Page 43 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Paul shook his head. “No,milaya. Thank you, but that’s okay,” he said.

I don’t shy from challenges, he told himself.Especially from my future father-in-law. Or maybe I’m still drunk.

“You sure?”

He nodded, looked down for a moment, then looked up with a half smile. “He wants me to sign a prenup.”

She groaned. “Not my idea.”

“No doubt.”

“I don’t know about this stuff. I’m the oldest in the family. The first to get married, the first to have to deal with all this. What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t say anything. He didn’task; he told me. Like, it wasn’t up for debate.”

“Did it bother you?”

Paul shrugged. “I expected it. He’s a wealthy man, and he wants to protect his daughter’s assets. They’ll send me the document, we’ll see what it says. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“He didn’t mention our engagement?”

“He said he was very happy. What did Polina say to you?”

“Oh, she was thrilled. She was already talking about where the wedding should be.”

“Uh-oh.”

“She wants it to be in Tuscany, at my father’s villa near Florence. She wants an over-the-top wedding. A showcase. Something that will show up his oligarch friends.”

Paul hadn’t even thought about that—competitive weddings in the oligarch world. “Is that what you want?”

“No way. I couldn’t care less about all that shit, Pasha.”

“Good.”

“Polina is . . .” She paused, looked up at Paul with an almost helpless shrug.

“She seems nice,” Paul said. “Is she not nice?”

“She competes with me, have you noticed?”

Actually, Paul had noted that Tatyana took particular care with her makeup and her outfits when she was going over to her father’s house. He suspected that on some deep, psychic level, she was competing with her dad’s young wife, too.

“She competes with me for my father’s attention.”

“Maybe you should feel flattered that she’s so jealous of you,” he said. “But you seem to get along.”

“We get along okay,” she replied. “I mean, she doesn’t treat me like a stepdaughter. Or a daughter at all. If Polina tried to treat me like a daughter—I mean, she’s only a couple years older than me—things would go badly. So we’re like sisters, and most of the time we get along well. We go shopping together.”

“What was their wedding like?”

“Unbelievable. It was in Moscow, at the Barvikha. Elton John performed.”

“You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head. “They had a ten-tier floating cake, and she wore a seventy-carat engagement ring.”

“Seventycarats? Did you want a bigger diamond than the one I gave you?”

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