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drink before.” He jammed both hands in his pockets. “Was it what I said to you, Eleanor?” he asked, his eyes darkening. “God knows, I’ve got a hair trigger temper, but I never meant to say those things to you. Damn it,” he growled, running a hand through his dark hair, “I don’t want you to go! There’s no reason in the world why you can’t stay on, even after Mandy and I get married! The two of you like each other.”
    Men, she thought, miserably, were the densest substance God ever created.
    â€œI’d still rather go,” she said stubbornly. “Jim needs me more than you do, now.”
    His eyes narrowed even more, dangerously glittering. “What for? To do his typing, or to…”
    â€œDon’t you say it, Curry Matherson!” she dared, knowing what would have come if she hadn’t interrupted him.
    â€œYou little prude,” he taunted, his eyes studying her slender body outlined under the bedclothes. “Hasn’t the relationship progressed to that stage yet? My God, how has he been able to keep from dragging you off into the woods? The way you look with your hair down like that, and those ridiculous glasses off…” He frowned. “Or is all that sensuality just on the outside?”
    She blushed at the look in his eyes. He made her feel threatened, uncomfortable.
    â€œWhy did you threaten to shoot him?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.
    She dodged his piercing eyes and took her aspirins, swallowing them down with the sweet, rich hot chocolate.
    â€œStay, Eleanor,” he said quietly, his hands jammed into his pockets.
    She looked up. “I can’t,” she said simply. “Not after what I heard you say. I’d never be able to forget it. Not when I know what you really think of me,” she added in a pained, husky young voice.
    â€œDo you know?” he asked, and there was something dark and quiet and unfamiliar in his eyes. “Do I?”
    She felt a kind of electricity burn between them as she noticed for the first time that the coverlet had slipped down to reveal the wealth of bare, silky skin where the thin spaghetti straps of her pink nightgown clung to the soft curves of her breasts. His eyes had traced those straps down, and he was looking at her in a way he never had before—a look so adult and masculine that it made her fingers tremble as they jerked the coverlet back up.
    He met her shocked eyes levelly. A slow, sensuous smile tugged at his mouthand the glitter of his eyes made her feel vulnerable and weak. He laughed softly.
    â€œYou lovely little creature,” he mused.
    She bristled. “I thought I was a chicken,” she said curtly, remembering.
    He shouldered away from the bedpost nonchalantly and paused with his hand on the doorknob to look back at her. “Baby chicks are soft and downy and sweet to touch,” he observed, grinning at the quick, hot color that poured into her face as he went out and closed the door behind him.
    She puzzled over the remark, over the look he’d given her for a long time before she finally slept. It was just as Jim had said, Curry wanted his own way and he wouldn’t stop at anything to get what he wanted. He might try flirting, or even something more to keep Eleanor from leaving. She shuddered, remembering that dark, strange flame in the eyes that had traced her body, and wondered if shecould resist Curry, loving him as she did. If he ever touched her…She put the disturbing thought out of her mind and rolled over.
    Â 
    She overslept for the first time in three years, and ran downstairs to see if Bessie had kept anything out for her.
    â€œThink I’d let you go hungry because you didn’t wake up?” Bessie teased. She took a covered plate out of the oven and put it in front of Eleanor where she sat sipping her hot coffee at the kitchen table. “Here. Saved