They circled one another for the longest hour of Plato’s life: she running the show, he watching her back. His resolve was complete when he finally slipped out through the back of the hotel, formal attire shucked, the excited shrieking of two hundred women still ringing in his ears.
He went alone—no security. Just a guy in a suit, collar open, tie dangling, hands shoved into his pockets, keys jangling in his pocket. Da, it was a Porsche 911, but still, just a guy with an appointment. Across town. In the old district. Far from the noise and spectacle, the rush.
Rose had been giving an interview to the media when he left, all Southern charm and big blue eyes, holding them in the palm of her hand. She hadn’t looked at him once.
But she knew he had left. Just as he knew she wouldn’t be far behind him.
She wanted to call it quits? Like hell.
* * *
The light flickered on in her front room.
Plato, in his car idling across the road, had watched Rose climb out of a taxi, seen her fumbling in her bag at the door, and waited until he saw the light go on in her bedroom window. Then he’d killed the engine.
Now he jogged across the wet road, hands in his pockets, head bent under the force of the rain slicing down. He hadn’t bothered with a coat, and by the time he stood at her door he was soaked. He rapped the lion’s head door knocker and leaned his head against the frame.
No light came on, but presently he heard the locks rattling, and the door cracked open. The hall was down-lit behind her, but he could make out the shape of her face, the curve of her shoulder. Rose kept the security chain in place.
She looked up at him, her hand still on the handle, as if at any moment she was going to slam the door in his face.
‘Rose.’ Her name came out hoarsely, as if his throat had been scraped too many times from saying it.
Then slowly she lifted the chain, opened the door and let him in. He shouldered it shut behind him on the night and the rain and the rest of the world.
Her big blue eyes were turned up to him. She didn’t say a word. She’d removed the purple dress, was wrapped in some sort of ivory silk robe. Her hair was down; her feet were bare.
He was about to speak but then Rose was in his arms, dragging his head down, pushing her mouth up against his. Her mouth was so soft, but she was angry. He could feel the force in her, found himself answering it.
She began pounding on his chest with her fists and he let her. Then she went quiet, her hands spreading, her body quaking, and the face she turned up to him was wet with her tears. He burrowed his head in her neck, fisted his hands in the silk over her hips. He was backing her towards the stairs. She hooked her arms around his neck and he lifted her, carried her, unerringly found his way to her bed.
He fumbled with all the hooks and eyes. She was wearing some sort of restrictive corset of a garment and he wondered how she could breathe in it. It had left tiny red welts on her pale skin, and he fell to tracing them with his thumb, his lips, his tongue, smoothing out the marks across her breasts and belly and hips. As if he could make better what had hurt her.
When she lifted under him he thrust inside her, and they found a rhythm, old as time, that rocked them through the questions of why he was here, how she’d known he would come, and why nothing else mattered. Rose answered by forging her mouth to his, taking what she wanted, and he gave it to her, the muscles bunching in his upper back and then in his quads as he lifted her upright with him. Rose straddled him in the centre of her rickety double bed, cleaving to him, coming apart in his arms. She collapsed on top of him, and he could feel the rise and fall of her heavy breathing as she began to sob.
‘It was a coup de foudre,’ he muttered hoarsely into her messy hair, ‘and I fought it, Rose. I had to.’
‘Why?’ she sobbed.
‘Because I knew what it would mean. I’d have to give it all up.’
Her head lifted. Her eyes were huge, drenched. ‘Give up the other women?’ The words came painfully from her throat.
He looked at her almost wildly, catching her face between his big hands. ‘No. There are no other women. Don’t you see, Rose? It was never about other women. It was me. The self-loathing, the despair. To be with you I’d have to finally believe I was a better man.’
Rose heard the echo of what she had said to him, but seeing the pain in his eyes was what convinced her and it stunned her into silence.
Plato gently disentangled their limbs, only to draw her into his arms, cradling her against him. His voice was very low and still hoarse when at last he began to speak. ‘I built this life for myself—cold, hard, soulless.’
‘No.’ Rose caught his face with her hand, made him look at her. ‘That apartment of yours in Moscow—that was soulless. I walked from room to room thinking. This must be who he is. This is the man I could be falling for. How could I be so wrong?’
Plato drank in her face, seeing beyond the delicate, lush features to the person she was.
She regarded him solemnly. ‘When I saw that ridiculous entertainment console—that’s when I thought maybe we had a chance.’
Plato laughed desperately, pressing his forehead to hers. ‘I almost lost you,’ he said roughly.
‘Then we found each other again,’ she reminded him, her eyes so big and blue and shiny.