She actually gasped. He sounded as if he hated Ben, and it was in his eyes, in the way he spoke. He even looked rigid, as if his backbone were encased in plaster.
“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “That was a question I had no right to ask. Here, give me that.”
He took her cup and the paper that had held the doughnut and put them into the sack that had contained the food. He got out without another word to put it in the garbage container.
She sat almost vibrating with nerves. She’d never dreamed that the conversation would turn into an inquisition, and his attitude toward Ben was frightening. How much did he know? And if he’d been aware of Ben’s drinking, why hadn’t he fired him? Ryder was so particular about his work force. He knew intimate little things about almost all of them, and he had his secretary send get-well cards when they were sick and flowers if someone died. He wouldn’t tolerate crooks or drunkards, but he’d tolerated Ben, whom he actively disliked. Why? For Ivy’s sake? Because she was like a younger sister to him? She couldn’t understand it.
He got back into the truck. “Well, I’m still starved, but that will have to do,” he said, good humor apparently restored. “A few hamburgers at lunch will save me yet.”
She laughed, their earlier harsh words already forgotten as he turned the pickup toward the highway.
The auction was fascinating. She walked along beside Ryder, looking at equipment she didn’t even know the name of, listening while he expounded on its merits and flaws.
His pale eyes looked out over the flat horizon and narrowed. “Before too many more years, little one, land and water are going to be as rare as buffalo. The population keeps growing, and someday soon there isn’t going to be enough for all the people.”
“Land grows, too,” she said, smiling up at him. “It comes up out of the ocean.”
“Not around here, it doesn’t,” he mused, tapping her nose with a long forefinger. He smiled back, but his finger moved down to her mouth and began to trace, with apparent carelessness, the perfect outline of her lips.
The tracing made her feel shaky all over. Her breath jerked out against that maddening finger, and he seemed suddenly intent on her mouth, his jaw tensing, his eyes going glittery. His own lips parted and she could actually hear his heartbeat.
“How long have we known each other?” he asked huskily.
“Years,” she whispered. “Since I was...in grammar school.”
“All those years, and nothing but bitter memories for both of us,” he said harshly. His voice had gone deeper, huskier, and his gaze was intent on her mouth. “Yes, you remember, don’t you?” he asked, watching her cheeks flush. “It’s still there between us, even now.”
She could hardly breathe. She dropped her eyes to his chest. “I didn’t realize the door was open,” she said miserably.
“I know. But at the time I didn’t. And for that, I’m sorry.”
Her face did a slow burn. She remembered that night as if it were yesterday. She’d tormented herself with it for years. She’d been spending the night with Eve. She was only eighteen, and a very naive eighteen. Eve had gone with her mother to get a pizza, leaving Ivy alone in the house, or so she thought. Ryder had come home unexpectedly. Not knowing he was in the house, she hadn’t thought to close her bedroom door.
She’d been on her way to the shower and had stripped off everything but the lovely cream-colored silk teddy that Eve had given her for Christmas. It was the most expensive piece of lingerie she’d ever owned, despite the fact that she never expected anyone—much less Ryder—to see her wearing it.
But that night he’d seen the open door, and Ivy in the lacy teddy, and he’d thought she was parading around in it deliberately, for his benefit.
Even now she could see the look on his face. He’d frozen in the doorway, his pale eyes narrowing, darkening. His lips had parted on a shocked breath, and instead of apologizing and going out, he’d closed the door and walked into the room, something in his face vaguely accusing and angry.
Ivy had been eighteen. Young, hopelessly naive, and in the throes of her first real crush. She’d looked up at him with all her helpless longing in her eyes, so innocently beautiful that it had taken all his willpower to keep his hands off her. His eyes had touched her, though, like caressing hands, lingering where the all-but-transparent lace of the bodice gave an explicit glimpse of the tight bud of her nipples, dark against the pale lace.
She’d stopped breathing. Ryder’s eyes had met hers then and held them, his big body rigid.
It was a permissive world, and Eve made no secret of her liberated attitude toward the boys she dated. But Ivy was old-fashioned, and to let a man see her in her underwear was a shocking and embarrassing experience. Unfortunately for her, Ryder didn’t know that. He’d always assumed that she shared Eve’s modern outlook.
“Very nice,” he’d said, his voice caressing while his eyes had feasted on her lace-and-silk-clad body, lingering where her breasts pushed against the bodice. “But then, you always were a beauty, Ivy.”
“You shouldn’t be in here,” she faltered, torn between delight and fear.
“Why not?” His pale eyes had glittered. “You left the door open and waited for me, didn’t you?”
Her eyes had dilated wildly even as he reached for her. “Ryder, you don’t understand...!”
But the feverish protest had come too late. Ryder had been watching her, wanting her, for a long time. Despite his anger at what he thought was entrapment, her beauty was too much for his self-control.
His big, lean hands had framed her face and his eyes watched her as he bent his head. But it wasn’t her mouth he touched. It was the hard, aching tip of her lace-covered breast.
Her hands had curled on his shoulders and she’d made a sound that she could barely recall making. The warm, moist suction of his hard mouth had caused the most abandoned sensations in her slender body, had made her ache and burn and shiver with needs she hadn’t been aware of before. She’d been dazedly aware of his hands sliding the straps of the teddy down her arms, of his eyes suddenly, shockingly, on her bare, mauve-tipped breasts before he bent again. This time, he’d picked her up in his arms, lifting her, his mouth still covering her nipple.
Her fingers had been in his thick hair, holding his mouth to her body while she fought with pride and inhibitions and a certainty that he’d lost control of his own body.
“Ryder, you mustn’t,” she’d whispered weakly as he laid her on the twin bed across the room from Eve’s, the bed she was sleeping in during her overnight visit. “You mustn’t!”
He hadn’t seemed to hear her. He’d followed her down onto the bed, his long, powerful legs trapping hers, his hands smoothing the satiny skin of her back while his mouth suddenly found hers and took it with deliberate intent.
It was the first real adult kiss Ivy had ever received, and so passionate that even the memory of it could make her blush. It was a deep, sultry probing of her mouth that had left her shaking and helpless in his arms.
His mouth had smoothed over her body then, like fire, and she’d arched upward, her response so uninhibited that it had knocked any suspicion of her innocence right out of his whirling mind. Her arms had twined around him, her hands tangling in his thick hair, and tiny little moans had whispered into his mouth as he teased her nipples with strong, warm hands before he began to nuzzle them with his lips and bite at them gently.
Her trembling pleas had sent him over the edge. “Feel how hard you turn me on,” he’d whispered roughly, his dark eyes looking down into hers as his hands contracted on her hips, bringing them into tight contact with his aroused body. He ground her against the hardness, watching her lips tremble, her eyes widen at