Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife

‘Why did you follow me?’ she whispered fiercely. ‘It’s easier if you just let me go.’

‘But that’s the one thing I can’t do,’ Sergei revealed, thrusting back the chair opposite and dropping down into it with all the force of a forest tree crashing to the ground in a storm. ‘I can’t let you go.’

So tense that she was barely breathing, Alissa focused on him with a treacherous surge of pleasure. She had thought she might never see him again, or at least that the next time she laid eyes on him it might be in a courtroom months from now. Just those thoughts had made her feel deprived and she had started missing him the same second she’d left his side at the club.

‘You have to let me go. It’s time,’ she told him gruffly.

‘I told you I can’t do it,’ Sergei delivered in a roughened undertone. ‘If you try to walk away from me, I’ll lift you up and carry you out of here.’

‘You wouldn’t do that, for goodness’ sake…’

‘It would probably get me arrested because no doubt you would scream and shout. But I would still do it,’ Sergei intoned. ‘I won’t stand by and let you walk out on me without fighting.’

‘But why would you fight?’ Alissa was so stressed she could feel the dreaded tears gathering behind her eyes, even though she was as mad with him as she was also very upset. ‘Alexa’s much more your type.’

Sergei studied her levelly. ‘You’re the clever twin. You’ve got to know better than that, angil moy. Maybe I made a mistake not spelling out my disinterest more openly this evening.’

‘Your…disinterest?’ Alissa echoed in a doubtful tone.

‘But I wanted you to see exactly what your sister is like so that you won’t let her take advantage of you again. Because she will try again and again to use you and I don’t want that to happen.’

Alissa was frowning at a view of the interplay round that dining table that she had not considered. ‘I wouldn’t let Alexa take advantage of me…’

Sergei vented a sardonic laugh and gave her an expressive glance. ‘I bet she’s been taking advantage of you since you were children. I also bet that she was a very spoiled and selfish child, and that your parents found it easier to give in to her iron will than stand up to her. Alexa expects to get away with her offences.’

‘Are you saying you don’t prefer her to me?’ Alissa prompted in amazement.

‘I’d sooner get down and dirty with a shark. Alexa is everything I don’t want in a woman and she repulses me.’ Sergei grimaced. ‘Exactly what would I find attractive about her? She’s smothered in make-up and she dresses like a tart. She has to be the centre of attention and she has no manners. Surely you noticed the way in which she humiliated her husband this evening?’ he prompted. ‘That was another reason why I didn’t obviously try to repel Alexa—if I pretended that I hadn’t noticed how she was coming on to me it was less embarrassing for Harry.’

It was an analysis of Alexa that left Alissa bereft of speech, for she had spent most of her life feeling overshadowed by her twin’s attractions and now the accepted order of things was being swept away by Sergei’s bluntly offered opinions. ‘I never thought of that angle,’ she said numbly. ‘Poor Harry—’

‘That’s one marriage unlikely to last long. They were fighting when I took my leave of them—even then she was blaming you for spoiling her evening and calling you a drama queen for walking out,’ Sergei breathed in disgust.

‘Maybe I am a drama queen.’ Alissa sighed, the sturdy foundations of her resentment being destroyed with every word he spoke, because it was patently obvious even to a bitterly jealous and insecure person such as she was herself that Sergei not only wasn’t attracted to her twin, but also actively disliked her.

‘No. I should’ve appreciated that you read the situation the wrong way. Do you think we could find somewhere more private?’ Sergei angled his handsome dark head in the direction of the family with noisy kids taking seats too close for comfort.

Alissa rose upright. ‘Okay—where?’

‘The yacht…’

Uncertainty made her frown. ‘I’m not—’

‘Or I carry you bodily out of here, angil moy,’ Sergei completed, surveying her with stubborn determination.

And she knew he would, and suddenly she was laughing and the tears spilled over a little to mingle with her laughter. She sucked in a deep breath to steady her nerves as he walked her towards the exit doors. It was dark and cool outside and he shrugged out of his jacket to drape it round her bare shoulders.

‘I didn’t only decide to leave because of what happened this evening with Alexa,’ she warned him stiffly.

‘I wouldn’t have gone ahead with the marriage or the contract if she had turned up that night before the wedding,’ Sergei confided abruptly as he urged her into the four-wheel drive revving its engine by the kerb. ‘Until I met you, I was ready to dump the project because I wasn’t attracted by her photo and I didn’t like what I heard in her interviews.’

‘Is that the honest truth?’ Alissa prompted in an urgent whisper in the rear seat.

Sergei nodded.

‘So when you said that Alexa and I were amazingly different that’s what you meant…’

‘Da…yes. You had the X-factor, she didn’t, solnyshko moyo.’ Sergei closed an arm round her and drew her close.