by Lucy Ellis
‘Even in college my brothers interfered in my romantic life. They chased away any boys my own age who showed an interest. So when Bill came on the scene nobody suspected a thing, because he was so much older, came from an established Houston family. Who’d think he would be dating a college student? Worse, a girl from Fidelity Falls?’
She risked a glance at Plato. He wasn’t smiling any more. He looked stone-cold serious.
‘I was able to sort of sneak around with him, and I guess it made it exciting. I hadn’t had much excitement in my life of the romantic kind.’ She sighed. ‘He wooed me.’
‘What is this woo?’
‘Courtship. You know—he sent me flowers and took me to dinner and on picnics, wrote me poems.’
‘Poems?’
‘Later I found out he’d had a staff member of his father’s write them, but at the time it seemed…romantic.’ Rose shook her head. ‘I was very young, I thought that was how it worked. Men and women. But now I know different. He took my romantic notions and he trashed them.’
Rose risked a look at him. Plato’s smile was long gone.
‘Bill’s daddy was a senator, and all the Hilligers go into politics. Bill had a whole big career lined up—except he didn’t really have the heart for it. I think he would have been happier lecturing in politics for the rest of his life, but his parents insisted he was bound for big things. He wasn’t very confident with people…with women. I guess he chose me because I was so young and naive. He proposed a month into dating me, and I said no, but he kept asking, and by that time his mother had taken me under her wing and my whole social life seemed to be caught up with the Hilligers. Everyone around me seemed to expect it.’
She closed her little bag with a snap.
‘It wouldn’t have been so bad except he tried to make me ashamed of where I came from, of my family, and for a time I was. He tried to change me.’ She gave Plato a big false smile. ‘So you see—blinkers off. I’m a tough cookie these days.’
‘Da,’ he said slowly, ‘you’re a tough little biscuit. This guy—why did you stay with him so long?’
‘One minute I was living in a dorm with other girls. The next I’d moved into his house, was going with him to dinner parties and functions, living a life beyond my years. I guess I didn’t know how to step off the train.’ She broke off, realising she was almost wrenching the strap off her bag. ‘The idea was we would get married when I finished my degree and had a bit more social polish, and Bill would put his name forward for pre-selection. I started volunteering at a women’s shelter as part of my degree. The Hilligers weren’t happy about it, and that was when I first said no to them. Then I just kept on saying no—until one day I told Bill it was over. I was twenty-four and I’d grown up. In the end I worked out that he just wanted a woman on his arm who wouldn’t embarrass him in public. Which is ironic, because that’s exactly what I ended up doing.’
Plato nodded at her handbag. ‘You dumped him. Why was it newsworthy?’
‘Only in Houston. The Hilligers are big news there, and I used to get dragged along to all the functions with Bill. I made the mistake of agreeing to go to a political dinner after we’d broken up, and he used it as the venue to announce our wedding plans. I guess he thought he could strongarm me that way into doing what he wanted. I caused a little…scene. The press were there and it was all over the next day’s papers. It was a Sunday. Slow day.’ She patted her bag. ‘I carry it around with me so that it doesn’t become some sort of deep dark secret. It’s yellowing now. I imagine in a few years the print will be so blurry I’ll have to throw it out. Which is how it should be.’
‘Take what you need and move on,’ he said quietly. ‘Smart. This small town you come from—you didn’t go back?’
‘I became the girl who threw over the Hilligers instead of the Dairy Queen. I couldn’t go back and face that.’ She made sure her tone was light, almost flippant, keeping a tight hold on the emotions memories of that awful time always evoked. ‘I had my degree by then, so I packed up my suitcase, stuck a pin in a map and came to Toronto to start my own life.’
She gave him a wry smile. ‘I guess you want to turn the car around and take me home now,’ she said with a nervous little laugh. ‘Talking about old boyfriends isn’t very sexy.’
‘Detka, everything about you is sexy,’ he assured her, but there was something behind the easy smile he gave her that made Rose wonder if she’d said too much, made herself seem foolish to him.
CHAPTER TEN
SO ROSE had had a little unhappiness in her life? She’d clearly bounced back. She was a smart, capable woman. She didn’t need him riding in like some sort of Prince Charming, slaying her dragons.
Yet as he pulled out onto the highway Plato glanced at her serious, downcast profile and something hot and tight moved through his chest.
‘Where in the hell was your father or those brothers of yours when all this was going on?’ he demanded roughly.
Rose looked up, blinking with surprise. ‘I protected Bill from them, of course,’ she said simply.
Plato swore under his breath.
Rose sighed. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more, but Bill wasn’t like…well, you. He hadn’t had all that much experience with women. I guess I liked that about him. He didn’t overwhelm me. In fact if anyone was the aggressor it was probably me.’
He glanced at her again, and to his surprise Rose cut her eyes away. She looked a little embarrassed.
‘You went after him?’ He could hear the scepticism in his own voice.
‘No, I mean—’ She broke off. ‘Never mind.’
But he did mind. He was feeling angry and protective and he wanted to kick this guy who had taken advantage of a young Rose to the kerb.
It was completely unreasonable, but Plato found himself wondering where he’d been all those years ago. In the Caucasus mountains shooting insurgents, trading illegal car parts on the black market. Not fronting up and sorting out Rose’s life for her. Chert.
Rose, a Texan beauty queen who didn’t date and had hooked up with an older guy because she wanted to get married. Da, she was a traditional girl all right.
Realising his knuckles had whitened over the steering wheel, he purposely began to dial it back. Rose could have been a cliché, but she’d managed to break free of all that and forge something for herself. She’d turned her own longings into a paying business and she deserved respect for that, not his misplaced desire to fix things for her.
She wasn’t that eighteen-year-old Dairy Queen any more, for all that she carried a little bit of newsprint around attesting to it. She was a grown woman and she knew the score.
His role in this little scenario was to take her to Moscow, show her a good time and make sure—for her comfort and his—she didn’t get under his skin. She didn’t need a guy like him messing around in her life; from the sounds of her story what she needed was a little fun.
This is about sex, man, and it’s time to get this show on the road.
* * *
After her confession Rose was trembling like a leaf. Being so honest with another person had left her feeling exposed and vulnerable, raw. Plato was quiet. He drove and she stared uncomfortably out of the window and tried to fathom why in the heck she’d turned a simple get-to-know-you into a blood-and-guts confession. Talk about killing the mood.
To Rose’s surprise her big Russian didn’t drive into the airport terminal car park. He kept going, hung a right, and drove to some fenced gates. He lowered the window, handed his pass to a guard and they drove on through. Rose realised they were driving towards the tarmac.
Holy cow.
She stared up in sheer amazement.
A whole lot of shiny white, black-detailed jet, with a red and black wolf’s head design on the cockpit. It was the equivalent of this car. Except so much more.
‘It looks—fast,’ she said inadequately.
‘You like speed, malenki?’
Rose shook her head, tryi
ng not to let her nerves show. ‘Not me. I’m strictly third gear.’
‘Slow it is, then,’ he assured her, bringing the car to a stop.
Plato flipped the ignition, removed his belt, reached over and unfastened hers. Before she could move he slid a hand around her shoulders, drawing her towards him. She had a moment to register he was going to kiss her and then his mouth was on hers, hard and fast, his tongue rough and ready and rhythmic, taking what he could get. His other hand tangled in her hair as he cradled her head, angled her for a better penetration.
This wasn’t slow…
Rose heard herself moan, felt her hands going helplessly up to his shirtfront in an effort to touch him, find a little skin, bond herself to him. Vaguely she intuited that he was giving her some kind of message with this kiss—a kind of This is what we’re about, baby, and don’t you mistake it for anything else. After her little tell-all soap opera confession she was lucky he hadn’t dumped her by the side of the road.
Then just as suddenly his hands eased their hold, and he was smoothing the hair away from her face as his mouth turned softer, sweeter. She clung and looked at him dreamily as he drew back, his eyes very dark on hers. For a moment he looked a little thrown.
‘We need to move, detka,’ he said roughly, releasing her.
Plato was out of the car and had her door open. Rose climbed out on wobbly legs and turned around to face the jet in the near distance. Her stomach dropped. Out of the car it seemed to loom even larger.
Worse, whilst they’d been kissing another car had rolled up. A couple of guys were getting out and were openly watching her with Plato.
The cold wind snatched at her long A-line skirt. Rose was wearing a high-necked wool sweater and a jacket but the wind knifed through it. Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned towards Plato and said helplessly, ‘You could have given me fair warning.’
‘I was occupied,’ he imparted with a flashing smile. ‘It’s just Security, detka. I apologise. I forget you are shy.’
Was she? Rose didn’t think she was particularly shy. Just private about…private things.
He shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around her. She was instantly enclosed in the lovely musky male scent of him, faintly tinted with an expensive aftershave. He slung an arm around her and, casually as you like, steered her across the tarmac.
It was like something out of a movie. Rose kept expecting a director to yell Cut! or Print! and her big, gorgeous-as-all-get-out Russian to transform into a sexy stranger and lope away. Because she hardly knew him, did she? All she knew was that the backs of her knees gave a little every time he smiled at her, and right now she was enjoying being the centre of his attention so much it was seriously going to hurt when he took it away. Because people always did, and with a guy like Plato that moment was probably coming sooner rather than later.
If she truly was the modern girl she liked to pretend to be she’d just enjoy it for what it was: a good time, not destined to last. But she wasn’t a modern girl, was she? She was from a little town in Texas where you married your high school sweetheart and went to church and had babies.
Except she wasn’t doing any of those things. She’d failed spectacularly at the lot, and so she had decided two years ago to make a life out of getting those things for other people.
It was such a depressing thought that for a moment she had to fight the urge to pull herself free of his arms and hightail it back to the airport, jump in a taxi and speed home to the safety of her own four walls, where she had built a life to replace the one she’d fled from in Houston. And it was a good life. It just wasn’t particularly exciting.
The last thought brought her back to her senses. Ahead of them the jet loomed, larger than life—kind of like the guy who had his arm around her. This was real, and if it was different that was a good thing. Except she needed to settle this on her terms. She’d learned her lesson with Bill Hilliger. She might be taking a long-needed risk with this man but she wasn’t his plaything.
Her eyes narrowed on that jet. Here was a good place to start. This was exactly like last night. The only difference was this time he was using a bigger toy to bring her to him.
Time to rope this bull down, Rosy.
At the foot of the mobile stairs she ground to a halt.
‘I can’t get on this plane with you if this is just some sex thing.’
Plato was suddenly standing right up in front of her, blocking out the wind, his face close to her own. ‘Sex thing?’
He was giving her that you’re-speaking-in-a-foreign-language reaction but she wasn’t buying it.
Rose put her hands on her hips.
‘You know what I mean, cowboy.’
Yes, he knew. She could see the speculation in the look he gave her, as if summing her up, reaching for the words that would seal the deal. ‘I will treat you like a queen, my Rose,’ he said, in that deep, sexy voice. ‘You have my word.’
‘A queen, huh? Just see that you do.’
A genuine smile creased his face, drawing fine lines at the corners of those Slavic eyes of his, and Rose had a glimpse of the boy he must once have been. Her heart gave an unexpected lurch.
Oh, my, that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. She wasn’t to go all soft about this guy. He was definitely not the man to let her guard down around so soon.
‘All right then,’ she said a little breathlessly, the wind taken out of her sails. ‘Just as long as we’re clear.’
Plato couldn’t credit the satisfaction that streaked through him. He had her. The street-smart boy from Udilsk had scored himself a real live princess.
Da, with a fake line he’d delivered before to women who couldn’t care less as long as he showed them a good time. He hadn’t missed the vulnerable light in her eyes. The odd little speech she’d made when she’d called to refuse his dinner date last night flashed through his mind. Not his kind of girl. He wondered how much she knew about his reputation from the tabloids. She must know something. Was that the root of this sex thing?
He wanted to tell her he wasn’t that man. He wasn’t the guy who’d wanted to send the limo to pick her up when he’d known the first night they were together, when he’d barely scratched her surface, that she was the kind of girl you drove home.
Da, and what would you know about that, Kuragin? Peasant boy from a hick town. You’ll amount to nothing. Everything good you touch turns black, cheap…
‘Rose,’ he said in a rough voice.
Her expression was pure caution, and it flashed through his mind what she’d said about how her romantic notions had been trashed.
‘I will look after you, malenki,’ he promised.
He had no idea where the words came from, but he sure as hell didn’t expect what happened next. She moved so quickly he didn’t have time to do much more than stand there. Rose wrapped her arms around his middle and held him tightly, communicating a whole lot of the feeling he’d been sensing all along was just below her surface.
She barely gave him time to react, even if he had known how to, because now she was letting go and scooting up those steps.
The gesture left him stranded. He couldn’t remember anyone ever touching him in that way—or was it that he had never allowed it? For a moment the repercussions of what it meant silenced the usual cynical voice in his head that didn’t allow those thoughts in. He gave himself permission for just a moment to wonder what it would be like to have this in his life.
Rose in his life.
Then the familiar intervened.
What is wrong with you?
She was from a completely different world. She would never understand what he had come from. If she had the faintest idea she wouldn’t be here with him now.
He needed to get a hold of this.
“Coming, cowboy?” she called over her shoulder, her look pert, confident.
Da, she wanted this as much as he did. He wouldn’t think about why. He’d just take what she was willing to give.
&nbs
p; * * *
They touched down in snow. It was falling lightly but steadily. The bright lights of the building were harsh as they walked the concourse, flanked by security men.
Plato retrieved his cell, took a call.
‘Rose, we are in for a bit of press attention outside. I’ll get you into the car as quickly as possible, but I advise keeping your head down and using your bag to obscure your face.’
Rose frowned. ‘What do you mean, press attention?’
Plato shook his head at the ludicrousness of the situation. It would be impossible to explain to this girl what a Russian businessman’s life meant—especially one who had risen from the streets. She would not understand the dangers or the insatiable interest of the press. The world loved wealth and everyone wanted their piece of him.
‘Cover your face,’ was all he said, and Rose obediently lifted her handbag, holding it up and let him guide her steps as they emerged from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport into sub-zero temperatures and were showered in a flare of clicking cameras.
People were shouting out questions in Russian, French and English at Plato, who had his hand firmly anchored to her waist as he urged her onwards. Rose scrambled gratefully forward and was plunged into the privacy of the smokescreened limo. Plato was sliding in beside her. A minder was slamming the door.
‘Are you all right?’
Plato’s expression was taut as he ran concerned eyes over her. As he spoke he leaned forward. His coat was open, the broad expanse of his chest exposed in a faithfully cut olive shirt. Rose couldn’t help getting a little lost in looking at him. He must work out an awful lot…
She nodded vigorously, but that nod immediately turned into an even more vigorous shake. She hadn’t expected this. Cameras, attention…
She had seen the media interest in Plato back in Toronto at that press conference, but until this moment she hadn’t really known. Until this moment she’d had no idea.
And right now it was all feeling a bit too much.
