Mikhail be that smooth and effective at deception? That he could treat a lover as though she were nothing more than a barely regarded employee? Kat frowned, for in her experience Mikhail was more naturally blunt and open in nature, so that she could quite easily tell when something annoyed or irritated or worried him. But then, to be fair, he himself had remarked that she was unusually accurate in her ability to read his thoughts. She had almost told him that that was because she loved him and when it came to him love seemed to have given her keener powers of observation. That was how she knew that when he lifted a brow in a certain way he was irritated, that when he moved his hands or stilled them altogether he was usually angry, and that when his mouth compressed it was usually a sign of concern.
On the other hand, men didn’t automatically regard the kind of casual sex that Lara had suggested had taken place over a sustained period as a tie worthy of acknowledgement. In that way, sex could be treated as being of no more account than a meal. Was that how Mikhail might have rationalised such behaviour? Had he been amusing himself with Lara on the sidelines while Kat agonised about whether or not she would sleep with him? It was a humiliating, wounding suspicion. Until that moment it had not occurred to her how much she had valued Mikhail’s apparent willingness to wait for her to share his bed or her natural assumption that no other woman was satisfying his needs while Kat remained unavailable.
When she got off the train Kat assumed she would have to phone for a taxi and wait because she had not informed anyone what time she was arriving, but she was greeted on the platform by one of Mikhail’s drivers and she slid into the waiting Bentley with a sinking heart. Had he already guessed that she would soon be back at Danegold Hall? Was she now honour-bound to stage some ghastly sordid confrontation over the head of Lara? Of course, if he was there and she was moving out she would have to give him some sort of explanation. She comforted herself with the awareness that Mikhail would only be home during the day mid-week on the very rarest of occasions and wondered if a brief note would do, in which she would say something meaningless but not unpleasant such as that things were not working out for her.
She ought to hate him, she thought painfully, wondering what the matter with her was. Perhaps she was still too much in shock to be thinking clearly, she reckoned wretchedly, in shock that Mikhail was not the man she had honestly believed he was and that he was a much more lightweight, untrustworthy and dishonest individual than she could ever have guessed from the way he had treated her. Ironically he had treated her very well. So, did he think that sexual infidelity was unimportant? She remembered the clusters of eager young woman who had surrounded him every time he went out in public and accepted that temptation must often have come his way. Yet to have slept with a woman who worked for him, whom Kat knew and accepted, was beyond forgiveness.
Kat mounted the steps to the front door, which was already standing open with Reeves, Mikhail’s imperturbable butler, stationed there. With a pained smile in response to his greeting, Kat limped in, acknowledging that if anything her feet were hurting her even more than they had earlier that afternoon. Maybe taking them off on the train had been unwise. Halfway across the hall she came to a halt, slid the beautiful but too-tight shoes off and walked barefoot up the stairs. She headed straight to the bedroom she shared with Mikhail and the dressing room where a miniature trunk held everything from her passport to her birth certificate. She lifted out the papers, slapped them down on the bed and went off to locate a suitcase. She couldn’t believe she was leaving the man she loved, couldn’t bear even the thought of it, yet knew she had no choice. Lara could only have known that Mikhail had not slept with Kat that night if Lara had spent that same night with him: her brain could not get past that fact.
From drawers she dug out a few basic changes of clothing. She wasn’t fool enough to try and pack everything. She would just take what was necessary for a couple of weeks and ask for the rest to be sent on to her. She supposed she would move back to the farmhouse with Emmie and knew her sibling would be glad to have company. What price her fine sensitivity about accepting the house from Mikhail now?
‘You’re not even giving me a chance to defend myself?’
Kat froze and spun to see Mikhail poised in the doorway, his lean darkly handsome face grim and taut as he asked that question. He had discarded his tie and his jacket and stood there in shirt sleeves, his black diamond eyes hard. He was toughing Lara’s confession out, Kat assumed, determined to admit no fault. She turned her head away from him because she felt as if her heart were breaking inside her.
‘Kat?’ Mikhail prompted.
‘Yes, I heard what you said but I don’t really know how to respond. Sometimes it’s best to say nothing. I don’t want to argue with you—what’s the point?’
‘The point is us,’ Mikhail growled. ‘Isn’t what we have worth fighting for?’
Kat dropped the clothing in her hands into the open case and shot him a furious glance of reproach. ‘OK. Did you sleep with her?’
‘No,’ Mikhail framed succinctly, hard dark eyes challenging her.
Kat turned back to her packing. ‘Well, of course you’re going to say that,’ she told him, totally unimpressed.
‘What the hell was the point of asking me, then?’ Mikhail roared back at her. ‘You know you’ve put me through one hell of an afternoon?’
Refusing to be intimidated by that lion’s roar, Kat kept on packing. ‘I can’t say that I enjoyed my afternoon either—’
‘First of all I had to put up with a melodramatic tantrum from an employee, then you went missing!’ He stressed the word.
Infuriated, Kat whipped back to him. ‘I did not go missing!’
‘How do you think I felt when you took off after that nonsense Lara spouted to you? I was worried sick about you!’ Mikhail bit out furiously. ‘I knew you were upset and—’
Kat lifted a russet brow and turned to him again, hating him at that minute, convinced she knew exactly why he was behaving the way he was. ‘How could you know I was upset? You got a spy hotline to my brain or something? I wasn’t upset. Naturally I was surprised, rather disgusted, in fact,’ she confided with growing vigour. ‘And I needed some time to myself—’
‘You needed time to yourself to think about that poison like you needed a hole in the head!’ Mikhail shot back at her with lethal derision.
‘Don’t you dare shout at me!’ Kat shrieked back at him.
Sudden smouldering silence fell. Mikhail breathed in deep and slow, his broad chest expanding. ‘I didn’t intend to shout.’
‘When you’ve been accused of infidelity, bellowing like a bull in a china shop is not a good idea,’ Kat informed him curtly.
‘Wrongly accused,’ Mikhail fired back at her, his stunning dark eyes scorching hot with annoyance. ‘That is the crucial fact.’
‘Mikhail …’ Kat swallowed hard and collected her churning thoughts, unhappiness bowing her shoulders like a giant weight as she accepted that the scene could not be avoided. ‘Lara knew that we didn’t spend that last night together before I was supposed to leave The Hawk. She must’ve been with you that night to know that.’
‘Wrong!’ Mikhail framed grittily. ‘She was standing on the deck outside the office below us eavesdropping on our last exchange over dinner that night when you told me you wanted to sleep alone. So, if that’s your only piece of evidence against me, you’re on a losing streak!’
Kat’s
