Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife

One glance at Sergei, looking impossibly tall and intimidating as he strode forward, stole the breath from her lungs. In a charcoal-grey business suit, he was a spectacular sight, but his expression paralysed her in her tracks. His lean, darkly handsome face was hard and taut with anger as he slung a couple of photographs down on the bed in an aggressive gesture. ‘Explain yourself!’

Stiff with astonishment, Alissa collided with scorching dark golden eyes and then bemusedly turned her attention to the pictures on the bed. She moved closer and frowned down at the grainy images, her bewilderment only increasing when she realised that they depicted her with her father at the airport café. ‘What is there to explain?’

Sergei dealt her a look of pure black fury that made her lose colour. ‘How can you ask me that?’ he seethed in a raw undertone.

Alissa went rigid with indignation at his attitude. ‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me!’ she launched back at him angrily.

Sergei surveyed her in disbelief. ‘Is that all you have to say to me?’

Alissa shrugged, strands of golden hair sliding down from her topknot to curve to her pink cheeks. ‘I’ve got nothing at all to say to you. You barge in here when I’m in the bath—’

‘I knocked on the door!’ Sergei grated.

‘The very fact that you think that that is something to boast about says it all really, doesn’t it?’ Treating him to a disdainful look that would have shrivelled a less assured male, Alissa carefully worked her way round to the other side of the bed. ‘How dare you shout at me?’

‘If I see you holding hands with another man and weeping over him, shouting is the very least of what you can expect from me!’ he raked back at her without hesitation, clearing the foot of the bed in one long stride to close the distance between them again.

‘I will not be threatened.’ Breathing in short agitated bursts, Alissa reached for the crystal vase of flowers on the occasional table beside her. ‘If you come one step closer to me, I will thump you with this!’

His ebony brows snapped together in a smouldering frown of incredulity. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘I can look after myself,’ Alissa declared with bristling outrage.

‘Why the hell would you try to thump me?’ Sergei demanded. ‘I’m not threatening you with violence.’

Alissa made no attempt to loosen her white-knuckled hold on the vase. ‘No?’

Sobered and set back by that condemnation, Sergei looked grave. ‘Of course, I’m not. I would never hurt a woman.’ He reached down faster than she could react and deftly removed the vase from her hand to set it back on the table. ‘You scare really easily, don’t you?’

‘And you’re surprised?’ Alissa bawled back at him full volume, rage and embarrassment combining inside her. ‘You roar in here like a hurricane…’

With a ground-out curse in Russian beneath his breath, Sergei snatched up one of the photos. ‘Stop trying to avoid the issue. Who is this man?’

Alissa tightened the belt on her towelling wrap and folded her arms. ‘My father—’

‘Don’t tell me a stupid lie like that!’ Sergei snapped, out of all patience at that response as he stared down at the photo in his hand. ‘This man looks no older than I am—’

‘I’m sure Dad would be very flattered to hear that opinion, but I’m just bored with the whole subject. Why don’t you check your facts before you attack people?’

‘I don’t make a habit of attacking people,’ Sergei asserted grimly, well aware that for once in his life he had let his temper rip before he had investigated the cold hard facts. That was not how he usually operated and he could not explain the sudden absence of logic and cool that had afflicted him. He only knew that he felt out of kilter and that made him uneasy. ‘If that man is your father, why are you holding his hand and crying?’

‘It was an emotional moment and I hadn’t seen him or talked to him for weeks.’ Alissa was still angry with Sergei and she shot the crystal vase a look of regret, for thumping him with it might have released some of her pent-up fury. ‘Going by the way you’re behaving, you’re obviously used to women who play around behind your back—’

‘I am not,’ Sergei cut in to dismiss that insulting charge while wondering why the instant he saw those photos of her with another man a red mist of rage had enveloped him to the exclusion of every other thought and prompting.

‘You’re not even my boyfriend,’ Alissa pointed out.

‘But tomorrow I will be your husband—’

‘I hope you’ll forgive me for saying that right at this moment that doesn’t strike me as a very appealing prospect,’ Alissa retorted with a challenging lift of her chin.

‘I’m not trying to appeal to you.’ Aggressive to the last, Sergei flung his arrogant dark head high. ‘I am what I am and I’m unlikely to change.’

‘Well, that’s certainly telling me, isn’t it?’ Alissa quipped. ‘You’re not even bright enough to learn from your mistakes.’

The silence screamed. His lean, powerful length taut with shock at that comeback, Sergei viewed her with burning disbelief.

Conscience smote Alissa. Why was it that when she began fighting with him she could never resist the urge to top his last remark? It was a bad habit and a dismal way to embark on their relationship; he would keep on fighting because he didn’t know any other way. ‘That was rude, not a fair comment—’