The following morning that restive night of self-recrimination and regret had etched shadows below her eyes and left her pale and out of sorts with the world in general. She rose early to prepare the full breakfast her guests would expect. She heard Mikhail’s deep drawl before she saw him and busied herself by the stove, the nape of her neck prickling, stark tension leaping through her slim, taut length.
A hand touched her arm and she jerked her head around, colliding with his stunning dark eyes.
‘I expected to see you last night,’ Mikhail informed her with a candour that disconcerted her.
‘Sorry, you lost your bet,’ Kat framed with dulcet scorn.
His level black brows pleated and he swung back to her, surprisingly light on his feet for all his size. ‘What bet?’ he shot back at her.
Her cheeks flamed. ‘I overheard your friend offering you a bet last night—’
‘Oh … that,’ Mikhail breathed with a sardonic tightening of his handsome mouth, his spectacular dark eyes meeting hers without a shade of discomfiture. ‘I’m a little too mature to bet on such outcomes.’
Kat glanced past him to note that only Luka was at the table while Peter Gregory was still chatting on his phone in the doorway. Kat moved a step closer to Mikhail and lowered her voice. ‘You knocked on my door,’ she murmured that dry reminder, pleased that she managed to achieve a tone of complete unconcern.
A sardonic laugh was wrenched from the tall, powerfully built Russian. ‘So?’ he challenged. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
Kat dealt him a cold appraisal and without another word whisked the hot plates out of the warming oven in the range to serve the breakfast.
‘Ne ponyal … I don’t get it,’ Mikhail extended impatiently, determined to win a response.
Kat planted a rack of toast on the table along with a pot of coffee and stood at the window, watching Roger Packham drive a tractor in the field beyond her garden, only vaguely wondering what he was doing there in the snow while she struggled to keep a hold of her temper. She didn’t care whether Mikhail got it or not. Thankfully he was leaving and she wouldn’t have to see him again and recall how degraded he had made her feel. He had assumed that she was so easily available, so free with her body that she might invite him into her bed within hours of meeting him, and that was an insult. He would have slept with her too, had she been willing, Kat thought grimly, and that told her all that she needed to know about him and his outlook on life. Most probably, he was what Emmie called a ‘man whore’, the sort of guy who slept around, who probably kept a tally of his sexual scores and prided himself on his high success rate with women.
In the continuing silence, Mikhail ground his teeth together. She infuriated him without even trying. ‘I want to see you again,’ he said flatly, not an ounce of appeal or gentleness in that statement.
‘No!’ Kat told him sharply, her soft full mouth rounding on the vowel sound in a manner that sent his hormones jumping.
‘And that is all you have to say to me?’ Mikhail growled, outraged by her attitude, luminous black eyes glittering like falling stars.
‘Yes, that is all I have to say to you. I’m not interested,’ Kat completed with a little toss of her head that sent her fiery curls snaking round her taut cheekbones.
‘Liar,’ Mikhail contradicted with complete derision and the thwack-thwack noise of a helicopter coming in low above the house almost drowned him out.
But Kat heard him and squared up to him, antagonism splintering from her. ‘You really do think you’re God’s gift to the female sex, don’t you?’ she condemned, her scorn unhidden. ‘I’m not interested and I can’t wait for you to leave!’
‘Never thought I’d see the day that you got the brush off,’ Peter Gregory murmured somewhere in the background while Luka, glancing in every direction but at Mikhail, urged his future brother-in-law to keep quiet.
In a rush, Kat served the breakfast. Two helicopters were engaged in landing in Roger’s field beyond her garden. The older man must have been clearing the snow for them to land. She turned back to discover that Mikhail had still not sat down.
‘Eat,’ she urged him.
‘I’m not hungry,’ he breathed curtly, colour scoring his exotic cheekbones to accentuate the clean sculpted lines of his darkly beautiful face.
An unexpected stab of remorse assailed Kat, who wondered if she had been unreasonably outspoken and spiteful. Hadn’t she made assumptions about him in the same way she assumed that he had made assumptions about her? What if she was wrong? But she had not been wrong in her conviction that he had knocked on her bedroom door the night before, she reminded herself impatiently, wondering where that inappropriate attack of conscience had come from. Soft pink mantled her cheeks just as a loud series of knocks sounded on the back door. Mikhail opened it and suddenly her kitchen was awash with large men in overcoats all speaking Russian at one and the same time. An older man with greying hair greeted him with perceptible warmth and relief. In the free-for-all of competing male voices, Kat concentrated on offering everyone coffee and biscuits.
Evidently, Mikhail was important enough to have a helicopter sent to pick him up to facilitate his swift return to London. Two helicopters? Had he arranged that means of transport the night before? Was he a flash high-earning banker like Peter Gregory? Or some big businessman with more money than sense?
Luka was digging through his pockets to extract money to settle the itemised bill she had left on the table. Mikhail swept the bill up, glanced at it and shot Kat a sardonic look. ‘You don’t charge enough,’ he told her forcefully, digging the bill into his pocket, leaning down to thrust his friend’s money back into his hand. He tugged out his own wallet and slapped several banknotes on the table.
‘Thanks,’ Kat said in a voice that conspicuously lacked gratitude.
Mikhail dealt her a hard-eyed look, his superb dark eyes glittering with hauteur and arrogance. ‘I will not thank you,’ he delivered with succinct bite. ‘As yet you have done nothing to please me … not one single thing.’
And she almost burst out laughing because he sounded remarkably like a sultan informing a humble harem girl of his displeasure while cherishing the belief that she would naturally wish to improve on her performance. But when she clashed unwarily with his striking black eyes and the inescapable chill etched there, any sense of amusement vanished and a touch of dismay and foreboding somehow took its place.
The men filed out to head for the gate that still led from her garden to the field and the parked helicopters. Mikhail waited to the last while the older man awaited him just beyond the door. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he murmured huskily, surveying her downbent coppery head in frustration.
Kat studiously avoided looking at him. ‘Don’t bother,’ she could not resist saying.
‘Look at me,’ Mikhail ground out between clenched teeth.
Against her will, affected more by that tone of command than she expected to be, Kat glanced up. Soft pink flushed her delicate cheekbones while a pulse beat out her nervous tension like a storm warning just above her collarbone. Involuntarily captivated by the brilliance of her green eyes against her pale perfect skin, Mikhail studied her with a frown. He watched the tip of her tongue slide out to moisten her lower lip and he went hard as a rock just imagining even the tip of that tongue on his body. Expelling his breath harshly, he turned his handsome head away.
‘I’ll