Her fingers dug into the arms of her chair, the tendons in the backs of her hands tensing.
‘And since you mention child-bearing...’ He lifted his eyes to hers. They blazed back at him with a banked fury that might have made him pause in other circumstances. He didn’t want Carissa calm and dismissive or, worse, distracted. He preferred her hot under the collar, concentrating onhim. ‘How do you feel about starting a family straight away?’
‘That’s why you want to marry? To have children?’ Surprising how stunned she sounded. Surely the thought of kids must have occurred to her?
Alexei shrugged. ‘Why else? When I have children I want them to have my name, to be part of a family unit. There’s nothing else I can get from marriage that I can’t have already.’
Alexeididwant a family. Kids of his own. He’d spent years driven by the need to drag himself out of poverty and hadn’t looked beyond securing success and financial security. Determination had kept him climbing to the top. But one day, yes, a family of his own...
He had a few precious memories of happy family life before his father died but he knew how lucky he was to have those. The miserable years after his mother remarried made him appreciate what he’d had so briefly. He’d like to recreate that with his own children.
When this debacle with Carter was over he’d think of finding a woman suitable to share his life. Someone who’d make a wonderful mother.
‘There’s nothing else you can get from marriage?’ Carissa’s mouth twisted superciliously. ‘How about emotional intimacy? Trust? Love?’
‘Love?’ He frowned. ‘You believe in love?’
Yet she was happy to sell herself into a marriage of convenience. The woman was a mass of contradictions.
Carissa hesitated. Her hands plucked at the arm of her chair. ‘I believe it exists,’ she said eventually.
‘But you’ve never been in love.’ It was a guess, but Alexei always backed his hunches. The idea intrigued, that a pretty woman in her mid-twenties had never fancied herself in love.
‘Haveyou?’ She raised one eyebrow.
‘No.’ People talked of love but it was rare.
His parents had married for love and he admitted the idea held allure. But look where it had left his mother. When Alexei’s father died she’d been heartbroken. Even as a young child he’d understood that. She’d forced herself to go through the motions of life but she’d never been the same. Her sense of loss had been behind her disastrous second marriage. She’d admitted it to Alexei before she died and he’d had to bite back a howl of protest that she hadn’t been alone. She’d hadhim. But clearly that hadn’t been enough.Hehadn’t been enough.
Almost as bad, it turned out her other reason for remarrying was to provide Alexei with a father. Because of that she’d condemned them to life with that miserable excuse for a man.
Futile anger boiled in his belly. Alexei wouldn’t let anyone make him weak the way his mother had been.
He’d triumphed over adversity and made himself a man his father would have been proud of. He had no intention of falling into some sentimental trap.
‘So you don’t expect to love the woman you marry.’
Carissa’s cool tone cleaved his thoughts. She surveyed him with faint disapproval.
‘If you’re waiting for a declaration from me, Princess, you’ll be disappointed.’
Predictably she didn’t bat an eye. This woman had grit.
‘What if you fall in love with someone else after you marry?’
‘I can’t imagine it happening.’ Alexei saw her open her mouth to object and raised a hand. ‘But if, after some time, we divorce, you needn’t be concerned. The legal agreement will ensure you’re recompensed.’
Her jaw inched even higher. ‘And if your wife fell for someone else?’
Alexei met her challenging stare and felt a tiny beat of surprise. At the idea of the woman he married preferring another man. And at Carissa’s determination to speak in the abstract. As if discussing some faceless woman instead of herself.
Why did she pretend lack of interest when she was here for marriage? Even now, staring along the length of that straight nose like a monarch surveying a vulgar yokel, she couldn’t hide her awareness of him. Alexei read her shortened breathing, the pebbled nipples pressing invitingly against taut fabric. He understood, with the experience of a man who’d attracted women since his teens, that Carissa was anything but uninterested.
The knowledge sent a frisson down his spine, to circle his body and lodge in his groin.
Carissa Carter might be a necessary encumbrance for now but increasingly Alexei recognised a woman he’d enjoy knowing better.
Perhaps when his business with her father was resolved they might come to a mutually enjoyable arrangement.