Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife

‘Answer it, for goodness’ sake!’ her twin urged. ‘I can’t answer it for you. It’s sure to be him and it’s safer if he doesn’t know I exist.’

Alissa answered the phone.

‘I want to take you shopping,’ Sergei announced without any preliminary greetings. ‘I’ll pick you up at ten.’

And that was that. It was not a request, but an order. As she shared both that opinion and the outing mentioned with her sister Alissa studied the phone with disfavour, convinced that it was more of a convenient command line for Sergei than a gift.

‘Of course he’s going to be bossy!’ Alexa snapped crossly. ‘He didn’t make all that lovely cash by acting like a wimp. He’s rich and powerful and he knows what he wants and when he wants it.’

‘I haven’t got much time. I’d better get dressed.’

Alexa released a heavy sigh of irritation. ‘And I can’t trust you to do it on your own.’

Her sister’s annoyance permeated the atmosphere as she insisted on putting together an outfit for Alissa to wear.

‘What is really wrong?’ Alissa pressed anxiously.

‘I feel like you’re stealing my life,’ Alexa confided, shocking her twin with that accusing statement. ‘A billionaire is taking you shopping and it should have been me!’

Alissa gave her aggrieved sister a troubled appraisal. ‘You’re going to marry Harry soon. He loves you and you love him and you have a baby to look forward to. Everything with Sergei is fake and it won’t last,’ she reminded her.

‘When I look at a photo of Sergei Antonovich I’m still jealous,’ Alexa said tightly. ‘And I’m not used to being jealous of you. What man ever looked at you when I was around? I’ve always been the prettier, more popular twin.’

The bell buzzed. Alissa was tense, hurt and nonplussed at her sister’s admission. Alissa longed to suggest that Alexa take her place but, of course, that option was no longer possible. Borya accompanied Alissa downstairs. She was lost in her thoughts, acknowledging that it was true that Alexa had always enjoyed the status of being the more attractive of the two of them. She was thinner and wittier, always beautifully groomed and she drew men like bees to a honeypot. What was true now had also been true, more painfully so, in their adolescence.

Alissa winced at the secret knowledge that she had once fallen hard for their neighbour, Peter, but had never truly existed for him except as Alexa’s sister and a friend. She had gone through agonies of guilt where Peter had been concerned, because she had known that loving her sister’s boyfriend was disloyal and shameful. As a result, she had never told anyone how she’d felt about Peter, not even when Alexa had deceived him with other men, revelling in the other opportunities and passing flirtations that came her way. Alexa had always had a somewhat elastic approach to fidelity, for she had reserved the right to be outraged when their father had gone off with another woman.

Alissa’s train of thought was derailed with startling abruptness when she first caught sight of Sergei ensconced in the back seat of the opulent limousine. He was even bigger, darker and more gorgeous than she remembered. One glance and her mouth ran dry and a flock of butterflies broke loose in her tummy.

‘Alissa.’ Sergei scanned her with laser-bright dark golden eyes that missed nothing. She looked tense and miserable, which could only irritate a man accustomed to female smiles and gushing appreciation. She was dressed in yet another mistake, he noted, watching with unashamedly hypocritical male appreciation while she endeavoured to take a seat in a short tight skirt and high-heeled boots without showing him her undergarments. But, mood and wardrobe errors aside, she still looked fabulous. He was already trying to pin down exactly what he found so irresistible about her.

Was it those big aquamarine eyes that, according to the light, went from the sea-blue to mysterious, deep forest-green? The delicacy of her bone structure? The exceptionally feminine appeal of her tiny fragile proportions? Those delightfully unexpected curves?

‘Why are we going shopping?’ she asked.

‘You have a final fitting for your wedding dress…and I believe we should also take the opportunity to extend your wardrobe.’

Alexa had already had dress fittings? Why on earth had her twin failed to warn her of that fact? The prospect of trying on a wedding dress intimidated Alissa, while Sergei’s concluding comment simply surprised her. ‘But why do I need more clothes?’

‘Those you wear are too revealing,’ Sergei informed her bluntly.

Her face flamed as though he had turned a blowtorch on her and her fingernails dug crescents into the skin of her palms as she swallowed back a tart response. She could easily have agreed the point and it annoyed her that she could not shrug off responsibility for the outfits he had so far seen her in. Her full curves at breast and hip made fitted tops and short skirts seem much more daring than Alexa’s ethereal slenderness ever had.

Sergei shifted an expressive hand. ‘You look very sexy but I want a more upmarket conservative image for my wife.’

Thirty minutes later, Alissa underwent one of the most mortifying experiences of her life as the designer and her assistants endeavoured without success to get a toile—a sort of understudy to a real bridal gown—to fasten on her.

‘I think I may have put on a little weight,’ Alissa said tightly as their combined efforts to cram her into the too small garment were constricting her lungs.

As that confession was made the toile went slack again and her attendants backed off. An uneasy silence fell.

‘I’ll take your measurements again, if I may?’ the designer asked with commendable brightness.

Red-faced with embarrassment and feeling the size of a heifer, Alissa withstood being measured and could not avoid seeing the designer’s mounting anguish as the numbers expanded.

‘Don’t worry,’ the older woman finally murmured with rigid calm. ‘The dress will be altered in time for the ceremony.’

Alissa guessed that the lack of open lamentation was down to the small fortune that Sergei was undoubtedly paying for the gown. But she was mortified by her companions’ astonishment. After all, brides usually got thinner before their weddings.