she lifted one hand to brush away any Danish crumbs that lingered on her lips. His eyes grew even more heavy lidded and Rose swallowed—hard.
‘The result of your scurrilous accusation is I was escorted out of the hotel. It was very embarrassing …’ She trailed off, realising he wouldn’t be particularly interested in her feelings.
‘I’m sure you’ll recover.’
‘I don’t know why you’re so sure. You don’t know me. I could be very sensitive.’
He gave her an arrested look and for a spinning moment it occurred to Rose that he might think she was referring to something else. More personal.
‘No doubt,’ he drawled, and she could feel the hot colour sweeping up her chest like a tide. ‘But not on this subject. After all, you were trawling the boys this afternoon. Not the actions of a shrinking violet, detka.’
Rose’s mouth fell open. ‘I was what?’
‘Trawling. Throwing out a net behind a boat and seeing what you can drag in.’
‘I know what trawling is, and it has insulting connotations.’
‘Da, but it is accurate.’
His expression was stone-cold accusation, and Rose’s hard-won confidence took a tumble. She gathered her manners around her like defences. ‘Did your mama raise you to talk to ladies with that mouth?’ she demanded, trying not to let him see how upset she was.
Plato had the searing thought that his mother had been too busy working herself into the ground and drinking herself to death to mind what her street-smart young son was getting up to, but he pushed that aside as he stared down Texas. He couldn’t remember any woman in the past who’d pulled him up on his manners. Mostly they were too busy trying to hold his attention. Apart from her little show this afternoon, Tex hadn’t done anything other than defend herself since he’d turned up at her door. She actually looked a little wounded, and he had the unlikely thought that he was going too hard on her.
Da—right. The woman who had sashayed around that room today with her little gold pen wasn’t hiding her light under a bushel.
She probably had the hide of a rhinoceros, even if her skin did look translucent as glass. Chert, he could see the shadow of a pale blue vein running along her throat from here, and there would be more tributaries of fine blue veins at her ankles, her wrists, the inner curves of her body.
She was really quite delicately built—which got lost in the sumptuous scale of the rest of her, cloaked now from his view. He checked the drift of his thoughts under that throw. He wasn’t going there.
The Wolves players weren’t going there either.
Why that should raise a low, primitive growl in his subconscious he wasn’t going to investigate. He snapped himself brutally out of the reverie.
Being ejected from hotels was an occupational hazard for a woman like this. How old was she? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? The lifestyle wasn’t showing on her yet …
‘Aren’t you a little bit old for groupie tactics?’
Rose stiffened. Old? Old? ‘I’m twenty-six,’ she retaliated, then cursed herself for handing out personal information. It made all of this far too intimate.
‘Da—older than half the boys.’
Trying not to feel as if she was halfway to her pension, Rose responded frostily, ‘It’s the modern era. Age is irrelevant.’
‘Keep telling yourself that, princess.’
Rose’s mouth fell open, and if she hadn’t been so precariously positioned, and intimidated because of it, she would have leapt up and slapped his no-good, smirking face. Who did he think he was, insinuating she wanted to sleep with his players?
‘I don’t want to sleep with them,’ she burst out. ‘I want to date them!’ No, that wasn’t right. ‘I mean I—’
‘Let’s get this clear,’ he interrupted coldly. ‘You came to the Dorrington to date an entire ice hockey team?’
Rose gave him a withering look. ‘Yes,’ she said drolly. ‘I want to date twelve elite athletes. It’s a dream of mine.’
Something approaching a smile tugged on Plato Kuragin’s firm mouth, and for a moment Rose forgot how he had barged into her home, refused to let her dress, making these ridiculous accusations … because he’d almost smiled at her and some of her defensiveness crumbled away.
For a moment she spun on the thought that she could actually have a little fun with this. She could handle this guy. He was just trying to intimidate her—and, okay, doing a pretty good job of it—but nobody bossed her around any more. A long time ago she’d dug herself a hole of her own making with a man, but she’d got herself out of that. She was in charge of her life now. And maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to be seen as a femme fatale, capable of leading young men astray. Plato Kuragin was certainly making her think it was possible …
Rose shook her head. She couldn’t believe she was even thinking that. She was letting the situation get to her. Letting his almost-smile get to her. She wasn’t capable of leading herself astray, let alone twelve grown men! Yes, she’d acted recklessly, she knew that, and she hadn’t bargained on the result she’d got. But now she was determined to handle it.
‘I run a dating agency,’ she explained crossly. ‘I wanted to find dates for them.’
For a moment Plato Kuragin just stared. Stared until Rose felt the colour burning in her cheeks.
Stared until she felt forced to blurt out, ‘Why are you staring at me like that?’
‘The boys don’t need help with that, detka.’
Rose rolled her eyes. ‘I realise that. I was looking for publicity—’
His expression cooled, and his mouth formed a straight, hard line. ‘Of course you were.’
‘Don’t make it sound like that!’ she defended herself. ‘You can’t just come in here, insinuating horrid things about me. You don’t know me! You invited yourself into my house, you won’t let me get dressed—’ She broke off as her voice tremored under the strain of keeping it all together.
Something flickered in his eyes, and his mouth softened as if he was going to say something.
‘I’d really like to have my dinner and then go to bed …’ she floundered.
For a moment his heavy gaze dropped to her mouth, and Rose had a startling and not completely unwelcome image of Plato Kuragin in that bed along with her.
She firmed her mouth.
‘I don’t know—perhaps this is how you do things in your country. My knowledge of Russia is limited to Dr Zhivago. But in Canada men don’t burst into the homes of women they don’t know.’
‘And you’re keen to broaden that experience with my boys?’ he inserted coolly.
‘I
