back was so stiff she might have had a poker welded to her slender spine and her colour remained high. She stepped out of the lift, dipped the key card into the lock on the suite door and stalked into the big reception room, switching on the lights.
Mikhail followed her, a frown hardening his features as he studied her. ‘Kat?’ he pressed impatiently.
Kat spun back to him and settled furious green eyes on him. ‘You’re younger than me … years younger!’ she launched at him in angry consternation. ‘I can’t believe that I didn’t see that, that I didn’t even consider the possibility!’
Unmoved by the same conflict of emotion that powered Kat, Mikhail gazed steadily back at her. ‘Da … you’re a few years older. And the problem is?’
Outrage shimmering through her slender taut figure, Kat stared back at him accusingly. ‘That’s a big problem as far as I’m concerned.’
Women were strange, Mikhail reflected, but he was utterly convinced in that instant that she was more strange than most. She had been born five years in advance of him. It was an age difference so minor in his opinion that it was barely worth commenting on, but the look of aversion stamped in her beautiful green eyes warned him that she was not so accepting of the fact. Anger stirred in him because he immediately recognised that she was grabbing at yet another reason to hold him at bay and no woman had ever put up such sustained resistance to him before.
‘It’s not a problem for me,’ Mikhail countered curtly, black eyes brooding as he struggled to work out why he still wanted her in spite of all the discouragement she offered. In fact the more she tried to move away, the faster he wanted to haul her back in a kneejerk reaction that felt natural enough to disturb him.
An older woman with a younger man, Kat was thinking in painful mortification. People always found that combination both funny and objectionable. Remarkably older men seemed to get away with relationships with very young women without attracting similar derision. But the knowledge that Mikhail was a full five years younger than she was simply underscored Kat’s conviction that she should not be with him at all.
‘It’s wrong, distasteful … inappropriate that you’re younger than I am,’ Kat spelt out jerkily. ‘I’ve read in the newspapers about women christened “cougars” for getting involved with younger men and I’m afraid I’ve never wanted a toy boy …’
A smouldering silence spread between them.
‘A toy boy? You are calling me a toy boy?’ Mikhail echoed in rampant disbelief that she could have dared to apply that offensive term to him. Dark blood marked the arch of his high cheekbones. It was one of the very few occasions in his life when he was rendered almost mute by a shock backed by a surge of the volatile rage that he virtually never let anyone see. ‘Take that back … that term,’ he instructed rawly. ‘It is an insult that no man would tolerate!’
The scorching heat of his dark eyes blazing with indignation clashed with Kat’s defiant gaze. She was very still because although he had not raised his voice she had never seen that much anger in anyone: it burned off him like a shower of sparks in darkness, acting on her like a menacing wave of warning that shortened the breath in her lungs and convulsed her throat.
‘You’re years younger than me,’ Kat responded in shaken self-defence, pained by that discovery, not even understanding why it should matter so much to her. ‘It’s not right—’
‘Take it back,’ Mikhail breathed wrathfully. ‘It is unacceptable that you should say such a thing to me.’
Kat swallowed hard. Her knees felt wobbly: he really could be the most downright intimidating male. ‘All right, I’ll take it back,’ she muttered ruefully. ‘I didn’t intend to insult you but I was shocked.’
‘I would be no woman’s toy boy,’ Mikhail delivered harshly.
It was a ludicrous label for a six-foot-five-inch male exuding aggression, Kat conceded numbly as she sank down boneless with stress on a sofa and nodded weakly, still shaken by the inexplicable emotions that had erupted inside her. ‘Well, that’s OK because I wouldn’t make a very good cougar,’ she confided in a pained undertone.
‘Why not?’ Mikhail enquired, his tension dispersing as he studied her. She looked exhausted, her russet head drooping on her slender neck like a broken flower, as if it was too much effort to hold it upright, and a sense of blame assailed him because he had almost lost his temper with her and he knew he had frightened her. He recalled his father’s infamous violent rages too well to allow himself any comparable outlet. Indeed the main bastion of his character was self-control in every mood and in every situation.
Kat was all shaken up. She could not recall ever having been in such turmoil before or understanding herself less. He was only thirty-years old and she was thirty five, way too old for him, in fact even being attracted to him was practically cradle-snatching, she decided desolately.
‘Why not?’ Mikhail asked again, curious about what made her tick in a way he had never been curious about a woman before.
‘Cougars are experienced women … I’m not,’ Kat admitted dully, convinced that she was an oddity in such a day and age and wondering in despair how she could possibly have done things differently. Her mother had put her sisters through so much with her ever-changing parade of men and Kat knew that for the sake of her siblings’ welfare she needed to lead a very different life from Odette. Unfortunately ten years earlier she had not appreciated that that would mean celibacy because in those days she had still dimly assumed that eventually she would meet a suitable man and enjoy a serious relationship. Only it hadn’t happened; the opportunity had just never arisen.
His level black brows drew together. ‘I don’t understand.’
Kat released a bitter laugh that was discordant in the quiet room and lifted scornful green eyes to say, ‘I’m still a virgin. How’s that for seriously weird?’
In the immediate aftermath of that admission, it would have been hard to say which of them was the more shocked: Kat that she had told him something she had never told any other living person, or Mikhail, who could not have been more stunned had she confessed that she was a serial killer. Physical innocence was way beyond his experience and even further removed from his comfort level.
ENSCONCED IN THE spectacular luxury of Mikhail’s private jet the following day on a flight to Cyprus where they were to board his yacht, The Hawk, Kat pretended to read a magazine.
So far, Mikhail had not required much in the way of companionship. He had worked industriously since they boarded mid-morning. If he wasn’t talking on his phone, he was doing something on his laptop or rapping out instructions to the employee who had boarded with him. Kat was relieved by his detachment because she was still cringing over her behaviour with him the night before. How on earth had she lost the plot like that? Why the heck had she randomly announced that she was a virgin? That was none of his business and totally extraneous information to a male she had no plans to become intimate with. She would live to be a hundred before she forgot the stunned expression he had worn in receipt of her gauche admission. Aghast at having embarrassed herself to that extent, Kat had simply fled afterwards, muttering goodnight and taking refuge in her bedroom.
A virgin? Mikhail was still brooding on that astounding information. It explained a lot about her though, he conceded
