by Lynne Graham
‘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.
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.
‘When you told me off for shouting at the checkout attendant, it was a wake-up call. When you looked like an angel in the church on our wedding day. When you insisted I send Greek postcards to Yelena and you refused even to consider having a child and giving it away.’
‘You liked that even though it meant I couldn’t do what you wanted?’ she queried in amazement.
‘I’m naturally perverse and when you got all dirty and bloody rescuing Mattie I was even more impressed. You have a big heart and I love that side of you most of all, angil moy,’ Sergei confided, unzipping her dress so that it fell at her feet. ‘But I wasn’t impressed when you ran out on me tonight without even telling me what was wrong.’
‘I couldn’t bear watching Alexa flirt with you—’
‘I couldn’t bear listening to her put you down,’ he countered.
‘I was scared to tell you about the baby. I sort of assumed it would end everything between us and just start up a horrible dispute about custody so I saw no point in staying to talk,’ Alissa admitted ruefully.
Releasing the hooks on her bra, Sergei curved her back against his muscular chest, closed his hands to her breasts and breathed raggedly. ‘I won’t ever let you go. You’re the woman I never thought existed, the woman I believed I would never find. When my lawyers told me to prosecute and divorce you, I ignored their advice. They thought I was insane, and love must be a kind of insanity because I didn’t really care what you had done. I was too busy being grateful that I didn’t get the wrong sister.’
‘But you’ve forgiven me so much.’ Overwhelmed by his generosity and understanding and the strength of his love, Alissa swivelled round in the circle of his arms. ‘I really, really love you, Sergei.’
With all their defences down and their mutual joy in the baby she had conceived, they had so much to share. Alissa had never known such happiness could be hers. Sergei told her about the abortion that his first wife, Rozalina, had had without consulting him and how that discovery had led to their divorce and the loss of a good part of his wealth back then. Alissa wrapped him tight in her arms and fully understood his longing for a child, a family, a secure circle of people he could love and trust and work hard to support and spoil. They made passionate love and talked far into the early hours before Sergei decided that the honeymoon should be extended by one more week.
The next day she rang her mother just to tell her how deliriously happy she was and that she had conceived. Jenny, shaken by Alexa’s recent announcement that she had lost her baby, was overjoyed by the discovery that she was going to be a grandmother after all.
Just over a year later, Alissa was putting the finishing touches to the giant Christmas tree she had had erected in the drawing room. She was humming a carol under her breath as she attached delicate baubles and ornaments to the branches.
Mattie was snoozing by the fire. Alissa and Sergei’s infant daughter, Evelina, was in an equally restful mood and dozing in a baby seat. Evelina had the arresting combination of her father’s luxuriant black hair and her mother’s light eyes. Once Alissa had got over the nauseous phase, she had had an easy pregnancy. In every way it had been a very busy and eventful year.
They’d had a second wedding in London, for Sergei had confided that his lawyers were not one hundred per cent certain that their Russian marriage was fully legal when Alexa had forged Alissa’s signature on certain documents. Alissa had fully enjoyed that ceremony and her mother had enjoyed it even more. The big glitzy party that had followed had proved to be the social event of the year. Jasim and Elinor had attended and their other friend and former flatmate, Lindy, had also put in an appearance. That had been very welcome, for neither Elinor nor Alissa had seen much of Lindy recently as the younger woman was very much focused on her small crafts business and worked long hours.
For a good deal of the year, Sergei and Alissa based their lives in St Petersburg, but they were planning to live mainly in the UK once Evelina reached the age for school. Alissa’s parents had reconciled, although it had been quite a few months after her father’s affair with Maggie had ended before Jenny was prepared to invite her estranged husband to move back in with her again. Alissa’s father had returned the money he had been given and in turn Jenny had insisted on returning all of it to Sergei. For a while Alissa had found visiting her reunited parents rather like walking on eggshells, but time had healed the worst wounds and the older couple currently seemed to be rediscovering happiness. She had also managed to regain her former closeness with her father after Sergei had pointed out that it really wasn’t fair to punish people for being less than perfect.
Unhappily she had yet to reach the same accommodation with Alexa, whose own life had admittedly suffered a number of disastrous ups and downs in recent months. After a history of violent quarrelling with Harry and his family, and having had an affair with her married boss, Alexa was now in the midst of a bitter separation. While she had flatly refused to repay the money she had accepted for signing the contract with Sergei’s lawyers, she now had to fight Harry’s attempt to take a good share of it off her in a divorce settlement.
‘What goes around comes around,’ Sergei had commented cheerfully.
Alissa had not seen much of her twin over the past year but the sisters did make a point of being pleasant to each other when they met at family gatherings, for Alissa did not want her parents upset. Alexa had also made an effort to attend Evelina’s christening while avoiding getting within thirty feet of Sergei’s sardonic tongue. Alissa had found it easier to forgive her twin’s flaws once she’d realised that Sergei was never going to be one of Alexa’s admirers. At present, her strongest hope was that Alexa would stop rating the acquisition of money above everything else in her life and appreciate what was really important.
‘It’s good to be optimistic,’ Sergei had quipped on that score, deaf to Alissa’s protests. ‘But please don’t introduce her to any of our single male friends. I don’t want anyone putting that on my conscience.’
Yelena was a frequent visitor and was arriving the following day to share her second Christmas with them. She would stay until the Russian New Year had been welcomed in. Alissa could now speak enough of her husband’s native language to make herself understood and she got on very well with her husband’s grandmother. Yelena positively worshipped Evelina and seemed to have no greater happiness than to sit quietly attending to her first great-grandchild.
The slam of the front door alerted Alissa to Sergei’s return and wakened Evelina and the dog. Mattie trotted over to welcome Sergei home while Evelina kicked her legs in expectation of the attention she was accustomed to receiving from her father. As the door opened Alissa felt a leap of wicked anticipation flare and she studied the tall handsome male in the doorway with loving eyes and a wide smile. She had never known until she met him that another human being had the power to give her such ha
ppiness. Sergei stowed parcels on the table, contrived to pat the dog and scoop up Evelina on his way past, tucking his daughter deftly below one arm to keep the other free to reach for his wife.
‘A week without you all is a week too long, angil moy,’ he groaned, bending his proud dark head to steal a hungry kiss from her soft pink lips. ‘I’ll have to keep you in bed for a month before I recover from that amount of self-denial.’
Alissa moaned a little beneath the urgency of his sensual mouth, both thrilled and embarrassed by that candid warning.
Evelina let out a cry of complaint because she was being crushed and Sergei lifted the little girl playfully aloft to study her with loving attention before lowering her and smoothing her little dark head with a gentle reassuring hand. Replacing her in her seat, he turned back to his wife.
‘I even missed the dog,’ he groaned. ‘What have you done to me?’
Alissa linked her arms round his neck and smiled up at him. ‘We missed you too…’
He kissed her again, passion stirring so that her slim body welded to the lean, hard angles of his. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said, freeing her to lift the parcels.
Evelina got an ingenious toy to keep her amused and Alissa got a fabulous diamond eternity ring. ‘It’s an expression of my love and appreciation, angil moy,’ Sergei breathed, turning the ring at an angle so that she could see the words ‘For ever’ etched in flowing script on the inside with their names.
‘It’s wonderful,’ Alissa sighed happily sliding the ring into place beside her wedding ring. ‘I’ll think of you every time I look at it.’
The last parcel contained a little box with a tree ornament that bore a remarkable resemblance to Mattie, or at least a four-legged version of him. Glowing with contentment, Alissa hung the thoughtful gift on the tree. Their nanny came down to collect Evelina for her bath and Sergei and Alissa enjoyed a leisurely evening meal catching up on news. Jasim and Elinor had invited them to visit Quaram in the spring and they were looking forward to the trip. On their return they would as usual be spending Easter Day with Yelena.