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never have let you touch me!”
    “Having made ourselves clear on that point,” he added, turning away from her. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
    He sounded as if he was about to choke on the words. She noticed that his face was clenched as tightly as her fingers.
    “Two apologies in one day,” she said with mock surprise. “Do you have something fatal and you’re trying to win points with God while there’s still time?”
    He laughed faintly. “You could be forgiven for thinking so, I suppose.” He turned and looked at her for a long time, as ifhe needed to reconcile his memory of her with the reality. “You were eight when we came to live with Mrs. Barton. That means you’ve been part of my life for eighteen years.” His eyes grew contemplative. “I’ve given you nothing but hostility, all that time. But the minute I get in trouble or get hurt, you come running. Why?”
    “Habit,” she said at once. “And a monstrous appetite for verbal abuse,” she added with a faintly wicked smile.
    He burst out laughing, and this time it was genuine. It changed him. It made his eyes sparkle, his face so handsome that it hurt her to see it. He’d been this way with Patricia, his wife, she supposed. Maybe he’d been happy with other women, too, over the years. But he only smiled at Maggie if she teased him. So, through the years, she’d tried to do that. It was one way of getting attention from him, even if the only way.
    “You didn’t need to come here and apologize,” she added. “I’m used to having you snarl at me.”
    He frowned as he considered that. She spoke as if she expected nothing else. There was so much about her past that he didn’t know, couldn’t know. She volunteered nothing. It was a reminder that she knew far more about him than he knew about her.
    “You can come and stay out at the ranch while you look for work,” he said out of the blue.
    Her heart skipped, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “No, thanks. I like it where I am.”
    He hadn’t expected the refusal. “What’s the matter, scared I’ll lose my temper and throw you out in your nightgown one rainy night?”
    She sighed. “It would be in character,” she said with resignation. “You’d make sure it was on a main street, too.”
    He grimaced. “I was kidding!”
    She looked up. “I wasn’t.”
    His jaw clenched. “You don’t know me, Maggie.”
    She laughed shortly. She sat up, pushing back the thick waves of her long hair before she leaned forward with her head in her hands, her elbows resting on her drawn-up knees. “My head hurts. I’m not used to traveling so far at one time.”
    “You’re jet-lagged,” he said. He knew a lot about overseas travel. He’d done more than his share. “You probably went to sleep the minute you got here. You should have tried to wait until bedtime.”
    She gave him a speaking glance. “I had a trying day.”
    He sighed and stuck his hands in the pockets of his khaki slacks. “So you did.”
    Her eyes lifted to his face, tracing the new cuts and stitches. “It’s a miracle that you didn’t lose your sight,” she said softly.
    “It was. And I’m not going to make it public that I haven’t. Note the dark glasses,” he added, indicating them hanging out of one pocket by an earpiece. “I even had one of my boys drive me into town and bring me up on the elevator, just to keep the fiction going.” He didn’t say why. He jingled his car keys in his pocket restlessly. “Watch your back while you’re intown,” he added suddenly. “I’m pretty sure that an old enemy of mine set me up. If I’m right, he’s going to be on my trail pretty soon, to make sure I don’t put him out of business. He wouldn’t stop at attacking anybody close to me.”
    “Well, that certainly puts me out of danger,” she said pertly.
    He glared at her. “You’re family. If he doesn’t know it, he’ll find it out. You could be in danger. I think he’s involved with people here in