Brides For Billionaires. Lynne Graham

      Kat closed her eyes tight because the tears were still welling up and she was biting back a sob and loving and hating him simultaneously: loving him for recognising that they had found something special, hating him for springing it on her in such a last minute way that she couldn’t be fully convinced by it. ‘What if you change your mind again?’ she asked in a wobbly undertone. ‘What if this isn’t what you want in a few weeks’ time?’

      ‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take. I will always be honest with you and I don’t want to lose you.’

      Kat swallowed back the thickness in her throat and struggled to breathe at a regular rate again. She supposed she couldn’t expect him to say much more, for they would both be on the same learning curve together. He didn’t want to lose her yet he had very nearly let her go. How very close he had come to doing that would probably always haunt her. If she had left on that helicopter, would he have come after her?

      ‘I own a country house that I believe you will like,’ Mikhail volunteered. ‘You can invite your sisters there, treat it as though it was your own home and next week you can attend Luka’s wedding with me as my partner.’

      Her restive fingers clenched on the edge of his silk-and-linen-mix jacket, wet clogged eye lashes lifting on drenched green eyes as she stared up into his handsome face, her heart pounding like a piston engine.

      His forefinger gently traced the generous curve of her lower lip. ‘It will work beautifully … you’ll see,’ Mikhail forecast with his usual invincible confidence, and then he kissed her with passionate urgency and thought took a hike from her head.

      At the end of that day she lay in his bed, her body weak and sated from the hungry demands of his, and she wondered if she had been foolish to agree to stay with him. Was she merely putting off the heartbreak that awaited her? Extending her suffering? She loved him like crazy, but was very much afraid that he was simply in lust with her and not yet ready to give that pleasure up.