Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife

Alissa spent most of the journey happily adjusting to the news that Sergei had picked her, not Alexa, to marry and that he preferred her in every way. In the moonlight his lean, strong face was a brooding arrangement of light and shade, hooded eyes dark and unfathomable. She wondered how he would feel when he realised that she was carrying his child. Was that revelation likely to divide them again?

‘If you leave me, I’m keeping Mattie,’ Sergei told her softly. ‘That note of yours was priceless. You didn’t devote one line to agonising over leaving me, but you lamented leaving Mattie behind for two and a half lines!’

‘You can’t have him,’ Alissa asserted, fearful that he would take the same attitude over their child.

‘I would have let you visit him occasionally.’

They boarded Platinum and Mattie raced to greet their return with panting, wriggling, doggy fervour and sharp little barks. When he had quietened down, Alissa breathed in deep. ‘I have something to tell you…’

Sergei spread lean brown hands wide. ‘I’m waiting—just tell me!’

‘I’m pregnant—that’s part of the reason why I left. I just didn’t see how we could possibly manage—’

‘Pregnant?’ Sergei swept her up in his arms in an expression of exuberance that totally took her aback. Both arms wrapped round her, he gave her a wolfish smile. ‘That’s the best news I’ve ever heard…and we didn’t even have to work at it! Not that having to work at it would have been a trial,’ he acknowledged with an easy masculine laugh.

‘You can put me down now,’ Alissa advised in a daze.

‘Why? So that you can put some sort of gloomy slant on this moment?’ Sergei censured in full bossy mode. ‘Don’t you realise that the rule book on our marriage went out the window the same day I met you?’

‘It wasn’t a real m-marriage!’ Alissa stammered that reminder as Sergei very deliberately spread a large hand across her stomach.

‘How real does real have to be before you will believe in it?’ Sergei enquired, stretching her out full length across his lap and flipping up her dress so that he could bend his handsome dark head and press his lips to the bare skin of her stomach instead. ‘It’s amazing to think our baby’s in there.’

Alissa was frozen in place by the unpredictability of his reactions to her announcement. ‘You’re really pleased about the baby, aren’t you?’

Sergei gave her a huge smile. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

Sudden tears convulsed Alissa’s throat. ‘It’s different for me. You married me according to a contract.’

‘Which you broke,’ he slotted in with amusement.

‘Only a few weeks ago you were threatening to prosecute me!’ she slung shrilly back at him.

‘A couple of weeks back, I received background reports on you and Alexa and I didn’t have to be a genius to work out that your sister has never been a nice person. I knew who to blame. You were thoughtless but there’s no malice in you. I went from wanting to prosecute to giving you an extended honeymoon instead. Haven’t the last few weeks we’ve spent together taught you anything about me?’

‘Only that I don’t know what you’re going to do or say next!’ Alissa was so worked up that she burst into tears and startled him. ‘I don’t even know what you want from me or if you’re about to try and take my baby away from me!’

Sergei framed her face with firm hands. ‘I wouldn’t do anything that hurt you or the baby. I want you both together…for ever.’

‘For ever?’ Alissa gasped, tears still trickling down over her cheeks.

‘For ever,’ Sergei confirmed, claiming a kiss with a hungry urgency that sent an entirely new source of energy coursing through her slim body. ‘Because I have feelings for you that I never thought I would have for any woman and I was overjoyed by my good taste when I heard you shouting at your sister this evening that you would want me even if I was broke!’

Alissa flushed crimson. ‘Oh, my goodness, you heard that?’

‘I heard it—the window was wide open behind the shutters. I love you,’ he breathed huskily, stealing yet another kiss and an even more passionate one this time that sent her senses all reeling.

‘Honestly?’ she checked, scarcely able to believe that all her dreams were coming true at once.

‘Honestly,’ Sergei confirmed with mock solemnity.

Her fingers closed round his tie and pulled it loose. ‘I’m crazy about you too,’ she confided breathlessly.

Sergei carried her down the companionway to the master suite. She lay in his arms with a blissful smile. ‘What made you love me?’

‘The oddest things.’

‘Like what?’ she demanded, eager to know.