“Don’t ‘honey’ me,” she said. She went right up to him, glaring at him, hating him, her small hands clenched at her back. “Mama told me what you’ve done. Now you listen to me, Matthew Kincaid. I just grew up, and you can stop trying to put me back in your hip pocket. I won’t fit! You gave me those shares when I turned eighteen, and you can’t take them away.”
His narrow eyebrows arched. “Who, me?” he asked innocently. Still watching her with amusement, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with maddening carelessness. “I didn’t take them away, I just had the interest you were drawing reinvested.” He grinned wider. “Look in the small print, Kit. I retained that right when I signed over the shares to you.”
Her eyes lanced into him. “What am I going to do to pay my rent in New York, beg on street corners?”
“I don’t remember any discussion about New York,” he returned at once.
She hated that smile. She knew it all too well from years past. It meant he’d dug in his heels and there wouldn’t be any moving him. Well, she’d just see about that.
“I’ve been offered a job with a very prestigious New York public relations firm,” she told him. “It wasn’t easy to get, and it was only because the father of one of my college friends works there that I was even considered. It’s a plum of a job, Matt. The salary—”
“You’re only twenty-one,” he said, pursing his lips. “And New York is a wild place for a little country girl.”
“I’m not little!”
His eyes went pointedly to her small breasts, and he grinned. “No?”
She let out a furious cry and aimed a kick at his shins with one hard-booted toe. He sidestepped with lightning grace, and she went down flat on her back in the wet grass and mud.
He grinned at the shock on her face, then flashed a look at two of his men who were riding by with curious looks on their faces.
“Better get up quick, honey, or Ben and Charlie there will think you’re trying to entice me into making love to you,” he said outrageously.
“Matthew…Dane Kincaid…I hate you…!” she sputtered as she tried to get to her feet.
He was trying to stop laughing, but without much success. His white teeth flashed and black eyes were alive in his swarthy face. He reached down to grab her wrist and jerked her to her feet. His strength was a little frightening. He looked lithe and limber, but he could have forced her to her knees if he’d flexed his hand, and she knew it. Her angry eyes scanned his hard face, her fury kindling all over again at the traces of humor she saw lingering there. She drew back a hand, but it hovered in midair.
“Hold it right there, honey,” he said, chuckling. “I don’t mind a little dirt, but if you connect with that muddy hand, I’ll hit you where it hurts most.”
“I’ll tell Mama!” she threatened.
“Betty would hold you still for me.”
He loosed her wrist, and she rubbed it, surprised at the tingling sensation that lingered after his hard fingers had withdrawn.
She tugged her long-tailed shirt out of her jodhpurs and used the hem of it to wipe off the mud. He stuck his hands on his lean hips and watched her with the infuriating superiority that clung to him like the faint mud stains on his shirt.
She sighed. “I hate you, you know.”
“No you don’t, Kit.” He grinned. “You just want your own way. And this time, you’re not getting it. I’d never forgive myself if I turned you loose in that big city all alone, fresh out of college in Forth Worth.”
“And that’s another sore spot,” she threw back at him, shivering a little in the cool air. “You hardly even let me go off to college. Not me, oh, no, I had to commute on weekends! It’s a wonder you didn’t come with me and hold my hand as I crossed streets!”
“I did think about it,” he murmured dryly.
“I’m grown up!”
“Not yet,” he corrected. His eyes went down to her breasts and lingered there, where the hard tips were visible through her thin shirt, and he smiled slowly. “But you’re getting there.”
She stared at him unblinkingly, surprised at the remark, at the way he was studying her breasts. Boys had looked at her that way when she wore swimsuits or low-cut blouses, but Matt never had. It shocked her that he’d even bothered to look. Perhaps it was just another way of getting back at her. She folded her arms over her breasts as a scarlet flush covered her cheeks. She avoided meeting his eyes.
“Hey,” he commanded softly.
“What?”
“Look at me.”
She forced her embarrassed eyes up, but he wasn’t teasing her. He looked faintly kind, for Matt.
“If you want to practice public relations, I’ll put you to work,” he said. “You can publicize my foundation sale month after next.”
“Matt, that’s not a job!”
“It’s a job,” he said firmly. “A lot of work goes into that annual sale, and a lot depends on its being a success. I usually hire an outside agency to handle it, but since you’re here, you can do it. I’ll even let you design the brochure.” He eyed her closely. “That’s a challenge, honey. Show me how capable you are, and I’ll make you a present of an apartment in New York and find you another job to boot. I’ve got some contacts of my own.”
She wavered. It was tempting. Very tempting. And if he hadn’t been trying to bend her to his will, she might have accepted his offer. But he was calling the shots, and if she made a success of the job, he’d probably find some way to make her keep working for him. She’d never get away.
So, he wanted his sale publicized, did he? She smiled faintly. Okay. She’d do it. And in such a way that he’d be more than delighted to send her on her way.
“Okay,” she agreed after a minute, her green eyes sparkling. “I’ll just take that dare.”
“I’ll start you off tomorrow morning. Be at the office eight-thirty sharp,” he replied. “Now you’d better get home and change into something a little more decent, or Betty will come after me with a shotgun.”
“I can just see you now, running for the border,” she returned dryly.
He smiled wickedly. “This far away?” he said with a chuckle. “Hell, no, I’d drive.” He pulled his hat low over his eyes. “Hadn’t you better go home and change?”
She knew when she was defeated. Green eyes glared up at him. “You’re just stifling me,” she ground out. “Smothering me! My gosh, you tie me to the house.
You grill every man I date. You won’t let me go to New York and find my own way in life—Matt, I’m a grown woman,” she said, trying to reason with him. “You’re an old bachelor…!”
His eyebrows lifted as he lit another cigarette. “Honey, I’m just thirty-one.”
“And someday you’ll be fifty-one and all alone, and what will you do then?” she asked haughtily.
He smiled slowly. “I guess I’ll start seducing kids your age.”
She opened her mouth, started to speak, thought better of it and closed her mouth with a snap.
“My, my, the fish aren’t biting today,” he said conversationally. Boldly, his dark eyes wandered slowly down the length of her slender body, assessing her; then suddenly they shot up to catch her eyes. She stared back, and the world narrowed to Matt’s face. Cows bellowed all around and cowboys whistled and called, moving them along, but she no longer noticed them. A wild