before bed. This afternoon, you say? Well, you’re a quick worker. Mind you be good to her. She’s a sweet girl, our Rose. I don’t like this business she’s in. I think it hardens a girl, makes her cynical. I should have asked—are you a date or a client? It’s confusing with her running the agency from home.’
Plato wasn’t given a chance to reply as Wiggles chose that moment to come hurtling across the garden and into the house. Plato had a glimpse of something resembling a grey streak, and the elderly lady, with a little cry of surprise, vanished after him.
Plato rapped the lion’s-head door knocker. Hard.
The light went on and the door opened, and for a moment Plato forgot what he was doing there, on a doorstep in an inner suburban neighbourhood of Toronto, chasing down a woman who might or might not be a lady of the night and being door-stepped by her elderly neighbour and a dog called Wiggles.
Texas Rose stood on the threshold in a red silk robe with definitely some serious black silk and lace something underneath. Faint music he identified as Ravel’s Boléro was coming from another room, and in the downlights of the hallway the interior of her home hinted at a cavern of sensual delight. But the comparisons with a bordello ended there.
Her head was wrapped in a white towel and her face was scrubbed bare, so that her nose looked a little pink, and she was holding out a twenty-dollar bill that retreated as she took in his presence.
‘You’re not pizza,’ she said faintly.
‘Nyet,’ he said, wondering if the boys at the pizzeria threw dice to see which one got to deliver to Texas Rose. ‘Can I come in?’
She gazed back at him, looking as flummoxed as he was feeling but no doubt for different reasons.
He had been expecting this, but also he hadn’t. Hell, he didn’t know what he’d expected. All he knew was that he should turn around right now, get back in his car and drive away, and forget this had ever happened.
Except in that moment her towel turban slipped and, despite her attempt to keep it in place, damp, dark hair spilled out. All of a sudden he became aware of her nipples peaking against soft fabric, and the stroke of her tongue along the inside of her bottom lip. It all seemed to happen at once and he stepped forward, definitely going in.
‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ she said, backing up.
‘Nyet,’ he agreed, ‘it’s probably a very bad idea.’ He watched the outline of her breasts shift beneath that silk. She wasn’t wearing a bra. His mind went blank. The most powerful surge of lust shot through him.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes. No.’
She was staring at him warily, and it took a moment for her alarm to penetrate his thick fog of desire. What in the hell was he doing?
‘I’m here to speak to you,’ he said, clearing his voice, as if that sorted it all out.
She looked so appalled by the idea that it brought him back to reality. ‘Miss Harkness,’ he said with exaggerated formality, ‘you crashed that press conference today. We can either do this on the doorstep, or sitting down like a civilised man and woman.’
The tone of command seemed to do the trick.
‘Where are my manners?’ she said rapidly. ‘Of course. Won’t you come on in, Mr Kuragin?’
The sudden switch from open-mouthed alarm to Southern hospitality was too abrupt for his liking.
As was the sway of those hips as she preceded him down the narrow hall. He could see the outline of her bottom shifting under the silk, a little too wide and round for current fashion, but he had lost interest in contemporary standards of the female form the moment she opened that door. Texas Rose had one of those lush bodies found in paintings of nineteenth-century odalisques. He had a few of them hanging on the walls in his home in Moscow. Slender, but stacked in all the right places.
He followed her into a small front room from which the music was emanating. He noted the drawn drapes, the functional but pretty furniture, the place on the sofa where she had obviously been sitting: a red cashmere throw disturbed, a half-glass of wine, a book and a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses. Not the accoutrements of a woman who was regularly entertaining men.
‘Please sit down,’ she said, with a degree of formality at odds with her deshabillé state.
He noted her cheeks were scorched red, and one of her hands was clenching at the ribbon tie that kept her robe vaguely cloaking what lay beneath: the full glory of those stupendous breasts.
‘If you’ll excuse me? I won’t be a moment.’
‘I don’t excuse you, and I want you to sit down.’ When she jumped he added, ‘Now.’
The bark in his voice had come from nowhere, but this woman and this routine she was performing was getting to him. Who in the hell did she think she was? Turning up at the Dorrington, making doe-eyes at the boys and then dragging him across town, offering up tantalising glimpses of a truly epic female body and then faking this I must preserve my modesty act …
Her eyes flew wide and her other hand darted up to crisscross her breasts with her arms. It was a classic ‘woman in peril’ gesture, and it almost convinced him he’d overreacted, was in fact completely in the wrong.
‘I want to get changed, Mr Kuragin. And you’re a guest in my house …’
‘Nyet, I’m not one of your guests, Rose. Speaking of which—your neighbour was very informative.’
‘Mrs Padalecki? You spoke to her?’ Something in her expression eased a little.
‘As I said, informative. You run your agency from your home?’
‘Yes,’ Rose said slowly, edging towards the sofa.
‘You are zoned for this?’
‘Zoned?’
He watched curiously as she made a snatch for the red cashmere throw and held it up under her chin, effectively shielding herself. He wanted to tell her it was unnecessary. He had no intention of sampling the merchandise. But that would have been a lie, he acknowledged ruefully. His intentions were being felt all too painfully—it was just he had no intention of acting on them.
‘I am not familiar with the Canadian laws,’ he said steadily, ‘but that can be remedied. I could be your worst nightmare, Rose.’
All the colour that had been so charmingly lighting up her face drained away. ‘If you don’t get out of my house I’m calling the police.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Mrs Padalecki will call the police.’
‘Your neighbour seemed to think I was a client … or a date. Sounds as if men are in and out of here all the time.’
He picked up the book lying on the table between them. Madame Bovary.
He frowned.
‘Get out!’ Her voice cracked and for the first time he noticed her hands were trembling.
‘Sit down, Rose. I’m here to discuss your little foray into the world of ice hockey. You can either do it with me, or with my legal team.’
Her lashes fluttered. ‘Your legal—legal team?’ She sat down abruptly on the sofa. ‘You’re here to talk about what happened today?’
‘Da,’ he said brusquely, annoyed at how vulnerable she suddenly appeared as relief coloured her voice.
‘Oh.’ She released a breath. Her shoulders, however, remained stiff little jolts of wariness.
Plato glanced around the room. This wasn’t a den of iniquity. It was a comfortable home. A woman’s home. There were framed photographs on ledges, frilly-edged lamps, and a gorgeous girl huddled in a red cashmere throw gazing up at him as if he’d staged a home