The Ruthless Magnate’s Virgin Mistress

I prefer to buy my own clothes.’

‘Nikolai,’ he urged, watching her for the response he was accustomed to receiving from her sex.

Meeting his stunning dark eyes head-on, she felt extraordinarily short of breath and her tummy flipped. He had astonishingly long and luxuriant black eyelashes for a man. Her nipples had tightened into stinging hardness and she was terrified they would show through her cotton T-shirt. She folded her arms hurriedly. She had never been so conscious of her own body or of a man’s proximity in her entire life and the level of that awareness was unnerving her. ‘I don’t think I know you well enough-’

‘A situation which I am eager to remedy,’ he cut in, smooth as glass. ‘Would you like to go to a club when this affair winds up? Or perhaps for a meal?’

‘No, I’ll be winding up, too. I have to get up for work in the morning,’ Abbey pointed out in a flat, discouraging tone.

Exasperated dark as ebony eyes rested on her mutinous face. ‘Are you always this difficult to pin down for a date?’

‘I’m just not interested in getting to know you any better,’ Abbey told him honestly. ‘Don’t waste your time on me.’

Blunt rejection was not an occurrence that Nikolai was familiar with. Women usually went out of their way to attract his attention and hold it. His gifts were received with shrieks of pleasure and gratitude, not ignored or refused. To be turned down by a woman who did not even try to sound regretful was a novel experience for him and not one he savoured.

‘I allow nobody to waste my time. Tell me, do you continue to wear a wedding ring to keep other men at a distance?’

Abbey could not credit his insolence in daring to ask her that question. Did his choice of words suggest that he was already aware that she was a widow? If anything Nikolai Danilovich Arlov was proving to be even more obnoxious than she had expected him to be, she acknowledged, her pride still smarting from his impertinent offer to buy her the blue evening gown. She glanced down at the familiar band of gold on her wedding finger. ‘No, I still wear my wedding ring to remind me that I was once married to a very special man.’

Rare anger sparked and flared through Nikolai. He breathed in slow and deep. The defiant tilt of her chin, her patronising tone and the haughty look in her eyes offended his pride and masculinity. But more than anything else he did not want to hear her say such things. He wanted her to be carefree and hot as he was for a more intimate acquaintance, not some idealistic clean-living widow who had buried her heart in the grave with her Mr Perfect husband. Keen to steer the conversation to other channels, he asked her where she worked.

Abbey told him with pride that she was a partner in a concierge business with her brother.

‘The service industry is booming at present,’ he remarked, and he asked her how she had got involved in devoting her spare time to a spinal injuries charity. She explained that Caroline was married to her brother and described the very real support given by Futures during the challenging transition the blond woman had had to make from being able-bodied and independent to disabled.

‘Like a lot of people in the same position her whole life changed and she didn’t know where to turn,’ Abbey advanced with enthusiasm, for she was happier to talk about the charity than talk about herself. ‘She could no longer do the job she had trained for-she was a chef and a good one. Her home wasn’t adapted to her needs and she had financial problems because the accident put paid to her earnings. Futures stepped in with advice, counselling and a grant that covered her most pressing requirements-’

‘You’re a good advocate for the work that Futures does. If I offer to make a large donation to the charity, will that buy me some of your precious time?’

Abbey was stunned by the staggering concept of anyone purchasing her time and company with cash. Hot colour washed her cheeks, her violet eyes widening in disbelief. ‘I’m not a hooker for hire, Mr Danilovich.’

He rested his brilliant dark eyes on her. ‘I believe I’m already aware of that fact. But like most keen businessmen I will use any angle that works to get me what I want. If your heart is softened by the prospect of the charity benefiting from my interest in you, I will not be slow to take advantage of it. Do you want to talk figures?’

‘No, I do not!’ Abbey gasped, shocked to the core by his attitude. Only when heads turned in their radius did she realise that her sharp tone had carried farther afield. In receipt of curious glances, she flushed. ‘If you wish to make a donation, please make sure it has nothing to do with me. You should discuss it with Cyril Townsend, Futures’ director.’

‘But it will have everything to do with you. At least let me take you home, lubimaya,’ he breathed, his Russian accent curling richly round the vowel sounds.

Abbey intercepted a pleading look from her sister-in-law and compressed her lips. She was reluctant to embarrass the blond woman by offending the charity’s VIP guest. ‘I’m afraid not. I’m driving my sister-in-law home,’ she confided.

In receipt of yet another rebuff, Nikolai studied her as if he could not believe his ears. ‘Then when will I see you again?’

‘I don’t think a second meeting is on the agenda,’ Abbey replied.

‘I want you.’

I want you. That admission was bold and uncompromising and he delivered it like a challenge, a sworn statement of intent. Her heart lurched inside her ribcage as he stared down at her with stubborn brooding force etched in his lean, sardonic face. He had buckets of sex appeal and, no matter how hard she tried, she was insanely aware of his breathtaking good looks and far from impervious to his rough-edged masculine appeal. Antipathy and resentment shot through her tall shapely body, however, and she lifted her chin. ‘I’m not for sale, Mr Danilovich. And I can’t be bribed.’

‘Every human being under the sun has a price. It may not be money, it may be something else. It doesn’t follow that a bribe, as you call it, is morally wrong if it wins positive results,’ Nikolai traded.

‘We don’t see the world the same way,’ Abbey countered drily, unsurprised by his attempt to package his unacceptable bribe into an excusable act of benevolence. She was dealing with a hard, cynical man whose greatest god was money and who did not know how to accept the word no when it conflicted with his wishes. ‘And I doubt that we ever will.’

‘I’m a realist and rarely wrong.’

‘How comforting it must be to see oneself as supreme in all fields,’ Abbey replied.

‘Apparently not in this encounter,’ he quipped.

‘Goodbye, Mr Arlov. I hope you won’t regard a donation to Futures as being in any way influenced by my behaviour.’ Abbey walked away from him with a strong sense of relief.

Nikolai watched her until she vanished from view. He felt angry and frustrated. He had never met a more annoying or intriguing woman and her unexpected resistance and prickly personality had only heightened the intensity of his desire for her.

A few minutes later, and with her children in tow, Caroline tracked Abbey down to where she was gathering her things in the now-silent dressing area that had earlier buzzed with so much life and noise. ‘What did you say to our Russian billionaire? Leaving, he looked like the iceberg that sank the Titanic.’

‘No iceberg is that hot to trot.’

‘It’s not a hanging offence to fancy you, you know.’ Her sister-in-law sighed. ‘You are single and very attractive.’

‘I didn’t like him at all.’ Abbey chewed anxiously at the soft underside of her lower lip. ‘Did he write a cheque?’

‘No, he didn’t give Futures a penny.’

Abbey compressed her lips in disappointment and followed her brother’s wife out to the lift that would ferry them back down to the car park. She wondered if she would lie awake all night feeling guilty about the donation that hadn’t materialised because she had done nothing to encourage it. Would it have killed her to spend a couple of hours with Nikolai? She drove Caroline and the children home and saw them indoors before heading back to her apartment. Drew had been a no-show. He had sent his wife only an apologetic text. Her soft, full mouth down- curving, Abbey resolved to have a quiet word with her sibling. Caroline wasn’t just her brother’s wife, she was also the woman that Abbey had long regarded and trusted as her closest friend.

‘So what happened to you last night?’ Abbey demanded of her brother when she walked into his office the next