Page 41 of Pregnant By the Russian Pakhan

He acted with such supreme indifference that she could barely reconcile this stranger and his tightly controlled anger with the same man who had made passionate love to her twice.

Then he stepped harder on the accelerator, ramping the powerful car up to 120mph.

The speed was dizzying and Mira was honestly going to be sick. She knew she could hardly open the door and leap out at this speed, but something about the journey was making her ill. Mira yanked off her seat belt, calling his bluff.

He stared straight ahead. When she made to open the door on her side, she found she couldn’t. Child lock. Of course.

“Stop this car this instant, or I’ll jump,” she threatened.

“Answer me this first. Why are you trying to kill me?” he asked, tossing her an arctic look.

Mira ignored him.

“Answer me, Mira,” he demanded. “Why?”

She remained stoically silent, knowing as she did so that her silence would anger him.

It did.

His voice became more grating and hard as a whiplash as he persisted, “Was it to please Daddy dearest and get back in his good books? Was it so you could tell him that even though you betrayed him you really did it for him?”

She stayed silent, fighting nausea and dizziness.

“Come on, Mira, was it so you could convince him that all the times you were moaning in my bed with your legs up in the air you were taking one for the team?”

She was really going to be ill, she thought, as black dots swam before her eyes. She could hear his voice from a distance, hard and angry. She tried to grab his arm to tell him she was going to faint, but she couldn’t see anything but darkness in front of her eyes.

“And the times you were moaning and asking me for more? Was that also part of your plans to kill me?” he grated.

Even through her discomfort, she could hear the thread of hurt in his voice, as though he had been hurt when he found out she wanted him dead. She tried to open her mouth to say something.

The nausea pressed more insistently against her and before she could control it any further, she vomited all over the interior of his expensive car.

From a distance, she noticed he hit the brakes, making the tires screech loudly. Dimly she heard, “Mira, are you all right? Mira!”

Mikhail’s concerned face hovered in front of her eyes, and she heard a string of swear words in Russian and French.

He can speak French, she thought dimly, and then she succumbed to the darkness.

When she came to, she was dressed in a hospital gown. She was lying in a room that was so clean it didn’t even have any smell whatsoever, but her instincts recognized the hospital bed right away.

She looked around, her mind reaching for Mikhail. Where was he? The room was empty and she was by herself.

Returning memory assailed her and she groaned with embarrassment when she recalled how she’d thrown up in his car. If there was something she’d learned from her friends in college, it was that men who owned such cars didn’t like to get so much as a speck of dirt on it, never mind someone’s vomit in it.

She groaned again. A different kind of man would have been off somewhere chanting her name into tea leaves or something to express his anger, but Mikhail was probably cleaning out his pistol and getting ready to kill her.

Why had he asked her those questions, she wondered as memory returned. He’d known she was trying to kill him, yet he’d made his questions about them being lovers.

She had also heard something remarkably like hurt in his tone, she realized now, biting down on her lips. She shouldn’t have tried to kill him, she thought with remorse. She should have found some other way to avenge her mother.

What other way was there, though? Her subconscious wanted to know. Isn’t the code a life for a life?

She sighed. Mikhail was trying desperately to kill her father because he claimed her father had killed his. And she had been trying to kill him to avenge her mother. Mikhail, of all people, had to understand it.

Just then, the door popped open and a cheery-looking doctor walked in with Mikhail dogging her steps.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” she announced chirpily before Mira could pretend otherwise.

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