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beginning that I didn’t just lie down and let people walk over me. I’m not any good at taking orders, and I don’t intend to take them from you.”
    His dark eyes glittered with amusement and something deeper, more dangerous. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” he asked, studying her posture. “Where’s all that bravado you had in front of my guests?”
    “It’s not fear of you,” she promised with a blatant smile. “I’m just afraid that if I don’t keep my distance, I might wrestle you down on the floor, that’s all.” Gathering her courage, she batted her eyelashes at him. “Oh, Mr. Thorpe, you’re
sooo
sexy!”
    He made a rough sound. “Think so? Well, honey, you’d have to pay me.”
    He turned to leave, and she lost her head. “Damn you!” she breathed with glittering fury. She glared after him with eyes full of hatred.
    He turned with his hand on the doorknob and studied her one last time. “You have the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen,” he said unexpectedly. “Are you a virgin?”
    She held the coverlet tighter. “Guessing?”
    His eyes wandered over her. “Miss Forrest, an experienced woman doesn’t run for cover at the first sign of male interest. Just for future reference.”
    She tossed her hair. “I don’t need instructions. Least of all from someone who sleeps in a bed full of ice cubes.”
    His eyebrows arched. “Do you think I do?” He put his hands in his pockets and studied her curiously.
    “I’ll give you my character analysis of you on the day I leave here,” she promised.
    He looked her over again, with calculating eyes. “Delle and her mother left a few minutes ago, by the way, and I’m on my way out now,” he said with a cool smile. “Thanks to you, I had some explaining to do. They seem to feel that you’re here for my benefit, not my mother’s. I set them straight.” He lifted his square jaw and pursed his lips. “There’s just one thing you’d better keep in mind. In case you don’t know, I pay the bills. Including my mother’s. That makes me your real boss, and if you want trouble, put me in the same position twice.”
    “You can count on my cooperation, sir,” she said huskily, and grinned.
    “I thought you’d see it my way. I’m glad we had this little talk, Jane,” he added with a superior smile. “Just dig up bodies for my mother, and you and I will get along fine.”
    “I’ll do my very best,” she promised. An impish smile touched her full lips. “But just hold your breath until I lay my heart at your feet again.”
    Amazingly, he laughed. And it was genuine, for once. “Damned brat,” he muttered as he jerked open the door. “Too bad we’re from such different worlds, Jane Eyre,” he said with a curt laugh. “I think I could have made you lay more than your heart at my feet a few years back.”
    She blinked. “A few years back?”
    “Before I learned what devious, twisted minds you women have. Before Amanda’s mother taught me how beautifully deceit can be clothed.” He rammed his hands in his pockets and stared at her. “I don’t have any inclination to lose my heart again.”
    “Delle would be crushed to hear you say that,” Merlyn replied.
    “Delle will make a good wife,” he returned. “She’s young and impressionable and easily led. She dresses beautifully and she knows how to be a good hostess. The perfect businessman’s wife. Our marriage will be a very profitable merger.”
    “Mama comes with her,” she reminded him. “And she isn’t easily led.”
    “Mama is a barracuda. But I’m a shark.”
    She wouldn’t have touched that line with a cattle prod.
    His eyes wandered down the coverlet and back up again, and there was something in them that frightened Merlyn more than his earlier anger.
    “I don’t like domineering men,” she said.
    “I wasn’t aware that your job required you to like me.”
    She laughed. “Praise the Lord.”
    His head tilted and he smiled slowly. “You’re full of