The Man She Shouldn't Crave

by Lucy Ellis

  She just did. And for the first time in his life he didn’t know what to do.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ROSE opened her eyes, pushing herself up, yawning hugely, widening her eyes as she saw Plato standing at the end of the bed in grey sweatpants that rode low on his lean hips and nothing else. Just lots of male skin and muscle, and a hazing of dark hair all over that broad chest narrowing down to his taut abdomen and lower.

  Oh, my. This was the best dream ever.

  She smiled, the cat that got the cream, and stretched, the sheet dropping and settling around her waist.

  That ought to do the job.

  ‘Cold chicken, salad, bread, cheese, fruit.’

  He laid it out before her on the bed as if in offering to a goddess. Which was exactly how Rose was feeling right about now.

  ‘And the pièce de resistance.’ He grinned. ‘Blueberry pie. Texas-style.’

  Food winning over sex, Rose peered with interest at the pie. Gathering the sheet around her, she inched forward on her knees, inspecting her feast. She was a hungry goddess.

  Plato dealt with the champagne. Rose laid out the plates and cutlery.

  Plato handed her the glasses and propped himself up against the bedhead, dragging Rose onto his lap. They fed from a single plate.

  ‘Plato?’

  Her soft Texan drawl, the cadence that was hers alone, made his name sound unfamiliar and yet absolutely right. The soft ‘plah’ when everyone else said ‘play’. The scent of violets in her damp hair so close to his face teased his senses, and as she turned her head towards him he could see the pugnacious tilt in that dimpled chin of hers.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  He angled a look at her. ‘What sort of question is that?’

  ‘I mean how did you get from the Urals to this?’

  So this was it. The inquisition that would tell her what she needed to know. He wished he could give her a story that would please her romantic heart, but all he had was the truth. He was what he was, and he had never hidden it from anyone. He wouldn’t start now.

  Blood, sweat and tears. He wound a long dark tress around his hand. Luck, opportunity, making every moment count. The usual. All of this he could have said to her—had said before in interviews.

  ‘I won a hand in poker.’

  Her expression filled with delight. ‘Don’t tell me—you parlayed it into a fortune?’

  ‘No, I bought a train ticket and washed up here in Moscow. Did a load of jobs, worked security. Army service intervened. I got out, did a couple of years of economics at university, and worked nights as a bouncer.’ He watched the surprise bloom on her face and the familiar coldness closed around his heart as he continued. ‘I figured the guy I was working for didn’t know how to turn a kopek into a rouble, and he was making a fair living from it, so I opened my own place in a neighbourhood about to turn from a slum into a growing concern and from there I expanded.’

  ‘How did you know the neighbourhood was going to turn?’

  ‘I was living there, malenki.’ He watched her reaction closely, his eyes hooded.

  ‘Oh.’ She tried to picture that—Plato without the accoutrements of wealth. In her mind’s eye he was still Plato. She imagined he’d been born in charge, taking names, issuing orders. She relaxed back against him. ‘And now you’re famous for it.’

  ‘Free market capitalism has been very good to me.’ He stroked her long hair. ‘Otherwise I’d still be that tow-headed country boy playing hockey in winter and kicking a football around in summer.’

  ‘I like to think of you as that boy. When I was a kid I wouldn’t play any sport at all, on principle. My brothers always made such a song and dance about having to include me that I walked away rather than be made a fool of.’

  Plato tried to imagine her as a little girl. She would have been plump, he could see that, with that cute little nose of hers unformed, and probably with her hair in pigtails and a whole heap of temperament too big for a child to handle. He wondered how her brothers had survived it.

  He was more than ready to take the focus off himself. ‘Tell me about these brothers.’

  ‘Cal, Boyd, Brick and Jackson. Jackson has got three years on me, and they just go up from there.’

  ‘I am seeing where it comes from. The attitude. You needed it.’

  ‘Yes, well, I learned young to stand up for myself. But they do dote on me. It was a bit of a problem as I got older. Do you know I didn’t have a boyfriend until I left for college? Brick and Jackson chased them all away.’

  Plato relaxed. He liked these brothers of hers already. ‘You don’t say, Tex?’

  ‘First thing I did when I got to Houston was check out the football team and get myself a quarterback.’

  The tension shot back into his neck.

  ‘Then Boyd turned up and threatened to have him thrown off the team if he had anything more to do with me. Boyd was a bit of a star on the university squad in his day, and the coach was a friend of the family, so…’

  ‘No more quarterbacks,’ he said with some satisfaction.

  ‘I guess if I’d had a more normal romantic development I wouldn’t have taken up with Bill in the first place,’ she said softly.

  ‘When you overreact with me you’re thinking about this guy who tried to control you,’ Plato said in a deep dark voice, ‘and it’s made you wary. I understand.’

  Rose lifted her head to protest, but he was right, and she found herself laying her head on his shoulder and confessing, ‘I was supposed to be special to him. He was supposed to put me first before everyone else. Instead he put me last.’

  ‘Rose.’

  Plato’s voice was rough. She could feel him looking down at her but she needed to get the rest of this out. Maybe it was the incredible intimacy of lying here with him like this, but she wanted to show him a little bit of her heart.

  ‘I spent all my teen years finding matches for other people, watching other girls have romances. I wanted to have that for a change, and so I had to go behind my family’s back to be with Bill. By the time I realised I’d made a mistake it was too late. I’d made my bed. I thought I had to lie in it. I was raised to honour my promises.’ She looked up and met his eyes. ‘It must sound crazy to you.’

  ‘Honourable,’ he said quietly, ‘and young. You forget, I come from a small town. I know what it can be like.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘And I wasn’t the girl I am now.’

  ‘Fiery, strong-willed.’ He kissed her lips softly. ‘My tough little Texan.’

  ‘I was all those things before I met Bill, and then suddenly I couldn’t be them any more. There was too much pressure on me not to be. To be someone else’s version of Southern womanhood. In the end I just ran.’

  ‘Ran?’

  ‘To the shelter where I volunteered. They helped me organise myself so I could get the hell out of Houston.’

  Plato’s arms tightened around her. ‘But not back to Fidelity Falls?’

  ‘No. I was too ashamed.’

  Plato said something in Russian. It didn’t sound very nice. Then he pressed a fierce kiss to her temple.

  It felt a lifetime ago at this moment, that life. She’d come so far. ‘It was awful,’ she said simply, softly. ‘But it’s over.’ She angled up a curious look. ‘Tell me about your family.’

  ‘Just me and my grandparents.’ He sounded gruff.

  ‘Are they still alive? Do you go back and see them?’

  ‘I go back whenever I can. The Wolves are based there.’ He wanted to stop there, but she was shining those big blue eyes on him. He hesitated, then told her, ‘My grandparents are gone now.’

  ‘Did they live to see your success?’

  ‘Nyet.’

  The back of Rose’s head nestled against his shoulder. He could feel her listening, her interest. What would it hurt to tell her more? To give a little of what she wanted?

  ‘Dedushka—my grandfather—was born and lived under another system than the on
e I was able to take advantage of. He fought in the Great Patriotic War…’

  ‘That’s World War Two?’

  ‘Da, it left him a broken man. They were poor. He didn’t work. My grandmother ran the household. My mother fled the house at sixteen, came back a year later pregnant, desperate. They took her in.’

  His voice had dropped an octave and Rose heard a wealth of meaning in those four words.

  ‘Growing up, I barely saw her. She was never around. She—worked.’

  ‘She must have loved you very much to make those sacrifices,’ said Rose carefully.

  ‘Da…sacrifices.’ He laughed dryly. ‘She drank, Rose. She worked hard and she drank it all away.’

  She laid her hand on his bristly jaw. ‘She must have had her reasons. I’m sure she loved you.’ Something flashed through his eyes and Rose frowned.

  ‘Da, she had her reasons. She liked the taste of vodka.’

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  He met her eyes, shrugged. ‘It’s not important now. She drank herself to death when I was fifteen. If you knew my grandmother you wouldn’t have blamed her.’

  Rose propped herself up, a little stunned by the cold smile on his face.

  ‘There was a red corner in my grandmother’s house—that’s a place where icons are hung, to pray, and every night she would get down on her knees and beg the Lord to send the devil out of her house.’

  Rose shuddered. She couldn’t help it. Something passed across Plato’s face—a look so painful Rose instinctively lifted her hand to his face, smoothed the silky hair off his temples, stroked. His grey eyes were stone-dark as they moved over her face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t mean to upset you.’

  But he was looking at her as if he wanted something. More. From her.

  Rose experienced a rush of soft feeling. She was going to have to tread very carefully, because she sensed this wasn’t usual for him. Plato didn’t strike her as a guy who spilt his guts. She’d grown up amongst taciturn ranchers, men who clenched their jaws and got on with it even when life dealt them unbearable blows. Plato Kuragin had tough Texan written all over him.

  She cupped his stubbled jaw with the palm of her hand. ‘Tell me…your grandmother was religious?’

  ‘Crazy with it.’

  Those thick brown lashes fanned down and she pressed a tender kiss to his temple. ‘Why did she think the devil was in the house?’ she asked quietly, reasonably.

  His lashes lifted, and he fixed her with those unfathomable eyes. ‘I was the devil,’ he said, in a low, rough voice. ‘When she was done praying she’d get her broom and beat the demons out of me.’

  Rose’s hand slipped from his jaw. ‘She would beat you—a child—with a broom?’

  ‘Like Baba Yaga in the folk tales,’ he said softly, then smiled thinly at her, ‘Don’t look so distraught, Rose. I wasn’t home enough for it to be a regular thing.’

  ‘How old were you when this started?’ she whispered.

  Plato saw the horror she was trying to hide in Rose’s eyes and it hit him like a ton of bricks. What the hell was he doing? What was he looking for from this girl…? Comfort?

  Da, get the princess to kiss it better for you and everything will make sense, a familiar cynical voice sneered.

  ‘Where were you when you weren’t at home?’ she whispered.

  In a criminal gang, running rackets for the local crime boss. ‘On the streets. Getting up to mischief.’

  Rose’s eyes were full of concern, and Plato silently swore at himself. He didn’t want to upset her, and he didn’t want her pity. He didn’t need it. Hell, in their Army days he and Nik had swapped childhood horror stories and some of Nik’s had won hands down.

  ‘I was a tough kid, Rose, but I’ve been luckier than most and I’m grateful for it. A local hockey coach noticed I had skills, put me in the junior league, got me off the streets, saved my life.’

  ‘The Wolves?’

  ‘Da, the Wolves.’ Neutral ground.

  ‘They’re your family?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Yeah, if you want to look at it that way.’

  Rose gazed at him steadily, then said, ‘So how did you get from street kid to guy with big bucks?’

  She was letting it go, and Plato could feel himself relaxing. He could paper over the rest. Instead he heard himself telling her the truth. ‘I got a girl pregnant when I was seventeen. I was ready to marry her. I got a wedding coat and a job at the local mine. But she was smarter than me. She wanted out of that town, and she insisted we go to Moscow. I had this crazy idea it could work out—I’d do for my kid what my father had never done for me. But the truth was she just wanted the train fare. She had a guy in the city. There wasn’t even a baby.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What do you think I did? I stayed. I took a chance, because there didn’t seem much to go back for, and I built this life.’

  ‘I understand. You did the only thing you could do,’ murmured Rose, and she did understand.

  When she’d left Houston she’d known there would be no going back to Fidelity Falls. Her four years with Bill had taken that possibility away from her. Changed her. You couldn’t go back.

  Rose settled her hands on his shoulders, brought her lips to his and kissed him. Gave him her understanding in the only way she knew. Because of that it wasn’t a gentle kiss—it wasn’t anything like that which had gone before.

  Plato splayed his hand through her hair to deepen the kiss, rolling her under him to take what she was giving—and that was when he felt it. The force of what Rose held inside her, what she was communicating.

  This wasn’t just sex. Not for her, and certainly not for him. If this was just about sex he’d have had her four ways to Sunday, moving through his repertoire of positions and some of hers, until he was sated and she was telling all her girlfriends what a phenomenally good time she’d had. She wouldn’t be outside his apartment before she started making calls…he was a trophy for women in this town.

  Instead Rose had fallen asleep in his arms. Now they were eating in bed. Rose was asking him about his mother, his grandparents, and he was telling her. He was telling her things he hadn’t revealed to another living soul. And now she was kissing him, and he was kissing her—not as a prelude to sex, although it was about to go that way, but because she wanted to share her feelings with him. And he was taking what she offered.

  He lifted his head, looked down into her big blue eyes as he cradled her…

  Since when had he cradled a woman in his arms?

  The nimbus of her dark hair was drying around her face. He made a study of the classic contours of that face, those unplucked dark brows of hers that just made her eyes seem more intensely blue, her mouth more ruby than red. She gazed back at him steadily, mirroring everything he felt…

  What had he done to deserve all this?

  Nothing. You deserve nothing.

  Hell.

  He needed to get this back to basics before he said or did something he would regret. He sat her up, disengaged her from his arms. Rose didn’t seem nonplussed, but she was looking at him curiously.

  He checked his watch.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He thought fast. ‘There’s a party tonight, detka, how about we make an appearance? Introduce you to a bit of Moscow nightlife?’

  He was getting off the bed. He was going to break up this little exercise in bonding with lots of people, lots of noise—a reminder of who he was and what she was doing here.

  Rose didn’t say anything. She didn’t look hurt or confused or about to lose it with him. All she was doing was sprawling on the bed, incredibly sexy, bunching the sheet around herself, looking so at home Plato felt the muscles in his gut contract.

  ‘What sort of party?’ She didn’t sound offended, merely surprised.

  She didn’t know.

  ‘Opening night for a nightclub. I own it.’ He forced himself to smile, forced
easy cynicism onto his lips, gave her the knowing look that made other women curl their toes. He knew what he was doing.

  ‘Not the kind of nightclub I’m used to, I guess?’ she said, watching him curiously.

  ‘We don’t plan on opening one in Toronto,’ he observed with a wry smile. ‘You’ll enjoy it, detka. It’ll be a circus.’

  Rose turned up those druggingly sensuous blue eyes. ‘What can I say? I love a circus,’ she said with a little smile.

  ‘Horosho. Good. I’ll make a couple of calls, get you something organised.’

  ‘Organised?’

  ‘A dress…hair.’ He made a gesture towards the masses drying over her shoulder, toppling down her back. ‘Not that I wouldn’t mind looking at it like that all night, but I don’t think we’d make it out the door.’

  It was supposed to be a compliment, something to ease the harshness of what he was doing, but Rose lifted one hand to her hair and for the first time looked uncertain.

  Plato felt as if hooks had been lodged in his chest wall and just about now were pulling like crazy. He didn’t think. He crossed to the bed, knelt beside her, turned up her face and kissed her.

  He felt her relax, felt her arms lift around his neck. The sheet dropped and those gorgeous ruby-tipped breasts of hers rubbed up against his chest.

  ‘Plato…’ she sighed.

  At this rate they weren’t going anywhere.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re organising me a dress,’ she said, her eyes so blue, so close to his own, inviting him in.

  ‘You can wear one of your own, but most of the women there will be in couture.’

  ‘I understand.’ She looked up at him, all eyes and sincerity. Her dimples came out.

  Suddenly he didn’t want to go to the party. But if they didn’t he might very well start making plans with her—and he just wasn’t that man.

  It wasn’t the right time in his life. Work had to come first. His lifestyle didn’t support a girl like this. He couldn’t give Rose what she needed.

  So many reasons why not.

  But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, ‘If you’d prefer to stay in…’

  ‘No, you’ve got me in the mood now.’ She snaked her way sinuously off the bed and gathered up her clothes. Her smile over her shoulder was pure Rose—all warmth and curiosity. ‘But I should warn you, cowboy, I love to dance.’