LITMIR.BIZ

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the Grand Duchess she was right before his eyes and he loathed the way that made him feel.

      ‘You’d resort to the heavy gang? That wouldn’t look good in the gossip columns. “International playboy needs help to deal with one small female intruder”.’

      ‘Small? I would hardly call you small,’ he drawled coolly. ‘You must have grown—what?—six inches since I saw you last?’

      She had grown in other ways too, he acknowledged, admitting to himself the instant and very basic male reaction that had taken him by storm in the first moments he had seen her. Before he had realised just who she was.

      He hadn’t seen such a stunning woman in years—in his life. Everything that was male in him had responded to the sight of her tall, slender figure, the burnished hair, porcelain skin, long, long legs …

      And then he had realised that it was Ria. She had grown up, grown taller, slimmed down. Her face had developed planes and angles where there had once been just firm, round, apple-rosy cheeks. He had loved those cheeks, he admitted to himself. They had been soft and curved, so smooth, that he had loved to pinch them softly, pretending he was teasing but knowing that what he actually wanted was to feel the satin of her skin, stroke it with his fingertips. These days, Ria had cheekbones that looked as if they would slice open any stroking finger, and the rosy cheeks were carefully toned down with skilful make-up. The slant of those cheekbones emphasised the jade green of her eyes, and the soft pink curve of her mouth, but it was obvious that any softness in her appearance was turned into a lie by the way she behaved.

      In a series of pulsing jolts, like the effect of an electric current pounding into him, he had known stunning attraction and the rush of desire that heated his entire body, the shock of recognition, of disbelief, of frank confusion as to just why she should be here at all. And then, just as the memory of how they had once been together had slid into his mind, she had destroyed it totally, shattering the memory as effectively as if she had taken a heavy metal hammer to it.

      That had been when she had looked down her aristocratic nose at him, her expression obviously meant to make him feel less than the dirt beneath her neatly-shod feet. And Ria, who had once been his friend and confidant, Ria who he had just recognised as a sweet girl who had grown into a stunningly sensual woman, had become once more the Ria who together with her father and her family had stuck a knife in his back, ruined his mother’s life and cast them out into the wilderness.

      ‘And, as to the gossip columns, I’m sure they’d be much more interested in the scoop of seeing the Grand Duchess Honoria Maria Escalona being forcibly ejected from the offices of Sarova International—and I can just imagine some of the stories they might come up with to explain your expulsion.’

      ‘Not so much of a Grand Duchess any more,’ Ria admitted without thinking. ‘Not so much of a duchess of any sort.’

      ‘What?’

      That brought him up sharp. Just for a second or two blank confusion clouded those amazing eyes and he tilted his head slightly to one side as a puzzled frown drew his brows together. The small, revealing moment caught on something in her heart and twisted painfully.

      He had always done that when she had known him before. When they had been children together—well, she had been the child and he a lordly six years older. If he was confused or uncertain that frown had creased the space between his dark brows and his head would angle to the side …

      ‘Lexei—please.’ The name slipped from her before she could think. The familiar, affectionate name that she had once been able to use.

      But she’d made a fatal mistake. She knew that as soon as the words had left her mouth and his reaction left her in no doubt at all that the one slip of her lips, in the hope of getting a tiny bit closer to him, had had the opposite effect.

      His long body stiffened in rejection, that slight tilt of his head turned into a stiff-necked gesture of antagonism as his chin came up, angry, rejecting. His eyes flashed and his mouth tightened, pulling the muscles in his jaw into an uncompromising line.

      ‘No,’ he said, hard and rough. ‘No. I will not listen to a word you say. Why should I when you and yours turned your back on my mother—on me—and left us to exile and disgrace? My mother died in that disgrace. It’s not as if anything you have to say is a matter of life or death.’

      ‘Oh, but …’

      It could be … The words died on her tongue, burned away in the flare of fury he turned on her, seeming to scorch her skin so painfully.

      This was not how she had planned it, but it was obvious that he wasn’t prepared to let her lead up to things with a carefully prepared conversation. Hastily she grabbed at her handbag, snapping it open with hands made clumsy by nerves.

      ‘This is for you …’ she managed, holding out the sheet of paper she had folded so carefully at the start of her journey. The document she had checked was still there at least once every few minutes on her way here.

      His eyes dropped to what she held, expression freezing into marble stillness as he took in the crest at the head of the sheet of paper, the seal that marked it out for the important document it was.

      ‘You know that your mother needed proof of the legality of her marriage,’ she tried and got the briefest, most curt nod possible as his only response, his gaze still fixed on the document she held out.

      It was like talking to a statue, he was so stiff, so unmoving, and she found that her tongue was stumbling over itself as she tried to get the words out. If only someone else could have been given this vital duty to carry out. But she had volunteered herself in spite of the fact that the ministers had viewed her with suspicion. A suspicion that was natural, after the way her father had behaved. But they didn’t know the half of it. She had only just discovered the truth for herself and hadn’t dared to reveal any of it to anyone else. Luckily, the ministers had been convinced that she was the most likely to be successful. Alexei would listen to her, they had said. And besides, with success meaning so much to her personally, to her family, she would be the strongest advocate at this time.

      It was a strong irony that all the discipline, the training her father had imposed on her for his own ends, was now to be put to use to try to thwart those ends if she possibly could.

      ‘And for that she needed evidence of the fact that the old king had given his permission for your father—as a member of the royal family—to marry all those years ago, when they first met.’

      Why was she repeating all this? He knew every detail as much as she did. After all, it had been his life that had been blasted apart by the scandal that had resulted when it had seemed that his parents’ marriage had been declared illegal. Alexei’s father and mother had been separated, with him living with his mother in England until he was sixteen, and the fact that her husband was ill—dying of cancer—had brought his mother to Mecjoria in hope of a reconciliation. They hadn’t had long and, during what time they had had, Alexei had found the old-fashioned and snobbish aristocracy difficult to deal with, particularly when they had regarded him and his mother as nothing more than commoners who didn’t belong at court. His rebellious behaviour had created disapproval, brought him under the disapproving gaze of so many. And too soon, with his father dead, there had been no one to support his mother, or her son, when court conspiracy—a conspiracy Ria had just discovered to her horror of which her father had been an important part—had had her expelled, exiled from the country, taking her son with her.

      Then there was her own part in all of it—her own guilty conscience, Ria acknowledged. That was an important part of why she had volunteered to come here today, to bring the news of the discovery of the document … and the rest.

      ‘This is the evidence.’

      At last he moved, reached out a hand and took the paper from her. But to her shock he simply glanced swiftly over the text then tossed it aside, dropping it on to his desk without a second glance.

      ‘So?’

      The single word seemed to strip all the moisture from her mouth,

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