Authors: Stephanie James
"What man could forget a weekend like this?" he asked huskily, bending down beneath the hot spray to drop a knowing little kiss on her forehead.
"I know it's
all my
fault,"
Dara
groaned, closing her eyes.
"Very generous of you to take the blame," he commended, his lips moving to her temples.
"I let things get out of control," she went on sadly. "I handled it completely wrong, I admit that."
"And now you're going to try and retreat to a position where you can handle it properly, is that
it?"He
chuckled, his hands cupping her breasts with increasing urgency.
"Yes!" she vowed.
"Such determination," he drawled with lazy interest. She knew he was becoming aroused again. His stamina was a little frightening!
"When I finally get around to making a decision, Yale, nothing can change my mind."
"And you've decided you let me go too far, too fast?"
"
Exacdy
."
"It's done, honey," he said silkily, propelling her closer until she could feel the sexual tautness in him. "You can't go back...."
"I'm thirty years old, Yale Ransom," she announced with cool fortitude. "I can do anything I damn please!"
Whirling so quickly she caught him by surprise,
Dara
stepped away from his slippery hold and out onto the rug.
She grabbed the nearest towel and hurriedly pulled it around her dripping body. He tugged back the curtain once more and stood regarding her for
all the
world like an annoyed shark which had just lost its prey. Did sharks have hazel eyes that gleamed like the gold in their teeth?
"I don't understand you this morning," he complained, sounding aggrieved.
"Precisely my point," she flung back, starting for the door again. "The problem with wild weekends is that the activities tend to be too limited in scope. We've made a lot of love during the past two days, Yale, but you know almost nothing about me. The only reason I've learned something about you is because I kept pressing for information. We're still a long way from a genuine communication. I should have had the sense to realize that too much sex too early in a relationship severely hampers the task of getting to know each other! Frankly, I'm not interested in a relationship based solely on the physical side of things!"
With royal disdain,
Dara
slammed out of the bathroom. Her mind was made up. The future path lay as sharply marked before her as if it were lit with neon lights.
She was dressed in jeans and a snappy plaid shirt, cracking eggs into a skillet, when Yale emerged from the bathroom and came to lean in the kitchen doorway. She ignored his appraising glance even though it seemed to burn through the fabric of her shirt.
"So you're at least going to feed me before kicking me out, hmm?"
"Don't knock it. I'm a good cook."
Dara
surveyed the toast with a watchful eye. "The Sunday paper's over there on the table if you want to occupy yourself while I'm fixing breakfast."
"Very homey," he muttered dryly as he detached himself from the doorframe and wandered over to the round glass table by the kitchen window. He stood beside the fern on the tall plant stand and scanned the headlines, hazel eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his glasses.
Eyeing him covertly,
Dara
knew his mind wasn't on the morning news. Encouraged, she poured a cup of coffee and carried it over to him. He looked up as he accepted the mug, the grooves around the edges of his mouth tight.
"
Dara
, about last night..."
"How do you like your eggs?
Over easy or sunny-side up?"
"I don't much care at the moment," he rapped. "I'm trying to talk to you about us, damn it!'
"So talk. I'm listening."
She turned away, opened a kitchen drawer and began dragging out flatware. Yale flung himself into a chair and watched morosely as she set the table with smooth, efficient movements. She could sense him searching for the words he wanted.
"Honey, we can't calmly go back to the beginning and start over," he finally began in an eminently reasonable tone of voice that made her want to smile: the rational male was attempting to deal with the irrational female.
"Then we can call it quits right here," she said easily. "Or we can maintain a business relationship, I suppose—that is, if you still want to give Edison, Stanford and Zane your account. There, that's at least two other alternatives I can think of at the moment," she concluded brightly, dishing up the bacon and eggs and toast.
"I have no intention of following either suggestion!" he growled as she set the food in front of him.
"Then you can go back to the beginning and we can start from scratch. Take your pick." She sat down opposite him and shot Yale a dazzling smile as she picked up her fork.
He watched her through narrowed lids, the fingers of his right hand drumming with ill-concealed impatience on the cheerful striped tablecloth.
"What if I agree to do that and then prove you can't resist me?" he offered coolly.
His self-confidence hardened her resolve as nothing else could have done. “You mean agree to start over and then deliberately seduce me? It wouldn't work. Not now. I've made up my mind, Yale. You haven't known me long enough to realize exactly what that means. We'll go as far as I want, and then I'll send you home. Just as I would any other
date.
"
"Are you issuing a challenge?" he asked, finally picking up his fork, unable to ignore his food any longer.
"No, I'm telling you how it's going to be between us, Yale,'' she explained patiently. “I want a normal, properly developed relationship, or I want nothing at all. As interesting as this weekend has been, it was a mistake. It won't happen again."
"You're very sure of yourself this morning. Yesterday morning you were in a flaming rage," he noted calmly.
"Yes," she
agreed,
her mouth quirking wryly. "I was. But when I'm in a rage, which is rather rare, I'm not at my most dangerous. It's when I'm cool, organized and
know
where I'm going next that I'm a force to contend with."
"I'll remember that," he vowed, lifting his coffee cup.
"You certainly will,
"
she
promised sweetly.
"More coffee?"
He held out his cup without a word. She could practically see him turning over her responses in his mind.
"You want the Southern gentleman back, is that it?" he asked finally. "You like the man you met at the party but not the one you found yourself with in a motel room out on the Interstate?"
"Stop trying to pretend you're two different men, Yale. Both aspects of you are part of the whole. There's no point trying to deny one or the other. Actually" —she smiled warmly— "they go together rather nicely."
He looked a little taken aback, as if he hadn't expected such an admission. But he was quick to seize on the apparent weakness. "If you're attracted to both sides of me," he pounced, "why are you so determined to keep me at bay?"
"Being attracted to a man is not a good enough reason for having an affair with him!"
"Why not?"
"Spoken with the essence of male logic."
She groaned, shaking her head so that the russet ends, still damp from her unplanned shower, danced around her throat. "The female's reasoned response to which is
because it's not!"
"Careful,
Dara
," he clipped, stabbing his egg vengefully. "I'm tempted to meet your response to my logic by turning you over my knee!"
"Now, that wouldn't be very reasonable, would it?" she murmured.
"I think you've been reading too much of that eighteenth-century philosophy I saw on your bookshelf. Just remember that back during the seventeen hundreds, during the so-called Age of Reason, it was still legal to beat one's wife!
A very practical era."
"Ah! But I'm not your wife!" she murmured triumphantly, lowering her lashes to hide the mischief in her eyes.
"No," he agreed on a distant note. "You backed out of your deal the minute you woke up this morning. But I'm not at all willing to do the same. I want you, little tabby cat, and I can make you want me."
"The only way you can continue to see me is on my terms," she stated aloofly. "This weekend is simply not going to be allowed to set the tone of our relationship, and that's final."
"You
are
issuing a challenge," he accused, waving his fork at her briefly.
"The fact that you can say that only goes to show how little you know me."
"It won't work," he told her darkly.
"Our relationship?"
"Trying to put it on another footing," he elaborated. "It won't work."
"Then that will be the end of things."
"I accept," he gritted.
"Accept what?"
"The challenge.
To put it in elemental terms, I will prove I can seduce you and make you eat every last one of your fine words. Before I'm finished you will be begging me to marry you!"
Dara
forced down the excitement wafting through her senses. She was a long way from the finish line yet. With seeming casualness she raised her coffee cup in mocking salute.
"Is that the Southern gentleman or the moonshine runner talking?''
"That's
me,
Yale Ransom, talking, and I mean every word! Whatever else happened this weekend, the one abiding fact is that I made you mine. I'm going to make you admit it if it's the last thing I do on this earth!"
"Fine," she said easily. "Now, if you don't mind, would you hurry up and finish that coffee? I'd like to get you out of this apartment as quickly as possible. With any luck maybe the neighbors won't notice the Alfa Romeo...."
"Are you worried about being compromised?" he jeered.
"As you said last night, I'd probably survive it, but there's no sense deliberately inviting any more trouble, is there?"
"Speaking of which," he interrupted loftily, "what about the business with Hank Bonner's drug runner?" His smile was one of impending victory. "I still feel morally obligated to look after you as long as he's on the loose."
"Try looking at page A12 in this morning's paper," she invited kindly.
Shooting her a glaring frown, Yale flipped open the paper.
"It's in fine print close to the bottom of the page under the advertisement for tennis rackets."
His mouth moved into a harder line as he read the brief report. "So they got him last night, after all."
"He never stood a chance, what with all those truckers looking for him."
"And we're in the clear," he continued absently, finishing the few lines announcing the arrest of a man suspected of using interstate truckers to transport drugs.
"No mention of us at all."
Dara
grinned cheerfully. "Your reputation as a nice, staid, gentlemanly accountant is safe."
"And your habit of getting involved in barroom brawls and then going off into the night with a trucker or two is also safely hidden. It looks like we'll both be able to show our faces in downtown Eugene tomorrow."
"Something tells me you weren't as worried as you pretended to be about your reputation," she murmured, rising to clear away his plate in a pointed manner. She didn't offer him another cup of coffee.
"Were you?" he asked suddenly, looking up speculatively.
"Would you have gone ahead and married me if we'd been made to look like a pair of reckless swingers?''
"It's an interesting problem, isn't it? We'll never know the answer, I'm afraid." She flicked a quick smile at him, mentally shouting,
Yes
! Yes! I probably would have been tempted by that excuse. My reputation wouldn't have mattered as much as having a legitimate excuse for marrying you. But I haven't even got that now. And I want you to marry me for far more important reasons, Yale Ransom. I want you to fall in love with me the way I've fallen in love with you!