Lucy Ellis - The Man She Shouldn't Crave

Instead her pen began making circles on the page, and she found herself recalling how Plato Kuragin had smiled at her—as if she was the only woman in the room—and how imposing he was close up.

He had to be at least six foot six. She’d barely reached his chin in her heels, and the forearm she’d grasped had been twice as broad as her own, covered in golden hairs that glinted under the bright chandelier lights of the reception room. The callused, roughened palm she’d held could have enclosed her hand entirely. Those labourer’s hands didn’t fit the image she had of him as a playboy tycoon, with models—usually of the blonde Scandinavian kind—draped around his neck. That big, muscle-honed body didn’t come from sitting behind a desk or lying on the deck of a super-yacht all day long. And it didn’t come from a gym either. He looked like a guy who used his body.

Rose propped her elbows up on the table and planted her chin in her hands. She had plenty of time to contemplate that body …

‘Excuse me, miss.’

Rose looked up to find two men in hotel uniforms standing over her. Her usual ready smile evaporated as she listened to their request that she leave the hotel.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You were observed accosting several of our visiting international guests earlier this evening. Mr Kuragin has personally requested your removal.’

Rose blinked. ‘What? Why?’

An uneasy feeling slid down Rose’s spine even as the man cleared his throat.

‘Procurement is not something our hotel turns a blind eye to, madam.’

Rose’s mouth fell open. ‘You think I’m a hooker ?’

After that there wasn’t much conversation. Just a security officer marching her none too gently through the lobby.

Outside the light had started to dwindle and the sleet to fall. As Rose walked the four blocks to where she had left her car she tried not to take any of it personally. This wasn’t about her; it was about the business.

Really, Rose? her conscience niggled. Because she knew it wasn’t the whole truth of the matter. There was a fine line between being bold and behaving with reckless abandon, and she suspected she’d come down a little too heavily on the latter side.

Walking a little faster, she told herself she was new at putting herself out there. She was bound to make mistakes. Often being bold and brash meant you didn’t get quite what you bargained for. She certainly hadn’t banked on being evicted from the hotel for soliciting!

Not that she regretted one bit acting on her impulses for once. No, sirree. Playing it too careful had got her nowhere thus far. She folded her arms protectively around herself. Besides, you needed a thick skin in the service industry.

Except something hopeful had been lit inside her when Plato Kuragin had smiled at her. She’d got the erroneous impression he was interested. Which just showed how delusional she was.

Okay, it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Although it was kind of disconcerting to discover that the only man you had met in for ever who got your pulse racing and your body temperature tipping over into tropical had assumed you were in a different kind of service industry, and informed the hotel management you were a hooker!

‘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.