A Rich Man's Whim (A Bride for a Billionaire 1)

‘Strong feelings?’ Kat prompted, one small hand awkwardly engaged in stroking the arm wound round her.

His fingers curved to her chin to turn her face gently round to his. His eyes were warmer than she had ever seen them. ‘I love you very much, Kat … so much I can’t contemplate a life without you. But until today I saw that as a weakness and a fault. I watched my father slowly drink himself to death after he lost my mother. He was cruel to her and he was never faithful, but when she died he went to pieces. He was much more dependent on her than any of us ever realised,’ he related ruefully. ‘I was terrified of ever needing a woman that much. I thought he was an obsessional personality. I thought I had to protect myself from that because, in common with my father, I do tend to be rather intense in personality, and then I met you and right from the start you had a very potent effect on me …’

The chill still inside Kat was soothed by the tenderness in his gaze and his honesty and she pushed her face into a broad muscular shoulder, revelling in the warm familiar scent of him and the new sense of soul-deep security flooding her. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered fervently.

‘You should have guessed how I felt about you that morning I prevented you from boarding the helicopter,’ Mikhail muttered with a frown. ‘I tried to make myself let you go and I found that I literally couldn’t face sending you away. The night before was the longest and worst night of my life. I wanted you. I needed you: choice didn’t come into it. You’ve owned my heart ever since.’

‘That may be so, but you’ve been pretty good at hiding it,’ Kat voiced, although when she thought back to recent weeks it occurred to her that he had probably shown it every time he looked at her, every time he curled her into his arms and held her tight through the night, only unfortunately she had been too insecure to recognise and interpret what she was seeing.

‘I won’t be hiding it any more. If you had known I loved you today you might have been more inclined to talk to me and trust my word rather than Lara’s. Would you have believed me without having seen that recording?’

‘Yes … deep down inside me it was a real struggle to believe that you would behave that way,’ Kat acknowledged with quiet certainty.

Mikhail lifted her hand and carefully threaded a ring onto her wedding finger. ‘I’ve had this in my possession since the first day you moved in.’

Kat studied the fabulous diamond solitaire with wide eyes of sheer wonderment. ‘But you resisted giving it to me?’

‘Yes. I’m a stubborn man, lubov moya,’ Mikhail groaned. ‘That means, “my love” and you are the only woman I’ve ever loved. You’ve had the chance to see the worst of me. Will you still marry me? And soon?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Kat carolled, flattening him to the mattress in a sudden marked demonstration of enthusiasm. ‘As soon as it can be arranged … when I let you out of bed, which is not going to be any time soon,’ she warned him with sparkling eyes from which the last shadow of insecurity had fled.

A wolfish grin of satisfaction slashed his handsome mouth. ‘I should have given you the ring the day I bought it.’

‘Yes, you’re a slow learner as well as stubborn,’ his future wife conceded. ‘But you did buy the ring weeks ago, which gains you points … not that you need them.’

‘I only need you,’ Mikhail told her, running his fingers lazily through the spirals of her russet hair. ‘And I won’t feel secure until I see my wedding ring on your hand.’

His phone buzzed.

‘Switch it off,’ she said.

A hint of consternation entered his beautiful eyes. ‘Have I created a monster?’ he murmured with flaring amusement.

Kat ran a rousing hand quite deliberately along a muscular male thigh and he tensed with sensual anticipation. ‘I’ll switch it off,’ he promised instantly. ‘Sometimes I’m a very fast learner, dusha moya.’

And so was Kat, bending over him to kiss him with a confidence she had never had before while trying to keep a lid on the wild, surging happiness assailing her in glorious waves. He was hers, finally, absolutely hers, her dream come true, and some day he would accept that being obsessionally in love with a woman who loved him every bit as intensely could be wonderful, rather than threatening.

EPILOGUE

THREE YEARS LATER, Kat stood at the foot of the pair of cots in the nursery at Danegold Hall, proudly surveying her twins, Petyr and Olga. They were both tiny and dark-haired with their newborn eyes of blue slowly turning green. Her son, Petyr, was lively, restless and slept very little while Olga was altogether a much more laid-back baby.

As far as their mother was concerned the twins were her personal miracle and, even two months after their birth, she could still hardly believe they were her children. After all, after she and Mikhail had married she hadn’t fallen pregnant as she had hoped. It hadn’t happened and eventually after fertility tests that proved nothing conclusive she had gone for IVF treatment in a top Russian clinic. She had found the process stressful and hard on the nerves, and the first time they had been very disappointed when conception failed to take place, but the second time she had undergone the process she had conceived. It would have been hard for her to describe the boundless joy she had experienced when she saw the two tiny shapes in her womb on a scan some weeks later. She hadn’t even realised that tears were running down her cheeks until Mikhail turned her round to dry her face for her.

The twins’ birth had been straightforward, a relief for Mikhail, who had barely let her out of his sight for longer than twelve hours during her entire pregnancy. What had happened to his own mother when she tried to deliver his sibling had still haunted him and had given him the impression that giving birth was the most dangerous thing even a healthy woman could choose to do. Only then had she truly understood why Mikhail had been so careful to tell her that he could be content with her even if they never had children. At the time she had been hurt, worried that he didn’t really want a child, but she had been utterly wrong in that fear. Mikhail had been terrified that something might go wrong and had had so many top doctors standing around when she delivered the twins that she ought to have been delivering sextuplets at the very least. Her eyes still stung when she recalled Mikhail pulling her into his arms afterwards, barely acknowledging the existence of his newborn twins to whisper shakily, ‘Thank God you are safe. That is all that has concerned me this day, ly-ubov’ moya.’

Even after three years, her husband loved her every bit as much as she loved him. Indeed the depth of the bond between them had gone from strength to strength since they married. Once that was achieved, Mikhail’s sense of security had enabled him to drop what remained of his reserve. And, as he had promised, he had embraced her sisters as though they were his own so that she was as close to her siblings as she had ever been.

‘Gloating again …?’ a familiar accented drawl teased.

‘Sorry, can’t help it, still can’t believe they’re ours,’ Kat confided, her bright head turning to focus on the darkly handsome male poised in the doorway, a flock of butterflies taking flight inside her tummy. Mikhail’s effect on her hormones never faded, she thought, her face warming. And how could it have done? He was drop-dead gorgeous.

A faint smile curving his sensual lips, her husband joined her to stare down at their son and daughter. ‘They do look cute when they’re not squalling,’ he conceded with amusement. ‘This morning they looked like little red-faced dictators when they woke up.’

‘They were hungry,’ their mother proclaimed defensively.

Mikhail turned her slowly round. ‘So am I, lasko-vaya moya. I am very hungry to have my beautiful wife all to myself for a few days.’

Her sparkling green eyes rounded as she leant up against his lean, powerful body, one hand resting on a broad shoulder. ‘Have you actually taken some time off?’

‘Even better. I’ve arranged a holiday for us on a deserted island.’

‘Doesn’t sound the kind of place you can take babies.’

‘They’re not coming.’ Lean, strong face resolute, Mikhail gazed down at his wife as she parted her generous mouth to object. ‘Your sisters are going to look after them for us. Our third wedding anniversary is an important occasion and I want to do something special.’

‘But, we can’t leave them behind—’

A black brow quirked. ‘Even with two nannies and your sisters and the entire household staff to look after them?’

Kat’s even white teeth worried at her full lower lip in indecision.

‘I need you too,’ Mikhail husked, lowering his dark head to caress her mouth slowly with his in exactly the way she could never resist, leaving her breathless and quivering. ‘And I think you need me in the same way.’

‘Well …’ Kat hesitated. ‘A deserted island?’

‘White beach, blue sea, no clothes,’ Mikhail outlined.

‘So that’s the fantasy?’ Kat laughed, loving his honesty as much as she loved him and the surprise break he had organised.

‘The fantasy I have every intention of turning into fact,’ her husband countered with a lethally sexy look in his black diamond eyes. ‘More pleasure than you can believe …’

‘Oh, I can believe,’ she confirmed dizzily, breathless at the smouldering look of desire in his stunning gaze. ‘You always deliver.’

‘I’m crazy about you,’ Mikhail muttered thickly, claiming her mouth in a passionate kiss that sent her every sense singing.

Kat was too happy and too bound up in that kiss to reply. A second honeymoon on a deserted island, Mikhail all to herself. No, she had not a single complaint about that plan of action.