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said tautly, “I haven’t been scolded so, ummm, grandly, in years and never with such an air of wounded innocence.I’ll grant you one thing—if this Goody Two-shoes attitude is an act, you’ve mastered it.”
    Rebecca’s eyes narrowed fiercely. A sharp sound of rage burst from her throat. “You want to see how crazy you can make a Goody Two-shoes? How you can turn a peaceful, polite person into a maniac? Fine!” She shoved him hard. “Get out!” His taut, thick shoulder muscles flexed powerfully, but the rest of him didn’t budge.
    “Calm down,” he said in a tightly controlled voice. Kash bit the inside of his cheek. Her righteous nonsense had worn thin. “At the moment I don’t care whether you’re an angel or not. Unless you’re damned good at surviving in the wildest section of one of the most notorious cities in the world, you need me. A woman like you wouldn’t get far on the street.”
    She shoved him again. “Read my lips.
I don’t need your help. Leave
.”
    “I don’t like violence. Or naive stupidity. Stop it.”
    Rebecca had never struck a person in anger before, not even as a child, but she drew back a fist and punched him in the chest. It wasn’t a coy tap; it was a roundhouse slug, and it made a deep
whump
.
    Santelli’s reaction was fast, so fast that she guessed he had trained reflexes that could have easily warded off her punch, if he’d wanted to. He sprang forward, encircled her in his arms, and flattened her on the bare gray mattress. Her feet dangled on the floor. One of his went between them, accompanied, farther up, by his leg. She felt his knee settle between her own, at the mattress’s edge. The rest of him lay intimately on top of her.
    His face was livid. She glared up into his eyes and was frozen by their intense emotions. Their directness mesmerized her.
    “You are
not
as tough as you think you are,” he told her, speaking in a low, fierce voice. “And regardless of whether you despise me or not, I’m the only help you have right now. You can’t wear your respectable littleSunday-school manners like a badge and assume they’ll scare off the rest of the world.”
    She writhed under him, but his weight held her down. “I don’t need this kind of help.”
    “You may not have noticed, Ms. Brown, but you’ve got a female body. That alone is enough to get you in serious trouble in this part of Bangkok. Unfortunately, your particular female body is attractive and comes with a pretty face. There are plenty of men who’d pay to have you on this bed wearing nothing but your exceptionally smooth pink hide, Ms. Brown, and they wouldn’t care if you wanted to be here, or not. They wouldn’t even care if you were conscious. You’re in luck, because as unpleasant and dastardly as you think I am, I’m not that kind of man. But believe me, my annoying, ignorant Ms. Brown, I know all about brothels and what happens to people in them. Now will you quit fighting me and cooperate in getting yourself out of here?”
    She felt muscles straining in her neck. She realized that she had bared her teeth at him. He’d nearly reduced her to snarling, like a cornered cat. Her violent reactions to him frightened her a little. Rebecca licked her lips and tried to speak in a calm voice. “I’ll do anything that will keep you from mashing me to death or giving me another lecture.”
    “Is that a yes?”
    “
Yes
.”
    He let go of her abruptly and, breathing lightly, rolled off her and sat up. She frowned at him thoughtfully as she sat up also. She put a clammy hand over her torn dress, picturing the red marks his shirt buttons must have pressed into her breasts.
    “Here,” Santelli said, now using a gruff, sympathetic tone. She refused to acknowledge him as he unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. He draped it around her shoulders. Wordlessly she grasped the sides and pulled them closed. Her gaze was drawn rebelliously to his bare chest. It was no less beautiful than she’d