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His mind had been otherwise occupied.
Seeing Rose to her door and having that door soundly slammed in his face had been a novel experience. Watching her light go on upstairs, standing across the road, leaning against the Ferrari, had been another. He hadn’t realised he was doing it until a late-night jogger idled on the pavement behind him and asked what he was doing. Plato could have asked himself the same question—and what the hell was it with that neighbourhood? Why were they all so vitally interested in Rose’s well-being?
‘Just seeing a lady home,’ he said, thinking it was good to know she was safe in this street.
‘Rose Harkness?’ said the jogger. ‘Nice girl.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
As he’d got the hell out of the suburbs he’d been humming Ravel’s Boléro under his breath.
If he’d been one of those New Age guys who thought their women were proto-men, who did not deserve to be looked after and protected and cosseted and humoured in their little idiosyncrasies, he might not have put in the effort he had that morning. But he understood factoring in Rose’s little quirks was all part of the game, and it was going to take a little finessing on his part.
He’d had a face-to-face with a couple of the boys, Rykov and Lieven, and sent them Rose’s way. He’d made sure twenty-four yellow roses were delivered to her home, and had lined up a stunning lakeview house, a chef, and himself as entertainment for this evening.
He could give her two nights, and he intended to make the most of them.
But he had yet to call her.
In the back of his mind he knew a phone call wasn’t going to cut it with Rose. It would give her too much opportunity to cut and run. Better to let her day run its course. She would be happy because her little destiny date had been achieved. She would be whistling Dixie—wasn’t that the expression?
Da, and then he would just turn up and take away her options. Give her new ones. And warm himself against all that stunning fire simmering in Rose’s sumptuous body.
He ignored the voice in his head that told him to forget it, to walk away. The voice that told him his lifestyle and her girl-next-door vibe made this a collision course of disastrous proportions.
He’d grown up tough in that mining town in the Urals, the son of an unmarried mother who had turned up on her parents’ doorstep after a year in Moscow pregnant and unable or unwilling to name the father. His grandmother had never let him forget how much he owed them, or how unwanted he was. His mother had worked, drunk and succumbed to a diseased liver by the time he was fifteen. By then he’d been uncontrollable, a menace to lawful society, a boy nobody wanted. The only things he had been good at were using his body as the violent instrument it was, and his sharp mathematical mind to run scams.
Recognising his skill with a stick and a puck, and his take-no-prisoners attitude, the local ice hockey coach, Pavel Ignatieff, had stepped in and given his sixteen-year-old self the break his grandparents, fate and the town hadn’t cut him. It had turned his life around. He’d been proving himself worth Ignatieff’s while ever since.
His old coach would understand if not necessarily approve of the old-fashioned, let-me-at-her lust that was driving him after Rose. But in his experience the only way to get what you wanted was to take it and be damned, and that was overcoming any finer scruples he might have. Besides, Rose was a grown woman, and after her performance at the press conference and again last night he didn’t doubt she knew the score.
* * *
Rose parked her blue jalopy under the stadium and made her way up to the private, ticket-holders-only entrance.
An old guy in a baseball cap was watching a black-and-white movie on a small set inside a glass office. Rose gave him her name—Sasha Rykov had said he’d leave it at the gate—and she was waved through.
If only the rest of this day would go so smoothly—but Rose was carrying an even bigger basket of butterflies in her belly than the one she’d toted at the press conference.
It could so utterly and disastrously backfire on her.
As it had last night when she’d lost her temper with Plato and gone in fists flailing.
She’d grown up in a family where pushing and shoving was an everyday occurrence. To get what she wanted she would pummel her brothers into submission, knowing they couldn’t pummel back. If she shrieked loud enough they always gave in. Last night she had fallen back on those habits she’d learned in her girlhood.
Humiliatingly, she’d exposed that hurt, uncontrollable little girl to the man she had been trying to win over. And win him over she was definitely trying to do. Because let’s be honest, Rose, the little voice of her conscience intervened, the I’m-doing-it-for-the-business line just isn’t cutting it any more. The minute Plato Kuragin had told her he’d wanted to see her again it had gone out of the window.
In the brief time she’d known this man she had revealed more of her true nature than she had in the four years she’d spent as Bill Hilliger’s fiancée. He brought it out in her—the earthy little country girl underneath a layering of urban poise. But Plato Kuragin wasn’t the sort of man to be swayed by temper tantrums. No, he’d pretty much spelt it out to her what he wanted. If she used her femininity to her advantage she could just about get anything she wanted out of him. But what sort of woman did he think that made her?
She knew exactly what sort, and it made her angry all over again. She knew who those women were. You couldn’t grow up in a household with four older brothers and miss the fact that the girls they had respect for were the ones who didn’t play that card.
Well, she was done making a fool of herself. He was passing through Toronto. He would be gone in a few days. She had a business to run. Today was D-day.
She’d left her house at dawn this morning, after not much sleep, to salvage what she could of her advertising spot. At one o’clock a small film crew was turning up at a local restaurant and shooting would go ahead for Date with Destiny’s ad spot on a popular morning show.
She’d be forced to go to Plan B and use a jobbing actor friend in lieu of a gorgeous athlete. It wouldn’t have nearly the impact, but she hadn’t any choice.
She had been about to make that call when a number had flashed up that she didn’t recognise.
