A Forbidden Passion: No Longer Forbidden? / The Man She Loves To Hate / A Wicked Persuasion. CATHERINE GEORGE

him, checking that he couldn’t overhear her calls. All the way along she’d known she’d need to set aside patience and temper to make him see she was doing the right thing.

      Now, though, a mental clock ticked in her head. The ferry’s horn usually sounded when it reached the tip of the island. It took ages to empty and reload, so she had at least thirty or forty minutes to get to the marina, but she suspected that wouldn’t give her enough time to talk Nic around to her way of thinking.

      There wasn’t enough time in the world for that. If only he wasn’t naked and looking like the biggest, angriest Viking ever to rip off his shirt and go berserk.

      “I made it clear we weren’t holding a service.” That low, livid voice nearly made her knees collapse.

      “We aren’t holding one, are we?” She spoke with admirable civility, keeping the quaver out of her voice. “I am. Courtesy demands I invite you. Could you make up your mind? I have to run if you’re not coming.”

      “How could you?” His fingers curled as if he wanted to close them on her neck.

      “Option two, then? We’re fighting.” Her temper caught like a cat’s claw. She might have kept her distance while she made the plans, aware that continuing their sexual relationship while going behind his back would make this betrayal worse, but he had completely ignored her for days! That hurt. “Or are you literally asking me how I did it? Because I don’t need your permission and I have resources.”

      “Table dancing?” he derided.

      “What else?” she taunted to hide the smart. “Of course in order to earn enough to pay for this big party I’m hosting I’ll have take off my clothes this time.”

      Outrage arced from him like an electric bolt, making her jerk as he seemed to rise taller and loom over her. “That had better be a lie.”

      “What’s it to you?” she cried, the words coming straight from the forsaken nights that had piled up in the last few days.

      This was the hardest time of her life and he was making it harder with his hot and cold attitude, the exquisite peaks of pleasure he’d brought her to and the pit of dejection he’d left her in. Her incendiary anger carried her forward, resentful words charging off her tongue.

      “What do you care if I sell myself on street corners and buy gold-plated urns? I’m just a girl you sleep with when you’re bored. I don’t rate so much as a good morning or a thanks for lunch or a kiss goodnight!”

      An inferno of anger roared in his eyes. Wrong thing to fight about