The Man She Shouldn't Crave

‘I didn’t feel I deserved you.’

Rose shook her head in wonder.

She needed to hear the truth, however painful, and Plato knew he had to give it to her.

‘All along I’ve been telling myself this couldn’t work. In Moscow I took you to that club to show you what I was, but it was you who showed me. I didn’t like what I saw, Rose, and Moscow without you was empty. London was too far away. I came to Toronto to make things right for you. I had no intention of trying to heal things between us. I thought you were better off without me.’

Rose touched his face.

‘I didn’t feel worthy of being loved. By anyone, let alone you. You’ve brought something softer, something decent into my life, Rose, and I’ve never had it before. Forgive me for not recognising it.’

‘You love me?’

‘I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you, Rose,’ he said with simple formality. ‘I just didn’t have the ability to recognise something I’d never known.’

Rose gazed at him wonderingly.

‘It’s the same for me. I thought love was like my college degree. You just put in the work and you got a diploma. I’m such a fraud. If my clients had any idea how little I actually know…’

‘We will have to remedy that,’ said Plato, sounding much more himself, with that smug male note back in his voice. ‘The wine is drunk, Rose.’

She angled an amused look up at him. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s an old Russian saying. It means there’s no going back. You’re already mine. The wedding will be a formality.’

Rose sat up on her forearms. ‘Are you proposing marriage to me, Plato Kuragin?’

‘I will be—at the appropriate time, with the appropriate jewellery.’

Rose buried her face in his chest hair. She really did love it. But Plato was sitting up, dislodging her. She realised what he was doing as he reached out for her corselette hanging off the end of the bed.

‘You answer the door wearing this?’ He sounded more accusatory than amused as he dropped back onto the pillow, slinging an arm behind his head and propping himself at an angle, the better to slide her in against him.

‘Only to you,’ she answered primly, amused when he restored her head to his chest. He really was incredibly old-fashioned, for all his reputation…

‘Plato?’ she murmured.

‘Rose?’ he replied with a smile in his voice, twirling the white Spandex and satin confection in one hand.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you… I read somewhere…’

‘In a tabloid?’

‘Maybe. The orgy on the super-yacht…?’

‘Rose, that never happened.’

She subsided happily back against his chest, not realising until this moment how much it had been bothering her.

Although he had answered rather quickly…

‘What are they going to do, with you all happily married and living in Toronto?’

Plato relaxed under her, as if the thought was a pleasant one. ‘Find some other poor guy to torment.’

‘I don’t know.’ Rose grinned. ‘Maybe they’ll start writing about me. I can be pretty wild, you know. I’ve even been known to pick up and fly off to Moscow at a moment’s notice with a sexy Russian billionaire.’

‘Da, in your single days, malenki. That’s all over. Now you pick up and fly off to the Maldives with your sexy Russian husband.’