A negotiated surrender by Jayne Castle Page B

or the women I've had since my marriage ended," he gritted between clenched teeth. "You better learn not to jump to conclusions!"
    "And what if I don't?" she taunted rashly, her temper flaring anew at his arrogance. It was typical of a man like this to resort to intimidation first. Perhaps when he realized she wouldn't bow to it, he would leave in disgust.
    "You will!" he admitted fiercely. "It's damn obvious you pulled yourself out of that mess of a marriage by your bootstraps and I'd be a fool if I didn't recognize the strength in you now to do whatever is demanded of you."
    "Then you ought to be making your exit, because I'm going to use every bit of that strength against you!"
    she flung back desperately.
    "Be my guest," he invited with a totally unexpected smile as he got lithely to his feet and pulled her up beside him. "You won't turn me into a sulky little boy by trying to prove yourself my equal."
    Calla ground her teeth as he took the ends of the dress and fastened them gently behind her neck.
    Trembling with reaction and anger, she stood still as he finished the task and then dropped a light kiss on her nape—a very proprietary kiss that made her long to slap him.
    "You really managed to throw everything into a tailspin tonight, didn't you?" he whispered wistfully as his hands came back down on her bare shoulders and he tugged her back against his body. He bent to breathe in the scent of her loosened hair.
    "I did nothing except let you know I was aware of your arrogant plans!"
    "But you didn't know all of my plans, did you?" he teased, nibbling at the tip of her ear as he pulled the hair on one side of her head back behind it. "You didn't know I meant to marry you, did you?"
    "What difference does it make? I'm no more interested in marriage with you than I am in an affair!"
    "Tell me that three months from now." She could sense his laughing smile.
    "If you think I'm going to work for you…!" she began seethingly.
    "You will," he said confidently. "You've got all those inefficient, redundant people on Lester's old staff to protect, remember?"
    "You wouldn't dare let people go!" she gasped as he stepped away from her and went to retrieve his jacket. "You issued a statement saying you wouldn't terminate anyone for the first year!" She whirled to face him, knowing he wouldn't hesitate to make good on his threat even as she denied the possibility.
    "I issued a statement to that effect, yes. But it wasn't written into the contract!"
    He pulled on the jacket, feeling automatically for the case in his pocket, and smiled down into her enraged eyes. "Good night, sweetheart," he murmured politely as he kissed her forehead and headed for the door.
    He paused, his hand on the knob, to glance back over his shoulder at the bouquet on the little table. "By the way, tell your friend, what's-his-name, that I don't want to find his flowers on the doorstep again!
    Regardless of the status of his masculinity!"
    An instant later he was gone into the warm Arizona night.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Calla came down from the series of entrechats, alighting in fifth position with the left foot in front, and knew even as she dragged air into her lungs that Miss Marsden was not going to be pleased.
    "No, no, no! What is the matter with you today, Calla?" the older woman snapped unpleasantly as she ignored the other adult pupils to concentrate on Calla's failures. "You have been taking lessons long enough to know that the knees must be straight while in midair. Try it again!"
    The tiny, imperious little woman known only as Miss Marsden clapped her hands to signal the required beats of the legs as Calla obediently sank slightly in a plié, jumped, crossed the right leg in a straight-legged beat, and once again descended in fifth with the left foot in front.
    "Better, better! Let us try a series of them now!" Miss Marsden's snapping black eyes brooked no excuses, especially not the ridiculous one of exhaustion. Her head, with its graying black hair drawn