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Plato found Rose standing alone in the lobby, the pale curve of her back visible through the drapery of her midnight-blue gown.
It had taken ten increasingly frantic minutes to locate her. He’d almost gone wild, knowing Rose was somewhere in the club on her own—or, worse, outside of it. In those moments he’d regretted every stupid move he’d made this evening. He most regretted leaving their bed at all.
He took a harsh breath. Security were organising a car. He’d take her home. He’d make it up to her somehow. He’d explain…what? He wasn’t worth her while. He didn’t want her to get serious about him because he had nothing to offer her…
‘Rose,’ he said abruptly.
She turned. Her face was white, her ruby lips a taut line. She blinked those big blue eyes at him and he knew it was already too late.
‘Rose?’ The softening of her name came unbidden. ‘Rosy?’
She gazed at him for a timeless moment. Her voice was hushed when she finally spoke. ‘I saw you with the redhead.’
His coat slipped from his hands. He had been waiting to see the judgement in her eyes, had told himself it would right everything. Make crisp and clear and familiar what these emotions had made murky. Emotions he hadn’t felt in years—longing, yearning, reaching for some softness in his life that just didn’t seem destined to be his fate. But there was no judgement in those now familiar eyes. There was only pain.
‘I did it on purpose,’ he found himself confessing. ‘Rose, do you understand? I did it to give you an insight into what it means to be in my life…’
She shook her head and uttered the little sentence he would have done anything in that moment to change. ‘I don’t want to be in your life any more.’
If she would only stamp her foot, round on him with her eyes snapping, hurl some charming, crazy country-girl epithets at his head until he was confounded and had no choice but to haul her back into his arms and not let her go….
But she didn’t do any of that. She looked at him with those big blue eyes and he saw that at last the fire had finally gone out inside her. It was like a little death.
‘Rose.’ He could hear the desperation building in his voice. Damn it, was he going to beg her? What the hell was he doing? She was just a woman—easy come, easy go. ‘I don’t want this to be over,’ he said, in a low, rough voice.
She stiffened, as if preparing for a blow. ‘Will you come back to Toronto with me when this weekend is over?’
He frowned. Where had that come from? ‘I have to be in London next week.’
Rose inhaled a sharp breath, as if he’d struck her.
‘Come with me,’ he said abruptly.
Rose closed her eyes. She could hear in his voice that he had surprised himself.
She waited for him to withdraw the offer, but he said more forcefully, ‘Come, Rose.’
‘I can’t be with you, Plato,’ she said, wondering why he was even bothering. Wasn’t this what he wanted? ‘Not like that. Your life is here, and my life is there. It’s not going to work, is it?’
She couldn’t believe how close this was to Houston. It was as if Bill’s words were still ringing in her head: ‘You wanted a husband and you came after me; you don’t love me, Rose, and I don’t love you, but you’re hungry for love. Other men are going to come and go. I can accept that. I don’t care as long as you’re discreet.’
That was when she’d known she deserved more than what Bill Hilliger was offering. She’d known that then.
She knew it now.
She had gone after Plato and he didn’t love her. He wasn’t going to love her—not the way she needed to be loved—and she deserved more. The abandoned little girl she had once been deserved more. When she gave her heart it was going to be to a man who put her first. Before his grief, before his career, before himself—because she would do the same for him. In a heartbeat.
Rose slowly bent and picked up Plato’s coat, feeling strangely heavy, as if every movement was an effort. She didn’t want to hear any more. She just wanted to be left alone.
He closed the space between them so all she could see and feel and know was him. ‘Let me take you home,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’ll talk, malenki, we’ll sort this out.’ He lifted a hesitant hand to her hair. ‘I’m sorry.’
Rose shut her eyes. What was he sorry for? The redhead? For treating her like a face in his crowd? For bringing her here and making her think just for a little while…? Oh, yes, he really was the devil—temptation incarnate.
‘Yes, take me home,’ she said wearily. ‘Take me away from here.’
In the car she sat as far away from him as possible, wrapped up in his warm coat. Yet still Rose felt her teeth begin to chatter. She was so cold. She’d never been so cold in all her life.
* * *
