Wild Enough For Willa

“Do you read? Never mind. An almost rape?” She eyed him skeptically. “Bribing a government official? You are a man who’s capable of highly suspicious activities.”

“Then we’re a matched pair.”

“No, we aren’t.”

Huffiness. Morality. From the likes of her?

“I found you tied to bedposts,” he thundered.

“You keep saying that! If that’s so, you’ve made the most of it ever since!”

“You were drugged.”

She glared at him. “I don’t take drugs and I don’t like being insulted.”

“Do you like being alive and in one piece on this side of the border?”

“I do,” she admitted. “Thank you. But I don’t much like sharing a…a cage with a beast like you.”

“I’m not a beast.”

Her lack of gratitude, her refusal to admit her own shortcomings, her ability to see the worst in him—everything about her maddened him. But what really set him on edge was her standing there in the bathroom doorway in that robe, looking sexy as hell as she stared daggers through him.

“Come out for God’s sakes. I won’t bite.”

Shyly, she took a trembling step. “I have to go home.”

“Not till I’m sure you’re okay…safe.”

“You don’t care about my safety,” she said in that soft, knowing tone. “I know why you won’t let me go. What sort of games do you play, Mr. McKade, with your women?”

His pulse accelerated. “I worked my ass off to sober you up. I fed you supper…breakfast.…”

“You made me eat eggs. I don’t like eggs.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“I told you.”

“For God’s sakes, I’m not running a short-order grill. I ordered eggs. I ate them myself.”

“But you like eggs.”

“You have the most illogical mind.”

“Don’t say that.”

As if she were remembering the other battles they’d fought, she stared past him, to the closet, to the skeleton key in the closet door. “You deliberately scared me.”

“Relax. Forget that,” he growled, ashamed of that little episode.

“You threatened to lock me in there.”

“You ran out.”

“Because you’re a big bully.”

“Only sometimes…when pushed.”

“All the time, I bet.”

“I couldn’t let you run off drugged—”

“Quit saying I was drugged.”

“When you quit calling me a bully.” His heart darkened with a bitter memory. There was ice and yet pain, too, in his deep voice. “Where I come from…it was bully…or be bullied.” Why had he said that? Why had he betrayed himself to the likes of her?

She lifted her chin, studied him. “I bet you were the biggest, baddest bully of all.”

He glared. She chewed on her bottom lip, considering him with one of those intense glances that unsettled him and made him wonder what she might do next.

They were in Little Red’s hotel suite. The room key had been in his brother’s wallet. Luke had brought her here on the thin chance his brother would show up…alive…and he could, thus, kill two birds with one stone.

His brother’s suite had seemed as good a place as any to sober her up. Once, after pouring countless cup-fuls of coffee down her, when he’d been forcing her to pace the room with him, she’d panicked and broken out of the suite. He’d caught her in the hall, shoved her back inside, and pushed her into the closet. She’d pounded wildly on the door. He’d opened it and told her to be quiet, threatening to tie her up the way Baines had or gag her and lock her in the closet if she didn’t behave.

She stared at the skeleton key in the lock of the closet door and went still.

“My aunt used to lock me up…in the dark,” she said. “And tonight…” Her eyes filled with terror.

“Difficult aunt.”

“Oh, she was. She was a lot like you. She believed all people were for sale, too, especially women. She even saw marriage in that light. She was always saying, ‘It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man.”’

“Every woman I know thinks like that.”

“Not me. I believe in love, in chemistry, in magic—in excitement.” She snapped her fingers. “Or I used to. Till Brand.” Her voice dropped. “Till you.” Again her eyes held fear although she strove to talk about something else. “My aunt and I drove each other to distraction. But she taught me to read and to appreciate the fine arts. On the whole, she was a lot nicer than you.” She tried to smile. “And at least she was very well educated and way more honest about what she was up to than you are—McKade.”

“Call me Luke.”

“I’m not sure yet if I want to know you that well.”

“You’re rude.”

“Me, rude? That’s rich.”

“Ungrateful too,” he accused.

She seemed to make an effort to concentrate on what he was saying instead of on what she was so afraid of.