The Man She Shouldn't Crave

He rapped on the door. Hard.

He waited.

Rose had vanished into the guest room when they’d reached the apartment. He’d heard the door slam. There had been something about her that had made him hesitate to follow, so instead he’d gone and had a drink, then gone up the stairs and lain on the sheets where they had made love, where the scent of her was strongest.

A part of him asked, Wasn’t it better to let it go like this? Whilst she was upset with him? Whilst she was riding that high horse of hers? If he pushed he suspected he could bring her down. She would still be wary but he could talk her round. And hadn’t he taken her out tonight to destroy whatever little hopes she was building around him?

He remembered his grandmother spitting curses on his first visit home after a year in Moscow. A devil city. He would be corrupted. He wasn’t worth half of his grandfather. It was his father’s blood—whoever he was—which made him no good. Go and don’t come back. He’d made his deal with the devil. He would have to live with it.

But he had gone back, and he’d given them what they would accept—all the stuff he could persuade his dedushka to take from him. Because a man in his eighties shouldn’t be working in a field.

Just as a girl like Rose didn’t belong in his world. He should just take her at her word and let her go.

He’d made his decision ten years ago, when he’d taken another girl at her word. He wasn’t going back to that hick town with his tail between his legs. He was going to prove himself.

His grandmother was right. He’d made a deal with the devil, and here was the price.

Rose.

Rose, who’d given him one last anguished look coming into this apartment and turned her back on him.

His Rosy. She wanted the full picture—a husband, babies, a home. None of it was his to give her.

He’d let her sleep it off. Maybe he’d go down in an hour or so and find her, curl his body around hers and just sleep with her one last time…

Hell.

This couldn’t continue.

He had launched off the bed and come carefully down the stairs. He didn’t want to scare her.

He tapped on her door again. He said her name. Nothing. He rapped harder. Nothing.

So he eased the door open. The lights were off.

‘Rose?’

Silence. He hit the switch. The bed was made. The room was still. Too still. He checked the en suite bathroom but by that time it was beside the point.

Her luggage was gone—and wasn’t this what he’d wanted all along? Wasn’t it?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SHE needed to keep busy.

Rose yanked her laptop out of her carry-on luggage and hit the power button. She hoped she had enough battery power left to see her through the next couple of hours.

Three days in the bosom of her family in Fidelity Falls and she was itching to get back to work, her friends, her life. It was crazy. All she had wanted to do as the taxi had taken her from Plato’s apartment to the airport was see her family again. It had been her lodestar as she’d boarded the long-haul flight.

As soon as she’d hit the ground in Dallas and seen two of her four brothers, her dad and Melody waiting for her on the concourse she’d known she had made the right decision. She’d flown into their arms and put her tears down to having been away for over a year.

A day later she had been making arrangements to fly back to Toronto. She’d told Melody it was to do with the business—it wouldn’t run itself. She hadn’t mentioned that Phoebe and Caroline were doing a great job without her, and nor had she mentioned she’d cancelled all of her clients until next week.

It was true. You couldn’t go back. Going home had just shown her how much she’d grown up. Her life wasn’t in small-town Texas any more. It might not even be in Toronto, but she was standing on her own two feet and making her own decisions. This was her life—no one else’s.

Her family had moved on with their lives. Her brothers had families, her dad and Melody were planning a cruise next Easter, and around the dinner table she had been one of a crowd.

Her father had taken her aside and asked her if there was anything she needed, anything he could do. ‘No, it’s fine, Dad. I’m fine,’ she’d said, and in saying it she had discovered she meant it.