When he was standing, feet still widespread, he encircled her waist with one arm and pulled her against him. His lips covered hers as his hand curved around her breast.
"Mackie…?"
"Judd."
"Judd…?"
"Go with it, Stevie."
His lips parted, so did hers. When they met again, their tongues touched and each released a low, satisfied, and conversely hungry sound. His mouth was as warmly possessive as his hand upon her breast, which he reshaped with his gently flexing fingers. Her nipple became hard and flushed beneath the idle sweeping motions of his thumb.
He dipped his head and kissed her through the blouse, leaving a damp, sheer spot on the soft cloth. Noticing that as he raised his head, he molded the wet fabric around her nipple until it clung, delineated, made visible.
His nostrils flared slightly and he muttered irreverently and arousingly. When his lips returned to hers, he kissed her with more depth and urgency and wildness.
"Stevie, don't worry, baby," he rasped against her lips, "you're more than enough woman for any man."
When the words registered, a wildfire of a different sort rampaged through Stevie's already burning body. She tore her mouth from beneath his and sent him sprawling across the hardwood floor when she pushed him away.
"So that's it!" She was seething, angrier than she'd ever been in her life, angrier than she'd ever been over a rotten line call or a lousy draw.
"That's why you're being so nice to me. That's what all the sexual innuendos and pawing are about. You feel sorry for me.'
'Huh?" Judd blinked his eyes back into focus.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Your kindness and concern, your unselfish invitation to share this rural refuge with you, your flattery and sly come-ons." Clenching her teeth, she slapped her hands against the sides of her thighs. "Lord, I can't believe I was stupid enough to fall for it."
"Does this tirade have a point?"
He was looking up at her darkly, obviously none too pleased that she'd cut their party short.
But his anger didn't come close to the level of hers.
"I don't need your pity, Mr. Mackie," she said heatedly.
"Pity? Pity didn't put this here," he said, briefly touching his fly.
"Then if your motivation isn't pity, that makes you even more despicable. You're manipulative.
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.