Plato shrugged. ‘And missed the fireworks? I enjoyed it, malenki.’
Rose beamed. ‘Sasha was my first choice anyway. I forgive you.’
Yes, she was every inch a woman. Making absolutely no sense whatsoever. And now it was his fault again.
‘Excellent news,’ he said.
‘So is that your story? Was sport your way out?’
‘No. I played, but it was never in my future.’
A poor boy from a mining town, destined to a life of crime to survive. How did you explain that to a girl like Rose? You didn’t. That was the short answer. As far as most women were concerned he was the sum of his parts, able to give them what they wanted in the short term. It was all about now.
In the process of reinstalling her laptop in its case at her feet, Rose looked up at him, a smile spreading across her face, deepening her dimples.
Plato jerked his attention back on the road as the car drifted slightly. Did she have the slightest idea what she did to him? Probably, his cynicism intervened. For all that down-home charm Rose laid out, it was clearly a distraction designed to smooth over what lay beneath her surface: a fiery, passionate young woman clearly prepared to take what she wanted. He’d seen her in action at the press conference, and she hadn’t been shy to make her own sexual demands this morning. He could still feel the confident glide of her hand taking his measure.
Da, she wasn’t a shrinking violet, and he liked that. It was a big part of why she was with him now.
‘How about you, Rose? What’s in your life?’
‘What would you like to know?’
Star sign? Favourite colour? How long until she dropped this country girl act and allowed the real Rose out to play…?
‘I guess workwise I finished my supervised internship in Houston two years ago,’ she said brightly.
Work—da, she liked to talk about that. ‘What is this internship?’ he asked patiently.
‘It’s part of the degree course you do to qualify as a psychologist—kind of like a medical resident. You have to earn your dues. Long hours and not much pay.’
‘You are a psychologist?’
‘Why, yes.’ Rose looked at him curiously. ‘Should I be amused or offended by how surprised you sound?’
Plato grinned. ‘I was distracted by the fact you were writing your cell number on my hand, Rose.’
She looked a little uncomfortable. ‘You needn’t make it sound indecent.’
Indecent? His English was excellent but every now and then Rose’s idioms had him paging through the Oxford English Dictionary he’d drilled himself in during his teens, when he’d come to realise language was one of the keys to a better future.
She had a way of choosing an old-fashioned word and it was a distraction. It sent his thoughts down a different, softer path. He almost believed she hadn’t meant it to be a provocative act, rounding up twelve elite athletes and pressing her pen to their palms.
‘I wasn’t the one wielding the pen, detka,’ he observed dryly.
She lifted that round little chin of hers as if determined to brazen it out. ‘Not very professional, I know, but it got the job done.’
There it was again. The sweetness.
Da, it had got the job done. She’d taken him by surprise on that rickety old bed, and he wondered if that was part of the job too. Had she targeted him from the first? He didn’t mind a bit of feminine manipulation, and Rose had already proved herself perfectly capable of it. It didn’t fit, though. The whole walking into her house, throwing her onto that bed and making out with her like an eager adolescent this morning had been driven by him. Even if she hadn’t left that message on his phone last night he would have stopped by. Nothing bar a natural disaster would have stopped him pulling up outside her house this morning.
Which troubled him—because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this susceptible to a woman. She wasn’t his usual type. Not that he really knew what that was. Maybe it was the little roadblocks she’d thrown up. Women usually made it pretty easy for him, and nothing about his pursuit of Rose had been easy thus far.
Rose’s enthusiasm once he’d had his hands on her this morning had
been a nice surprise. Da, very nice. And he was hard again now, just thinking about it. Where the hell he’d got the idea to slow things down he wasn’t sure…although deep down he suspected it had something to do with Mrs Padalecki and the open door, and the damn vacuum cleaner and the essential sweetness he had sensed in Rose from the start. Yeah, he really liked the sweetness. Except it troubled him. What if the country girl was the real Rose after all?
‘I don’t mind not very professional,’ he said, his voice a little husky. Chert, he didn’t want professional at all. He wanted her mind off that business of hers and focussed on the good time he was going to show her. Instead he found himself saying, ‘How did you get into the matchmaking business?’