"Whether I like it or not."
"Essentially. I'm not Roger Thornhill. I'm not, and I've never used you for anything."
"No, you're not a user, Byron. Do you know what you are? You're a handler. That's what you do, you handle people. It's what makes you so good at your job—that patience, that charm, that skill at easing people onto your side of an issue without them ever really seeing they've been maneuvered. Well, here's a flash for you. I will not be handled. I sure as hell won't be maneuvered into marriage."
"Just a damn minute."
He shifted to block her path before she could storm out.
When he closed his fingers around her arm, she yelped. Afraid that he'd misjudged his strength in temper, he jerked back holding her arm much more gently. But the bruises he saw on her arm were already formed. The haze that smothered his brain was dark and ugly.
"What the hell is this?" he demanded.
Her heart thudded hard into her throat as his eyes snapped to hers. "Let go of me."
"Who put these marks on you?"
Her chin angled in defense. The fury hardening his eyes was as lethal as the slice of a well-honed sword. "I've seen your white knight routine already, Byron. I'm not interested in a reprise."
"Who touched you?" he said, spacing each word carefully.
"Someone else who couldn't take no for an answer," she snapped. She regretted the words, bitterly, before they were fully formed. But it was too late. His eyes went carefully blank. Smoothly, he stepped out of her path.
"You're mistaken." His voice was cool and calm and deliberate. "I can take no for an answer. And since that seems to be the case, we don't seem to have anything left to discuss."
"I'll apologize for that." She felt the heat of shame burning her cheeks. "It was uncalled for. But I don't appreciate your interference in my business, or your assumption that I'd just fall into your plans."
"Understood." Hurt was a rusty ball of heat in his gut. "As I said, that seems to end it. It's clear you were right from the beginning. We want different things, and this isn't going to work." He walked over to the table, more to distance himself from her than because he wanted the wine he picked up and drank. "You can get you
r things now or at your convenience."
"I—" She stared at him, stunned that he could close the door between them so neatly. "I don't—I can't—I'm going," she managed and fled.
He listened for the slam of the door, then sat, as carefully as an old man. He put his head back, closed his eyes. It was a wonder, he thought, that she could assume he was such a brilliant strategist when a blind man on a galloping horse could see just how badly he'd bungled it.
She went home, of course. Where else did you go when you were wounded? The scene she burst in on in the parlor was so cheerful, so familial, so much what she had just been offered and refused, that she wanted to scream.
Josh sat in the wing chair near the fire, the pretty lights from the flickering flames playing over him and his sleeping son. Laura, her younger daughter at her feet, poured coffee into pretty china cups. Margo snuggled on the end of the couch with Ali so they could pore over a fashion magazine together.
"Kate." Laura glanced up with a welcoming smile. "You're just in time for coffee. I bribed Josh to bring the baby over with one of Mrs. Williamson's honey-glazed hams."
"He might have left a few scraps," Margo added. "If you're hungry."
"I only had seconds."
"You had seconds twice, Uncle Josh," Kayla pointed out, and got up, as she had every few minutes, to peek at the baby.
"Stool pigeon." He tweaked her nose.
"Aunt Kate's mad." Ali straightened up on the couch in anticipation. "You're mad at somebody, aren't you, Aunt Kate? Your face is red."
"So it is," Margo drawled when she took a closer look. "And I think I hear her teeth grinding."
"Out." Kate pointed a finger at Josh. "You and I, we're going to go round later, but right now, go away and take your testosterone with you."
"I never go anywhere without it," he said easily. "And I'm comfortable right here."
"I don't want to see a man. If I do see a man in the next sixty seconds, I'll have to kill him with my bare hands."