The Man She Shouldn't Crave

‘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.

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?’