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contract! I’m offering to buy a couple of days of your time! How about it, Judd. Two thousand dollars for two days.”
    Anger flashed in him. “Now what are you trying to do?”
    She leaned forward intently, putting a hand on his arm. He felt the contact of her fingers and something in him reacted to it. Grimly he refused to give any indication of that reaction, forcing himself to sit like stone beneath her touch.
    “Two days, Judd. I want to buy two lousy days. Is that so much to ask? The people who sent you after me will never know, will they? They can’t have any way of knowing you’ve even found me yet. How long did you tell them it might take?”
    His eyes narrowed. “I told them to give me a couple of weeks, maybe a month.’* Now why the devil had he told her that much?
    “You can double your take on this job by simply staying here in this village with me for a couple of days,” she explained. “I’ll give you the money up front. Tonight. All I want is your word that during the next two days you’ 11 give me a chance to tell you my side of this story. Think of it. Two thousand dollars for two days of humoring me. Surely you can’t afford to ignore that kind of offer?”
    “What is it with you, lady? You’ve tried just about everything tonight. Bribery, a gun and sex. Just to buy a couple of days’ worth of time here in this flea-bitten shack?”
    “I didn’t try sex!” Honor didn’t know why she felt obliged to clarify that point. The desperate wish to provoke some sort of identifiable male reaction in him hadn’t been a thought-out plan. It had been an instinctive, intuitive action which had nearly backfired. “And you needn’t worry that I’ll try that tactic during the next two days, either. I only want a chance to tell my side of this mess.”
    He looked down at the hand on his arm and Honor immediately withdrew it, folding it tensely into a small fist which she rested against her thigh. When Judd’s eyes met hers again in the shadowy light she could see a trace of the savage gutter she’d elicited a few minutes earlier when she’d taunted him.
    “You did try sex,” Judd growled softly. “And your efforts nearly got you raped. That’s all you would have achieved, Honor, believe me. Taking you physically would not have made me more vulnerable to your arguments and schemes. I want that very clear between us. I want you to understand that seducing me isn’t going to buy you a damn thing except a night in bed with me. It’s certainly not going to convince me not to take you back to Arizona.”
    She flinched under the harsh impact of his words even as she registered the fact that his tone was at last carrying some nuance of emotion. He was still angry at her for causing him to nearly lose his self-control, she realized vaguely. There wasn’t time now to sort out what that might mean, but she stored it away for future reference.
    “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about money. I understand that money probably holds a lot more interest for you under the circumstances,” she retorted.
    Once more a measure of fury, quickly checked, flashed into those raven-dark eyes, but when he spoke again Judd had himself firmly under control. “I’ve told you that you can tell me your story on the trip back to Arizona in the morning. It can’t be that long a tale!”
    “I want more time than the few hours it will take to fly me back to the States!”
    “Time to convince me.”
    “Yes, damn it! Believe it or not, I get the feeling that if I can just drum the truth into your thick skull I might have a chance of surviving this disaster. I’m banking on the fact that you wouldn’t willingly turn me over to people who want to kill me. Not if you know the truth.”
    “What gives you so much faith in my integrity?” he mocked.
    “Maybe it’s not a case of having any faith in your integrity,” she shot back heatedly. “Maybe it’s just a feeling mat you’ve got sense enough to look out