"Oh, yes, yes."
"You're a liar. You're lying because Rex wants you to lie. What I want to know is why."
Rex made a sound of impatience. "He doesn't want to come out now, Alexi, all right?''
"No, it isn't all right--"
"Dammit!" He threw his napkin down on the table. "Do we have to make a major production out of everything?''
Alexi went dead still, staring at him in sudden fury. Gene cleared his throat, then looked at his watch. "Wow. I'm going to miss those chess championships if I don't go back. Now."
Alexi stood up. "We'll drive you--"
"No, no. I have a driver waiting," Gene assured her. He kissed her cheek, waved to them both and left. Alexi stared at Rex. He wasn't looking at her; he was glaring down at his plate. Ignoring her, he raised his hand to ask for the bill. They maintained a tense silence while he signed it. Walking out of the restaurant, Alexi jumped when he slipped a hand around her waist. She drew back from his touch and hurried ahead.
In the car, he bounced angrily into the seat beside her. As they drove along, neither of them spoke for at least ten minutes. Then Alexi burst out with a demand to know what was wrong with him.
"Nothing," he insisted, but he didn't look her way, and he didn't have another thing to say as they headed along the peninsula. She didn't know what to think or what to feel; she was simply baffled and hurt. Hadn't he said that he was falling in love, too? Hadn't they admitted the same fears and then agreed to let things blossom and grow as they naturally would?
Maybe she had closed the doors against him; maybe he had never really opened them as far as she had thought. For all that the days had been between them, they were as distant now as the sun and moon, and she couldn't begin to understand what had caused his fit of temper.
"Drop me at my house," she told him, and added softly, "then go home yourself. I think we need some time apart." "You must be crazy!" he thundered out to her. "No! I'm not crazy!" she retorted after several seconds of incredulous silence. "You're yelling at me, and I don't feel like being yelled at! Let me off--and go home!"
He cast her a murderous stare. The type that reminded her that she had once thought he might have a dark and wicked soul. "You were conked on the head not too long ago--being in that house by yourself. Have you forgotten that?"
She looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. "I--no. And I do have the good sense to be afraid of--to be afraid. Maybe it is John--and maybe it isn't. Maybe something else is going on--" "Like what?"
"I don't know! It doesn't matter. I'll be all right; I'm not stupid. Samson is there, and you know as well as I do that no stranger could ever get past Samson." "You'll come home with me." "There you go again!"
"There I go again what?"
"Cracking the whip, laying down the law, whatever! Will you please quit telling me what to do? Now, Samson is in that house. And I appreciate that, Rex, I really do--''
"You can't borrow my dog, Alexi."
"Rex! What--"
They drove right past the Brandywine house and kept going. Alexi gritted her teeth. She really wanted to land a hard punch right to his jaw. "Rex, I swear, this time you really can't do this! I want to go to my house, and so help me, I will!"
He ignored her. The car jerked to a halt before his house. Alexi turned to her door, ready to storm out. Rex's hand fell upon her arm. She started to wrench it away from him.
"Alexi!"
He turned her to him. He caught her lips in a long, burning kiss. She tried to push away from him; she couldn't. And despite her anger, or perhaps because of her anger, the heat of him took flight and seared into her. When he drew away from her, she was breathless. Furious, but breathless...
"Marry me," he said.
"What?"
Rex wasn't at all sure what had made him say that. He wanted her; he wanted her forever. And he wanted to keep her here, far from the Brandywine house. But marriage...
He really didn't know where the words had come from, but once they were out, he knew it was what he wanted. It was exactly what he wanted. She was beautiful, she was sweet, she was fire, she was a tranquil pool where he found peace.
"Marry me."
"Rex--you're crazy."
He stepped from the car and came around to her side, jerking the door open. None too gently, he caught her hands and pulled her up and into his arms and kissed her slowly and heatedly, holding her tightly to him. He lifted his lips a bare half inch from hers.
"Marry me."
"You're a temperamental bastard," she whispered in return. "You think you're some he-man. You think you can tell me what to do all of the time. I still don't believe you trust me--"
"I want your property," he told her, smiling.
"I don't even own it."
"Close enough."
He picked her up and smiled at her as he started for the house. She curled her arms around his neck, but she still watched him skeptically. "Rex, I'm going home."
"Later."
"Rex--"
"Please, Alexi. Please. I want you.... I need you."
"You're hardly deprived at the moment," she murmured. "We've been off together alone--playing--for three days now."
His arms tightened around her. She felt the keen burning flames in his eyes, glitter against ebony. It was crazy; it was mad--but she felt the touch of his eyes and the heat of his arms, and it was something that came to her, that built in her, and it was as if they had been apart for days, for months, for years. She felt the rapidly spreading wings of desire take flight, deep inside her, at her very core.
As he opened the door and brought them into the house, she was caught by the flare in his eyes, and was held by it as he headed for the bedroom. The shades were drawn and it was dark and cool, and when he put her down she couldn't remember why it had been imperative that she leave; now leaving was the last thing on her mind. He set her down upon the spread, and she was still, watching in silent fascination as he quickly stripped. She shivered in a whirlwind of anticipation and sensation then as he lay down beside her and removed her clothing with the same careless, nearly desperate abandon with which he had shed his own. She melded quickly with him in that same fierce, desperate heat. The urgency remained with them.... In moments, the culmination of something so fiercely desired burst upon them, sweet and exciting and exhausting. Alexi curled up at his side.
"Marry me," he repeated softly after a moment.
Yes! she wanted to shout. But she didn't know whether or not it was right; she knew he feared the commitment, and the question had been so sudden. And she still couldn't begin to figure out what made him tick--she had no idea why he had been so angry at the restaurant or why he had been determined to keep her away from the Brandywine house.
"I do love you," she whispered.
He turned to her, fierce, protective and somehow frightening in the shadows. "I love you, Alexi." He said it slowly, as if professing the words without qualification was difficult. "I do. I love you."
He kissed her again, running his fingers sensually over her lower abdomen and curling his naked feet around hers. Instantly she felt little flaming licks of desire light along her spine. She pulled away from him and threw her legs over the side of the bed to sit up. She and Rex should rise, she thought.
Softly, throatily, he whispered her name. He rose on his knees behind her, and she felt his lips against her shoulders. He turned her in his arms... and she was lost. This time he was very, very slow, making love like an artist. They'd been so hurried before, but now he took his time. He touched her....
And touched her. Stroking the soles of her feet, finding a fascination with the curve of her hip, laving her breasts with endless kisses that each sent waves of sensation flooding through her. He said the words to her again and again.