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presence.
    He solved the matter quite neatly. While she stood there, uncertain, he walked into the room, crossed to her, and took the mug of milk from her hand. "You'll burn yourself," he said gently.
    He was too close to her. She wished this were simply an extension of her nightmare. She wouldn't even mind the blood, as long as it wasn't real. But it was. Richard Tiernan was standing within inches of her, towering over her respectable five feet nine, invading her space, close, too close, and she could feel the heat of his body in the cool night kitchen, smell the faint tang of whiskey on his breath.
    She took a step backward, away from him, not caring if she looked like an hysterical idiot. He simply looked at her and smiled, a slow, cynical smile. "Your father says you're going to stay and help us."
    Us. It was an unnerving word. She considered denying it, but she wasn't a coward. She didn't run away from her family demands when the going got rough. If she said yes, or said no, she lived with the consequences.
    One of which was the man standing far too still in the middle of her father's kitchen. A man whose power to disturb her went far beyond the crimes he was accused and convicted of committing. "Yes," she said.
    "We need all the help we can get."
    "We" was just as bad as us. "I'll do my best," she said inanely. Maybe that was the way to protect herself from his insidious effect on her. Be as trite and ingenuous as she could be. As corny, as breathtakingly guileless…
    "I'm sure you will," he said, with just the faintest trace of a drawl in his voice. To her horror he lifted the mug of milk to her mouth, holding it there. "It's cool enough now," he said.
    The challenge was obvious, even with the unreadable expression on his still, dark face. It was a challenge she couldn't back away from. Not with his dark eyes watching her.
    She put her mouth against the mug and drank, when she knew she shouldn't. She should spit it out, tell him she didn't need it after all, and bid him a polite but firm good night.
    Ah, but she'd been safe all her adult life. She drank from the mug in his hands, letting the thick warm milk slide down her throat.
    When she'd drained it, she looked at him defiantly.
I'm not afraid of you
, she thought. Knowing it was a lie.
    For the first time his slight smile reached those dark, haunted eyes. "You have a milk mustache," he said.
    She took another step back, this time coming up against the cabinets, as she backhanded her mouth, wiping the milk away before other, more troubling suggestions came to her mind. "I think I'm ready to sleep now," she said brightly, only a faint tremor in her voice.
    "Are you?"
    "I'll see you in the morning."
    There was only one problem with her firm dismissal. He stood between her and freedom. She was literally backed into a corner, backed by her own nervousness, and he'd advanced on her. She raised her chin, looking at him with completely false calm, and waited for him to move out of the way.
    He didn't. Not for an agonizingly long time. He let his gaze fall, travel down the length of her, from her wild mane of hair, down the front of her plain white nightgown to the tips of her bare feet. There was nothing even remotely suggestive about the cotton nightgown or the baggy sweater she'd pulled over it, nothing erotic about bare feet. His eyes slid down her body, and she was burning up.
    And then he stepped back. "In the morning," he said. And left her there, disappearing back into the shadows of the night kitchen.
    She let out her breath, realizing for the first time she'd been holding it. Just as she'd had a virginal hand at her throat, to ward off demons. She was shaking, she realized absently.
    She pushed away from the counter, still tasting the creaminess of the hot milk in her throat. She walked into the darkened living room, reached for her father's bottle of good Irish, and poured herself a stiff drink, tossing it back with only a faint choke, letting it burn its way