by Lynne Graham
‘While Alexa was going through the application, she started dating someone and she fell pregnant by him. So, of course, then she couldn’t go through with marrying you, but she’d already spent the money you gave her—’
‘What? All…’ Sergei quoted a massive headspinning amount of money and suddenly it was Alissa’s turn to gape at him in disbelief. ‘Even the biggest spendthrift would find it hard to spend that much in so short a period.’
‘You can’t have given Alexa that much money!’ Alissa exclaimed in astonishment.
‘Don’t act the innocent. You and your sister were playing for very high stakes and you got away with the cash. But pause and consider your predicament for a moment. I have never allowed anyone to get away with cheating me,’ Sergei informed her softly.
A quiver of cold alarm was trickling down Alissa’s tense spine while anger was beginning to spark inside her. ‘There was never any intention of cheating you—’
‘Then how come I paid and got an impostor and a liar who expects me to believe that she doesn’t even know what was in the contract her sister signed in her name?’ Sergei angled harshly at her.
‘I never got the chance to see the contract!’ Alissa slammed back at him defensively.
In answer, Sergei swept up the laptop on the chest near the bed and hit several buttons on the keyboard before angling it in her direction. ‘Here…your recommended bedtime reading. It’s the contract. If you’re telling me the truth, which I doubt,’ he said coldly, ‘don’t you think that neglecting to read what you were signing up for was very foolish?’
‘But I didn’t sign up for it originally…’
‘Who got the cash?’
‘Alexa used it to help Mum keep her home and business and pay off Dad’s claim on them.’
‘What a saint of a daughter!’ Sergei derided. ‘Are you planning to play the same violins for my benefit? Save your breath. Sob stories leave me cold.’
Clutching at the laptop, Alissa lifted her chin. ‘I’ve none to tell you. But Alexa was totally honest. If she hadn’t been pregnant she would have gone ahead and married you!’
‘Try some joined-up thinking,’ Sergei advised with stinging scorn.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Alissa shot back at him.
‘According to what you’ve told me your sister used your name from the outset in this scam,’ Sergei reminded her very drily. ‘Obviously there was no way that she could ever have planned to marry me when she was masquerading under your name! That would have been a legal impossibility.’
In receipt of that shrewd and contemptuous assurance, Alissa dealt him a fuming appraisal, infuriated by his insinuations. Just then she was in the grip of shock and it was beyond her capability to compute that fact and doubt her sister’s intentions when her own actions had always been powered by family loyalty. ‘You’ve said enough—’
Sergei flung open the communicating door to her bedroom in a blunt invitation for her to leave. ‘I’ve only just begun.’
‘What are you going to do…now that you know?’ Alissa asked nervously.
‘I’m not about to be the loser in this scenario,’ Sergei drawled, smooth as silk. ‘Be assured of that. I may well prosecute you and your sister for fraud.’
Alissa twisted her hands together. ‘Sergei…nobody meant to do you any harm. It was just the way things happened and Alexa was in a complete panic—’
His lean, darkly handsome face was cold and set, his dark eyes merciless. ‘If you’re not prepared to fulfil that contract in her place, I’ve been cheated and I won’t accept that. I’ll tell you what I intend to do tomorrow.’
That last assurance made her blood run cold but there was one question she just had to ask. ‘Did Alexa really agree to have a baby with you?’ she framed unevenly.
‘Not so much with me, as for me. Study the contract,’ Sergei instructed flatly. ‘You’re very lucky I’m not throwing you out on the street right now! As far as I’m concerned you’re a lying, cheating con artist.’
That judgement hit Alissa hard. As the door snapped shut in her face she backed over to the bed and sat down to focus on the contract on the screen. It was very long and involved and by the time she had finished rereading the more complex clauses she was ashen pale and shattered by the lies and omissions her twin had employed to lure her into taking her place.
On one very telling issue Sergei had been hatefully accurate. Alexa had walked away with a fantastic sum of cash, far, far more than Alissa could ever have estimated. Furthermore it would only have taken less than a quarter of that money to settle their mother’s financial problems, so Alexa had enriched herself considerably by signing that contract in her sister’s name.
Alissa was in deep shock and questions she had never dreamt she might ask about her sister were now tormenting her. Had Alexa planned to use Alissa as a dupe from the outset? What else was she supposed to think? Trust Sergei to pick up on the fact that, having used Alissa’s name to begin with, Alexa could never have followed through on the contract she had signed.
Devastating as that possibility was, Alissa was a good deal more appalled by the actual content of the contract. Sergei hadn’t only wanted a wife to please his grandmother, he had wanted a child as well and, having spelt out those terms in advance, he was expecting the bride he had hired for the purpose to supply him with one. Where did that leave them both? She could not even countenance the idea of having a child with him, never mind giving that same child up wholly into his care. She curled up in her cold bed and shivered. How on earth could she have got herself into such a mess? All those years of stepping up to save Alexa from herself had clearly addled her wits, for they were no longer children and she had ignored the gravity of exchanging identities as adults and the threat of legal repercussions. She was filled with horror at the idea that she might have inadvertently broken the law.
It hurt even more, though, to accept that her sister had known all along about the baby issue and had deliberately concealed that aspect because she had known that Alissa would never agree to it. Obviously, Alexa had done it for the money, that extraordinary pile of cash that had tempted and finally persuaded Alexa into deceiving her own flesh and blood for the sake of profit.
While Alissa succumbed to exhaustion and tossed and turned her way through uneasy dreams for what remained of the night, Sergei was thinking. The fire of his anger, chilled and steadied by several hours of frustrating consultation with his lawyers, was still liberally laced with outrage. He had begun to believe in Alissa, he registered in sardonic disbelief. He, who had not trusted a woman since Rozalina and who had countless experiences of female greed and dishonesty, had nevertheless mysteriously warmed to Alissa’s girl-next-door warmth and seeming innocence. And yet she was clearly a fake, a lying, cheating little fake whose dazzling sex appeal just so happened to have stopped him dead in his tracks.
Her sins and his oversights had come home to roost and he had to forge a new path to his goal or he would lose everything. Losing was never an option for Sergei. He could not even contemplate such a demeaning conclusion. He studied his bruised knuckles with hard dark eyes. Some time during the night, when the endless wrangling of the lawyers during conference calls had breached his tolerance level, he had punched the wall in frustration, but now ice-cold logic was ruling him once again. He had no plans to lose anything, least of all the right to keep his ravishingly sexy wife in the marital bed.
When the maid entered the room and opened the curtains the next morning to let wintry daylight flood in, Alissa came awake immediately. She had a headache and a jarring jumpy sense of stress that was new to her. The very first thing she did was text Alexa, warning her twin that Sergei knew the truth and that they needed to talk urgently. Breakfast was served to her while she sat frozen in place against the pillows, recalling that ghastly confrontation with Sergei during the night.
A bitter laugh bubbled in her throat when she remembered her dizzy introspection during that candlelit
bath. Hands up who was impressed to death by the gorgeous Russian billionaire who had swept her to the altar! She had sat in that bath with a diamond and emerald pendant worth thousands still clasped round her neck and she had eaten handmade chocolates while nourishing romantic ideas and feelings that could only make her shudder in retrospect. Of course she was not falling in love with Sergei Antonovich! Of course she did not admire him!
He might be her every fantasy come true in bed, but that did not excuse her for getting so carried away with her role that she had started acting like a real bride on her wedding night. Shame sat like a brick at the foot of her throat and strangled her appetite at source. At some stage, she dimly appreciated, all sense of reality had forsaken her and she had forgotten that she was virtually an employee hired to do a specific job.
And now she knew that it was a job she could never, ever fulfil. Sergei had been willing to pay a fortune for a discreet woman, willing to give him a child and then walk away without any hassle. What did that say about him? Her soft mouth trembled and she dug her fingers tightly into her palms. Not a guy who thought much of a woman’s maternal instincts or even of a child’s need for a mother. Not a guy who thought much of women as decent people full stop, she reckoned painfully. And all she had done was give him even more justification for his cynical attitude towards her sex!
Her eyes stung with tears and she blinked rapidly and sniffed, furious that her emotions were still out of her control. But she really did feel wretched and ashamed at what she had let herself get involved in. She was thinking about the man who had impassively admitted putting his alcoholic mother to bed every night as a child. Even his loving grandmother had not managed to alter Sergei’s bleak view of family life. He’d had dreadful parents. And one bad marriage had evidently ensured that he was not prepared to give any woman a second chance.
Certainly not one who had already been exposed as a liar and a cheat, Alissa told herself doggedly. She mopped her face and blew her nose and struggled to pull herself back together to deal with life as it was, not as she would have liked it to be.
The phone rang while she was getting dressed.
It was not her sister as she had hoped, but Sergei. ‘I’ll see you downstairs in twenty minutes,’ he informed her.
Alissa anchored her hair in a ponytail and stonily studied her reflection. She hadn’t bothered with make-up and had pulled on jeans and a sweater. Her own clothes, not the borrowed glamour of the designer garments that Sergei had purchased for her. The transformation was complete and she looked ordinary again. But what was the point of gilding the lily for his benefit? Surely that would only make her feel as if she were still trying to pretend to be her more fashionable twin? She checked her mobile phone. Alexa had still not responded to her text. Impatient to talk to her sister, Alissa rang her direct and had to leave a message when the call wasn’t answered.
‘Dobraye utra…good morning.’ Sergei surveyed his bride with sardonic cool when she appeared in the doorway of the elegant library he used as an office. ‘Are the jeans your equivalent of sackcloth and ashes? I’m not impressed.’
Stung by his acerbic mockery, Alissa folded her arms in a defensive movement. Her struggle to maintain her composure was not assisted by the truth that, while her troubled sleep had left her pale and drawn with heavy eyes, Sergei looked as breathtakingly handsome and vibrant as a man who had enjoyed a full eight hours of undiluted rest. The leap of attraction and erotic response that slivered through her treacherous body mortified her pride. ‘I hardly think that what I wear today makes any difference,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t feel that those clothes you bought are rightfully mine and that I should wear them.’
‘Such a little puritan…’ Sergei released a derisive sound of amusement that grated against her nerves in the tense silence. ‘Let me see-you can marry me in a church in front of hundreds of people and allow me the freedom of your beautiful body, but your principles are too fine to allow you to wear the clothes I bought you?’
As he spoke a deep flush of humiliation slowly rose below Alissa’s pale skin and washed up over her face, highlighting the sea-blue shade of her beautiful eyes. She was squirming. ‘I didn’t mean it like that—’
‘Oh, I think you did but, as I have discovered, there’s often a wide gulf between your principles and your actual behaviour.’
‘Is this why you asked me to come down here? Just so that you can insult me some more?’
Sergei elevated an ebony brow. ‘I don’t do small talk. Or were you expecting praise for what you’ve done?’
Alissa drew in a sharp little breath and held it before shaking her head in grudging agreement on that point. Her gaze evaded his.
Satisfied to have put her out of countenance, Sergei lounged back against the edge of his desk to study her. Dressed like a teenager with her face bare of cosmetic enhancement, she looked outrageously youthful and innocent. He paid no heed to the aura of shame and worry that clung to her, for he was in no mood to trust such a show. He was no longer surprised that she had contrived to fool him. The greatest misogynist would have been challenged to pick her out as the calculating con artist she was, he conceded grimly. Hadn’t he been taken in? Hadn’t his lawyers been fooled by her sister? And hadn’t he wanted Alissa so much that he had stifled his misgivings and cancelled the background check that would certainly have revealed that she was one half of a matching pair?
‘What we both need to know now is-where do we go from here?’ Sergei spelt out.
‘I couldn’t possibly meet the terms of that contract!’ Alissa shot at him in a nervous rush. ‘I had no idea that conceiving a child was part of the agreement. I was willing to act as your wife—’
‘And share my bed with enthusiasm,’ Sergei inserted silkily. ‘Let’s not forget that angle.’
Alissa flung her head back, her golden ponytail bouncing, her eyes very bright and reproachful. ‘That just happened, for goodness’ sake!’
Sergei dealt her an unimpressed look as hard as polished steel. ‘In this scenario that is very difficult to believe. Sex oils so many wheels. When a man wants a woman he’s more careless about the little things that don’t add up.’
‘Look, stop trying to make everything worse than it already is. I didn’t use sex to do anything! I may have slept with you and I wish I hadn’t,’ she declared heatedly, ‘but let’s leave it at that. What are you going to do about all this?’
‘If I do what my lawyers want me to do, I will prosecute you and your sister for fraud. One word of complaint from me and Alexa will be arrested. It is a criminal offence to deliberately sign a contract to defraud anyone of their hard-earned cash.’
Alissa met his contemptuous dark golden eyes in a horror-stricken collision. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘I think you’ll find that as the wronged party in this set-up I can do whatever I like.’
Desperation assailing her, Alissa was thinking frantically hard. ‘But you wanted discretion and if you start prosecuting people it’ll get into the newspapers. Surely you can’t want that to happen?’
Sergei was impressed by the speed with which she had brandished her only possible weapon. ‘Why should I care? Yelena doesn’t read newspapers and it is very unlikely that anyone close to her would find out about a legal case taking place in the UK. I have done nothing wrong and nothing that I am ashamed of and publicity, bad or otherwise, isn’t a matter of concern to me. Throwing you and your sister to the wolves on the other hand would at least give me some satisfaction.’
Alissa was paralysed to the spot by that blunt speech. Stone cold fear chilled her tummy, for she knew he was capable of launching a prosecution. Hard enough, vengeful enough, ruthless enough to hit back hard and hurt. Her mind kept on dropping stupidly back to the candlelit bath and the chocolates and the change in him cut through her like a knife. The day before might never have been.
‘But nothing would satisfy me quite as much as the fulfilment of the original contract, milaya moya,’ Se
rgei informed her smoothly. ‘You assure me that that is out of the question, but tight corners have a habit of pushing back the boundaries of what people find acceptable—’
‘Nothing you could do or say would persuade me to give up my own child!’ Alissa snapped back at him with not an ounce of hesitation.
‘I will make you an offer, then. If the money is returned in full and you agree to maintain the marriage for at least a year, I will put all thought of contacting the police on hold for the moment.’
Return the money? Of course he would want the money back, a little voice cried inside her head. She shifted position uneasily. ‘From what I understand, a fair proportion of it has already been spent—’
‘From what you understand?’ Sergei repeated very drily. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t have access to that money?’
‘Alexa has it, but obviously I’ll speak to her.’
Sergei surveyed his bride with burning disbelief. ‘Your sister set up the scam, took the money and left you to deliver on the contract and face the music? And you let her do that to you? Evidently I got the dim twin, rather than the cunning, greedy one!’
Highs spots of colour burnished Alissa’s cheeks. ‘It wasn’t like that. I’ll admit that Alexa can be reckless and extravagant but she’s not a thief—why won’t you listen to me?’
‘You’ve yet to say anything that either makes sense or is of interest to me.’
‘There was no scam!’ Alissa proclaimed in fierce protest.
‘Then what was it? Where’s my money? Or alternatively where’s the woman I believed had signed a binding contract with me?’ he countered harshly. ‘Your sister used your name, backed out last minute and took off with the cash. You’re the only hostage I’ve got. Isn’t it time that you stopped disclaiming all responsibility and accept that you’re in this up to your throat?’
In receipt of that blistering advice, Alissa swallowed hard and painfully. A tension headache was tightening like a band of steel round her brow. ‘I’ll try to get the money back—’