei growled from several feet away.

‘I’m going home. I don’t date Neanderthal men and the only place you belong is a cave!’ Alissa sizzled back at him without hesitation.

‘You’re not on a date,’ Sergei reminded her with biting cool, reluctantly amused by the ‘Neanderthal man’ crack, but also offended even though nothing would have made him betray that crucial fact.

In an impatient movement he stepped forward and addressed the coat check attendant. ‘Get a move on,’ he urged. ‘We are in a hurry.’

‘Don’t be so rude!’ Alissa launched at him. ‘She’s not feeling well. She doesn’t need you barking orders at her like she’s in the army.’

All amusement evaporating, Sergei drew in a long slow breath and suppressed his volcanic temper with some difficulty. Borya and his men were already stationed by the exit, transfixed by the scene being enacted fifteen feet from them. What sort of a woman dared to tell him how to behave? Criticised him? Threatened to walk out on him? He flicked a glance at the shocked coat-check girl, who was coughing noisily into a hanky and simultaneously trying to shrink into the back of her cubbyhole. What sort of a woman cared about the health or the feelings of a menial employee? A kinder woman than the more selfish type he usually spent his time with, he conceded grudgingly. Her altruistic concern reminded him of Yelena, who had long been the first port of call when neighbours fell sick or needed someone to mind their children. Here was a woman who might, with his guidance, turn into exactly the kind of wife he wanted to produce for his grandmother’s inspection.

Alissa watched Sergei settle a high denomination banknote down on the counter in a silent apology. Oh, how she wished the girl would fling it back in his handsome teeth and demand the words instead, but of course she didn’t. In obvious awe of him, she stammered heartfelt thanks and pocketed the money at a speed that shook Alissa. He took the coat and extended it with a flourish for Alissa.

She dug her arms into it and froze as his lean warm hands lifted her hair from her nape where it had caught beneath the collar. The gentle brush of his fingertips against her skin burned through her sensitised body like a match flame lighting dry crackling straw. That fast she remembered the raw, demanding sensuality and pressure of his mouth and her body reacted to the memory with an instantaneous rush of heat and moisture between her thighs. Unbearably aware of her body’s wanton vulnerability, she froze.

Sergei eased her back against his big powerful frame and ran lean, sure hands down her sleeves to lift and enclose her hands in the warm, firm grip of his. Unable to maintain her rigid stance and wildly aware of his proximity, she trembled.

‘The press are waiting outside and you are about to enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame,’ he murmured lazily, the rich dark tone of his deep voice feathering like a caress along her spine. ‘It’s time to start acting and look happy to be with me.’

Alissa was bemused by that information. The press? She felt out of her depth and knew that, most ironically, her sister would have loved such a moment in the public eye. ‘So I can’t slap you, then?’

Sergei vented a roughened masculine laugh that made her more than ever conscious of his sexual pulling power. ‘No.’

‘Or sulk?’

‘I wouldn’t put up with it, milaya moya. Just like I won’t stand another man laying a single finger on any part of you while you’re supposed to be mine,’ he added with a studious casualness that somehow made what he was saying all the more riveting. ‘With me there are boundaries and you must respect them. Do I need to say any more?’

Picking up on the intimidating chill in his intonation, Alissa almost shivered, but she was bone-deep resistant to domination of any kind. ‘Were you born a bully? Or do you find you have to work at it?’

Sergei was utterly poleaxed by that impudent comeback. Black brows descending over grim dark eyes, he stared down at the shining blonde head that barely reached the centre of his chest, his long brown fingers still instinctively engaged in stroking the fine-boned fragility of her wrists. She was the size of a doll and she was fighting him every step of the way. He could not even begin to credit her bravado.

‘Your silence tells me that it comes naturally to you,’ Alissa answered for herself and even she was wondering why she was going out on a limb to hit back at him. Was it the effect of the vodka? Or his behaviour with female admirers, which had paraded his total lack of interest in her feelings? Or the ghastly embarrassing truth that she found him stupendously attractive in spite of his overpoweringly masculine ways?

Sergei bent to clamp his hands to her waist and then he lifted her bodily around to face him. ‘By the time I’m finished with you, you will love football—’

Seriously vexed at being lifted off her feet and treated like a child, Alissa focused on him with blazing aquamarine eyes. ‘Dream on!’

‘And once you get used to me you’ll be jealous and clingy and adoring just like all the other women I’ve ever known,’ Sergei completed with raw conviction.

In the hold of his hands, her fingers balled into furious fists. ‘I don’t think you can ever have met a woman like me before.’

His brilliant dark eyes flamed golden as the heart of a fire and he looked dangerous, his lean, dark, handsome face taut. ‘Stoy…stop!’ he spelt out with critical cool. ‘Have you forgotten why you are here with me?’

Her lashes lowered and she was suddenly still and fighting to get a grip on her angry discomfiture. His reminder had been timely: she had forgotten. He had hired Alexa to carry out a role and so far Alissa had annoyed him, disagreed with him and argued with him. She breathed in slow and deep to calm herself.

‘That is better,’ Sergei pronounced and he lowered his arrogant dark head and pressed his lips gently to her lush pink mouth.

And for the merest fraction of a second she resisted the urge to part her lips before the throb of the blood in her veins and the acceleration of her heartbeat combined to vanquish her defences. Suddenly, without even being aware of the prompting, she tipped her head back and let him taste her again, glorying in the shimmering, prickling mist of coming-alive sensation surging through her again. The flick of his tongue against the tender roof of her mouth made her shiver and press forward, instinctively wanting more.

‘Now we will go outside,’ Sergei breathed, lifting his handsome dark head and tugging her beneath one arm.

The bank of cameras and shouted questions that greeted their appearance made her shrink back against the arm locked to her slender spine. Aquamarine eyes huge, she contrived an uncertain smile while his bodyguards fanned out around them to prevent anyone from getting too close. She didn’t breathe again until she was safe inside the limousine and invisible behind the tinted windows. She was in a daze, unable to credit that she had let him kiss her again and that, in truth, she could hardly wait for a repetition. It was as if one little taste of him had created a terrifying craving she could not suppress.

‘You didn’t enjoy the attention,’ Sergei remarked, his questioning gaze locked to her pale face. ‘It frightened you—why?’

‘I suppose I’m rather a private sort of person.’

‘That is not the impression you gave in your interviews.’

Alissa had felt safe from detection in his presence because he had never met her sister. But evidently her sister’s interviews had been recorded in some way and he was aware of the content and had formed advance opinions about her personality on that basis. Suddenly she was very tense. ‘Everyone puts their best foot forward in an interview situation.’

Sergei made no comment but he noticed her evasiveness and wondered what lay behind it. ‘You have to learn to relax with me. In less than a week we’re flying to Russia for our wedding.’

‘Russia,’ Alissa echoed weakly, plunging into even deeper consternation at the concept while she asked herself if she could possibly go through with the role her twin had agreed to play.

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