You figured I'd be easy to get into bed because I was panicked over losing my womanhood."
He released a series of creative curses. Aiming a finger at her, he said, "You should be the one writing the novel. You've got the imagination for it."
Stevie was pacing the width of the room.
"While you were at it, you thought you would soften me up, get me to talk about every private aspect of my life. Then, when we returned to Dallas, you planned to write a really bang-up story that would ingratiate you with your boss again, sell newspapers, and leave the competitor who scooped you with egg on his face because you got the real story."
"I don't believe this." Still sitting on the floor, he laughed softly and shook his head.
"Let me tell you something." She stood above him, quaking with fury. "I don't need a Neanderthal like you to restore my faith in my femininity.
Even if the surgeon does have to take everything out, I'll be more a woman than you are a man. A real man doesn't have to resort to the lowest, sneakiest form of trickery to get a woman into bed with him."
"That's the highest pile of crap I've come up against in a long time." He came to his feet so that they were standing toe to toe. "I'm not about to honor it with a comment, much less a denial."
"No matter what you said now, I wouldn't believe you."
"That's why I won't waste my breath." ' 'You're a lying con man. Your writing stinks.
Your column is a joke. Being in your company makes me sick, and I've eaten much better steaks!" She tossed her braid over her shoulder and took a calming breath. "I want to leave.
Right now. Drive me back to Dallas."
"Forget it." 'Wow I said."
"No I said. You can stand there and fume all night if you want to, but I did the work of ten men today. I'm tired. I'm going to bed."
He unfastened the shorts. They dropped to the floor and he stepped out of them. Then he peeled off his briefs. Nonchalantly he moved toward the bed, flung back the covers, hit the wall switch of the overhead light and got into bed.
"G'night."
Stevie was sitting at the kitchen table the following morning when he came sauntering in. He was idly scratching his bare chest and yawning broadly.
"Ah, coffee, good." He took a cup out of the cabinet and filled it, then leaned against the drain board to drink the brew. "Got your bags all packed, I see."
"No.'
Wearing an amused expression, he nodded toward the large canvas tote bag she'd brought with her the day before. It was propped against her chair. She was dressed in her own clothes. They were filthy, but her bearing was one of superiority.
'Sleep well?" he asked guilelessly.
'*Gee, that's too bad. I slept better than I have in months, maybe years. What was your problem, bed too soft?"
She gave him her iciest stare. "I guess I should thank you for putting on some shorts before coming downstairs." That was all he had on, but more than he'd been wearing the last time she'd seen him.
"Actually I enjoy drinking my first cup of the morning in the buff, so the shorts are a real concession in your honor." He executed a quick, little bow.
"Go to hell."
He laughed. "Come on, Stevie, lighten up. If we're going to be staying here together-"
"We're not. I'm going back to Dallas. If you won't drive me, I'll take a bus."
"There is no bus."
"Then I'll hitchhike."
"I'd pay to watch that.'
'I'll find a way home," she shouted.
"Are you still mad at me? Look, you know that everything you said last night is garbage.
Taking pity on you and getting you here under my roof just so I could bed you while you're in a vulnerable state of mind is all hogwash."
"Is it? I don't think so."
"Believe me, baby, the only reason I ever kiss a woman is because I want to. Pity has never extended that far."
"You said yesterday that you wanted this arrangement to be platonic, that seduction wasn't what you had in mind."
"Okay, so I told a fib. It was a tiny one." She didn't return his beatific smile. He tilted his head down and peered up at her from beneath his eyebrows. "I think you're madder at yourself than you are at me."
"Why would I be mad at myself?"
His grin was egotistical and knowledgeable.
"You didn't want to enjoy kissing me, but you did."
"You…you…'
"No need to get huffy. I was enjoying it, too," he said, raising his hands helplessly. "I couldn't very well hide the fact, could I?"
She quickly averted her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"The hell you don't. See, Stevie, that's what happens to a man when he caresses a woman's breast. Even kissing it through her blouse is a real turn-on." His voice lowered an octave.
"And your nipple wouldn't have been so easy to find through your blouse if you hadn't been as aroused as I was. So what are you going to do, shoot me for behaving and responding normally?
If so, you're gonna have to shoot yourself, too. That's only fair."
Her cheeks were flaming. Her whole body was as hot as a furnace. All her extremities were throbbing. His words had evoked stirrings within her she wished she could forget. But after unsuccessfully battling them all night, it didn't seem likely that they would simply vanish over breakfast, especially with Judd fanning the coals of her recollection.
"I want to go home," she said sternly. "You put on a sincere dog-and-pony show yesterday, but you brought me here for self-serving rea sons."
"Nope, Stevie, that's not why you're angry."
He set his empty coffee cup on the countertop and moved toward her. "You're not even mad because I stripped down in front of you."
She inclined away from him, until she was at risk of falling out of her chair. "Of course that's why I'm mad."
"Then why didn't you take the car and strike out for Dallas on your own?"
"I thought of it!"
"Well?"
"It was late," she said, hoping he couldn't tell that she was grasping at straws.
In fact, she hadn't thought of leaving by herself.
After seeing him naked, all she had thought about was distancing herself from him before she did something really foolish, like follow him into bed.
She'd gone to her room, got into her own bed and lain as stiff as a board, afraid to move for fear that her churning body would prompt her into committing a rash and regrettable act. For all his swaggering this morning, she might just as well have.
If he were this disgustingly arrogant when she resisted, imagine how obnoxious he would be if she ever gave in. It didn't bear thinking about.
He was waiting for a plausible answer. She said the first thing that popped into her head. "I wasn't sure I could find my way along these country roads back to the interstate."
He gave her a smug look that told her at once he knew she was lying. "Uh-huh." Bracing his arms on the table, he leaned over her. "You got upset because last night reminded you of Stockholm."
If his goal had been to knock the props out from under her, he had succeeded. She made several vain attempts to speak, opening and closing her mouth like the dummy of a ventriloquist with laryngitis. Finally she was able to croak, "I didn't think you remembered."
"I do."
"You were drunk."
"Not that drunk."
Leaving the chair, she ducked under one of his imprisoning arms. The coffeepot shook in her hand as she refilled her cup. She sipped it for fortification and to give her eyes something to look at besides the triumphant gleam in Judd's.
He thought he had her at a disadvantage. He did. The only way she was going to save face was to brazen it out. She assumed a haughty, indifferent air.
"Stockholm happened a long time ago,
Mackie. Ten or eleven years, for heaven's sake.