"I want to go home," she said sternly. "You put on a sincere dog-and-pony show yesterday, but you brought me here for self-serving rea sons."
"Nope, Stevie, that's not why you're angry."
He set his empty coffee cup on the countertop and moved toward her. "You're not even mad because I stripped down in front of you."
She inclined away from him, until she was at risk of falling out of her chair. "Of course that's why I'm mad."
"Then why didn't you take the car and strike out for Dallas on your own?"
"I thought of it!"
"Well?"
"It was late," she said, hoping he couldn't tell that she was grasping at straws.
In fact, she hadn't thought of leaving by herself.
After seeing him naked, all she had thought about was distancing herself from him before she did something really foolish, like follow him into bed.
She'd gone to her room, got into her own bed and lain as stiff as a board, afraid to move for fear that her churning body would prompt her into committing a rash and regrettable act. For all his swaggering this morning, she might just as well have.
If he were this disgustingly arrogant when she resisted, imagine how obnoxious he would be if she ever gave in. It didn't bear thinking about.
He was waiting for a plausible answer. She said the first thing that popped into her head. "I wasn't sure I could find my way along these country roads back to the interstate."
He gave her a smug look that told her at once he knew she was lying. "Uh-huh." Bracing his arms on the table, he leaned over her. "You got upset because last night reminded you of Stockholm."
If his goal had been to knock the props out from under her, he had succeeded. She made several vain attempts to speak, opening and closing her mouth like the dummy of a ventriloquist with laryngitis. Finally she was able to croak, "I didn't think you remembered."
"I do."
"You were drunk."
"Not that drunk."
Leaving the chair, she ducked under one of his imprisoning arms. The coffeepot shook in her hand as she refilled her cup. She sipped it for fortification and to give her eyes something to look at besides the triumphant gleam in Judd's.
He thought he had her at a disadvantage. He did. The only way she was going to save face was to brazen it out. She assumed a haughty, indifferent air.
"Stockholm happened a long time ago,
Mackie. Ten or eleven years, for heaven's sake.
It wasn't any big deal."
"Oh, no?" He sprawled in one of the kitchen chairs, thrusting his bare feet out in front of him arid crossing them at the ankles. "The shindig at that place was one of the best damn parties I've ever been to."
"You crashed it."
He chuckled. "See, that's the beauty of party crashing. You get to choose the very best ones to goto." ' 'You and your pals bribed- "
"Charmed." '' -your way inside. You upset-'' "Entertained."
"-everybody. The hosts were mortified-"
"Amused."
Stevie sighed with annoyance. "I see we remember it differently."
"Admit it. My group livened things up considerably."
"That much I will admit." Her lips ached to surrender to the smile tugging at the corners of them. "Until you showed up, it was a stuffy and boring affair."
"After the hubbub we created had died down a bit, my well-trained radar system homed in on the prettiest woman there." His eyes found hers across the homey kitchen, just as they had across the ballroom of a Swedish palace so many years earlier. "You."
"Thank you. But I was also the youngest."
"I was young, too," he remarked introspectively.
"I didn't realize how young. That was before I got the job at the Tribune. I was working for a news service, covering sports in Europe. My leg…"
He shook his head, clearing it of that unhappy thought. "I had a helluva good time over there, hanging out with all the sports celebrities, hobnobbing with royalty, going to parties, eating free food, drinking free booze."
"Picking up free women."
"The job definitely had its perks." He flashed his most unrepentant smile.
"I was so naive," she said in a reflective tone that echoed his. "That was my first year on the tour. I hadn't been warned against predatory media wolves like you."
'That was a stroke of good fortune for me."
Stevie snapped to attention and said with emphasis,
"Nothing happened."
"That's not the way I remember it."
"Okay, we danced. You rudely cut in on my other partner."
"After you gave me that smoldering come-hither look."
"Smoldering? Come-hither? Boy, is your memory warped."
"And I didn't cut in, I just sort of nudged your partner out of my way. Besides, his dancing reminded me of a goose flapping its wings."
She smiled at the memory of her partner and Judd's unflattering, but accurate, description.
"No, he couldn't dance very well."
But Judd could. Oh, he could. He had ignored the gyrating couples surrounding them on the dance floor and had pulled her into his arms.
Hi.
That's all he had said. That single Americanism.
But there had been something totally captivating in the way he'd said it, softly, confidentially, as though they were meeting in a hushed, remote place instead of in a gigantic ballroom seething with laughter and deafening rock music.
He had mesmerized her with his compelling tone of voice and the possessive way his hands had settled on either side of her waist and pulled her swaying hips directly against his.
He had been everything she wasn't: sophisticated, cocky, self-assured, arrogant, undisciplined.
He was out to enjoy life, make friends, have a good time.
She thought of little except her tennis game.
Her constant companion was Presley Foster.
Their conversations revolved solely around tennis and how tough the competition was and how far she had to go to get into the big bucks and the big time. She was self-disciplined to a fault. Even attending a party and staying out that late had been a rarity.
The handsome sports journalist was fascinating -and dangerous. He danced close enough for her to feel his breath on her face, held her in a manner that wasn't decorous, looked at her suggestively and moved his lithe body against hers with blatant symbolism. He had made dedicated, disciplined Stevie Corbett feel deliciously reckless.
'And after we danced, you went upstairs with me.
"You're dreaming, Mackie." Stevie wished her voice sounded stronger, more derisive. Instead it sounded hoarse and emotional. "I went into the garden and you followed."
"You ran/'
"I needed air!" ''You were scared!''
She was scared. Scared of him and of her responses to him. Scared of the sensual awakening he had orchestrated. Scared because for the first time in many years, tennis was the last thing on her mind.
"I guess now you're going to ungallantly remind me that you kissed me."
Judd's steady gaze didn't waver. "You kissed me back."
She cleared her throat and made an offhanded gesture. "It was… pleasant."
"I'll say. Damned pleasant. Pleasant and wet and hot and sexy."
"Alright," she flared, "so we kissed.'
"French kissed."
"French kissed."
"And I put my hand inside your dress. I touched you."