Oh, yes, she needed this job—a top-of-the-tree job working for Vasilii Demidov as his PA on a six-month contract that carried a salary that made her catch her breath.

Everything she knew about Vasilii Demidov suggested that he was a man immune to the kind of vulnerabilities experienced by the rest of the human race. A powerful, hard-headed man who was completely focused on the success of his business. Not the kind of man who was likely to welcome the knowledge that a fourteen-year-old had had such a huge crush on him that she …

That was enough!

Laura checked her watch and quickened her walking pace. She must not be late for this all-important appointment—and she definitely must not be late because she was daydreaming about the man who would be interviewing her.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN has been writing for more than twenty-five years and has an outstanding record: over 185 novels published, including the phenomenally successful A PERFECT FAMILY, TO LOVE, HONOUR AND BETRAY, THE PERFECT SINNER and POWER PLAY, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. She says she hopes to go on writing until she has passed the 200 mark—and maybe even the 250 mark.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire, and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager, and has continued to live there. Following the death of her husband she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her Crighton books. She lives with her Birman cat Posh, who tries to assist with her writing by sitting on the newspapers and magazines Penny reads to provide her with ideas she can adapt for her fictional books.

Penny is a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be published authors.

Recent titles by the same author:

PASSION AND THE PRINCE

A STORMY SPANISH MARRIAGE

THE MOST COVETED PRIZE

(linked to THE POWER OF VASILII)

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Power of Vasilii

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

SHE really should not be doing this. She really shouldn’t.

It was a job—that was all. A job she needed now, thanks to what had happened, and needed badly.

A job working closely with Vasilii Demidov. Very closely. As his temporary PA, in fact. Mid-stride, Laura Westcotte stopped walking along London’s Sloane Street.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

She wasn’t fourteen any more, and in the grip of a massive crush on the very grown-up and breathtakingly, spine-shiveringly, far too excitingly male older half-brother of one of the new intake of day pupils at the school where her aunt was the matron and she’d been a pupil by virtue of her aunt’s post, was she?

No, she wasn’t.

Nor was she still the same silly girl who had secretly and eagerly searched the internet for every scrap of information she could find about Vasilii Demidov, committing to memory every single piece of information she’d managed to find about him. Thank goodness the big social networking sites hadn’t existed then, for her to make a total public fool of herself with, Laura thought wryly. Snatching that photograph of him to daydream over in private had been bad enough.

She’d taken it when he had come to the school to collect his half-sister one Friday afternoon. Her hands had been trembling as she’d watched him walk from his car to where his half-sister had been waiting for him, the muscles of his male body moving so powerfully beneath their covering of denim jeans and a black tee shirt that the sight of him had made her go hot with longing. It was a wonder that the resultant photograph hadn’t been so blurred as to be unrecognisable. She had hidden the print in her most sacred of special places: the ‘secret’ drawer of the jewellery box that had originally belonged to her mother, and which had always somehow held an echo of her mother’s special scent. She still had that jewellery box.

And the photograph?

Now she was being ridiculous. If she did then it was simply because she’d never thought to throw it away. No other reason.

She had been such a very young and idealistic fourteen-year-old that worshipping from afar had come as naturally as breathing.

She had woven such ridiculous fantasies about the two of them meeting—the kind of fantasies that only an over-romantic, lonely girl with her hormones burgeoning into reckless life could weave. In her imagination she had even allowed herself to believe that because they had both lost their mothers there was a special bond between them.

All that and she had never even come face to face with him properly, never mind spoken with him. She had, though, dreamed endless daydreams about him, torn between an aching longing for him to notice her and the thrill of fear she had felt at the thought of that happening, and how she would cope with that level of sensual excitement.

So what? That had been then. This was now. She had just mentally said his name several times without her heartbeat going into fifth gear and then overdrive, hadn’t she? No, she wasn’t fourteen any more, Laura assured herself. But she still couldn’t stop herself from glancing into the window of the expensive designer shop she was hurrying past on her way to her interview, as though she needed to reassure herself that the reflection she could see there was that of an assured twenty-four-year-old woman, and not a fourteen-year-old girl. A woman, moreover, whose brunette hair swung sleekly and under control to her shoulders, and whose blue-green eyes in her heart-shaped, Celtic pale-skinned face, like her soft full lips, were discreetly made-up—as befitted a careerwoman about to undergo an interview for a job upon which her immediate financial security depended.

So why the need to check? Surely she didn’t really fear that somewhere within her that lonely, overly idealistic and romantic girl she had once been still existed, and that by some dangerous alchemy Vasilii Demidov could resurrect that girl and her crush on him just by the mere fact of them breathing the same air?

Instead of thinking about the past she should be focusing on her own present, Laura reminded herself. To mangle that famous Oscar Wilde quote, to be rejected and dismissed for one job for which she was well qualified might be overlooked as merely unfortunate, but to be rejected for a second would be a bad mark against her that would lie on her career history for a long time to come.

She was under no illusions, of course. She knew exactly why she hadn’t been given the verbally promised promotion in her previous job. The reasons had, after all, been made more than clear to her by the company’s new CEO.

The pain and humiliation of what she had undergone momentarily drove the colour from her face.

Oh, yes, she needed this job—a top-of-the-tree job working for Vasilii Demidov, as his PA, on a six-month contract that carried a salary that had made her catch her breath. It was nearly twice as much per month as she had been earning, plus it would open doors for her and enhance her CV—not to mention distance her from the present calamity to her career.

The fact that she had recently been on the internet once again, researching Vasilii Demidov, meant nothing other than that—like any candidate for a new job—she wanted to arm herself with as much knowledge about the business for which she hoped to be working as she could. And, in the case of Vasilii Demidov’s business, Vasilii himself was the business.

And what a business. Vasilii had taken charge of the business portfolio originally begun by his late father and had turned it into a multinational empire. The head office of this empire might technically be located in Zurich, but from what Laura had been able to learn the reality was that the head of the empire still adhered to the traditions of the Nomad desert warriors of his maternal family. He travelled almost continuously between all the places in which he had business and financial interests.

Unlike so many other Russian oligarchs, Vasilii did not own lavish homes all over the world. Instead he stayed in hotel suites or concierge apartments, as though at heart his spirit needed to move as ceaselessly as the sands had once moved beneath the feet of the camels in the camel trains of his mother’s people.

How intrigued and awed she had been at fourteen to learn that Vasilii, whilst being half Russian through his Russian father, could trace his roots back through his mother’s family to one of the most noble and ancient races to travel the deserts and the rugged terrain of the southernmost part of Russia’s old territories. There was a legend she had read saying that this tribe of light-skinned and light-eyed desert warriors had once mixed their blood with that of a lost Roman legion, and that their centuries-old pride in their warrior skills came from that time. There had been other stories on the internet about the tribe, and its fierce pride and equally fierce adherence to its own code of honour.

Like so many of the old desert tribes its numbers had been reduced by war and disease long before Vasilii’s mother had been born. She had fallen in love with Vasilii’s father, and then been lost to both her husband and her son in the most tragic of circumstances. She had felt such a surge of idealistic love when she had learned from her aunt the story of the kidnap and subsequent death of Vasilii’s mother.

But that had been then, and this was now—and everything she knew about Vasilii Demidov now suggested that he was a man immune to the kind of vulnerabilities experienced by the rest of the human race. A powerful, hard-headed man, who was completely focused on the success of his business. Not the kind of man who was likely to welcome the knowledge that a fourteen-year-old had had such a huge crush on him that she …

That was enough!

Laura checked her watch and then quickened her walking pace. She must not be late for this all-important appointment—and she definitely must not be late because she was daydreaming about the man who would be interviewing her.

From his exclusive concierge apartment on the top floor of one of London’s most prestigious hotels, Vasilii had an excellent view of Sloane Street and the surrounding neighbourhood as he stood at the window of the apartment’s smart boutique-hotel-style sitting room. A shaft of late July sunshine falling across his face threw into relief the harsh scimitar-sharp angle of his cheekbones and the taut line of his jaw.

To his Russian compatriots the golden warmth of his skin and the autocratic boldness of his nose might mark his genes as those of an outsider—someone who belonged more to the Arab world than their own—but he had grown up just as much of an outsider to the world in his late mother’s family as he had his father’s: truly accepted by neither, marked physically by his mother’s genes and mentally by his father’s brilliance as a businessman. An outsider who had learned young to walk alone and to trust no one other than himself. Especially after his mother had been kidnapped and then murdered by her kidnappers in a rescue attempt that had gone wrong.

To have been as emotionally dependent on his mother’s love as he had been as a child, and then to lose that love, had taught the man he had become the necessity of protecting himself against such vulnerability. And that was exactly what he had done, holding other people at a distance and promising himself that he would never allow himself to become vulnerable to the pain of love and loss again.

Right now, though, it wasn’t the past that was making him frown, it was the present. The present and a certain Miss Laura Westcotte.

If it had been unfortunate that his PA had had to take compassionate leave for six months to be with his sick wife, then it had been irritating that the temp hired to take his place had gone down with a particularly vicious form of the norovirus bug—just when Vasilii had been at the most delicate state possible of negotiations with the Chinese, and thus most in need of a PA who was not only fluent in Mandarin but also in Russian, and of course English, and who understood the protocol and etiquette complexities of negotiating with high-ranking Chinese dignitaries and officials. Vasilii might be fluent in all three languages himself, but one of the things one did not do when negotiating with high-status Chinese officials was risk losing face or, even worse, risk causing them to lose face by doing one’s own translating.

Vasilii had quickly discovered that when dealing with the Chinese the existence of an impressive retinue of personnel was extremely important. Which was why right now he was waiting to interview Laura Westcotte, the applicant best qualified to suit his needs according to the headhunters he had hired to find someone.

However, there were excellent reasons why Laura Westcotte was not the applicant or the PA Vasilii wanted. The first was that she was female—Vasilii never took on female staff to work closely with him. He had quickly learned that female graduates were far too likely to see him—unmarried and extremely wealthy—as potential husband material, and Vasilii had no intention of getting married—ever.

A muscle flickered in his jaw, as though he’d had to tense his body against a surge of unwanted emotion. Marriage, like any close relationship, meant giving something of yourself to others. It meant commitment, and it meant being vulnerable to loss and thus to the most terrible pain.

The contradiction within him that came from his dual heritage meant that living alongside the modern Russian was a fierce desert warrior, whose handed-down moral code and beliefs were hopelessly out of step with modern-day life. And why should he marry? There wasn’t any need. His half-sister Alena’s recent marriage to a fellow Russian meant that in all probability there would at some stage be children from that marriage, to work for and take over the family business in due course.

But it wasn’t just his aversion to having a female PA that made him antagonistic towards having Laura Westcotte as his PA. Despite her impressive CV, what he’d learned about her through Alena, along with the investigations he’d had made about her, proved she lacked both responsibility and ethics, and therefore could not be trusted. In short, morally she was everything he did not want in his PA. Unfortunately, though, there was no other applicant for the post who was anywhere near as well qualified for it.

It wasn’t just that her Mandarin and Russian were, according to all the enquiries he had made about her, beyond compare, it was also that her grasp of the manners and customs of both the modern-day-business and diplomatic Chinese worlds was so nuanced as to be in a class of its own. Those skills were exactly what he desperately needed right now if he was to secure the Chinese contract he had been pursuing for the last fifteen months. Not to secure it wouldn’t just affect his business empire and its profits, but also its future growth potential

No, he had no other choice. He would have to offer Laura Westcotte the job.

It was the incredibly swift upsurge of the lift that was responsible for the unwanted fluttery sensation in her stomach, and not the thought of coming face to face with the man who had been responsible for those embarrassing to remember feverish teenage fantasies and romantic daydreams, Laura assured herself as she waited for the outer door to Vasilii Demidov’s serviced apartment to be opened. This was a job interview she was attending, after all—for a job she desperately needed, she reminded herself. She simply could not afford to show any kind of nervousness—no matter what the cause. Given what she had read about Vasilii’s ice-cold clinical ability to slice through anything that stood in the way of his targeted business goals, he was obviously not someone who would be sympathetic to uncertainty or nervousness in others. He was far more likely to use that vulnerability to his own advantage.

The clicking and whirring of internal locks accompanied by a mechanically controlled voice instructing her to ‘enter when the green light shows’ had Laura stepping as confidently as she could into a marble-floored rectangular inner hallway brilliantly lit by concealed modern lighting.

A pair of double doors off the hallway opened automatically, and a disembodied voice from within the room beyond them commanded curtly, in an upper class English accent, ‘Come.’

It was hardly the warmest of welcomes, Laura recognised as she stepped towards the doors and then through them, into the smartly modern room beyond. Her attention, though, wasn’t focused on the expensive designer furniture and decor of the room. Instead it had flown like a homing pigeon to the man standing in front of one of the room’s two tall balconied windows, with his back to her.

Like her, he was wearing formal business clothes—a dark suit. His equally dark hair just touched the white collar of his shirt. His hands, which were at his sides, were tanned and ring-free. His head was angled slightly to one side, so that the light from the window caught the sharp bone structure.

The flutters she had felt in her tummy when she’d got out of the lift had turned into a distinct and discomforting curl of sensation—not, of course, awareness of him as a man, and certainly not helpless female appreciation of that maleness. That could not be allowed to be possible. Not with the very personal knowledge she had of herself and the way other people might translate it were they to know. It wasn’t as though she had actually chosen to be that way. And it certainly didn’t have anything to do with Vasilii Demidov and those teenage feelings she had had for him.

What she was feeling was simply a very natural anxiety, Laura insisted to herself. Professional anxiety because she needed this job so desperately. That was all.

And then he turned round.

The man her fourteen-year-old self had adored must have been stored in her memory in soft focus, and that focus had been gentled by idealism, Laura acknowledged, torn between wishing that there was a chair for her to steady herself on and being glad that there wasn’t as she withstood the searing, biting hostility of a gaze that felt like the coldest wind that had ever blown off the winter steppes.

She had taught in Russia for a while, just as she had in China, whilst studying the languages of both countries, and she knew exactly how that wind could burn into one’s flesh and senses, destroying those who weren’t strong enough to withstand its onslaught.

That wind and the whip of desert sand and its burning heat had surely carved the bone structure of this male face that was stripped of all softness. The tanned flesh might look velvet-warm, and human enough to tempt any woman’s yearning touch, but the flint-grey eyes warned of the fate that would destroy anyone reckless enough to attempt the forbidden intimacy of doing so. That this was a man who prided himself on not having any human vulnerabilities within his make-up, Laura already knew from her research, but seeing the reality of all that delineated so clearly and harshly in his features was still a heart-jolting shock. His tall, broad-shouldered frame might be clothed in what looked like the best that Savile Row could produce, but it was abundantly clear to Laura that beneath those twenty-first-century clothes lay not vulnerable flesh but instead a hardened steel armour.

This man had the heritage of both his mother’s people’s blood and his father’s business success soldered into him and onto him. His already critical scrutiny told Laura that. He might by his blood be of the desert, but there was a coldness about him—an air of distance, almost a total rejection of his own humanity allied to a contempt for the vulnerability of others. The sheer onslaught of the information being relayed to her by her own senses was almost too intense for her to manage.

Every warning system her body and her mind possessed was telling her to turn and leave, to run if necessary. And yet … that frisson of sensation, that unwanted but determined sensual awareness of him as a man that trembled through every nerve ending and tingled every pore of her skin meant—Meant nothing. And if it did exist, and wasn’t merely something ridiculous left over from her teens, a product of her imagination, it should be ignored, Laura told herself firmly.

The photograph of her on her CV hadn’t revealed the female delicacy and the perfection of her heart-shaped face and its features anything like as clearly as the reality of Laura in the flesh, Vasilii was forced to acknowledge as he studied the young woman standing in front of him. Intriguingly—or suspiciously, depending on your mindset, and his always veered towards the suspicious—she had no internet presence. No unseemly photographs of university antics, no gossipy posts to reveal any real aspects of her personality. But of course he didn’t need them. He already had a direct insight into exactly what kind of person she was. The kind he most despised.

She might be physically attractive, and she might have dressed her elegantly slender five feet nine inches in a smart, businesslike, summer weight off-white dress, over which she was wearing an equally smart mid-grey jacket, accessorised with mid-height grey leather pumps and a workmanlike black leather bag, but he knew the reality of her. Just as he knew that beneath the clothes that discreetly skimmed her body she had the kind of curves that most appealed to the heterosexual male’s desires, and that they were entirely natural.

Inside his head Vasilii discovered that he was making an illogical and totally unnecessary calculation as to the number of months it had been since he had last cupped the full softness of a woman’s breasts in his hands whilst he slowly kissed his way from her throat down towards them. Her skin would be creamy pale, a sensual incitement all of its own to the man who wanted her. But he of course was not that man. He controlled his own male reactions. They did not control him. The powerful lightning strike of sexual awareness jolting through him meant nothing. It was merely an instinctive physical reaction. Nothing more. He had far more important things to think about than the brief, inconvenient surge of male desire, both inexplicable and un-desired, that had surged through him.

Turning away from her, Vasilii reached for some papers on his desk, demanding curtly as he turned back, ‘I see you speak Russian as well as Chinese? Why Russian, when most Russians who need to speak and understand English already do so?’

His question caught Laura completely off guard, and made her feel self-conscious. She could easily remember how her desire to learn Russian had been fired, and by whom, but she could hardly tell him that it had been the thought of speaking to him in his own language that had motivated her all those years ago.

‘My parents were linguists. They both spoke Russian, and I started speaking it myself, picking it up from them. I thought … I felt … It seemed natural to follow in their footsteps.’ It was in part the truth, after all—even if she was not telling him the whole of that truth.

‘You decided to follow in their footsteps rather than strike out and make your own path through life? Is that what you mean? Wouldn’t you say that that shows a lack of self-determination and ambition?’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Laura defended herself firmly. He was deliberately trying to make her feel uncomfortable, she was sure, but she wasn’t going to let him. ‘Certain abilities do pass down through the generations, after all. In your own case you followed your father into the same line of business, and your success has proved that you have an aptitude for it. I had an aptitude for languages. After I lost my parents, developing that aptitude and those skills and following in their footsteps helped me to feel that they continued to be a part of my life. I loved languages, and I wanted something I could hold on to that felt as though it was part of them.’

Something to hold on to. An image of his mother the last time he had seen her alive flashed briefly and harrowingly through Vasilii’s head before he could deny it. The fact that it had been there at all only increased the dislike and rejection he felt towards Laura. She was stirring up within him memories she should not have the ability to stir up, raising issues that no one was ever allowed to raise with him, crossing lines that no one was permitted to cross with her conversation about her parents and her foolish sentimentality. Why? And, even more importantly, how? It was absurd that a woman like her, whom he already knew he could not trust, should somehow have managed to breach the defences that not even the gentle, loving touch of his late stepmother had been allowed to breach. Absurd and dangerous. The day that a woman like Laura Westcotte could represent any kind of danger whatsoever to him would never come, Vasilii assured himself.

‘I asked you for an explanation of why you chose to learn Russian. I expected a business reason, not a self-indulgent description of your childhood emotions.’

The harshness in his voice made Laura want to recoil from it—and from him. She’d felt so sorry for him when she’d learned how he’d lost his mother. She’d even felt as a girl that it gave them a shared bond. Was that why she had mentioned her own parents? Did she still want to create a shared bond with him? No! There wouldn’t be any point, because no woman would ever be allowed to share any kind of bond with the man he actually was, Laura suspected.

His criticism had stung, and under normal circumstances—if she hadn’t needed this job so badly—it would have had her questioning whether he was the kind of person she wanted to work with. She might need this job, but she certainly wasn’t going to allow his comment to go undefended.

Straightening her shoulders, she told him spiritedly, ‘I may have chosen Russian for personal reasons, but my decision to learn Mandarin—which was not one of my parents’ languages—demonstrates that I was looking towards the future of business. My parents passed down to me an ability to learn languages, but I made the decision to study Mandarin based on my awareness of the growing importance of China in the world market.’

She was daring to challenge him? That wasn’t something Vasilii was used to at all. Not from anyone and especially not from women, who were normally all too eager to court and flatter him.

‘You attended the same school as my half-sister. As far as I am aware Mandarin was not on the syllabus there.’

He knew she had been at school with Alena? A mental image of herself trying to find out from her aunt when Vasilii was likely to come to the school to collect his sister and then positioning herself at the window that would give her the best view of his ar rival flooded her body’s defence system with guilty self-consciousness. He couldn’t possibly know about that—just as he couldn’t know how often she had mentally rehearsed walking oh, so casually past his stationary car as he waited for Alena, only to have always lacked the courage actually to do so. She was being ridiculous, Laura warned herself. Of course he would know that she had been at school with Alena, just as he would know that her aunt had been the matron there, because—naturally, as her prospective employer—he would have checked up on her.

‘No. Mandarin wasn’t on the syllabus,’ she agreed.

One dark eyebrow lifted in a manner that Laura felt was coldly censorious.

‘Private lessons must have been an added expense for your aunt.’

He really did not like her. Laura could tell.

‘I paid for them myself,’ she informed him, her voice every bit as cold as his had been. ‘Some of the private pupils stabled their horses locally, and I worked at the stables mucking out. They got an extra hour in bed every morning and I earned the money to pay for my Mandarin lessons. Oh, and before you ask me, I saved up and bought an old bicycle so that I could cycle to the stables.’

Against his will Vasilii had a mental image of a much younger version of Laura Westcotte—ponytailed, fresh-faced and determined—setting off on her bicycle every morning, no matter what the weather, in order to do the chores that girls from better off families were too indulged by their parents to want to do, before returning to the school to begin a day’s education. His own father had always insisted that he work for his spending money as a boy, and even Alena, protected though she had been, had had her own special chores to do.

Vasilii pulled himself up. He wasn’t used to thinking about other people with his emotions, never mind mentally linking their situation to his own. Quite how and why it had happened he had no idea, but he did know that it must and would not happen again.

‘I would like you to read these notes aloud to me, translating them into Mandarin as you do so,’ he told Laura, firmly dismissing the unwanted image of her as a teenager from inside his head.

Very quickly Laura scanned the first paragraph of the technical data she had been handed. As an employee of a business specialising in handling translations of and negotiations for highly complex business operations she had become very much at home with the kind of thing Vasilii had asked her to do, so there was no reason whatsoever for her hand and then her whole body to tremble slightly, or for the colour to come and go in her face—apart, that was, from the fact that Vasilii’s hand had brushed her own as he handed her the piece of paper. That was ridiculous. Vasilii’s touch couldn’t possibly have made her feel like that.

She took a deep breath and started to translate the information on the printed page.

She was good, Vasilii was forced to accept as he followed Laura’s translation. His own PA would have taken longer, despite his experience.

‘And now if you would translate it into Russian?’

Laura nodded her head.

Again she was word-perfect. Not that Vasilii would have expected or accepted anything else.

‘So, we have established that your translation skills are … adequate, but if you know anything about China you will know that there is far more to successful business negotiations with the Chinese than merely having a good grasp of Mandarin.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Laura agreed. ‘Even if they speak another language the heads of Chinese industries and high-ranking Chinese officials often use a retinue of interpreters and PAs because that adds to their status. It is part and parcel of the Chinese way of doing business. Since I know that you speak both Russian and Mandarin yourself, I assumed that it was in part because of the issue of respect that you have decided to negotiate through someone else yourself.’

‘That is correct,’ Vasilii replied, and then looked at her, his eyes slightly hooded and his grey gaze unreadable.

Instinctively Laura knew that his silent assessment of her was both critical and meant to unnerve her.

It would have been so much better, so much easier for her, if she didn’t have that silly teenage crush lodged dangerously in her emotions. Its mere presence was enough to weaken her self-confidence.

When the silence instigated by Vasilii stretched to a length that was beginning to feel uncomfortable he delivered the blow that came from a direction she had not been prepared for. ‘You resigned from your previous employment, I understand—without having secured another post first. Why? It is rather a risk in today’s financial climate.’

CHAPTER TWO

LAURA felt her heart still in fearful recognition.

He couldn’t know. It just wasn’t possible. Summoning all her courage, she told him, ‘I decided to take a sabbatical,’ keeping her tone light and her head held high.

‘Really?’

The cynical look he was giving her warned Laura that he didn’t believe her. But worse was to come when he continued.

‘I understand that you are buying your current property with a mortgage, and that in addition to that financial commitment you also help to pay the fees for your aunt’s sheltered accommodation?’

‘Yes,’ Laura was obliged to confirm. ‘My aunt brought me up after the death of my parents. She’s not been well recently, and only receives a small pension, so naturally I want to do what I can to help her.’

‘You seem very eager to draw a picture of yourself as someone who takes her duties and responsibilities seriously, yet your attitude towards job security, which I would have thought in the circumstances would be extremely important to you, suggests the opposite. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I find it hard to believe that someone with your financial commitments would even think of taking time out for a sabbatical. And I have to say that I find it even harder to believe when I know that you made that decision within a month of being offered a promotion for which you had been personally selected by your mentor—a mentor with whom you have worked for many years.’

Laura’s heart had started to beat with heavy, hammer-like blows of acute dread.

There was nothing he wanted to do more than tell Laura that he had another far more suitable, far more acceptable applicant to fill the vacancy as his PA, Vasilii acknowledged as he watched her, but he couldn’t. Her translations had been faultless and skilled, and he already knew from her CV how highly her previous employers had rated not only her negotiating skills but also her people skills. As Vasilii knew, they were going to be very, very important in securing this particular contract. However, he intended to let her know he was not a man she should cross.

Laura could see that Vasilii was waiting for an explanation, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. Instead she had to appear casual and calmly in control, even if she was sick with anxiety inside, and tell him, ‘The new position I was offered would have entailed a relocation to New York. I resigned because I preferred not to go.’

‘Because you don’t want to travel? But the position as my PA involves a great deal of travelling—and to places rather more far flung than New York.’

Laura’s earlier anxiety had become a clawing sense of impending disaster. Her dread was justified when Vasilii announced, ‘If there is one thing above all else that I demand in my employees, Ms Westcotte, it is honesty and trustworthiness.’ He paused, and then demanded, ‘Isn’t it the truth that you were offered the option of leaving your previous employment voluntarily or being dismissed, because of your affair with your immediate—and affianced—superior?’

‘No!’ Laura denied immediately.

This time it was impossible for her to control her emotions—those feelings that she had kept locked up inside herself since the shocking and humiliating moment when Harold and Nancy had burst into the bedroom of John’s hotel room. And then she’d been summoned to Harold’s office to be accused of having an affair with John—her boss and her mentor, a man she loved and admired. A man she looked up to as a career-related father figure. John was, after all, twenty years her senior. He had been divorced when she had first met him, with two sons he adored, and she had been delighted for him when he had become engaged to a wealthy American socialite, a divorcée of his own age whom he had met in New York, even though she had never actually been able to warm to Nancy herself.

One dark, sardonically arched eyebrow told her exactly what Vasilii thought of her hot denial.

‘Very well—yes. I was offered that choice,’ she felt forced to agree. ‘But I was not having an affair with John. He was my mentor—a father figure to me in many ways. We were not having an affair,’ she stated again fiercely.

‘Your CEO thought you were. In fact he was so convinced of it that he offered you the choice of leaving of your own accord, with the whole matter being kept private, or of being subjected to a very public dismissal, with all the damage that would do to your professional reputation. Harold Johnson has very strong views on the morals he expects from those who work under him. He is also an extremely astute CEO, so I doubt he would make such an accusation against a valued and valuable member of his team if he wasn’t convinced of their guilt. Was he convinced of your guilt, Ms Westcotte?’

Laura exhaled shakily.

‘Yes. Yes, he was,’ she admitted.

‘And he was convinced because he and John Metcalfe’s fiancée found you in Metcalfe’s bed. Isn’t that also the truth?’

‘Yes …’

As the excruciating scene came rushing back, Laura could hear in her own voice the dying of her hopes of Vasilii offering her the job. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the condemnatory look in the flint-grey gaze that right now was clinically ripping her pride to shreds.

Laura didn’t know, but something definitely gave her the determination and the strength to insist, ‘But it wasn’t how it looked. John and I had been working late on a project for a client and the client had taken us both out to dinner, and then a nightclub. There had recently been articles in the papers about young women being at risk in using cabs late at night—especially from nightclubs. We were both tired, and we knew we’d got an early start in the morning, so John suggested I stay overnight in his hotel suite. We’d done it before …’

‘Before? Before he had become engaged? When he was a single man?’

‘Yes. But …’

‘I understand that at the time you elected to share John Metcalfe’s suite he and his fiancée were having relationship problems. She had told him that she believed your feelings for him were not those of a mere work colleague.’

‘I didn’t know about that. John is tremendously loyal. He would never have discussed his relationship with Nancy with me. I had no idea that she had told him that she wasn’t happy about the two of us continuing to work so closely together.’

‘Because she felt that you wanted to usurp her position in his life and become his wife?’

‘That’s what she told Harold,’ Laura was forced to agree. ‘John told me afterwards that she didn’t like the fact that he was having to work such long hours.’

‘But you, of course, were happy to share those long hours—and his bed.’

‘No. I’ve already told you. John and I were close, it’s true, but he was never anything more to me than a mentor and a father figure.’

‘You were discovered in his bed.’

‘Yes, because he’d insisted that I take it. He slept on the sofa in the sitting room of the suite.’

‘A very convenient excuse and one that can’t be proved. Though your willingness to walk away and not fight to prove your so-called innocence speaks volumes.’

Laura closed her eyes. Yes, she had walked away—but only to spare her elderly aunt the stress and upset of watching her niece go through in public what Vasilii was putting her through now.

Vasilii was right in one respect. The fact she had not shared a bed with John could not be proved. But the fact they had never been lovers could—since she was still a virgin. Not, of course, that she was ever going to admit that to anyone—much less this man. It was her embarrassing secret. A woman in her twenties who had next to no real sexual experience because … Because she had been too busy with her education. Because she had simply not met the right man at the right time. Never because of that crush she’d had on the man now standing in front of her with such contempt in his gaze. The very thought of ever being challenged to admit that it was because of Vasilii that she was still a virgin, because her crush on him had been so intense that she had simply never desired anyone else with the same intensity, made her feel weak with angry shame.

But that did not alter the fact that Vasilii was wrong about her and wrong to accuse her as he had. She’d chosen to walk away before, but now she was determined to defend herself—and fully intended to do so.

‘You obviously want to think that.’

The words were out before Laura could silence them. She wasn’t going to apologise for them, though. Not even with Vasilii giving her a look as dangerous as the scimitar swords of his desert ancestor warlords.

‘Meaning?’ he demanded.

‘Meaning that you want to think badly of me,’ Laura told him, standing her ground. ‘Harold and Nancy’s interpretation of what they saw was the wrong one. John and I both told them that, but they didn’t want to listen—just as you don’t want to listen. You’ve judged me already, and on someone else’s assessment of me. I’d assumed from what I’ve read about you that you are a man who makes his own judgements rather than a man who runs with the herd.’

Vasilii was hard put to it to conceal his disbelief. Once again she was actually daring to challenge him. She had a certain proud independence about her—he had to give her that. But independence wasn’t what he was looking for in a PA.

‘I take on board the opinions of others. Who doesn’t? And what my own opinion tells me is that so far, despite your excellent CV, nothing you have said inclines me to think that I want to employ you as my PA—a position that demands that the person who fills it is two hundred per cent trustworthy and reliable. You are neither of those things. The accusation made against you in your previous employment proves that you are not trustworthy, and I already know from my own experience that you are if not specifically unreliable then at least not someone who puts duty ahead of their own pleasures.’

There—that should put her in her place and stop her from looking at him with that clear-eyed look of female pride that for some reason made him think about all the ways in which, as a man, that pride challenged him. All the ways? Vasilii tensed against the unwanted question. If he was aware of her as a woman then it was only because he needed to assess her so thoroughly. The last thing he wanted was a female PA who was going to create sexual havoc everywhere she went.

From his own experience? What did he mean?

Laura intended to find out. ‘What experience?’ she demanded angrily. ‘This is the first time we have met.’

‘In person, perhaps, but I am well aware of the way you behaved when your aunt—who was employed by me to provide my sister with female company here in London—requested you to stand in for her, when she was taken to the hospital. When my sister telephoned you to pass on your aunt’s request you decided to go to New York with friends instead—even though you must have known that your aunt was depending on you. In my opinion a person who does not fulfil their obligations to their family is not likely to fulfil those same obligations to an employer.’

Laura’s head was a whirlwind of stunned thoughts. This was the first she had heard about any of this. The last thing she would ever do was let her aunt down, and her first instinct was to say as much. But even as she opened her mouth to tell him that she had never at any time received a telephone call from his sister, never mind refused to help her aunt because she preferred to go to New York with friends, she remembered once listening to Alena as a schoolgirl, complaining to her aunt when she had come to the matron’s room to ask for a headache tablet that her half-brother was very strict with her, and had advised her parents against allowing her to spend the weekend with another pupil.

‘Just because he doesn’t approve of her brother,’ Alena had protested.

Whilst Laura had sympathised with her, a small part of her had envied her for having such a protective brother—but then, of course, in those days Vasilii could do no wrong as far as she had been concerned. Now, though, she was old enough to think that Alena might have had her own reasons for lying to Vasilii, and a certain sisterly solidarity was making her feel that she didn’t want to betray the other girl—even if that solidarity came at the cost of being misjudged.

After all, what was the point in trying to defend herself when it was plain that he wanted to think the worst of her? Immoral and unreliable—that was what he thought of her.

Surely that wasn’t a sharp stab of pain she felt? Why on earth should the biased opinion of a man so condemnatory and arrogant that she already thoroughly disliked him cause her to feel pain? It wasn’t pain—it was misery at the thought of not getting the job she needed so much, Laura assured herself.

‘Nothing to say?’ Vasilii challenged her.

‘What would be the point?’ Laura asked. ‘Since you have obviously already made up your mind about me.’

She wasn’t going to let him see just how desperately it mattered that she wasn’t going to get the job. Lifting her chin she told him coolly, ‘I don’t see that there is any point in us wasting any more of one another’s time. Obviously you don’t want me to be your PA.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Vasilii agreed curtly, and paused before adding reluctantly, ‘However, unfortunately—given the excellence of your CV in respect of your language and negotiating skills, the inability of any headhunter to find me a candidate to better them, and the immediacy of my need to find a new PA—I have decided on this occasion I have no alternative other than to put to one side my scruples and offer you a temporary contract to cover the next six months. If at the end of that time my negotiations with the Chinese have been concluded to my satisfaction, then in addition to your salary there will be a generous bonus payment.’

Oh, how she longed to be in a position to turn down his offer, Laura thought helplessly. But of course she couldn’t. She could tell from his voice how much he resented having to offer her the job. He hadn’t let her know that out of weakness or vulnerability. No, he had told her because he wanted her to know just how much contempt he had for her. If she had felt hard done by before, at being falsely accused and then used as a scapegoat for Nancy’s unfounded jealousy, that was nothing to the raw, bitter taste of misery she was being forced to swallow down now. She wasn’t going to let him think she was grateful, though.

Lifting her chin, she told Vasilii as valiantly as she could, ‘Unfortunately for me I have no option other than to accept your offer. But that does not mean that I want to accept it, or that I want to work for you. I don’t.’

Their mutual antagonism crackled hostilely on the air between them.

‘And just to make things crystal-clear to you,’ Vasilii continued, ‘whatever your modus operandi or your personal agenda might have been in your previous post, in this one as my PA our relationship will be strictly business. Any woman who thinks that working for me is a shortcut to my bed and via that to a marriage licence will be making a big mistake.’

His bed? For a moment Laura was gripped by panic—had he somehow with some dangerous power managed to learn about her teenage crush? A thousand bolts of searing self-consciousness burned through her. But then her common sense returned. Of course he didn’t know. No one had ever known. Not even her aunt. Even so, she wanted to make it clear to him that she wasn’t someone who would run after a man—any man, but especially not him.

‘Both you and your bed are perfectly safe from me,’ she assured him. Unable to stop herself from giving way to her emotions, she couldn’t resist adding fiercely, ‘You obviously think that you’re a wonderful catch, but I certainly don’t. If and when I ever marry it will be because I love the man I am marrying and because he loves me in return—because we both want to make a lifetime commitment to be there for one another.’

‘A lifetime commitment? No one can or should promise that.’

There was so much anger in his voice—and something else as well that Laura couldn’t quite analyse.

As he spoke Vasilii had put down the papers he was holding and had taken a step towards her before he’d even realised what he was doing, never mind understood the reason he was doing it. The experience of letting a woman’s jibes cut under his skin—a woman he thoroughly despised and distrusted at that—was so unknown to him that it took him several seconds and several strides in Laura’s direction before he could bring his reactions, both physical and emotional, under control.

Even more damaging to his pride was the look of shocked, almost horrified revulsion on Laura’s face as she stepped back from him. She was actually raising her hands, palm open, as though to fend him off—as though she was revolted by the thought that he might be going to touch her.

How dared she try to claim the moral high ground? How dared she think she needed to defend herself from his touch after the way he had just warned her off?

Vasilii had a formidable sense of pride, and Laura Westcotte’s reaction had virtually flayed it to ribbons. No woman had ever, ever reacted to him like that. To Vasilii’s angry disbelief, the fact that it should be this woman of all women who was rejecting him so obviously, and with such open revulsion, set alight inside him a savage male desire to show her exactly how easily he could punish her for that outrage by making her want him.

The surge of furious and instinctive need for supremacy threatened to slice through all the bindings of modern-day life, convention and even the strict limits he imposed on his own behaviour with such speed that inside his head he was already reaching for her. Reaching for her and holding her, sliding his hands into the lustrous silky warmth of her smooth hair and feeling it glide sensually through his fingers, its tendrils wrapping around them as he bound her to him, a willing captive to the possession of his kiss. Beneath his her lips would part softly and eagerly, clinging to the domination of his. Her head would tilt back to reveal the vulnerable arch of her throat, her skin as soft as the wing of a white dove at his mother’s people’s oases. And, as with the powerful life-giving water of those oases, he would be able to slake his own thirst and quench his pride’s need for vengeance in the soft sounds of pleasure she would make beneath the sensual punishment of a kiss that would teach her beyond all doubt that she wanted him. He would hear her sigh and sob that wanting beneath his mouth as she pressed herself closer to him, willingly offering herself to him …

The swift aching hardening of his body brought Vasilii abruptly back to reality, away from the dangerous place that his angry thoughts were taking him—in more ways than one.

Thankfully the punishment he wanted to inflict on Laura Westcotte had only been within the privacy of his own thoughts. Naturally he had retained enough sanity not to move so much as a centimetre closer to her, never mind actually touch her—despite the anger she had aroused within him with her obviously deliberately faked attempt to get under his skin by pretending that she was horrified at the thought of his touch. A woman like her would be adept at manipulating situations to suit her own needs. No doubt she had hoped to provoke him into desire for her after the way he had warned her off. Unfortunately for her she had failed. But at least he had her full measure now that he had himself fully under control, and he would ensure that that control was never compromised again.

As he stepped back from her, though, Vasilii knew that he now had another reason for not wanting to have Laura as his PA. Another reason not to want her. But he had no choice but to take her on.

It was a very galling reality to have to acknowledge, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth as he told her coldly, ‘There is no time to lose. My negotiations are at a very critical stage. I have an employment contract here ready for you to sign. Once it is signed I have a résumé of the history of the negotiations so far for you to study, so that you will be up to speed with what has happened.’

‘I shall need to know something of the future of your plans, as well as the past,’ Laura felt bound to point out.

Now was not the time to allow herself to dwell on the way she had felt when Vasilii had come towards her as though he was going to touch her. It was because she hadn’t wanted him to touch her, that was all. Not because she had. The very idea was … The very idea was unthinkable.

Taking a deep breath, she continued firmly, ‘As you know yourself, Chinese negotiations are very delicate. The wrong pause between words, never mind the wrong look or the use of the wrong word, can set things back far more than we would expect in the West. I know that when someone new joins a negotiating team the instinct is to keep them a little out of the loop facts-wise, until they’ve proved themselves, but in this instance—’

‘I shall be briefing you myself on those aspects of the negotiations tomorrow afternoon, when we shall be flying out to meet the Chinese, once I have assured myself that you have the correct grasp on what has already happened.’

Laura nodded her head. She was very professional when it came to her work, and she had no qualms about her ability to absorb the facts she would need to know.

‘Which part of China are we flying to? I only ask because I’ll need to pack appropriately.’

‘We aren’t flying to China. We’re flying to Montenegro. Wei Wong Zhang, the head of the company with whom I am in negotiation to work alongside in the development of new modern shipping container ports, has expressed a wish to visit Montenegro. He has other business interests in the potential development of tourist and leisure complexes on China’s coast. In the party of officials who are attending will be Wei Wong Zhang’s wife, Wu Ying, as well, of course, as the usual government officials and translators. In addition a nephew of Wei Wong Zhang, Gang Li, will also be a member of the party. Gang Li’s mother was Chinese-American and he was educated in America. He is very close to his uncle. All the indications are that Gang Li is being groomed to take over the business at some stage. There is, in fact, a suggestion that he might be Wei Wong Zhang’s son—although officially that cannot be mentioned and will certainly never be recognised.

‘The success of these negotiations has far-reaching consequences for my business that go well beyond the immediacy of this contract. My way of doing business and my status within the business community within China will be judged on my success with this contract. Winning it will by its very nature open doors to further investment in and business with Chinese partners. My PA has prepared a list of the officials who will be accompanying the family to Montenegro. The plan put forward by Wei Wong Zhang, through Gang Li, is that a smaller group than the large entourage he intends to bring with him can be formed to allow for more informal and thus more productive meetings to bring our negotiations to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.’

‘The Chinese are past masters of polite and creative delaying tactics, should they want to employ them,’ Laura felt bound to point out.

‘Yes. That had occurred to me. It will be part of your role to ensure that the use of such tactics is kept under control. As for clothes—just bring a few basics. I’ve already ordered a suitable wardrobe for you, which will be waiting at our destination. I shall require you to be here tomorrow for eleven-thirty in the morning.’

Vasilii had turned his back on her to walk over to his desk before Laura could so much as acknowledge her understanding of the information he had just given her, never mind make her natural objections to his highhanded behaviour with regard to her working wardrobe, or tell him that she didn’t like the way he had been so sure of her acceptance that he had already given instructions with regard to her clothes.

Only self-respect was one thing. Wilfully prejudicing the job she so badly needed if she was to be able to continue to help her aunt was another. Her aunt had sacrificed a great deal to bring her up. Sacrificing her pride now in order to help her was the least she could do.

It wasn’t that the concept of an employer requiring a certain standard of dress was something new to her, or something to which she objected. She’d had a clothes allowance with her previous job. The thought of someone else actually choosing those clothes, though—especially when that someone else was Vasilii—sent prickles of a sensation she did not like trembling down her spine. Even worse than that—humiliatingly so, in fact—were the sudden unexpected and unwanted images which had produced themselves inside her head of delicate and very sensual silk and satin wisps of underwear.

Such images were highly inappropriate. The clothes that Vasilii had selected for her would be work clothes. It could only be because she had walked past a couple of exclusive lingerie shops on her way here this morning that those images had somehow lodged inside her head. No other reason. Vasilii Demidov might be the kind of man who had the style and the good taste to buy his lovers the kind of underwear that women loved, but she was most certainly not the kind of woman he would ever want as one of those lovers. Nor did she want to be.

‘Here is the information you will need, and here is your contract.’

Vasilii had turned round, and now her face started to burn. Get a grip, Laura warned herself as she took the papers he had put down on the coffee table within her reach but without touching her. Another unwanted stab of emotion pricked at her heart.

She knew his opinion of her. She knew he didn’t like her or trust her. Everything about his manner towards her now that she had actually met him revealed him as a man who was corrosively antagonistic and nothing like the white knight she had fantasised about as a girl. So, given that, why should she feel hurt and rejected because he was making it plain that he didn’t want any kind of physical contact with her?

It was safer to lose herself in speed-reading the contract than to allow herself to dwell on finding a truthful answer to that question, Laura acknowledged with relief as she read and then reread the contract.

As she had already known, the remuneration package was very generous, and with the added benefit of the bonus Vasilii had mentioned thrown in this six-month contract would give her the kind of financial security she needed. There would be a high price to pay for that financial security, though, Laura suspected. Not so much in the two hundred per cent dedication to her work which she knew Vasilii would demand, but in the cost to her pride and her self-respect in knowing that she was working for someone who disliked and despised her. Beggars could not be choosers, Laura reminded herself firmly. For her, right now, pride and self-respect were luxuries she could not afford. She needed this job.

Reaching into her bag, she removed the expensive pen that John had given her on the anniversary of her first year of working for him. He had had her name inscribed on it, and she treasured it as the gift of faith in her professional skills that she knew it to be. Dear John. Despite everything, he was a good man. He had been dreadfully upset about what had happened, though Laura suspected that a part of him had also been secretly rather flattered that his fiancée felt so possessive about him.

The contract signed, Laura replaced it on the coffee table and then gathered up all the other papers.

‘You said you wanted me here for eleven-thirty tomorrow morning?’ she double-checked.

‘Yes. We’ll be flying out by private jet. I’ll discuss your grasp on the negotiations so far with you during the flight.’

There was nothing else to be said. Putting the papers into her bag, Laura headed for the door.

She had a lot of very intense work ahead of her now, if she was to be able to answer any question Vasilii chose to throw at her tomorrow, but irrationally, as she walked back down Sloane Street towards the tube station, it wasn’t concern about the work that filled her mind. Instead what was preoccupying her thoughts and her emotions was her own ridiculous and dangerous reaction to that heart-stopping moment back in the apartment when, unbelievably, it had seemed as though Vasilii was going to touch her.

The thrill of horrified revulsion she had felt then echoed through her again now. She went hot and then cold at the knowledge of just how foolishly and instinctively she had been on the point of going to him, reaching out to him herself, as though … as though she’d wanted him to hold her. Which of course she most certainly had not. She wasn’t fourteen any more, and he certainly wasn’t the white knight in shining armour she had imagined him to be in her girlish fantasies. He was autocratic, disdainful, sardonic and utterly without a single aspect of shining knighthood to his personality. But somehow her body had thrilled recklessly at the prospect of his touch. No wonder she had felt so horrified and revolted by her self-betrayal.

As she started down the steps to the tube station Laura couldn’t help wishing that she hadn’t had to accept his job offer. The reality was, though, that she hadn’t had any other choice.

Once Laura had gone Vasilii gathered up the signed contract—her signature, he noted, was well formed and elegant, rather like Laura herself. That acknowledgement brought a swift cold frown to his eyes as he filed the contract. He had no wish to have any kind of personal thoughts about Laura Westcotte intruding into his private mental and emotional space.

As he straightened up from locking away the contract in his desk the group of silver-framed family photographs on the sideboard opposite caught his eye. The photographs had originally been placed there by his half-sister, when she had shared the apartment with him prior to her marriage.

He walked over to the sideboard and looked at them, reaching for the photograph that was almost tucked away behind the others—a photograph of his parents on their wedding day. His stepmother had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday, having gone to what he knew must have been an enormous amount of trouble to find it. After his mother’s death Vasilii himself had burned all the photographs he could find of his mother, because he hadn’t been able to endure seeing her image when he couldn’t see her any more in the flesh. He had only been a child then, and of course—although he could never have admitted it to anyone—later he had regretted his emotional reaction.

His stepmother had guessed how he felt, though, although she had never said so. Her choice of that special gift to him had told him that. She had somehow known of the pain of his loss, and she had tried to offer him some comfort. Vasilii could still remember how torn his feelings had been when he had opened his gift—the sharpness of his sense of humiliation that his guard had been pierced by a woman’s knowledge of what he believed to be a weakness he had successfully concealed from everyone but himself battling against the deep well of emotion looking at his mother’s youthful features had brought him. Allowing oneself to need another person in one’s life was dangerous. He had needed his mother but she had been taken from him. He’d had to learn to go on alone without her. That experience had taught him never to take the risk of loving anyone in a dependent way ever again.

Vasilii had never resented his father remarrying. He had grown up knowing that his parents’ marriage had been in part a business marriage. That was the way things had been for the women of his mother’s people. She had often told him that she had been proud to be chosen by his father. His father in turn had respected her and valued her. They had been happy together, and they had both loved him and shown him that love. That his mother’s kidnapping and death had left his father devastated had been more than plain. If there had been other women in those years between her death and him falling in love with Alena’s mother he had made sure that Vasilii had never known about them. He had been a man of strong principles and honour.

Vasilii had been pleased for him when he had met and married Alena’s mother. Again, though, he had been caught off guard by the depth of brotherly love he had felt at the birth of their child, his half-sister. Of course he had tried to keep that emotion hidden—especially from Alena as she grew up. She had been so adept at winding their father round her little finger that Vasilii had been determined not to let her see that he was also putty in her small hands.

He had grieved for her and worried over her when his father and stepmother had lost their lives in an accident, and yet at the same time he had, he knew, built up a wall between them. For Alena’s sake. It would have done her no good at all if she had seen him devastated, lost and made helpless, unable to protect her from her own loss. He had had to be strong for her. He had after all known the savage pain of that kind of loss. If he had been stern with her at times then it had been for her own sake, and now that she was happily married to the man she loved that wall had been justified.

Because she had her own life now, with her husband and the children they would have together, and he was once again alone.

He had known from his own experience just how intense was the longing to cling to anything or anyone connected with the memory and the lost love of the one who had gone, so it had been for her own sake that he had encouraged Alena not to become emotionally dependent on him, whilst at the same time doing everything he could to protect her from further hurt.

It was because of the pain the loss of his mother had caused him that he had vowed never to allow himself to be so vulnerable again—not to a woman, not to any children that woman might give him, not to anyone. Some people might be driven to pursue love after such an experience, desperate to replace what they had lost, but he was not like that. The pain had been too intense, too much of an affront to his youthful male dignity. He had decided that he would rather not have love at all.

Unwillingly Vasilii was obliged to acknowledge that he and Laura Westcotte had something in common, in that she had lost her parents, too—and at a similar age to the age he had been when he had lost his mother. He at least had had his father. She, on the other hand, had had only an elderly aunt. If there was one saving grace within her make-up it was her financial support of her aunt. What? Did he actually want to find some good in her?

Vasilii put down his mother’s photograph and turned back towards his desk. No, he did not. He thoroughly disapproved of and wanted to reject the way in which Laura Westcotte was managing to invade his private thoughts. Because whilst he knew that he had every logical reason to disapprove of and to reject Laura herself as well, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to do so.

If that was true—and he was by no means prepared to admit that it was—then he must make sure that he found a way, Vasilii warned himself.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS time for her to leave for Vasilii’s apartment. Quickly Laura checked her appearance in her bedroom mirror. After doing a brief check on Montenegro and its climate via the internet, she had decided to dress for the flight and their arrival there in a softly structured cap-sleeved tan silk jersey wrap dress that wouldn’t crease, looked smart, but was not too businesslike, given that their destination was, from what Vasilii had told her, an upmarket exclusive resort. Pulling on a three-quarter-sleeved cream cotton jacket, Laura checked that she had put all the documentation Vasilii had given her to study in her laptop bag.

Just as she was about to reach for her trolley case, she stopped and turned round, going back to her wardrobe. The jewellery box was tucked away, right at the back of the wardrobe on the floor. It had been a gift to her mother from her father. He’d brought it back from Hong Kong for her. Traditionally decorated and lacquered, the box was in its own right a valuable antique, but its real value to Laura was and always had been the fact that not only had it belonged to her mother, but it had been given to her by her father. Their hands had touched it; they had exchanged loving smiles over the giving and the receiving of it.

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