the least bit of sincerity. Fingertips fluttered quickly to her lips.
She didn’t look like a whore anymore. Then she stared at him suspiciously, and he almost wished she did. He had the strangest feeling he didn’t have her figured at all. But that was absurd.
She was tall, five eight if she was an inch. Yet she seemed smaller. She was too thin for his usual taste, but her delicately boned frame and her natural grace made her easy on his eye. And those soft, ample breasts and long, shapely legs made him forget how skinny she was in other places. Not that he could see much of her lush curves with so much blue terry cloth swaddling them, hem puddling at the slim ankles, thick, long sleeves dangling over her nervous fingertips.
Without her makeup, with her cheeks flushed from the long bath, without the tight polka-dot dress to cheapen her beauty, she looked sweet and young—as delectably innocent as a high school virgin, as classy as the priciest cover model, but a bit bratty, too.
The deep blue intensified the brilliant color of her eyes. It was those eyes, the way they sparkled with such mischief, that made her look…What? Sort of spontaneous and unpredictable.
She was so alive, incandescent, mesmerizing, sexier than hell. She drew him. Indeed, she had some gut-clenching power over him no woman had ever had. Or maybe, it was just that he felt so damned lonely and vulnerable after Marcie.
The girl’s golden hair shone, and he wanted to slide his fingers through its lustrous thickness. Who was he kidding? He wanted to do way more than that. Sex appeal—she had it in spades. At least for him. Which put him on dangerous ground.
With looks like hers, she could make a fortune. She was wasting herself on the border.
Maybe he should hire this lively girl on a permanent basis—to service him. Him alone. He wouldn’t share.
He could hire somebody to teach her how to talk and act at his parties. In the right clothes, she’d prance about palaces like a thoroughbred. Just like he did. Nobody would ever know they were a pair of fakes from the gutter.
She’d be more suited to him than the highbred socialites he dated. She knew what women were really for. He wouldn’t let her near those self-help books and women’s magazines that had made Marcie so dissatisfied. No expensive shrink like Marcie’s for this girl.
This girl turned him on. He needed a simple, basic relationship with a woman. Sex. A woman like her wouldn’t demand what he wasn’t capable of giving.
“Long bath,” he said, attempting to consider her as coldly as he would any commodity he was interested in buying.
But she wouldn’t have it. She glared back at him with an impish ferocity that stunned him.
No. Don’t even think about it. This girl spelled trouble. Besides, a woman of any sort was the last thing he needed as a permanent fixture. Especially when he was still so raw from Marcie…
“I always take long baths,” the girl retorted. “Not that my habits are any of your business, mind you.” She softened this bit of rudeness with the most enchanting blush; she squirmed, too, toes curling into the carpet. Sensing danger, but not about to run from him, her long-lashed, blue eyes flashed. Her mixture of boldness, reticence and obvious discomfiture around him caused a tightness in his chest.
He remembered their fight. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t totally unreasonable of her to distrust him. He’d forced her to walk and drink coffee until she’d collapsed in angry tears and called him a bully. When her mind had cleared, she’d thrown everything he’d told her about Mexico right back at him.
“Why, you raped—”
“I saved your cute little ass,” he’d thundered. “You were tied to bedposts…half-naked…alone…like some damsel in distress in a porn comic book.”
“And what do men in those comic books do to such women?”
“The point is I got you out of Mexico.”
“You’re determined to paint yourself as a hero and me as a—” She’d blushed then. “You don’t know anything.”
He’d learned quickly she blushed at nearly everything. Then she’d looked stricken and profoundly ashamed. Naturally, she’d launched an attack. “You almost raped me—”
“Almost being the operative word. You teased me, kissed me. You wouldn’t even know about it if I hadn’t told you.”
“Ha! I’m surprised you did,” she’d huffed. “I’m sure the only reason you did was to put me down. You just love telling me how low and awful you think I am. You called me a—”
Whore? He’d restrained himself and hadn’t said the word out loud again. “Your career of choice was all too obvious.”
She’d blushed again, bitten her lips. “Ha! And are you always right about everything?”
He’d laughed. “Don’t act so coy. You came on to me like a pro. You put your hands on me, remember? You unzipped me, fondled me, begged me for it.”
“Because I—” She went stock-still. Her blush was no longer becoming. Her face had deepened to angry purple.
Were those tears glistening behind her eyelids, too? Tears of outrage? She had a misplaced temper, this girl.
“If I did those things…” Her lip quivered. “Not that I’m at all sure I should believe you…I—I must have thought you were somebody else…somebody decent…although how I could have thought such a thing about you—even drugged—I’m sure I can’t imagine.”
The indignation and despair in her soft voice jarred him. Still, he defended himself with a burst of temper equal to hers.
“That same decent somebody who drugged you and tied you to those bedposts and left you there for anybody to find?” he shouted. He never shouted. Not at underlings. “Lucky for you I came along and not somebody else.”
“Lucky? You’re judging me…when you don’t know anything about me. You said yourself you nearly raped me.…”
“Don’t be inane,” he said in a low, controlled voice. “I stopped when you said no.”
“Then why did you feel guilty enough to confess?” Her voice was equally controlled. But she stuck her pretty little nose in the air and faced him with a startling amount of belligerent spirit. “You say I fainted. You say you’re my hero. How do I know what you really did?”
“I stopped.” He ground his words like meat through a grinder.
“You don’t look like a man who would stop once he got started.”
Her perverse compliment maddened him. The gall of this girl!
“I got you the hell out of Mexico. It cost me five hundred dollars cash to bribe the border guard.”
“You bribed a border guard?” Her eyes widened. “I wish they’d thrown you in jail. I would have liked seeing you behind bars—caged.”
“Well, they didn’t, because like everybody else in this world, especially you, they’re for sale, sweetheart.”
“You must have a limited and unlikable bunch of acquaintances.”
“Carrying unconscious young females across international borders is a highly suspicious activity. I had to pay them. They were strangers, not acquaintances.”
“I don’t much like you—even if you are as handsome as Mr. Darcy.”
Handsome? She thought him handsome. “Who the hell is Mr. Darcy? A client?”
“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.”