The Man She Shouldn't Crave

CHAPTER THREE

‘HIYA, Rose, no date tonight?’

Her elderly neighbour in the adjoining townhouse on George Street greeted her at the gate. It was after six, and cold and dark, but Rita Padalecki had a small ageing dog who needed regular trips to the garden.

‘No, Mrs Padalecki, not tonight.’

‘I keep hoping for you, Rose.’

Rose smiled, opening her front door. She wondered what Mrs Padalecki would say if she told her she’d been turned out of a hotel tonight for procurement? She knew what her father and brothers would say. You’re packing up and coming back home.

Fortunately her family didn’t need to know any more than her sweet, elderly neighbour. No, refreshingly, she could keep that little blip on her radar to herself.

She headed upstairs, kicking off her heels as she dropped onto the end of her bed and fired up her laptop. She wanted to get this onto her blog before she turned in for the evening.

Met the Wolves ice hockey team today. Ladies, they are all single. Learned some curious facts about Russia, pucks and how to drink vodka. Unfortunately Grigori and Ivan Sazanov were in the land of the missing. If you see any gorgeous Russian men looking lost, send them our way. Study up on your ice hockey, girls.

She smiled at her own silliness and posted the photo she had taken of Sasha Rykov. She’d told him she wanted to use it on her blog and he’d shrugged and smiled. Then again, Plato Kuragin had shrugged and smiled—and look where that had left her. On the pavement with a scarlet letter on her back.

Right, that’s enough. Forget Plato Kuragin. Remember how well the rest of the day went and give yourself props for fronting up and taking a chance.

She shut the lid on her laptop and padded off barefoot to run a bath.

Half an hour later Rose emerged into her bedroom, wet hair wrapped in a handtowel. She was too tired to prepare anything, so rang and ordered a pizza from her local, picking at the remains of a Danish she’d had this morning as she did so. Carrying a cold glass of white wine in one hand and a book in the other, she made herself comfortable on the sofa and kept her phone in sight. No bites yet, but she remained hopeful.

Plato skimmed the printout his security adviser had handed him.

‘What in the hell is this?’

‘Rose Red’s blog. The woman you asked us to run a check on—Rose Harkness. This is what came up. She posted it thirty minutes ago.’

‘Rose Red? What’s that? Her working name?’

‘She runs a website—a dating agency.’

Plato looked up swiftly. Was that what they were calling it nowadays? ‘Do you have an address for her?’

‘We do. How would you like it handled?’

Discreetly. For some reason his mind replayed the way she had cut her gaze away when she was speaking to him, as if shoring up her courage, and it interfered with his first thought which was to have his legal team make a threatening phone call.

‘Nyet, I’ll handle this myself. E-mail me the address. I take it she’s in central Toronto?’

‘The old district. Nice area.’

He didn’t doubt that. There had been something classy about her. Less to do with the suit and more to do with the way she had infiltrated that room, sweet and sassy, but low-key. A woman with a mission but not drawing attention to herself.

He picked up the printout again. It was innocuous enough, but it drew attention to the very thing he didn’t want questions about: the absence of the Sazanov brothers. Also, Anatole had told him she’d spoken to nearly all the boys and given them her number.

He should let Security deal with this. There was no reason for him to get involved … other than the smudged line of digits still faintly visible on his left hand, the invitation in her blue eyes and the unreasonable desire he still had to take her up on it.

He was in the Ferrari and driving downtown when he acknowledged that the shape of that ruby-red mouth and the promise in those baby blues had a little more to do with it. The sat nav took him to a quiet tree-lined street with traditional gabled townhouses close to the kerb. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. A residential home in a nice neighbourhood.

An elderly lady peered at him over the low railing fence as he strode up the path to the front door of number seventeen.

‘She’s home,’ chirped the woman helpfully. ‘And who are you, dear?’

Plato stopped, frowned. ‘Plato Kuragin,’ he said simply.

‘Foreign,’ said the woman. ‘She’s never had any foreign gents here before. When did you meet?’

When did they …? ‘This afternoon,’ he drawled. ‘It’s cold, madam, shouldn’t you be inside?’

‘It’s Wiggles. He needs to do his business before bed. This afternoon, you say? Well, you’re a quick worker. Mind you be good to her. She’s a sweet girl, our Rose. I don’t like this business she’s in. I think it hardens a girl, makes her cynical. I should have asked—are you a date or a client? It’s confusing with her running the agency from home.’

Plato wasn’t given a chance to reply as Wiggles chose that moment to come hurtling across the garden and into the house. Plato had a glimpse of something resembling a grey streak, and the elderly lady, with a little cry of surprise, vanished after him.

Plato rapped the lion’s-head door knocker. Hard.

The light went on and the door opened, and for a moment Plato forgot what he was doing there, on a doorstep in an inner suburban neighbourhood of Toronto, chasing down a woman who might or might not be a lady of the night and being door-stepped by her elderly neighbour and a dog called Wiggles.

Texas Rose stood on the threshold in a red silk robe with definitely some serious black silk and lace something underneath. Faint music he identified as Ravel’s Boléro was coming from another room, and in the downlights of the hallway the interior of her home hinted at a cavern of sensual delight. But the comparisons with a bordello ended there.

Her head was wrapped in a white towel and her face was scrubbed bare, so that her nose looked a little pink, and she was holding out a twenty-dollar bill that retreated as she took in his presence.

‘You’re not pizza,’ she said faintly.

‘Nyet,’ he said, wondering if the boys at the pizzeria threw dice to see which one got to deliver to Texas Rose. ‘Can I come in?’

She gazed back at him, looking as flummoxed as he was feeling but no doubt for different reasons.

He had been expecting this, but also he hadn’t. Hell, he didn’t know what he’d expected. All he knew was that he should turn around right now, get back in his car and drive away, and forget this had ever happened.

Except in that moment her towel turban slipped and, despite her attempt to keep it in place, damp, dark hair spilled out. All of a sudden he became aware of her nipples peaking against soft fabric, and the stroke of her tongue along the inside of her bottom lip. It all seemed to happen at once and he stepped forward, definitely going in.

‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ she said, backing up.

‘Nyet,’ he agreed, ‘it’s probably a very bad idea.’ He watched the outline of her breasts shift beneath that silk. She wasn’t wearing a bra. His mind went blank. The most powerful surge of lust shot through him.

‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes. No.’

She was staring at him warily, and it took a moment for her alarm to penetrate his thick fog of desire. What in the hell was he doing?

‘I’m here to speak to you,’ he said, clearing his voice, as if that sorted it all out.

She looked so appalled by the idea that it brought him back to reality. ‘Miss Harkness,’ he said with exaggerated formality, ‘you crashed that press conference today. We can either do this on the doorstep, or sitting down like a civilised man and woman.’

The tone of command seemed to do the trick.

‘Where are my manners?’ she said rapidly. ‘Of course. Won’t you come on in, Mr Kuragin?’

The sudden switch from open-mouthed alarm to Southern hospitality was too abrupt for his liking.

As was the sway of those hips as she preceded him down the narrow hall. He could see the outline of her bottom shifting under the silk, a little too wide and round for current fashion, but he had lost interest in contemporary standards of the female form the moment she opened that door. Texas Rose had one of those lush bodies found in paintings of nineteenth-century odalisques. He had a few of them hanging on the walls in his home in Moscow. Slender, but stacked in all the right places.

He followed her into a small front room from which the music was emanating. He noted the drawn drapes, the functional but pretty furniture, the place on the sofa where she had obviously been sitting: a red cashmere throw disturbed, a half-glass of wine, a book and a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses. Not the accoutrements of a woman who was regularly entertaining men.

‘Please sit down,’ she said, with a degree of formality at odds with her deshabillé state.

He noted her cheeks were scorched red, and one of her hands was clenching at the ribbon tie that kept her robe vaguely cloaking what lay beneath: the full glory of those stupendous breasts.

‘If you’ll excuse me? I won’t be a moment.’

‘I don’t excuse you, and I want you to sit down.’ When she jumped he added, ‘Now.’

The bark in his voice had come from nowhere, but this woman and this routine she was performing was getting to him. Who in the hell did she think she was? Turning up at the Dorrington, making doe-eyes at the boys and then dragging him across town, offering up tantalising glimpses of a truly epic female body and then faking this I must preserve my modesty act …

Her eyes flew wide and her other hand darted up to crisscross her breasts with her arms. It was a classic ‘woman in peril’ gesture, and it almost convinced him he’d overreacted, was in fact completely in the wrong.

‘I want to get changed, Mr Kuragin. And you’re a guest in my house …’

‘Nyet, I’m not one of your guests, Rose. Speaking of which—your neighbour was very informative.’

‘Mrs Padalecki? You spoke to her?’ Something in her expression eased a little.

‘As I said, informative. You run your agency from your home?’

‘Yes,’ Rose said slowly, edging towards the sofa.

‘You are zoned for this?’

‘Zoned?’

He watched curiously as she made a snatch for the red cashmere throw and held it up under her chin, effectively shielding herself. He wanted to tell her it was unnecessary. He had no intention of sampling the merchandise. But that would have been a lie, he acknowledged ruefully. His intentions were being felt all too painfully—it was just he had no intention of acting on them.

‘I am not familiar with the Canadian laws,’ he said steadily, ‘but that can be remedied. I could be your worst nightmare, Rose.’

All the colour that had been so charmingly lighting up her face drained away. ‘If you don’t get out of my house I’m calling the police.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Mrs Padalecki will call the police.’

‘Your neighbour seemed to think I was a client … or a date. Sounds as if men are in and out of here all the time.’

He picked up the book lying on the table between them. Madame Bovary.

He frowned.

‘Get out!’ Her voice cracked and for the first time he noticed her hands were trembling.

‘Sit down, Rose. I’m here to discuss your little foray into the world of ice hockey. You can either do it with me, or with my legal team.’

Her lashes fluttered. ‘Your legal—legal team?’ She sat down abruptly on the sofa. ‘You’re here to talk about what happened today?’

‘Da,’ he said brusquely, annoyed at how vulnerable she suddenly appeared as relief coloured her voice.

‘Oh.’ She released a breath. Her shoulders, however, remained stiff little jolts of wariness.

Plato glanced around the room. This wasn’t a den of iniquity. It was a comfortable home. A woman’s home. There were framed photographs on ledges, frilly-edged lamps, and a gorgeous girl huddled in a red cashmere throw gazing up at him as if he’d staged a home invasion.

It wasn’t a familiar experience for him, but he finally acknowledged he might have overreacted. She swiped her bottom lip with that little pink tongue again and he had a fairly good idea why he’d overreacted. Sexual energy wasn’t just moving at a rate of knots through his body, it was thrumming in the air between them. Boléro, reaching its crescendo even on a low volume, wasn’t helping.

‘Can you turn that off?’ he growled.

She blinked rapidly, reaching across the table for the remote. The sudden silence was almost worse.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ Rose said softly.

Da. Sit down. Don’t loom over her. Keep this brief and to the point. Then get the hell out of here.

As he lowered his big body into a far too fragile armchair across from her she took the opportunity to push back some of the heavy, curling damp hair that was falling forward over her shoulder, drawing attention to the creaminess of her skin visible between the throw and her robe. Peignoir, he thought distractedly. That was what they were called, those flimsy little veils women wore to make men think about what was underneath. He didn’t need help with that thinking. Those curves and hollows were burned into his retinas.

‘If this is about what happened with Security I want you to know, Mr Kuragin, seeing you’ve already threatened me with legal action, I could sue you for defamation.’

‘Izvenitye? Pardon?’

‘You told the hotel security I was soliciting!’

He shrugged. ‘Those are your words, Rose. I told my chief of security you had an agenda.’

As she grappled to come to terms with the fact that Plato Kuragin was in her house—the Plato Kuragin, of the killer looks, killer financial skills and, if the tabloids she’d skimmed through in her research were to believed, similarly honed skills with the opposite sex—Rose became aware right there and then she’d lost a little ground. She did have an agenda. She had quite a big agenda.

She just hadn’t factored in this man taking any sort of interest in it. But then you did target him too, Rose, a little voice niggled. And now this has happened and what are you going to do about it?

It was just she’d never expected him in a million years to call. That he had turned up at her home was off the scale. But he was talking about legal teams and threatening legal action and … and he was looking at her mouth again. Did she have crumbs on her lips? She thought hungrily of the half-eaten Danish on her kitchen bench.

Aware her panic levels had dropped sufficiently for her to be thinking about food again, Rose wondered why she had thought Plato Kuragin had nefarious intentions.

It was the way he had stormed into her house, she reasoned, refusing to let her dress, welding those stunning dark eyes to her body as if heat-seeking the bits he liked. Well, she didn’t have to worry about that. He was notorious for dating specifically Scandinavian blondes, with mile-high legs and breasts that, thanks to plastic surgery, sat up and saluted. Her curves were of the ordinary woman variety, round and placed exactly where nature intended them. It was her night gear that had made him take a second look.

Forced to dress conservatively during the day, she indulged herself in beautiful lingerie underneath. And a little ultrafeminine part of her psyche was ever such a tiny bit pleased that she’d wowed him. But she stuffed that thought away, along with those other pesky fantasies about him scooping her into his arms and carrying her upstairs to have his way with her.

Surreptitiously she lifted one hand to brush away any Danish crumbs that lingered on her lips. His eyes grew even more heavy lidded and Rose swallowed—hard.

‘The result of your scurrilous accusation is I was escorted out of the hotel. It was very embarrassing …’ She trailed off, realising he wouldn’t be particularly interested in her feelings.

‘I’m sure you’ll recover.’

‘I don’t know why you’re so sure. You don’t know me. I could be very sensitive.’

He gave her an arrested look and for a spinning moment it occurred to Rose that he might think she was referring to something else. More personal.

‘No doubt,’ he drawled, and she could feel the hot colour sweeping up her chest like a tide. ‘But not on this subject. After all, you were trawling the boys this afternoon. Not the actions of a shrinking violet, detka.’

Rose’s mouth fell open. ‘I was what?’

‘Trawling. Throwing out a net behind a boat and seeing what you can drag in.’

‘I know what trawling is, and it has insulting connotations.’

‘Da, but it is accurate.’

His expression was stone-cold accusation, and Rose’s hard-won confidence took a tumble. She gathered her manners around her like defences. ‘Did your mama raise you to talk to ladies with that mouth?’ she demanded, trying not to let him see how upset she was.

Plato had the searing thought that his mother had been too busy working herself into the ground and drinking herself to death to mind what her street-smart young son was getting up to, but he pushed that aside as he stared down Texas. He couldn’t remember any woman in the past who’d pulled him up on his manners. Mostly they were too busy trying to hold his attention. Apart from her little show this afternoon, Tex hadn’t done anything other than defend herself since he’d turned up at her door. She actually looked a little wounded, and he had the unlikely thought that he was going too hard on her.

Da—right. The woman who had sashayed around that room today with her little gold pen wasn’t hiding her light under a bushel.

She probably had the hide of a rhinoceros, even if her skin did look translucent as glass. Chert, he could see the shadow of a pale blue vein running along her throat from here, and there would be more tributaries of fine blue veins at her ankles, her wrists, the inner curves of her body.

She was really quite delicately built—which got lost in the sumptuous scale of the rest of her, cloaked now from his view. He checked the drift of his thoughts under that throw. He wasn’t going there.

The Wolves players weren’t going there either.

Why that should raise a low, primitive growl in his subconscious he wasn’t going to investigate. He snapped himself brutally out of the reverie.

Being ejected from hotels was an occupational hazard for a woman like this. How old was she? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? The lifestyle wasn’t showing on her yet …

‘Aren’t you a little bit old for groupie tactics?’

Rose stiffened. Old? Old? ‘I’m twenty-six,’ she retaliated, then cursed herself for handing out personal information. It made all of this far too intimate.

‘Da—older than half the boys.’

Trying not to feel as if she was halfway to her pension, Rose responded frostily, ‘It’s the modern era. Age is irrelevant.’

‘Keep telling yourself that, princess.’

Rose’s mouth fell open, and if she hadn’t been so precariously positioned, and intimidated because of it, she would have leapt up and slapped his no-good, smirking face. Who did he think he was, insinuating she wanted to sleep with his players?

‘I don’t want to sleep with them,’ she burst out. ‘I want to date them!’ No, that wasn’t right. ‘I mean I—’

‘Let’s get this clear,’ he interrupted coldly. ‘You came to the Dorrington to date an entire ice hockey team?’

Rose gave him a withering look. ‘Yes,’ she said drolly. ‘I want to date twelve elite athletes. It’s a dream of mine.’

Something approaching a smile tugged on Plato Kuragin’s firm mouth, and for a moment Rose forgot how he had barged into her home, refused to let her dress, making these ridiculous accusations … because he’d almost smiled at her and some of her defensiveness crumbled away.

For a moment she spun on the thought that she could actually have a little fun with this. She could handle this guy. He was just trying to intimidate her—and, okay, doing a pretty good job of it—but nobody bossed her around any more. A long time ago she’d dug herself a hole of her own making with a man, but she’d got herself out of that. She was in charge of her life now. And maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to be seen as a femme fatale, capable of leading young men astray. Plato Kuragin was certainly making her think it was possible …