‘What is it?’ she asked, smiling at the sound.
‘I’ve been wanting to do this all morning,’ he revealed, looking up and flashing that killer smile. ‘Your breasts are a gift to mankind. Well, to me—and at a stretch I’ll share with Kostya.’
Maisy snorted and began to laugh.
‘And now they’re jiggling. I’m in heaven.’
‘Stop it.’ She smacked his shoulder lightly. ‘You didn’t answer my question before. Are you going to spend the rest of the day with Kostya?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Can I have the day to myself?’
‘You and Kostya?’ he asked.
‘No, I agree it’s better if I’m not in the picture.’
Alexei set her back, hands linked behind her waist. ‘There’s a spa just outside of town. Why don’t you spend the day there?’
Maisy didn’t want to leave the circle of his arms, let alone go to a spa. But he was being sweet, offering her something she might like.
‘I’ll arrange it. A car will take you. What’s that crease for?’
He gently smoothed her worry line with his thumb. ‘What are you thinking now, little Maisy?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, suddenly breathless, wishing so much of this was different. If she had met him under different circumstances. If they had courted … Such an old-fashioned word. Maybe dated was better. She would have liked to be dated. Instead they’d set terms. ‘I wish …’
‘What do you wish?’
His voice had taken on that low timbre she liked so much, and her whole body began to speed up. That we could be together, just the two of us, with no one else around. ‘I wish I had more clothes to wear,’ she said instead, and that was true too. ‘I think I’ll go shopping.’
Alexei’s arms released her. His expression was indulgent but somewhat cooler than what had been there earlier in his eyes. ‘Excellent decision. Shop in the morning, spa in the afternoon.’
Maisy tried not to throw herself back into his arms. She couldn’t very well pick up his hands and hold them on her waist. ‘What will you do with Kostya?’ she asked.
‘Guy stuff.’
‘He’s two.’
‘Guy stuff with training wheels,’ he amended, and Maisy couldn’t help smiling at the image. He really was trying with Kostya. It made her feel better about leaving him for the whole day.
‘Whatever you do, remember to take his nappy bag and his water bottle. I’ll pack it for you. And he needs his hat on at all times. He’s so fair he burns in a trice.’
‘I can do this.’
He suddenly looked so completely out of his depth that Maisy couldn’t help herself, and launched herself into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and inhaled the lovely male smell of him that she would keep with her for the rest of the day.
Alexei’s hands landed gingerly on her waist, as if he was startled by her sudden missile launch of affection. ‘I’m hugging you,’ she told him, her voice muffled by his shoulder. His arms tightened around her nicely and Maisy smiled contentment.
Alexei frowned into the middle distance. He hadn’t expected any of this: the time it was going to take to build a bond with Leo’s little boy, the emotional investment. Yet what choice did he have? There were two other couples waiting in the wings to take responsibility for him; it would perhaps be the most sensible course to hand the boy over to one of them. Yet Leo had named him Kostya’s guardian. Leo didn’t do anything without a reason, and Alexei didn’t back down from a challenge.
But he hadn’t expected Maisy, who was presenting her own unique challenge.
The minute they’d hit the bed this morning every one of his tightly held tenets about women and sex had flown out of the window. It was probably to do with her innocence, which was playing havoc with the traditional Russian male he’d thought he’d done a good job of burying deep enough that he hadn’t thought about marriage and children and a future in years. Not since he’d made his first million and women had become easy and their expectations primarily mercenary.
Maisy, with her long glossy ringlets tickling his chest and her soft sweet mouth trading slow kisses, eyes shut, expression dreamy, as if he was every one of her fantasies rolled into one, had seemed much more absorbed in making this morning romantic than in the sort of sexual marathon it turned into. That was his doing. He hadn’t been able to get enough of her. Her subsequent reaction to him meant he’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to realise she was investing her emotions in this, in him. But what was confusing him was that he was virtually encouraging it.