of the waiting limo.
‘Are those men security guards?’ Kat enquired, sliding along the sumptuously upholstered leather back seat, striving not to gape at the opulent fittings surrounding her.
‘Da … yes,’ Mikhail confirmed. ‘Why are you wearing so much make-up?’
That directness of the question startled Kat. She blinked. ‘I didn’t put it on,’ she responded. ‘The make-up girl at the beauty place did it—’
‘Why did you allow it?’
Her smooth brow creased. ‘I didn’t know I had a choice. I assumed this was the one-size-fits-all look you like your companions to have.’
His mouth set into a harsh line. ‘You are not expected to conform to some ludicrous identikit female appearance for my benefit. I have no such preference. I respect individuality and I expect you to make your own choices about such things. I also liked you the way you were.’
‘Understood.’ Her generous mouth tilted in amusement at his honesty. He was very blunt but she found that remarkably refreshing in comparison to the polite and often meaningless fictions that people spouted. ‘So, I’ll take off the false eyelashes the first chance I get. It feels like I’m wearing fly swats on my eyelids.’
Unexpectedly, Mikhail laughed, black eyes gleaming with appreciation as he lounged back in the corner of the limo, long powerful thighs spread in relaxation, and scrutinised her slender figure in the fitted black dress: the small high breasts, the tiny waist and slim shapely knees. Arousal hummed through him. ‘Talk to me,’ he urged lazily. ‘Tell me why you took on responsibility for your half-sisters.’
Naturally Kat had accepted that Mikhail had to know a good deal about her life when he had discovered how much she was in debt, but that question made her green eyes flash with annoyance, for she did not like the idea that she had surrendered the right to all privacy. ‘I’m sure you’re not really interested.’
‘Would I have asked if I wasn’t?’
‘How would I know?’ Kat replied flippantly, shooting him a look of barely concealed resentment. ‘It’s quite simple. My mother couldn’t cope with my sisters and she put them into foster care. They were very unhappy when I visited them and I wanted to help—I was the only person who could help.’
‘It was a generous act for so young a woman—you sacrificed your freedom—’
‘Freedom’s not always the gift people like to think it is. Family’s important to me and I never really had that security when I was a child. I also wanted my sisters to know that I cared about them,’ she admitted grudgingly.
Dense black lashes framed the shrewd gaze still welded to her, his dark eyes lightening with male appreciation. ‘Why do you always want to argue with me?’
‘Do you want an honest answer?’ Kat enquired.
‘Da,’ he confirmed huskily, but in that moment he was mental miles away, engaged in imagining her graceful length adorned with pearls and nothing else. No, not pearls, he decided, rubies or emeralds to enhance that porcelain-pale complexion.
‘You’re so sure of yourself and so arrogant that you irritate me,’ Kat confessed, lush red-tinted lips pouting as she framed the words.
Mikhail’s body tensed because he very much wanted to nibble at that full lower lip, but for the first time in his life with a woman he hesitated to do exactly what he wanted. He didn’t need to dive at her like a starving man being offered a last meal. He could practise restraint, couldn’t he?
‘I can’t understand why a man acting like a man should irritate you,’ Mikhail told her with amusement, his healthy and exuberant ego gloriously impervious to her criticism, for he had never known what it was to doubt that he knew best in every situation. ‘Unless you prefer weaklings … in which case I could never hope to please you.’
Involuntarily studying him, taking in the amusement illuminating his dark as night eyes and the tug of a smile pulling at the corner of his stubborn mouth, Kat stiffened, resisting his potent masculine charisma with all her might. Companion, she reminded herself staunchly, not his lover or one of his admirers. ‘You do realise that you’re going to get bored with me?’ she warned him.
‘How could you bore me when you’re quite unlike any other woman I’ve met before?’ Mikhail countered with lazy assurance. ‘I never know what strange thing you will say next, milaya moya.’
As Kat was not aware that she had ever said anything that might be considered strange to him she was, not unnaturally, silenced by that statement. The limo