The Last Kolovsky Playboy Read Online Free PDF Page A

what?’ Kate frowned.
    ‘Aleksi is on his way up!’ Nina hissed, her eyes narrowing. ‘If I find out you had anything to do with this, you can kiss your perky little job goodbye,’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Kate swallowed and tried to feign genuine shock at the news. ‘Aleksi isn’t supposed to back for months yet.’
    Just his presence in the building set off a panic.
    There was a stampede for the restrooms as everyone dashed to fix their face. Accountants, who had been resting on their laurels, seemingly safe in the knowledge that the astute Aleksi’s return was ages away, suddenly flooded Kate’s e-mail inbox and phone voicemail with demands for reports, figures, meetings.
    Though outwardly unruffled, inside Kate was a bundle of nerves, her heart hammering beneath her new jacket and blouse, her lips dry beneath the glossy new lipstick, her hands shaking slightly as she tapped out a response to one of the senior buyers. Even as her head told her to stay calm, her body struggled with the knowledge that, after the longest time, in just a few seconds, finally she would see him again.
    She sensed him, smelt him, tasted him almost, before she faced him.
    His formidable, unmistakable presence filled the entire room and her eyes jerked up as he approached—and she remembered.
    Remembered the shock value of his presence—how the energy shifted whenever he was close.
    It wasn’t precisely that she had forgotten. She’d merely refused to let herself remember.
    ‘What are you doing here, Aleksi?’ Kate didn’t have to feign the surprise in her voice; the sight of him ensured that it came naturally. A couple of months ago there had been a single photo of him captured by a paparazzo that had been sold for nearly half a million dollars. It had showed a chiselled and pale Aleksi recuperating in the West Indies, his wasted leg supported on pillows, and that was the Aleksi Kate had been expecting—a paler version of his old self.
    Instead he stood, toned, taut and tanned and radiating health, his rare beauty amplified.
    ‘It’s good to have you back, Aleksi,’ Lavinia purred. ‘You’ve been missed.’
    He just nodded and headed to his office, calling over his shoulder for a coffee. Then, as Lavinia jumped up, he specified his order. ‘Kate.’
    ‘Poor you!’ Lavinia’s cooing baby voice faded as Kate made his brew. ‘If Nina finds out you had anything to do with him coming back she’ll make your life hell.’
    ‘I didn’t,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, Aleksi’s head of Kolovsky, not Nina.’
    ‘This week.’ Lavinia smirked. ‘Don’t you realise times are changing? Aleksi’s days are numbered.’
    Which was the reason Kate had summoned him back.
    When the youngest male Kolovsky, the head of the empire, had spectacularly crashed his car and come close to losing his life, the population of Australia had held its breath as Aleksi had lain unconscious—although rumors of brain damage and amputation had been quickly squashed. Still, the spin doctors had had other things to deal with at the same time. The news that Levander Kolovsky had been raised in an orphanage in Russia while his father had lived in luxury with his wife had slipped out.
    The House of Kolovsky had faced its most telling time, and yet somehow it had risen above it—Nina, a tragic figure leaving the hospital after seeing Aleksi, had somehow procured sympathy. Her almost obscene fortune and the rash of scandals had been countered by her recent philanthropic work in Russia. Her daughter’s wedding, followed by the news that Levander was about to adopt a Russian orphan, and now her involvement with the European magnate Zakahr Belenki, who ran outreach programmes on the streets of Russia, all boded well for Nina. Suddenly the tide of bad opinion had turned, and Kolovsky could do no wrong.
    ‘Tell the press that the House of Kolovsky is riding high.’ Nina had said at a recent decisive board meeting. ‘At the moment we can