business. It was about the women’s shelter where she volunteered, and where she hoped to be able to offer more than just her professional counsel. If Date with Destiny was the success she hoped it could be, there was a real chance come the end of the year, when the lease on the shelter came up, that they could move to larger, better premises.
And there was no way she was going to get even one of these players on side through legitimate avenues. She’d tried. No one would speak to her.
On a less important but personal level, today was also about firming up her confidence in herself. If she could do this—if she could take on an entire Russian ice hockey team with a bit of charm and a line of chat—she could finally put the past into a box and ship it to Utah. She was done with being that unhappy, humiliated girl who had fled Houston two years ago.
She spotted a couple of team members gripping wineglasses like life jackets, clearly cut off by the language barrier. They would have been easy pickings—they reminded her of herself once—but they weren’t the ones she wanted. She wanted confident, a bit brash, hard to pin down. Those were the guys who would sell her business.
It was absurd, but it was human nature. You always wanted what you couldn’t have. A guy who had the world at his feet, who could have any woman, who could walk away at any time, was not long-term material. That was certainly not the type of guy she wanted on her books. Too much hard work.
But they were perfect for publicity purposes.
She just realised she’d described Plato Kuragin to a tee. Not that she would be approaching him any time soon. She was confident, but she wasn’t delusional.
Her plan was to send a couple of these hockey boys out on dates, add a film crew to the mix, and pull in a favour with a local TV producer who was the friend of a friend who had assured her a spot if she could pull it off.
Now she only had to find a couple of photogenic specimens and run her little pick-up spiel by them.
She had a lot of competition. There were some seriously gorgeous women here. But attracting a man’s attention had less to do with looks and more to do with confidence—and it helped to have a plan.
She fixed herself in front of the dark-haired athlete she’d seen earlier, smirking for the press corps.
‘Oh, my, nobody move!’ She made a helpless gesture, lifted her gaze so that they made definite eye contact, and then dropped to her knees. ‘My contact lens!’ she wailed.
The guy dropped to his haunches and cast his gaze around on the floor—but mainly had a good long look at the shape of her bottom and thighs outlined by her crouching position. A few minutes of pointless searching and she was coming to her feet and holding out her hand.
‘Rose.’
‘Sasha.’
She was aware they were being surreptitiously watched by a couple of women, and Rose knew she’d made a good choice. She thanked him, made sure she kept eye contact because guys liked confidence, bemoaned how fuzzy the world suddenly looked and asked him how he was enjoying Toronto.
It only took a few minutes before she had his vital statistics: enthusiastic, a bit dull, and possessing less confidence around women than his outer swagger would suggest. But he had the face of an angel. It wasn’t hard to scrawl her cell number on his hand, and she added her name: ‘Rose’. He didn’t look bright enough to remember it if she simply left her trademark drawing of the flower.
It was her signature strategy. Handing out business cards would be intimidating to some of these boys, and likely to go straight into the bin. The coy girl who pressed ink to their palm was going to be remembered.
Everyone was sceptical about a young woman setting up her first business on such a flimsy premise as matchmaking, but Rose knew her youth was on her side. She came across as unthreatening, unserious, and to some of these men as a bit of harmless fun. The fact she had been doing this since she was eight years old and considered herself an old hand at it was her secret weapon.
After all, she had managed to find a wife for her father, and two of her four brothers, and several of her girlfriends were happily settled with men Rose had helped them land.
It was a little different when she was doing the landing, keeping a smile on her face despite the bite of her heels and the uncomfortable warmth of her wool suit, and every time she approached a new face her heart began to pound.
Today was all about Date with Destiny, but in the days leading up to this, as she’d formulated her plan, something else had been growing alongside it. Right now it was gnawing at her, and if she was honest with herself turning up today was about much more than business. There was a recklessness in choosing to go this route that turned it into the bold move she needed to make. She had played it safe for four years under the watchful eyes of her fiancé’s ambitious family, and where had that got her? What did it say about her matchmaking skills when she was twenty-six and still single …?
No, she was going to put herself on the line—for the business but more importantly for herself—and if pesky doubts were already crowding in she’d just ignore them.
But so far, so good, and she hoped the results would be at least one phone call later today. Then she could make her approach.
Plato watched as Blue Eyes cut a swathe through his boys. Every time he looked around she was with a different player. What in the hell was she up to? Although given a couple of seconds he could guess.
He was on the move away from the CEO of one of the brands the boys would be wearing on their shirts on Saturday when he heard a soft, twangy ‘Hey …’ Against his better judgement he halted, turned, made a gesture to his security officer, who was barring her path.
A big smile crossed her lovely face and up came some serious dimples. He hadn’t expected those. He had expected the approach, however.
He could see all of her now. She was wearing a double-breasted blue and black plaid wool jacket and a knee-length matching fitted skirt. A pair of long shapely legs in black tights plunged down into aqua coloured high heels. Vaguely he understood this was some form of retro fashion statement. Her dark hair was pulled back severely from her face, but it only served to draw attention to those big eyes, that lush mouth, the slightly upturned nose and the apple-round curve of her cheeks and gently rounded chin, echoing the curves below.
And she had some serious curves. She was all woman.
‘Y’all didn’t answer my question,’ she said brightly.
This was going to kill him. ‘Not as single as you’d probably like, detka,’ he said.
She crossed the space between them.
‘I get that you probably don’t want to talk right now,’ she said rapidly.
Up close, she was not quite as confident as she had initially appeared. Her gaze cut shyly away as he looked down at her, but instinct and experience with women told him it was a calculated gesture.
She looked back up, a determined glint in her eyes, and waved a gold pen. ‘Can I give you my cell number?’
He chuckled and reluctantly turned away. She was beautiful and persistent.
To his surprise he felt her hand close over his forearm. If she’d been a
