The Russian Rivals: The Most Coveted Prize / The Power of Vasilii. PENNY JORDAN

he was. Why must she keep on putting a personal slant on everything he said to her? And, even worse, dragging it into the far too overheated sensual awareness of him she should be resolutely ignoring rather than encouraging. He himself was making it plain that his interest in her was not personally biased at all. Was it because she wanted him to have a personal interest in her? Because she wanted him to desire her and, desiring her, show her that desire? No. No—a thousand times no.

      ‘I am proud to take on that responsibility,’ Alena assured him, finishing her vodka so that she could break the eye contact he was maintaining with her, hoping she sounded suitably businesslike.

      Gesturing towards her starter, Kiryl said, ‘I hope the food I have chosen will be to your liking?’

      ‘This is my favourite starter,’ she admitted.

      Of course it was, Kiryl thought inwardly with cynical satisfaction. He had left nothing to chance about this lunch. He knew exactly what her favourite dishes from the restaurant’s menu were.

      ‘You mentioned your own mother when I asked you what had drawn you to my mother’s charity,’ Alena reminded him, having told herself yet again that this was a business lunch—no matter how intimate it might seem. Talking about the charity would help her to focus on that reality. So she wasn’t asking him about his mother because she desperately wanted to know more about him. She wasn’t.

      ‘Yes, I did,’ Kiryl agreed, reaching into the second ice bucket and removing a bottle of white wine, telling her, ‘Try this. I discovered it the last time I stayed here and I rather like it.’

      Wine on top of the vodka she had already had to drink; was that really a good idea? For a moment Alena hesitated. It was very flattering to be asked her opinion on a bottle of wine. She wasn’t a big drinker—her mother hadn’t been, and Vasilii deplored the growing modern trend for young women to drink heavily.

      Quickly she placed her hand over her empty wine glass and shook her head, telling him, ‘No, thank you. I’m not much of a drinker, I’m afraid. Especially at lunchtime.’

      Kiryl put down the bottle and gave her another of those searching looks that seemed to probe the depths of her being.

      ‘Was that decision your own or your brother’s?’ Kiryl asked.

      He was smiling at her again. His smile said that she could feel safe with him, but his words had sliced to the heart of her own growing awareness that a byproduct of Vasilii’s protection of her was a certain immaturity when it came to experiencing the things that other girls her age had experienced. Was that how he saw her? As someone immature and inexperienced? A girl rather than the fully sensual and adult woman a man like him was bound to prefer?

      ‘My own,’ she answered him. ‘Vasilii does not make my decisions or choices for me—nor would he want to do so.’

      ‘So why not allow me to convince you that this wine will greatly enhance your enjoyment of our time together today?’

      Her heart was skittering around inside her chest. Another, more experienced woman would know whether or not Kiryl was indulging in flirtatious banter with her with words that were mundane on the surface and yet somehow held a teasing note of a deeper sensuality, but she did not. So surely it would be better to play it safe and assume that it was merely her own over-active imagination that was deepening them with a sensual promise that did not exist?

      No sooner had she made that decision than the calming effect it had had on her was ripped away, when Kiryl stood up and came to her side, gently lifting her hand away from her wine glass and continuing to hold it whilst he poured her the merest half a glass of pale straw-coloured wine, before filling his own glass and then returning the bottle to the ice bucket. All the while he continued to hold her hand. And not just hold it. He was touching her fingers, stroking them lightly and almost absently.

      ‘You’re trembling,’ he told her.

      Of course she was. He was touching her. No, not just touching her, caressing her, and because of that she was trembling—from head to toe—her heart thudding frantically.

      ‘Your brother must be a very stern protector if the thought of having half a glass of wine without his approval can have this effect on you.’

      He thought she was trembling because she was afraid of Vasilii? By rights she ought to defend her loving halfbrother and tell him truthfully that never once in their lives together had she ever, ever had any need to fear him, that it had always been Vasilii to whom she had run with all her troubles, to be comforted by his big-brotherly love for her. But if she did tell him that then he might ask her exactly why she was trembling—and she couldn’t possibly tell him that. All she could do was make a mental apology to her brother and try to control the jagged exhaled breath of relief that shuddered through her body when Kiryl let go of her hand and returned to his own chair, lifting his own wine glass to his lips.

      ‘So, tell me more about your mother’s charity,’ he said.

      ‘You were going to tell me about your mother,’ Alena reminded him.

      For a moment Alena thought he hadn’t heard her. He seemed to be looking past her into some dark place that only he could see, a fixed expression on his face.

      Was that merely a shadow darkening his eyes, or was it really the ice cold look of anger it seemed?

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised uncomfortably.

      ‘For what? Asking about my mother?’ Kiryl gave a small shrug, his gaze hardening still further. ‘There is no need to be. It is no secret, after all. The reality of my mother’s life has been well documented by those who do not thinking it fitting that the son of a homeless Romany should become successful, because that challenges their prejudiced belief in their own superiority and the inferiority of those they choose to label in such a way.’

      And that labelling, that rejection and cruelty, had hurt him badly. Alena could tell. Her tender heart immediately ached for him, and for his mother.

      ‘It is true that as a child she did not receive the education afforded to the more privileged in society, but that was not her fault. My father was happy to sleep with her—the beautiful gypsy girl he had seen dancing in a café in Moscow frequented by the wealthy—but the minute she told him that she was pregnant, carrying me, he deserted and denigrated her, saying that she was lying about their relationship and that he had not fathered me. He told her he would rather smother me at birth than acknowledge that he had fathered a child with Romany blood.’

      Alena couldn’t hold back her gasp of emotion.

      ‘Your mother told you about your father’s cruelty to you both?’ she asked.

      A shuttered darkness claimed the light from Kiryl’s eyes.

      ‘No. She died when I was eight years old. But prior to that she told me that she wanted me to know how important love was and how much she loved me. How love could bring the greatest happiness life could hold and the sharpest pain. She wanted me to be proud of what and who I was, even though we were living in the meanest kind of poverty.’

      His mother had been a fool—too weak to stand up to his father and demand that he did the right thing by them both. All her talk of love and being proud of himself had meant nothing in the real world—the world that was ruled by men like his father, successful, wealthy men who controlled their own destiny and made the rules by which others had to live. As far as Kiryl was concerned it was far better to focus on that reality than to follow his mother’s advice about the importance of love. Look what it had done to her, and through her to him. No, there was no place for love in his life. Love only weakened those who were foolish enough to allow it into their lives.

      ‘So how do you know—I mean about how your father felt about your mother?’ Alena asked, wondering if perhaps he had misunderstood the situation. After all, surely no father could ever be so cruel to his child?

      ‘How do I know? I know because my father told me himself, when I finally tracked him down