Brides For Billionaires

‘Would I have asked if I wasn’t?’

‘How would I know?’ Kat replied flippantly, shooting him a look of barely concealed resentment. ‘It’s quite simple. My mother couldn’t cope with my sisters and she put them into foster care. They were very unhappy when I visited them and I wanted to help—I was the only person who could help.’

‘It was a generous act for so young a woman—you sacrificed your freedom—’

‘Freedom’s not always the gift people like to think it is. Family’s important to me and I never really had that security when I was a child. I also wanted my sisters to know that I cared about them,’ she admitted grudgingly.

Dense black lashes framed the shrewd gaze still welded to her, his dark eyes lightening with male appreciation. ‘Why do you always want to argue with me?’

‘Do you want an honest answer?’ Kat enquired.

‘Da,’ he confirmed huskily, but in that moment he was mental miles away, engaged in imagining her graceful length adorned with pearls and nothing else. No, not pearls, he decided, rubies or emeralds to enhance that porcelain-pale complexion.

‘You’re so sure of yourself and so arrogant that you irritate me,’ Kat confessed, lush red-tinted lips pouting as she framed the words.

Mikhail’s body tensed because he very much wanted to nibble at that full lower lip, but for the first time in his life with a woman he hesitated to do exactly what he wanted. He didn’t need to dive at her like a starving man being offered a last meal. He could practise restraint, couldn’t he?

‘I can’t understand why a man acting like a man should irritate you,’ Mikhail told her with amusement, his healthy and exuberant ego gloriously impervious to her criticism, for he had never known what it was to doubt that he knew best in every situation. ‘Unless you prefer weaklings … in which case I could never hope to please you.’

Involuntarily studying him, taking in the amusement illuminating his dark as night eyes and the tug of a smile pulling at the corner of his stubborn mouth, Kat stiffened, resisting his potent masculine charisma with all her might. Companion, she reminded herself staunchly, not his lover or one of his admirers. ‘You do realise that you’re going to get bored with me?’ she warned him.

‘How could you bore me when you’re quite unlike any other woman I’ve met before?’ Mikhail countered with lazy assurance. ‘I never know what strange thing you will say next, milaya moya.’

As Kat was not aware that she had ever said anything that might be considered strange to him she was, not unnaturally, silenced by that statement. The limo drew up in a quiet street and they alighted, Mikhail clamping his big hand to her slim hip to draw her below the shelter of his arm when she would have put greater distance between them. Disturbingly conscious of his proximity and the familiar scent of his cologne, not to mention the weight and position of his hand near her derriere, Kat had to fight the desire to pull away from him, knowing it would be as welcome to him as a slap in the face. She had to be more tolerant and relaxed, she instructed herself sternly. She was a grown woman and there was no need for her to behave like a jumpy teenager around him.

His security team ushered them into a low-lit restaurant. They were greeted at the door by the proprietor, who bowed as low as if royalty had arrived. A sudden hush fell among the other diners and heads swivelled in their direction. Mikhail addressed the proprietor in his own language. They were shown to a table and menus were presented with much bowing and scraping. Yes, it was very like being out in public with royalty, Kat decided ruefully, glancing down at her menu only to discover that it was incomprehensible to her.

‘Is this a Russian restaurant?’ Kat enquired.

Mikhail nodded calmly. ‘I often eat here.’

‘The menu’s in Russian—I can’t read it,’ Kat pointed out stiffly a couple of minutes later because he still hadn’t noticed that she was having a problem.

‘I’ll choose for you,’ Mikhail announced rather than offering to play translator for her benefit.

Kat gritted her teeth again, wondering how she would get through the month without trying to kill him at least once. He existed in his own little bubble of supreme confidence, King of all he surveyed, blithely, unashamedly selfish and stubborn. Her needs, her wants did not exist as far as he was concerned. Suddenly she wondered if that meant that he would be rubbish in bed and hot-pink chagrin flooded her complexion at that uncharacteristic thought on her part. As she had no intention of going to bed with him, she would never know the answer to that question, she reminded herself irritably.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mikhail asked, recognising the tension in her fine-boned features while at the same time wishing she would go and wipe off all the metallic grey make-up obscuring her beautiful eyes.

‘Nothing …’ Kat forced a valiant smile while he ordered their meals in Russian without consulting her preferences or even telling her what he had chosen for her to eat. She was doing this to regain her family home and she could put up with being treated like a piece of inanimate furniture for the sake of the house, she told herself staunchly.

Mikhail signalled Stas and gave him an instruction that startled the older man into glancing in surprise at Kat.

The first course arrived and it was caviar served with strips of hot buttered toast. Kat had never liked fish—in fact even the smell of anything fishy made her tummy roll. Mikhail failed to notice how little she ate and was equally impervious to the fact that she only took a few mouthfuls of the equally fishy soup that followed. Stas then approached her with a package, which he handed to her.

‘The make-up … you can remove it now,’ Mikhail informed her with satisfaction as she glanced into the bag in disbelief and discovered a pack of wipes.

Taken aback by the request that she remove her make-up while she was out in public, Kat vanished to the cloakroom and carefully peeled off the false eyelashes before wiping off the dramatic eye shadow. The effort left her eyelids slightly swollen, not that she supposed that that little consequence would matter to Mikhail, whose main goal in life always seemed to be getting exactly what he wanted from those around him. He didn’t seem to respect or even notice the normal boundaries that other people observed. After only a couple of hours Kat was reeling in shock from the challenge of dealing with such a force of nature. She dug into her bag for her own small stock of cosmetics and applied some foundation and lip gloss to banish the bare look from her face.

‘Much better,’ Mikhail told her approvingly when she reappeared, looking more as he remembered her. He was as comfortable with her transformation and his determined control of it as she was not. ‘I can see you again.’

Mercifully, a giant succulent steak arrived for Kat’s main course and she was finally able to satisfy her appetite with something she could eat. The dessert was something cheesy covered with honey. After that no-holds-barred introduction to Mikhail’s national cuisine, dutifully drinking down the special vodka he praised to the skies and ending on coffee seemed almost tame in comparison.

He then asked her if she wanted to visit a club and Kat felt like a party pooper when she admitted that it had been a long and very busy day and that she was tired.

As they stepped out of the restaurant onto the shadowy street, a dark shape lunged at her without warning and a shocked cry of fear erupted from Kat. Just as abruptly, Mikhail thrust her behind him and stepped between her and her apparent assailant with what sounded very much like an oath. In the scuffle that followed, men seemed to jump from all directions and she fell back into the doorway breathless and full of alarm, her heart thundering in her eardrums as she appreciated that Mikhail already had the man pinned down in a pretty threatening manner. Stas, the head of his security team, was intervening and he and Mikhail momentarily seemed to be engaged in some sort of a dispute. Mikhail’s anger was audible in his dark deep voice. Shaking the terrified-looking man he still held as a terrier might shake a rat, Mikhail released him with a sound of disgust and swung round to retrieve Kat.

‘Are you all right?’ Mikhail demanded thunderously.

‘I got a fright … that’s all,’ Kat framed shakily.

‘I saw the street light gleam on something in his hand—I thought he had a knife,’ Mikhail grated, shepherding her with determination towards the limo where the passenger door already stood open. ‘But it was just a camera—he’s only an idiot paparazzo trying to steal a photo!’

Still trembling from the shock of the incident, Kat settled into the passenger seat and marvelled at the way in which her attitude to Mikhail Kusnirovich had been turned on its head within the space of a minute. He might have neglected to ask what she liked to eat at dinner but he had, without the smallest hesitation, put himself in the path of what he thought might be a knife to protect her. Kat was stunned but hopelessly impressed that he could even have considered putting himself at risk for her benefit.

‘Wouldn’t your security have taken care of him?’ she prompted in bewilderment.

‘Their primary task is always to protect me, not those I am with. It was my duty to protect you, milaya moya,’ Mikhail growled between compressed lips, a lean brown hand clenching into a fist on his thigh, his adrenalin charge still clearly running on a high.

‘For what it’s worth, thanks.’ Kat concentrated on breathing in deep and slow to still her racing heartbeat.

‘You were in no danger—it was only a camera,’ Mikhail reminded her dismissively.

But he hadn’t known that when he had instinctively acted to ensure that she was not hurt, Kat conceded, suddenly plunged deep into her own thoughts and ashamed of the speed with which she had been willing to label Mikhail as selfish and arrogant. What had just happened revealed that there was far more depth and many more shades to the Russian billionaire’s tough character than she had been prepared to believe.

When Mikhail stepped into the lift with her back at the hotel, however, Kat’s nervous tension mushroomed afresh. She wondered why he was coming up to the suite with her. He lounged back in one corner of the lift, brilliant black eyes pinned to her with glittering intensity, and her legs went all woolly and her head swam, nerves fluttering in her tummy as she fumbled for something casual to say to dispel the dangerous drag in the atmosphere.

‘What birth sign are you?’ Kat heard herself ask inanely.

Mikhail gazed back at her blankly. No, she wasn’t going to get any horoscope chit-chat out of him, she registered in fierce embarrassment.

‘I’m a Leo … I was asking when were you born?’ Kat explained in the hope that he would appreciate that she wasn’t a crackpot.

Mikhail, taken aback by the random nature of the conversation and still not grasping what she wanted from him, breathed tentatively, ‘Thirty years ago?’

In receipt of that unexpected information, Kat froze in horror. ‘Are you telling me that you’re only thirty years old?’ She gasped.

Exasperated, Mikhail, who had been thinking that kissing her would hardly be breaking the rules because it was essential that she became accustomed to being touched by him, raised level black brows in enquiry. ‘Ya ne poni’ mayu … I don’t understand. What’s the problem? What are we talking about?’

Kat’s back was so stiff she might have had a poker welded to her slender spine and her colour remained high. She stepped out of the lift, dipped the key card into the lock on the suite door and stalked into the big reception room, switching on the lights.

Mikhail followed her, a frown hardening his features as he studied her. ‘Kat?’ he pressed impatiently.

Kat spun back to him and settled furious green eyes on him. ‘You’re younger than me … years younger!’ she launched at him in angry consternation. ‘I can’t believe that I didn’t see that, that I didn’t even consider the possibility!’

Unmoved by the same conflict of emotion that powered Kat, Mikhail gazed steadily back at her. ‘Da … you’re a few years older. And the problem is?’

Outrage shimmering through her slender taut figure, Kat stared back at him accusingly. ‘That’s a big problem as far as I’m concerned.’