by Lucy Ellis
Why was he just staring at her?
‘I’m sorry—all right? I’m sorry for being underhanded about it, but I was desperate. The shelter’s lease was coming up and they needed the money. But you’ve solved that now. Which takes away my ability to be mad with you. So we’ve done our little bit of business, Mr Kuragin, and now I’d like to call it quits.’
She stuck out her hand and was proud of herself because it wasn’t shaking.
Plato glanced down at her hand as if it were an unknown object.
Deep down she knew she was doing this all wrong. But she was desperately trying to hold on to her pride. She knew what he was doing here, standing in this bar, talking about the team and the game, pretending not to bask in the attention of twelve—count them—twelve women, all of whom would trample her just to get to him.
Back off, ladies, her subconscious snarled. Mine.
Shocked, she lifted unguarded eyes to his.
There were fine lines bracketing them. She’d never really noticed that before. But the expression in his eyes…there was something…
She hesitated, everything in her reaching towards him. But she knew everyone in the bar was looking at them, that she’d just done something very publicly that she really ought to have done with some decorum and class. But she was all over being well-mannered, and to her surprise she wasn’t feeling any humiliation. She was feeling…
Hopeful.
Because he was looking at her as if…
Rose yanked herself away from the precipice. ‘Good. Excellent.’ She backed up on her heels.
She did the sensible thing, the only thing she could under the circumstances: she whirled around and stalked away.
* * *
Plato didn’t move a muscle. Up until the moment Rose had walked into the bar he’d convinced himself that offering up the Wolves players en masse was going to be enough, staying on in Toronto until Sunday would be enough. Nothing was going to shift the selfish desire to go to her, to make her understand, to beg her…
And then she had walked into the bar.
For days he’d been unable to shake from his mind what had happened in Moscow. He’d taken her to that club to put a bit of space between them, to get his head on straight, to show her who he really was, to remind himself.
Da, the space. Other men looking at her, approaching her, trying to touch her had made him wild. He had barely been able to concentrate on anything other than keeping that space between them to a bare minimum. By the time they’d hit the dance floor he’d been unable to keep his hands off her.
He couldn’t believe he’d dragged her into a backroom at the club, pushed her up against the wall and fallen on her like an animal. But it hadn’t been mindless. Nor had it been about This is who I am, and Look at how I’m treating you any more. It had been This is what you mean to me. I need to show you what you mean to me. As if what was pulsing between them had been starved and needed to be fed. But he hadn’t understood then what it was…
The tabloids were full of his exploits—wildly exaggerated—and despite what he’d tried to convince Rose he didn’t touch those women who hung around the clubs any more than he did the women who followed the team. From the start he’d always had an eye to his sexual health, and then there was basic male ego—who wanted to be with a woman who was interested only in your money or fame? But he’d wanted her to think that, hadn’t he? He’d wanted to show her the worst, let her see what she was getting into…
Why he wasn’t worth it.
Worthless. The worthless, illegitimate spawn of a worthless, promiscuous daughter.
That was when he’d known. When he’d been driving back from the airport—because he certainly hadn’t let her go alone. He’d tailed her taxi to Domodedova, watched her from a distance until she’d vanished through check-in, and then he’d sat in the car and told himself to man up. To get over it. To understand he’d done the right thing, the only thing…
He’d left the apartment without security, so he’d driven away—not back to the apartment, but around the ring roads that encircled the city. Possibly one of the most dangerous things a man in his position could do.
But hadn’t he been doing that all his life? Risking everything because deep down he didn’t think he was worth it?
And he had known then why he had driven Rose away.
His entire life had been lived in opposition to the low expectations held for him. He’d built a financial empire, connections, a new family in the form of the Wolves, in spite of what his family, his town, sheer poverty had laid out as his future. Yet when it came to allowing a woman into his life he didn’t have a clue. After all, the women who should have loved him hadn’t considered him worth a skerrick of affection. Deep down he actually believed there must be a kernel of truth in those curses laid on him by a half-mad old woman long dead.
It was a stunning realisation to face and he’d been carrying it around for twenty-eight years. He hadn’t seen it until Rose had forced him to face it. He’d spent the last decade pursuing empty sexual encounters and then he’d found Rose, with her open heart and soul. When he’d first gazed into her eyes he’d mistaken those feelings between them and her openness to him as a simple sexual connection, because it was the only currency between men and women he understood. But he knew better now.
Rose had been offering him a way into her heart, and he’d thrown it back in her face.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘ROSE, you’ve lost weight, dear,’ said Mrs Padalecki as Rose approached her front door, lugging the little suitcase she’d been beetling around with in her car all day.
‘Have I?’ She raised a smile.
‘You look so thin about the face.’
‘I’ve been off my food,’ said Rose, truthfully enough. ‘I’m sure I’ll put it all back on over Christmas.’
She didn’t want to stop and chat. She wanted to shut the door and be alone, as she hadn’t been since she’d fled Plato’s Moscow apartment three days ago. But Mrs Padalecki reached out across the low fence and Rose stepped towards her, taking her frail hand.
‘How was Moscow? You weren’t gone very long.’
‘Wintry,’ said Rose, ‘and a bit overwhelming.’
Rita nodded as if she understood. ‘He’s not with you, then, that young man of yours? The foreign one?’
‘Oh, no.’ Rose affected a light laugh. ‘No, I won’t be seeing him any more.’
Rita’s shrewd eyes moved over her face. ‘That’s a shame, Rose, he seemed—different.’
He was different all right.
Rose was surprised when Rita lifted her hand to her cheek. ‘I can tell you cared for him, Rose.’ Then the older woman shook her head. ‘I will bring you in some food tomorrow and leave it in your kitchen. It’s clear to me you’re not eating properly.’
Rose didn’t bother to object. She was having a great deal of trouble keeping the emotion lodged in a ball in her chest exactly where it was.
‘I can tell you cared for him, Rose.’
Rita was the only person to acknowledge that. Caroline and Phoebe had called him all sorts of names over coffee. Phoebe had told her that off-hand, ridiculous story about Sasha over the phone, as if it wasn’t obvious to everyone she was crazy about him. It was understandable. The people who loved her wanted to minimise the weight of the disappointment she was feeling.
Only seventy-two-year-old Rita Padalecki gave her the dignity of her true feelings.
I do care for him, thought Rose, as she closed her front door and leaned back heavily against it. But I have my pride, and I’m afraid of my feelings if I let them loose and discover he doesn’t care a spit for me.
She was sitting at her kitchen bench when her cell buzzed. She was tempted to let it go, but in the end she picked it up.
It was Phoebe. She was at the Dorrington, organising the caterers for the after-party and lottery.
‘You should be here, Rose. This is your baby. You grew this business. Your face should be t
he one people see tonight.’
Rose slumped forward onto her elbows. She couldn’t go to the after-party. How could she admit to Phoebe she didn’t want to see Plato? It made her sound so weak. She’d spent the last two years making herself strong.
But it was too soon. Her heart wouldn’t stand it. He’d be there without a doubt, ruling the world, to pat her on the head and say, There you go, baby, look how you’ve benefited from a night in my bed. Or, worse, like this afternoon, he would say nothing because there was nothing left to say.
Because all it had been about was a weekend away with the girl of the moment.
She just hadn’t realised that girl was her.
Pain did an assault course on her heart.
Rose shifted her cell to the other ear. ‘No, Phoebes, I just can’t.’
‘I hate him,’ said Phoebe vociferously. ‘I’ve never seen you like this, Rose. What did he do to you?’
Made me want something I can’t have. Gave me a glimpse of what it could be between us. And I got spooked because I’ve never felt this way before…so I quit first…but I’ll never forget him…ever…as long as I live, because I think he was the one…
‘He’s just one of those rich guys, babe,’ said Phoebe stridently. ‘Probably never had to work hard for anything in his life.’
The man who’d given those boys from his hometown a way out and up. Rose opened her mouth to defend him, but Phoebe ploughed on.
‘Let’s take him for what he’s giving and what we can get.’
What he was giving…
Rose almost dropped the phone.
He’d been in Toronto all week. She’d asked him to come and he had. She had been the one who had run. He had a lot of explaining to do, but she hadn’t even given him the chance.
And now he was throwing stuff at her. Fixing things. Making it all right for her.
‘Phoebe, I really have to go. Make sure the audio equipment is working. We don’t want to get up on stage and not be able to be heard.’
‘Yes, chief.’ Phoebe paused. ‘Did you just say you’re coming?’
‘Yes, it appears I am.’
Rose hung up abruptly. She didn’t want to explain. She didn’t even really have an explanation. But she needed to get into the shower and she needed a lot of make-up and she needed a killer dress.
She was over running away from him, and she was over judging him. For once she was going to trust him.
* * *
Plato only half listened to the question being directed at him by the bright-eyed young journalist, with her two cameramen bearing down on him as if he was an endangered species and they had him cornered.
The girl was saying something about the novelty value of tonight’s stunt.
I am insane for agreeing to this, he thought wryly. I should be across town, in Rose’s little dolls’ house, on my damned knees, begging for her forgiveness…
‘The proceeds are going to charity, it’s promotion for the sport, and we’ve heard about how beautiful Canadian women are,’ he drawled. ‘Win-win, yeah?’
He’d said the right thing. Satisfaction crossed the hard face pushing a microphone into his space.
‘Go and talk to the boys,’ he said casually. ‘They’ll say the same thing.’
He knew they would because they’d all been schooled. He’d done it himself. This was his personal project.
The journalist gave him that speculative look he was accustomed to from women. She wasn’t his type—too blonde, too skinny, too hard. But then a few days of dark and round and gentle as summer rain and he was ruined for life.
Was it only a week ago she’d stepped out of the scrum, blue eyes fixed on his face, that smile coaxing all sorts of outrageous thoughts to the surface of his mind? The same smile had dragged him across town on a wild chase after something elusive, something he’d found on that doorstep when fate had overstepped its bounds.
Rose.
There was a hush as a brunette in a deep amethyst sheath of a dress, which clung so tightly Plato swore if he was any closer he’d be able to see the indent of her navel, sashayed across the stage, microphone in hand.
‘Ladies, gentlemen—if y’all would quieten down we can get this lottery underway.’
There was an almost immediate ripple of reaction across the room. Nothing to do with the lottery, Plato recognised, and everything to do with the woman in the dress. It wasn’t showing anything. It was a lot more modest than what most of the women here tonight had on. But there was something about the way she wore it. There was something about Rose.
His Rose.
Plato followed the purple satin from just above her breast to just below the curve of her sweet knees, so tight she couldn’t be wearing a scrap of underwear underneath. Although he knew she was. He knew Rose would be wearing elaborate corsetry to ensure everything stayed exactly where she wanted it. In fact he could picture perfectly how that corsetry would look, snugly fitted to every last inch of her very female body. He just didn’t want other men doing the same thing. Could they dim that spotlight?
‘My name is Rose Harkness. I’m the director of Date with Destiny, and I’m honoured to be able to take part in this wonderful opportunity provided to us by the management of the Wolves ice hockey team. All proceeds tonight, as y’all know, will be going to a women’s charity.’
She kept walking—swaying, really—as she spoke. The spotlight was barely keeping up.
She lifted her hand to shade her eyes. ‘I’m sure he’s out there somewhere, but Mr Plato Kuragin has been instrumental in bringing this to us, ladies, and I think he deserves a round of applause.’
Was it his imagination or was the top of that dress inching ever further south? At what point was he going to have to bound up there with his jacket to cover her up?
Why did she have people applauding him? This was her success, her moment. He’d engineered it all for her.
‘Girls, y’all reach into those handbags, if you don’t have your tickets handy already, because we’re going to start lifting numbers. Where’s that handsome Denisov? I believe he plays forward. Where are you, honey? Don’t be shy!’
An hour. This was going to take at least an hour. An hour of Rose, in that dress, with that voice, running her gentle hands over the boys as one by one they joined her on the stage. He would have to stand here in the dark, watching her flirt and manage and use those female skills of hers, until he went insane from wanting her, unable to tear his eyes away. Just like every other man in this room with a working Y chromosome. She actually had Denisov’s arm around her waist. What the hell did he think he was doing?
Get your goddamn hands off my woman.
‘Who is she?’ asked Serge Ivanov, general manager of the Wolves.
‘She’s a pistol, whoever she is,’ commented the guy beside him.
You can’t take on all of them; maybe just land a punch on Ivanov.
‘That’s Rose,’ said Sasha Rykov genially, tugging at his collar. ‘Rose with the little gold pen.’ He checked Plato. ‘She’s the Date with Destiny.’
Mine.
‘Da,’ Plato growled, ‘she is.’
They circled one another for the longest hour of Plato’s life: she running the show, he watching her back. His resolve was complete when he finally slipped out through the back of the hotel, formal attire shucked, the excited shrieking of two hundred women still ringing in his ears.
He went alone—no security. Just a guy in a suit, collar open, tie dangling, hands shoved into his pockets, keys jangling in his pocket. Da, it was a Porsche 911, but still, just a guy with an appointment. Across town. In the old district. Far from the noise and spectacle, the rush.
Rose had been giving an interview to the media when he left, all Southern charm and big blue eyes, holding them in the palm of her hand. She hadn’t looked at him once.
But she knew he had left. Just as he knew she wouldn’t be far behind him.
She wanted to call it quits? Like hell.
* * *
The light flickered on in her front room.
Plato, in his car idling across the road, had watched Rose climb out of a taxi, seen her fumbling in her bag at the door, and waited until he saw the light go on in her bedroom window. Then he’d killed the engine.
Now he jogged across the wet road, hands in his pockets, head bent under the force of the rain slicing down. He hadn’t bothered with a coat, and by the time he stood at her door he was soaked. He rapped the lion’s head door knocker and leaned his head against the frame.
No light came on, but presently he heard the locks rattling, and the door cracked open. The hall was down-lit behind her, but he could make out the shape of her face, the curve of her shoulder. Rose kept the security chain in place.
She looked up at him, her hand still on the handle, as if at any moment she was going to slam the door in his face.
‘Rose.’ Her name came out hoarsely, as if his throat had been scraped too many times from saying it.
Then slowly she lifted the chain, opened the door and let him in. He shouldered it shut behind him on the night and the rain and the rest of the world.
Her big blue eyes were turned up to him. She didn’t say a word. She’d removed the purple dress, was wrapped in some sort of ivory silk robe. Her hair was down; her feet were bare.
He was about to speak but then Rose was in his arms, dragging his head down, pushing her mouth up against his. Her mouth was so soft, but she was angry. He could feel the force in her, found himself answering it.
She began pounding on his chest with her fists and he let her. Then she went quiet, her hands spreading, her body quaking, and the face she turned up to him was wet with her tears. He burrowed his head in her neck, fisted his hands in the silk over her hips. He was backing her towards the stairs. She hooked her arms around his neck and he lifted her, carried her, unerringly found his way to her bed.
He fumbled with all the hooks and eyes. She was wearing some sort of restrictive corset of a garment and he wondered how she could breathe in it. It had left tiny red welts on her pale skin, and he fell to tracing them with his thumb, his lips, his tongue, smoothing out the marks across her breasts and belly and hips. As if he could make better what had hurt her.