The Man She Shouldn't Crave

by Lucy Ellis

  The unloved little boy he had been needed that, because God knew she had felt very much the same way as a little girl. But she knew the risk. The man he now was would very likely push her away. She just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon, and she hadn’t known she wasn’t going to be able to handle it. Because she’d been running from this very feeling since she was six years old. Being shut out of someone’s heart. Except it was worse. She hadn’t known it was going to feel worse.

  The realisation that she didn’t know what to do ripped through her as she stood up unsteadily to get a sight on him. He wasn’t difficult to find—his height, his build, the way people got out of his way. She watched him approach a conclave of men at one of the bars. It was like watching meat being dropped into a pool of piranhas as women converged on him. Purposely, she reminded herself. He was doing this on purpose.

  She almost expected it when a slender redhead, wearing not much more than a slip and skyscraper heels, slid her arm around Plato. It was when he shifted and casually encircled her waist that the glass in Rose’s hand dropped from nerveless fingers, splashing the hem of her couture gown and rolling away. Because, deep down, she hadn’t expected that.

  * * *

  Plato found Rose standing alone in the lobby, the pale curve of her back visible through the drapery of her midnight-blue gown.

  It had taken ten increasingly frantic minutes to locate her. He’d almost gone wild, knowing Rose was somewhere in the club on her own—or, worse, outside of it. In those moments he’d regretted every stupid move he’d made this evening. He most regretted leaving their bed at all.

  He took a harsh breath. Security were organising a car. He’d take her home. He’d make it up to her somehow. He’d explain…what? He wasn’t worth her while. He didn’t want her to get serious about him because he had nothing to offer her…

  ‘Rose,’ he said abruptly.

  She turned. Her face was white, her ruby lips a taut line. She blinked those big blue eyes at him and he knew it was already too late.

  ‘Rose?’ The softening of her name came unbidden. ‘Rosy?’

  She gazed at him for a timeless moment. Her voice was hushed when she finally spoke. ‘I saw you with the redhead.’

  His coat slipped from his hands. He had been waiting to see the judgement in her eyes, had told himself it would right everything. Make crisp and clear and familiar what these emotions had made murky. Emotions he hadn’t felt in years—longing, yearning, reaching for some softness in his life that just didn’t seem destined to be his fate. But there was no judgement in those now familiar eyes. There was only pain.

  ‘I did it on purpose,’ he found himself confessing. ‘Rose, do you understand? I did it to give you an insight into what it means to be in my life…’

  She shook her head and uttered the little sentence he would have done anything in that moment to change. ‘I don’t want to be in your life any more.’

  If she would only stamp her foot, round on him with her eyes snapping, hurl some charming, crazy country-girl epithets at his head until he was confounded and had no choice but to haul her back into his arms and not let her go….

  But she didn’t do any of that. She looked at him with those big blue eyes and he saw that at last the fire had finally gone out inside her. It was like a little death.

  ‘Rose.’ He could hear the desperation building in his voice. Damn it, was he going to beg her? What the hell was he doing? She was just a woman—easy come, easy go. ‘I don’t want this to be over,’ he said, in a low, rough voice.

  She stiffened, as if preparing for a blow. ‘Will you come back to Toronto with me when this weekend is over?’

  He frowned. Where had that come from? ‘I have to be in London next week.’

  Rose inhaled a sharp breath, as if he’d struck her.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said abruptly.

  Rose closed her eyes. She could hear in his voice that he had surprised himself.

  She waited for him to withdraw the offer, but he said more forcefully, ‘Come, Rose.’

  ‘I can’t be with you, Plato,’ she said, wondering why he was even bothering. Wasn’t this what he wanted? ‘Not like that. Your life is here, and my life is there. It’s not going to work, is it?’

  She couldn’t believe how close this was to Houston. It was as if Bill’s words were still ringing in her head: ‘You wanted a husband and you came after me; you don’t love me, Rose, and I don’t love you, but you’re hungry for love. Other men are going to come and go. I can accept that. I don’t care as long as you’re discreet.’

  That was when she’d known she deserved more than what Bill Hilliger was offering. She’d known that then.

  She knew it now.

  She had gone after Plato and he didn’t love her. He wasn’t going to love her—not the way she needed to be loved—and she deserved more. The abandoned little girl she had once been deserved more. When she gave her heart it was going to be to a man who put her first. Before his grief, before his career, before himself—because she would do the same for him. In a heartbeat.

  Rose slowly bent and picked up Plato’s coat, feeling strangely heavy, as if every movement was an effort. She didn’t want to hear any more. She just wanted to be left alone.

  He closed the space between them so all she could see and feel and know was him. ‘Let me take you home,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’ll talk, malenki, we’ll sort this out.’ He lifted a hesitant hand to her hair. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Rose shut her eyes. What was he sorry for? The redhead? For treating her like a face in his crowd? For bringing her here and making her think just for a little while…? Oh, yes, he really was the devil—temptation incarnate.

  ‘Yes, take me home,’ she said wearily. ‘Take me away from here.’

  In the car she sat as far away from him as possible, wrapped up in his warm coat. Yet still Rose felt her teeth begin to chatter. She was so cold. She’d never been so cold in all her life.

  * * *

  He rapped on the door. Hard.

  He waited.

  Rose had vanished into the guest room when they’d reached the apartment. He’d heard the door slam. There had been something about her that had made him hesitate to follow, so instead he’d gone and had a drink, then gone up the stairs and lain on the sheets where they had made love, where the scent of her was strongest.

  A part of him asked, Wasn’t it better to let it go like this? Whilst she was upset with him? Whilst she was riding that high horse of hers? If he pushed he suspected he could bring her down. She would still be wary but he could talk her round. And hadn’t he taken her out tonight to destroy whatever little hopes she was building around him?

  He remembered his grandmother spitting curses on his first visit home after a year in Moscow. A devil city. He would be corrupted. He wasn’t worth half of his grandfather. It was his father’s blood—whoever he was—which made him no good. Go and don’t come back. He’d made his deal with the devil. He would have to live with it.

  But he had gone back, and he’d given them what they would accept—all the stuff he could persuade his dedushka to take from him. Because a man in his eighties shouldn’t be working in a field.

  Just as a girl like Rose didn’t belong in his world. He should just take her at her word and let her go.

  He’d made his decision ten years ago, when he’d taken another girl at her word. He wasn’t going back to that hick town with his tail between his legs. He was going to prove himself.

  His grandmother was right. He’d made a deal with the devil, and here was the price.

  Rose.

  Rose, who’d given him one last anguished look coming into this apartment and turned her back on him.

  His Rosy. She wanted the full picture—a husband, babies, a home. None of it was his to give her.

  He’d let her sleep it off. Maybe he’d go down in an hour or so and find her, curl his body around hers and just sleep with her one last time…

 
Hell.

  This couldn’t continue.

  He had launched off the bed and come carefully down the stairs. He didn’t want to scare her.

  He tapped on her door again. He said her name. Nothing. He rapped harder. Nothing.

  So he eased the door open. The lights were off.

  ‘Rose?’

  Silence. He hit the switch. The bed was made. The room was still. Too still. He checked the en suite bathroom but by that time it was beside the point.

  Her luggage was gone—and wasn’t this what he’d wanted all along? Wasn’t it?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SHE needed to keep busy.

  Rose yanked her laptop out of her carry-on luggage and hit the power button. She hoped she had enough battery power left to see her through the next couple of hours.

  Three days in the bosom of her family in Fidelity Falls and she was itching to get back to work, her friends, her life. It was crazy. All she had wanted to do as the taxi had taken her from Plato’s apartment to the airport was see her family again. It had been her lodestar as she’d boarded the long-haul flight.

  As soon as she’d hit the ground in Dallas and seen two of her four brothers, her dad and Melody waiting for her on the concourse she’d known she had made the right decision. She’d flown into their arms and put her tears down to having been away for over a year.

  A day later she had been making arrangements to fly back to Toronto. She’d told Melody it was to do with the business—it wouldn’t run itself. She hadn’t mentioned that Phoebe and Caroline were doing a great job without her, and nor had she mentioned she’d cancelled all of her clients until next week.

  It was true. You couldn’t go back. Going home had just shown her how much she’d grown up. Her life wasn’t in small-town Texas any more. It might not even be in Toronto, but she was standing on her own two feet and making her own decisions. This was her life—no one else’s.

  Her family had moved on with their lives. Her brothers had families, her dad and Melody were planning a cruise next Easter, and around the dinner table she had been one of a crowd.

  Her father had taken her aside and asked her if there was anything she needed, anything he could do. ‘No, it’s fine, Dad. I’m fine,’ she’d said, and in saying it she had discovered she meant it.

  Except for this weight on her chest that wasn’t going to lift any time soon. This two-hundred-plus-pound Russian weight she knew she’d be carrying around for a while.

  She needed to be like Phoebe—dating Sasha Rykov but keeping her head screwed on about it.

  Who got serious about a twenty-four-year-old who had a slew of young women in Canada fixated on his every move right now? Sure, it was fun, Phoebe had said over the phone, but it wasn’t going anywhere. It was neat to be the object of envy, and Sasha was very sweet. The sex was enthusiastic, and he seemed to think it was going to last for ever—but she knew it had a use-by date. Long before his contract with the NHL expired.

  Rose tried to apply that wonky logic to Plato. He was a playboy billionaire. He flew in women the same way she ordered pizza. It was just one of those things. She’d had her fling. He’d been very clear. He wasn’t going to move heaven and earth to be with her. He wasn’t even going to pick up a phone and call her, ask her how she was…

  She had visited her mom’s grave on the way out of town. She’d laid wild violets against the headstone and told her about Plato and the awful truth that she had run out of ideas when it came to him.

  ‘It seems I can fix everything else in this world, Mama, but I can’t fix this man to love me. He’s got other things he wants to do—namely blonde models.’ She’d rolled her eyes as she said it, tried to make a joke of it, but it had fallen flat and she’d sighed. ‘Plus I’ve got a business to run. I’m thinking I might take it nationally. I don’t see why not. I don’t see why I shouldn’t aim as high as I can.’

  Why shouldn’t she aim high? She had nothing to lose. The laptop screen sizzled to life and she called up the Date with Destiny site. Time to get her head back into work space. It was the best cure-all. She could yell and stomp around and cry her heart out to her girlfriends—not in the middle of an economy flight en route from Dallas to Toronto, with a fat businessman to one side of her and a computer-game-playing teenager to the other.

  She frowned as a photograph of the entire Wolves ice hockey team came up on their main page.

  What the…? She scrolled down and combed through the text. Her pulse sped up, her face grew hot, and her foot began to tap against the chair in front.

  She shoved aside her tender hurts, the painfully present knowledge that she would probably be a little in love with Plato Kuragin for the rest of her life…

  Who the hell did he think he was, making a fool of her…?

  * * *

  ‘Here she is. Act naturally,’ Rose heard Phoebe say in one of those exaggerated whispers.

  She stepped over the ladder lying sidewards in the entrance and waved her hand around to dissipate all the dust. For a moment her anger was forgotten as she looked around at the disarray.

  ‘How do you girls get any work done amidst all of this?’

  Caroline, sitting at a makeshift desk behind a computer half-covered by plastic tarpaulin, said cheerfully, ‘It’s not so bad. Except when—’

  A power drill started up and Rose cast a baleful glance at the handyman making holes in the wall. She flung her handbag over her shoulder and made a thumbing gesture outside. Neither of the girls was in all that much of a hurry to follow her, which pretty much let the cat out of the bag.

  ‘What do you think of the office space. Pretty neat, huh?’ said Caroline hopefully, gesturing at the building in general.

  Rose gazed up at the pretty brick three-storey and had to admit it was lovely.

  Then she levelled a mean look at her girlfriends and demanded, ‘How much is he paying you, and how could you do this to me?’

  ‘You’ve seen the website,’ said Caroline with a sigh.

  ‘Of course she’s seen the website.’ Phoebe put her hands on her hips. ‘Cut the whining, Harkness. This is publicity gold for us. Twenty Wolves players, twenty dates, and a raffle. The money goes to the shelter and we go nationwide. If Plato Kuragin is feeling guilty about something, let him. Don’t fight it.’

  ‘I’m not taking anything from that man!’ Rose declared, hating Phoebe because she was absolutely right.

  ‘Too bad. Because we are.’

  ‘Oh, Rose, whatever happened in Moscow, you need to move on,’ said Caroline.

  I haven’t even dealt with it yet, thought Rose, a little disconcerted. This was the advice she gave on her website. Keep moving. Don’t look back. Suddenly it seemed like the worst advice in the world. She’d expected sympathy from her girlfriends, not this practical ‘we’ve got a business to run’ from Phoebe, or ‘get over it’ from Caroline, of all people!

  She stamped one foot. ‘Why is he doing this?’

  Phoebe put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re the only one who knows that, Rose. Look at it this way. You went to the Dorrington last week to get us some publicity and you got it for us—in spades. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’

  ‘I swear,’ said Rose, ‘if he wasn’t swanning around London right now I’d find him and plant a punch right in the middle of his perfect nose.’

  Caroline was madly shaking her head and Phoebe grinned.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Big, rich and Russian isn’t in London, babe. He’s here in Toronto. Has been all week.’

  * * *

  It felt like a million years ago since she’d first stepped through the doors of the Dorrington Hotel, instead of merely seven days. She’d taken a chance on Plato being there, and as she walked across the lobby she caught sight of him in the bar.

  Her heart stuttered.

  It was impossible to miss him. Quite apart from his physically imposing size, he was simply the most gorgeous man in the room.

  Her man
.

  She hadn’t expected this—for it to happen to her all over again. She’d thought the sheer misery of it all would have killed those feelings, but instead they were stronger than ever. Her whole body was literally trembling.

  As she came closer she noticed a couple of tables of preening women. All of them on parade. It was as if wherever he went there were girls making up to him. Paradoxically it brought her to her senses, and only served to make her madder.

  Rose was suddenly very glad she’d slid her feet into her ruby heels this morning, donned her best blue woollen coat and collected her vintage bag—the one with the bird’s wing clasp. She thought she cut a dashing figure. She was a girl about town. She had a ton more class than those floozies. Who drank in a bar at two o’clock in the afternoon? Okay, a posh, classy bar, but it was still a bar.

  The same one she’d been dumped out of a week ago, on suspicion of solicitation…

  Plato was leaning against the teak and gold railing with a group of other men. All shoulders, in a suede jacket spread open by the positioning of his arms to reveal the lean, hard-packed length of his torso. She recognised a couple of Wolves players. The other guys were older, with more flesh on them. They were listening to Plato.

  Rose hesitated in the doorway and that was when he saw her. His casual gaze caught on her, held, and he straightened up. For a moment he looked as stunned as she felt. Her heart stopped and he came towards her.

  Her lover.

  Pulling her bag in tight to her waist, Rose crossed the room with rapid little movements, shoulders back, working up her anger with every step she took and every step he no longer took. He just stood there, looking down at her.

  At the woman who targeted him.

  A fresh surge of anger pushed through her. Right. She would take care of this. She would make sure she was reasonable and low-key. She wouldn’t let him see how much he’d hurt her.

  ‘Why aren’t you in London?’ she demanded, the words just spilling out. ‘Why are you doing this to me? Haven’t you done enough? Haven’t I paid a high enough price for daring to take a little publicity from you?’ She stamped her heel, vaguely aware that this was neither reasonable nor low-key.