‘Uh-huh. Date with Destiny.’ For some reason this less-than-sure-of-himself Plato Kuragin was letting the real Rose uncurl herself from hibernation for the first time since he’d arrived. She even angled up her chin and gave him a curious look, which was a mistake because they were awfully close all of a sudden.

She brought down her arms with the glasses in her hand and her right breast brushed very definitely against his arm. She felt his bicep contract and saw his eyes go hard and hot as they dipped lower. Her nipples came out to play, and suddenly her brains just scrambled.

She turned to set the glasses down with a clatter and put some physical distance between them. The bench. There. No one could get through wood and Formica—although looking at the heavy musculature in those arms she wouldn’t bet money on it. Stop staring at his arms, Rose. What on earth was wrong with her?

‘I was at the Dorrington Hotel drumming up business, if you really want to know,’ she said a tad awkwardly, because suddenly it really mattered that he thought well of her. ‘And that’s the total extent of this agenda you say I have.’

‘Drumming up business?’ he repeated, but Rose got the impression she could have said anything.

He was intent on appreciating the look of her—her hair, her face, the cling of the dress down her legs. Was it her imagination or did he literally rip his gaze away from her as he held up the wine to check its label?

Rose stifled a groan, her attention shifting to how downmarket all this must seem to him. The house, the wine, her … ‘It’s just a regular white from the supermarket,’ she explained, her voice tailing off. It was an echo from her other life—the one in Houston where she’d never been quite good enough for Bill and his hoity-toity family—and that it should assail her here and now dumped a bucket on her fantasy.

Dammit, if she wanted a fantasy she could have it! She wanted to enjoy Plato Kuragin whilst he was here, because goodness knew he could vanish as abruptly as he had arrived.

Plato reached into his pocket and whipped out a cell phone. She watched as he thumbed the keypad.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Sorting out food. We can do better than pizza and cheap wine, detka.’

‘You’re ordering a meal? For both of us?’

‘Da, is there a problem?’

He’d had her thrown out of the Dorrington, invaded her home, virtually forced her to sit in front of him in her underwear, threatened her with legal action … and now he wanted to share a meal with her! Was there a problem?

‘I guess that would be all right,’ she murmured, looking down at her bare feet, tracing circles with her red-painted big toenail on the tiled floor.

You could almost call this a date, a little voice whispered in her ear.

Stop it, Rose.

‘We will sit in a restaurant and relax and talk,’ said Plato, rounding the bench.

Rose told herself to hold her ground, play it cool. She wasn’t going to hop about like a frightened rabbit. Truth be told, this was so much more than she had hoped for when she’d crashed the Dorrington press conference this afternoon.

He closed a big hand over her wool-clad shoulder and for a moment the gesture lingered, as if he was learning the delicacy of her bone structure, the roundness that was so much a part of her, as if his touch was about to turn into something else. He turned her effortlessly towards the door.

He wasn’t really asking, but he didn’t strike Rose as the kind of guy who asked. He seemed just to issue directives and take what he wanted—and why that should send happy messages to her lace-clad regions she wasn’t going to second-guess or question. Besides, this wasn’t about him controlling her, because this was what she wanted.

‘We’re going out?’ she asked redundantly.

‘Da, is that a problem?’

‘I guess not,’ she prevaricated.

‘You can tell me about this business of yours,’ he said, in that growly, sexy Russian voice of his.

Rose glowed.

I will. And whilst you’re being all he-man and Russian I’ll convince you that being my Date with Destiny is the least you can do, seeing as you burst in here and scared me out of my wits, you big lug.

‘I guess that would be okay,’ she responded with a little smile.

Being foreign, Plato Kuragin obviously didn’t understand that if you gave a Texan woman an inch she’d take a mile.

Yes, this was definitely a date.

THE night was finally making sense.

He’d laid eyes on her—what?—four hours ago? Now he had her in his car. He was taking her to dinner. He would possibly be introducing himself to the delights of her body in a few more hours.

Everything that had seemed murky, uncertain, almost out of character, suddenly fitted. A beautiful woman with an agenda … He’d had her investigated, he’d narrowed down and dismissed the problem, and now he could move in to enjoy what was on offer.

And she had a lot to offer.

But she was peering at him as if he might vanish at any moment. He wanted to tell her she had nothing to fear on that score. He was hers until he sent her home in a cab tomorrow morning.

The thought brought his attention to those small hands curled together in her lap. Uneasily he took in the modest, classic cut of her dress. The only concessions she had made to highlighting her appearance were dangling earrings and a midnight-blue bolero jacket she’d replaced the cardigan with. Little details, but they were cutting through his hard-won cynicism like a scythe.

There would always be women of a certain type hanging around elite sports teams. He didn’t take advantage of it. That wasn’t why he’d bought the club. That had been personal. A way to hold on to his roots.

He wasn’t interested in a woman who had so little self-respect she would throw herself at a man simply because he had some fame and she wanted publicity.

Rose wasn’t one of those women.

Sure, she was after a little star athlete for her hobby/business/whatever, but she wasn’t selling herself. When he’d looked up and seen her standing there in a long dress, her hair tidied, her lips gleaming, she’d knocked his half-arsed suspicions sideways. Rose had gone to some trouble with her appearance—the sort of trouble that told him she was embarrassed about being found in her satiny nothings and was trying to remedy the impression. She also clearly had no idea how incredibly sexy she was, or she wouldn’t have put on that romantic dress.

Women usually took more clothes off when they were trying to play up their sex appeal. Somehow with Rose the inverse was true—or maybe it was something to do with how he was responding to her?

He’d used to dream of dating girls like this once upon a time, back in the Urals mining town he’d grown up in. Even then he’d come with a warning sign—not the sort of boy any of the neighbourhood parents had wanted their daughters bringing home.

Something stirred uneasily in the back of his mind. Rose smiled across at him. A nice middle-class girl going out to dinner. With him.

Someone really needed to warn her.

Maybe not a cab. Definitely not a cab. He’d drive her home himself.

Da, that was sorted. He waited for some of the tension he was holding in his shoulders to trickle away. It remained stubbornly where it was.

Unaccustomed to scruples when it came to hooking up with women looking to profit by their association, he applied his mind to something that wasn’t soft and warm and playing footsie with his conscience—tomorrow’s schedule. At 5:00 a.m. he had a conference call from south-east Asia that would take him through to seven. Then a breakfast dialogue with Canadian NHL representatives. Then he had to deal with the legal issues surrounding the Sazanov brothers being arrested for drug possession—huge red tape there. He had a lunch with investors from the Arab Emirates, who were flying up from Washington for the privilege, and a meet-and-greet with local mayoral officials, and then the Wolves’ last practice match before they took on Canada’s finest on Friday night.