The Man She Shouldn't Crave

She knew the moment Plato appeared because Rob lost a lot of colour.

Blast, she should have locked him in the bedroom. Telling Plato to stay put was kind of like issuing orders to a killer shark. It was best just to stay out of the water altogether.

‘Who are you?’

Plato’s tone of voice was one he had never used in her hearing, and Rose lost a little ground herself as she looked from Plato to Rob and then back again.

It wasn’t just a question. It was a threat and a statement of ownership. His shirt was open, his hair was rumpled, and those Slavic eyes of his were narrowed, his mouth a firm, drawn line of aggression. He looked mean.

Rob retreated a step, then another. ‘I’ll return when it’s more convenient, Rose.’

Plato just kept coming, brushing past her without a word and literally driving Rob down the stairs.

Rose knew it was cowardly to just stay where she was. She could hear Plato speaking in that low, menacing way, but not a squeak from Rob. It was out of bounds for a client to just waltz in like that uninvited, without even an appointment, but Plato was being more than slightly territorial—which the woman in her was enjoying immensely even as the professional in her head told her she needed to intervene.

Following him downstairs, she found him standing on the doorstep.

His expression was grim. ‘Get your passport.’

‘Wh-what? Where’s my client?’

‘Likely Alaska,’ Plato responded coolly. ‘Do all your clients just walk in off the street and go on up to your private quarters?’

‘No—only the big, bossy Russian ones.’ She settled her hands on her hips. ‘Now, before you go any further, cowboy, you and I need to have a little talk.’

‘Da, we talk. In the car. Get your passport, detka. I’m taking you with me.’

‘Hold on. Taking me where?’

‘Moskva,’ he said shortly, as if it were obvious.

‘Moscow? Are you out of your cotton-pickin’…?’

‘You will spend a few days with me. It will be nice for us.’ He slid his hand around her waist, casual as you like, and she had to tip back her head to look him in the eye. That pesky woman inside her was doing a major melt.

‘What about the match tonight?’

‘I must return home. I was on my way to the airport when I detoured here.’

Rose blinked in receipt of that little bit of news. ‘Detoured?’ she repeated slowly, the melt temporarily on hold.

‘Da. I couldn’t resist.’

He smiled at her, his eyes reflecting everything they had been doing upstairs in her bedroom. Everything she had been happy to do until she’d realised she was only a detour.

‘How incredibly fortunate for me,’ she said, her voice at chiller level. ‘That explains why you didn’t bother to call me first.’

Plato shrugged. ‘If I’d called you we would have had one of those boring conversations about why you felt compromised by having dinner with me. I would have driven around. We would have ended up in bed.’ He brushed a lock of hair from her face. ‘I like you, Rose. I want to be fair to you. You have your life here. I live—there. But I find I’m liking you a little too much to resist. So we fly to Moskva and see what happens, yes?’

Rose sifted through all those extremely male assumptions and decided that one, Plato Kuragin had an amazingly strong sense of entitlement, but being gorgeous, rich and sought-after he probably had a lot of stuff to back that up with, and two, he was far too arrogant for his own good.

A little Thanks, but no thanks would help him look at those issues.

“You?

??re so bossy,” she said instead.

“Da, and you love it, detka.”