LITMIR.BIZ

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harshly, he turned his handsome head away.

      ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said again in a tone of decided challenge.

      Kat closed the door, shutting out the freezing air. As Mikhail reached the boundary of the gate he addressed the older man by his side. ‘Katherine Marshall. I want a background check done on her. I want to know everything there is to know about her …’

      Stas stiffened. ‘Why?’ he dared as if he had not noticed that very interesting hostile exchange at the back door.

      ‘I want to teach her some manners,’ Mikhail grated with a brooding glance back in the direction of the house. ‘She was rude!’

      Astonished by that outburst, Stas said nothing. As a rule Mikhail never got worked up over a woman. Indeed his marked indifference to the many women who pursued him and even the chosen few who shared his bed was a legend among his staff and Stas could not begin to imagine what Katherine Marshall could have done to arouse such a strong reaction in his employer.

      Kat was grateful to be busy once the helicopters had gone. She stripped the beds and in the act of filling the washing machine found herself pressing the striped sheet that had been on Mikhail’s bed to her nose, catching the elusive scent of him from the cotton before she even realised what she was doing. Her face hot, she stuffed the sheet into the machine, poured powder into the dispenser and turned it on. What the heck had he done to her? She had sniffed his sheet … She was acting like a loon! It was as though Mikhail had switched on some physical connection inside her and she couldn’t switch it off again. She was embarrassed for herself.

      Roger Packham called that afternoon with the firewood he had promised her and she invited him in for a cup of tea. With satisfaction he told her the outrageous sum he had charged to clear the snow for the helicopters to land that morning. ‘City boys must make easy money,’ he remarked with scorn.

      ‘I was grateful to get three guests out of the snow,’ Kat admitted, knowing she would use that money to stock up on food because, with the current state of her finances, getting hold of ready cash was a problem. ‘Business has been anything but brisk recently.’

      ‘But it must have been difficult for you to have three strange men staying here,’ Roger remarked disapprovingly. ‘Very awkward for a woman living on her own.’

      ‘I didn’t find it awkward,’ Kat lied with a determined smile, keen not to play up to the older man’s preferred image of her as a poor, weak little female. ‘And Emmie’s back from London, so I won’t be alone any more. She stayed in the village last night.’

      Mikhail was gone and he wouldn’t be back. She could bury all those squirming, inappropriate feelings and reactions that he had aroused, forget the mortification they had caused her, forget him …

      ‘Don’t use it,’ Stas advised, sliding the file onto Mikhail’s desk. ‘You’ve never been the kind of man who would use this kind of stuff against a woman …’

      His appetite whetted by the rare event of Stas coming over all moral and censorious, Mikhail lifted the file and flipped it open. He read the extensive information about Katherine Marshall with keen interest, noted the figures, raised a black brow in surprise and knew exactly where Stas was coming from. She was on the edge of bankruptcy, struggling to hang onto the house, a sitting duck of an easy target. Now he knew why he had never seen a smile on her face. Serious financial problems caused stress and might that explain why she had blown him off that weekend? He knew he could act on such information, employ it like a weapon against her. It was what his father would have done with an unwilling woman. Mikhail’s handsome mouth hardened, his eyes darkening, for the most unwilling woman of all had been his own mother, a living doll ultimately broken by his father’s rough handling. But he was not his father and Katherine Marshall was not an unwilling woman, simply a defiant screwed-up one, he mused impatiently.

      What was it about her that had kept her image alive for him? He frowned, frustration gripping his big powerful frame, for he was suspicious of anything he didn’t immediately understand. Three weeks had passed yet he still thought about her every day, hungering for that elusive image even as more immediately available woman failed to ignite the same urgency. His stubborn desire for Kat Marshall was obsessional and impractical and that he could see that and still feel that way greatly disturbed him. He wanted his head back in a normal place and he didn’t believe he could achieve that without seeing her again. But while she might be in debt and he was rich enough to solve her every difficulty, there was still one insurmountable problem on Mikhail’s terms: his own unbreakable rule that, no matter what happened, he didn’t buy women. Exactly where did that leave him?

      The next day, Kat received a devastating letter informing her that her house would be repossessed at the end of the month. As she had received copious warnings on that score it was not a surprise. A week after that, she answered her phone and frowned when her solicitor asked her to come and see him as soon as possible. What more bad news lay in store for her? Mr Green could only want to see her about her financial situation, which he had become aware of some months earlier when she had first approached him for advice. He had urged her to sell up, settle what she could of her debts and start again, but she had been desperate to hang onto the house that still counted very much as home for both her and her sisters. Birkside was their safe place, their security blanket, the place to which all her siblings ran to for cover when life got too tough in the outside world. Once it had worked that magic for Kat as well. Losing the house would be like losing a chunk of herself and now, after months of fruitless anxiety, it was finally happening.

      ‘I received this letter yesterday.’ Percy Green extended the single sheet to Kat. ‘It contains an extraordinary offer. Mikhail Kusnirovich is willing to settle your outstanding debts in full and buy your home. He is also giving you the chance to remain at Birkside as his tenant—’

      Kat had turned pale. ‘Mikhail … K …?’

      ‘Kus-niro-vich,’ the older man sounded out helpfully. ‘I checked him out and I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea how he became involved in your debt situation. He’s an oil billionaire, not a loan shark.’

      ‘B-billionaire?’ Kat stammered incredulously. ‘Oil? Mikhail’s rich?’

      Astonishment made the solicitor stare at her. ‘You actually know this man—you’ve met him?’

      In some discomfiture, Kat explained briefly how the three men had taken shelter with her in the snow the previous month. ‘And you say he’s suggesting that he pay off my loans and purchase Birkside? Why on earth would he do something like that?’ she whispered shakily.

      ‘A rich man’s whim?’ Percy Green shook his head slowly, his incomprehension unconcealed. ‘From your point of view, it’s a miracle and a timely one. Obviously since the repossession order would leave you homeless you’ll accept this offer.’

      ‘Obviously,’ Kat parroted unevenly.

      The letter dug into her bag, Kat drove back to Birkside in a growing stew of incomprehension. Mikhail was richer than sin and she was staggered by the discovery. Mikhail was offering to pay off her debts and buy her house. But why would he do such a thing? What did he want from her in return for such expenditure on her behalf? Wealthy men didn’t give their money away or waste it. She wasn’t a charitable cause he could claim as a tax deduction either. So, what was he after? Was he showing off his power? Punishing her for her rejection? But how could saving her from becoming homeless be considered a punishment?

      She called the lawyers’ office responsible for sending the letter and requested the phone number she needed to get an appointment with Mikhail. Whoever she was speaking to went all cagey and uninformative until her call was eventually passed on to someone else. Once she had identified herself, the attitude changed and the phone number was finally advanced. But the difficulties she had had getting that number from the legal office were as nothing to the challenge of getting past the secretarial watchdogs who were determined to know her business before even considering her request to see their employer. Hot with chagrin, Kat finally admitted that Mikhail owned her home and that she wanted

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