A Rich Man's Whim(14)
Evidently, Mikhail was important enough to have a helicopter sent to pick him up to facilitate his swift return to London. Two helicopters? Had he arranged that means of transport the night before? Was he a flash high-earning banker like Peter Gregory? Or some big businessman with more money than sense?
Luka was digging through his pockets to extract money to settle the itemised bill she had left on the table. Mikhail swept the bill up, glanced at it and shot Kat a sardonic look. ‘You don’t charge enough,’ he told her forcefully, digging the bill into his pocket, leaning down to thrust his friend’s money back into his hand. He tugged out his own wallet and slapped several banknotes on the table.
‘Thanks,’ Kat said in a voice that conspicuously lacked gratitude.
Mikhail dealt her a hard-eyed look, his superb dark eyes glittering with hauteur and arrogance. ‘I will not thank you,’ he delivered with succinct bite. ‘As yet you have done nothing to please me … not one single thing.’
And she almost burst out laughing because he sounded remarkably like a sultan informing a humble harem girl of his displeasure while cherishing the belief that she would naturally wish to improve on her performance. But when she clashed unwarily with his striking black eyes and the inescapable chill etched there, any sense of amusement vanished and a touch of dismay and foreboding somehow took its place.
The men filed out to head for the gate that still led from her garden to the field and the parked helicopters. Mikhail waited to the last while the older man awaited him just beyond the door. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he murmured huskily, surveying her downbent coppery head in frustration.
Kat studiously avoided looking at him. ‘Don’t bother,’ she could not resist saying.
‘Look at me,’ Mikhail ground out between clenched teeth.
Against her will, affected more by that tone of command than she expected to be, Kat glanced up. Soft pink flushed her delicate cheekbones while a pulse beat out her nervous tension like a storm warning just above her collarbone. Involuntarily captivated by the brilliance of her green eyes against her pale perfect skin, Mikhail studied her with a frown. He watched the tip of her tongue slide out to moisten her lower lip and he went hard as a rock just imagining even the tip of that tongue on his body. Expelling his breath 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.’