Married By Christmas: His Pregnant Christmas Bride / Carter Bravo's Christmas Bride. Christine Rimmer

the five palaces, four cathedrals and the enclosing Kremlin Wall and Towers.

      “Having a man of your influence for a guide obviously has its perks,” she’d told him.

      A teasing look had lit up his face as he’d winked at her. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

      She’d wondered what more there could possibly be as he’d taken them through a heavily guarded wing and into a massive, imposingly ornate office. It had only been when she’d found a man surrounded by half a dozen hulking bodyguards advancing eagerly to greet them that she’d realized what he’d meant, how accurate his words had been.

      She really didn’t remember everything that had happened in the time they’d spent in that man’s company. A normal side effect, she was sure, of finding herself face-to-face with the President of the Russian Federation!

      The meeting, an impromptu one that could only have been planned at most the day before, lasted for half an hour. During the surreal time, both men had made her the focus of attention and conversation, with the president himself pouring her tea and asking her all kinds of courteous questions.

      Then Ivan had said he was taking her to dinner and the president had stood up at once, asking Ivan for an extended one-on-one meeting. Instead of jumping to ask when, Ivan had actually given him an inconclusive answer.

      Still stunned from that, and from the whole momentous event, she’d let Ivan sweep her out of the palace complex. Only now, when they’d been in his car for at least ten minutes, did she finally get over her shock enough to speak. She turned to him.

      “Seriously? ‘I’ll see when I can clear a morning for you’? That’s what you say when the second-most powerful man on earth asks you for a personal meeting?”

      Keeping his eyes on the road as he negotiated Moscow’s downtown traffic, he gave that lopsided smile that had been coming easier to him and that twisted everything inside her. “It’s the only answer I had to give him.”

      “You direct your sprawling business empire from home these days, and you have the most efficient system humanly possible in place anyway. You can certainly ‘clear a morning’ at once for the President of the Russian Federation when he asks you to.”

      At a traffic light he slid her one of those heated glances that brought her blood to an instant boil. “It’s not only my business empire I have to take into account while clearing mornings.”

      “Seriously?” Her exclamation was almost a squeak this time. “You might have incurred the wrath of one of history’s most powerful and dangerous men on my account?”

      His lips spread wider at her burst of incredulous anxiety. “I’m too valuable to incur anyone’s wrath. I’m also too dangerous that no one, not even him, would act on it even if I do.”

      Her heart drummed in rising apprehension. “C’mon, Ivan. Even you shouldn’t risk putting that to the test, certainly not so you can babysit me. When will you believe I can spend time on my own and bring your obsession with watching me under control? For God’s sake, I’m healed, fully, totally. Inside and out. And you have me ensconced in this fortress of yours with enough black ops guards to thwart a military invasion.”

      His gaze lengthened as he seemed to realize that her mortification was real. Then, putting the car in motion again when the light turned green, he pushed the hands-free button on the wheel.

      In seconds the call connected and a voice she’d always recognize now emanated from the surround-sound system, answering in that heavily accented English. The president!

      “Mr. Konstantinov, so good to hear from you again so soon.”

      Ivan’s eyes briefly landed on her in an intimate caress. “You have Ms. Shepherd to thank for that, Mr. President. She convinced me I could leave her side and come to meet you whenever you wish. You understand that with her recuperating from major surgery, her well-being comes first to me.”

      “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll be only too happy to receive you whenever Ms. Shepherdova can spare your vigilant services.”

      Then with no closing words, both men hung up almost at the same moment.

      Ivan turned those incredible emerald eyes to her, that indulgence that always filled them choking her up yet again. “Happy now?”

      All tension drained from her body in a rush, making her slump back in the plush leather seat of his Rolls-Royce. “If you call feeling as if I’ve dodged a bullet happy, then yeah.”

      The smile froze over his magnificent face. “It really worried you that much?”

      “Hello? I had a dozen scenarios scrambling my mind and in every one of them you were targeted for any level of disciplinary action!”

      A frown crept over his face. “I wouldn’t have arranged that meeting in the first place if I thought it would upset you. I wanted it to be a surprise you’d remember fondly.”

      “And boy, will I.” At his darkening expression, she rushed on. “I will remember it in the best way, up until you offhandedly disregarded his request. Then it turned memorable for all the scary reasons.”

      At his stymied expression, she realized this was a serious enough event she could use to settle the issue he’d been dodging since they’d come here at last.

      Turning fully to him, she placed her hand over his arm, found his muscles bunched to the consistency of rock. “Want to know what upsets me? It’s that you keep tailoring your every breath to what you think is best for me. That you won’t believe me when I tell you what that is.”

      His jaw hardened, yet he made no response as he brought the car to a stop in front of what he’d told her on the way out of the Kremlin was one of Moscow’s premier gourmet restaurants.

      Before he got out to help her out, leaving the car to one of the guards who followed them everywhere at a discreet distance, he turned to her briefly. In the fleeting moments their eyes met, there was acknowledgment that he understood what she’d meant.

      That he hadn’t taken her yet.

      Over the last ten weeks he’d exposed her to all kinds of intimacy and pleasure, brought her to dizzying heights in every way, except for the way she craved. He hadn’t made love to her, hadn’t claimed her, fully. By now she wondered if he ever would.

      After she’d lost count of the times she’d begged him to take her, she’d stopped counting, and begging. She’d accepted from the start that being with him would be on his terms, that she needed him so completely, she’d take whatever he gave. Because at the time she’d made the decision, and even now, nothing at all from him wasn’t an option.

      But now that the ominous ten-week milestone was here, his continuing resistance to act on his desire only made her suspect if it even existed. That this wasn’t all some kind of debt he’d pledged to himself to pay, to her and to Alex. That would certainly explain his obsession with “healing her.”

      Yes, she had seen evidence of his desire, felt it, but now she wondered if it wasn’t just the normal reaction of a virile male to an aroused female. Maybe, he thought making love to her that way came with too high a price, that of complicating his exit when he needed to walk away again. Maybe his desire wasn’t strong enough for him to pay that price. Every day that passed made her a little readier to accept this explanation.

      Feeling his mood had plunged as deeply as hers, she let him lead her into the restaurant in silence. The moment they entered, a tall, thin blond man, the maître d’ presumably, came rushing toward them. A smile of eagerness broke through what looked like permanent disdain as he greeted Ivan.

      As he led them inside at once, bypassing everyone who crowded the entrance waiting to be seated, every head turned to look at them. It was clear that most, if not all of the diners recognized Ivan, giving her a taste of what it meant to be in the company of a celebrity and under the microscope of public scrutiny.

      Before they