Lucy Ellis - The Man She Shouldn't Crave

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.