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I need some time."
    "Three weeks, to be precise, right? You want to see if I’m going to file for divorce after we take the company public. You want to see if this courtship and marriage have merely been a clever business ploy."
    "That’s part of it," she admitted in a choked voice. "But mostly I just want time to be sure of what I’m doing."
    "Angie, don’t forget the fact that your parents approved of this marriage. Your father and brother had no problem with the idea of doing the merger and the wedding at the same time. You know your family would never have gone for the idea of you marrying me if they hadn’t believed you’d be happy."
    "I know. What I don’t know is how good you might have been at convincing them that you really care for me. Don’t you understand?" Her voice rose in frustration. "That’s the problem. There’s just too much I don’t know about you."
    "Like what?" Owen demanded.
    "I want to meet your family and find out the reasons none of them could be bothered to come to the wedding. I want to think about the fact that you kept the merger a secret from me. I feel I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind and now I want a chance to get my feet on the ground and make up my mind about our relationship."
    "And you don’t feel you’ll be able to think clearly if you’re sleeping with me?" he demanded, his fingers still clamped on her shoulder. "Is that it?"
    "Yes, that’s it."
    "Damn it, Angie," he muttered, "you don’t know what you’re doing."
    "I know. That’s why I want time to think."
    Owen shook his head ruefully. "That’s not quite what I mean." He tugged her gently against him. Her body was stiff and unyielding, but he felt her tremble. He wondered what would happen if he kissed her. She was so responsive to his touch…. "My family is not going to be a good advertisement for me, honey. I see as little of them as possible myself."
    "Owen, that sounds awful," she said into his shirt.
    "I know. You say that because you Townsends are really into family. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is."
    "But don’t you see? Sooner or later I’ll have to deal with your family. I need to know what I’m getting into."
    "Angie, I want you to trust me on this. Let me handle my family and the business. You just concentrate on being my wife and everything will work out fine."
    "You’re forgetting something, Owen," she said quietly. "That phone call tonight proves that you can’t separate our relationship from the business of Sutherland and Townsend."
    She had a point, and Owen knew it. He had kept the choice of which hotel he would be using for the honeymoon completely confidential, just as he and Palmer had kept the merger confidential. Yet
    someone had learned both secrets and had used them to drive a wedge between himself and Angie.
    "And I seriously doubt that we can ignore your family, either," Angie continued. "No matter how much you want."
    "We can give it a damn good try," he muttered.
    She stirred restlessly against him and lifted her head. Her eyes were stark in the pale light that filtered from the hotel room. "And there’s something else we have to resolve, Owen. Something I hadn’t allowed myself to examine too closely until tonight."
    "Damn. This list is getting a little tedious, isn’t it? What else do you need time to think about besides my family and my business and my honorable intentions?"
    She took a deep breath and looked at him, her face more sweetly serious than Owen had seen it. "I need to know if you really love me, Owen. That’s actually the only thing on the list, when you get right down to it. Everything else I’m wondering about stems from that basic question. I don’t know the answer."
    His insides clenched. "Angie, I’ve told you, you’re everything I want and need in a wife."
    "Yes, but do you love me? That’s what we need to find out. And then we need to see if you can admit it to me and to yourself. I need to discover if your feelings toward me are merely a