Because Of The Ring. Stella Bagwell

he informed her. “And what has my boat got to do with you? She’s not for sale.”

      Claudia met his cool blue gaze and tried not to shiver from the contact. “I’m not interested in buying your boat. It just happened to be the only clue I had to start with.”

      His expression suddenly wary, he stepped toward her. “Start what? Digging into my personal affairs? Are you with some insurance company? Because if you are, I’ll personally toss your little butt right out of here.”

      To her horror, her hand was suddenly itching to slap his face. She, a person who wouldn’t even step on a spider, wanted to inflict bodily pain on another human being! This man was doing something to her and whatever it was had to be bad.

      “I am not with any sort of insurance company. I’m a high school science teacher and I’m here because—” She sucked in a fierce breath, then heaved out the next words. “Because you’re the man I—I can’t get out of my mind!”

      Chapter Two

      The man had the nerve to laugh.

      “Oh, honey, come on, you got some mixed signals somewhere. I never did think I was God’s gift to women. And you shouldn’t, either. In fact, the opposite sex seems to want to take me in small doses. You probably will, too.”

      “I can certainly see why,” Claudia intoned, then stomped toward the door.

      Suddenly he was blocking her path and she teetered back on her heels to keep from plowing into him.

      “Where are you going?”

      Her jaw rigid, she folded her arms across her breasts. “Goodbye, Mr. Bedford. I can’t really say it’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

      His head swung back and forth in a menacing way and Claudia found her gaze sliding from his thick shoulders and wide chest to his long, muscular legs. She’d been around strong, athletic men before, but this man was different. There was something blatantly masculine about him. Something that made her think of procreation rather than recreation.

      Dear heaven, it was time she got out of here, Claudia thought. The last thing she needed was to add sexual fantasies to her visions of the man.

      “No,” he corrected in a voice too smooth to be nice. “You’re not going anywhere just yet. We haven’t gotten this matter straightened out.”

      She arched a haughty brow at him. “There is no matter. I—I found what I was looking for. And that’s the end to it.”

      Wrinkles furrowed his forehead. “You wanted to find me and now that you have, that’s it? You’re going to leave?”

      “That’s about the size of it.”

      “Just a minute,” he muttered, then opening the door, he said to his secretary, “Hold all my calls, Lottie, and radio Vince to let him know I’ll be late getting out to the site.”

      Claudia stood her ground and tried to gather herself together as she waited for him to shut the door. When he finally turned back to her, she said, “I think it’s you who are wasting my time now, Mr. Bedford. I have no intentions of discussing anything else with you! You’re arrogant and assuming and—”

      His features tight, he took her by the arm and this time led her to a long leather couch positioned against one wall of the office.

      “You’re the one who made an appointment to see me,” he reminded her as she sat. “And you’re the one who barged in here and started spouting nonsense.”

      “‘Nonsense’!” she echoed with outrage, then jumped to her feet.

      Immediately, he caught her by the shoulder and pushed her back down to the couch.

      “Stay put!”

      Claudia bounced right back up in his face. “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m leaving! Now step out of my way!”

      Ruefully he shook his head. “I didn’t want to have to do this,” he told her. “But it looks like I don’t have any other choice.”

      Air whooshed from her lungs as she suddenly found herself flattened against his hard chest.

      “What—”

      The question was literally smothered beneath his lips. Unprepared for such an intimate onslaught, she stood paralyzed. Then her mind began to spin and she felt herself going hot and cold, then hot again.

      Her hands formed two fists and she raised them to whack at his shoulders, but they never reached their destinations. Before she could fight back, he pulled his mouth away from hers and grinned down at her.

      “Feel better now?”

      He needed his foot stomped, but she realized she just didn’t have the strength to do it. Kissing this man had left her weak and quivering.

      “I’ve never been so insulted in my life!”

      “Sorry, I’m out of practice.” He lowered his mouth toward hers. “Maybe I should try again.”

      Ducking away from him, Claudia collapsed onto the couch and gulped in several breaths of air. “You’ll do nothing of the sort!”

      He’d been wrong a few moments ago, Hayden realized as he looked down at her. She wasn’t a plain woman. Now that he’d kissed her, every nuance of her soft features had come alive. Fire blazed in her brown eyes, heat burned brightly in her cheeks and passion had pouted her rosy lips to an enchanting curve.

      It would be nice to taste her again, he thought. But he was a busy man and didn’t have time for such pleasantries. Besides, he’d not flirted in years. Not since he was a teenager. A few kisses now would lead his body straight toward the main course. Now that he thought about it, he was already straying in that direction. Why had he kissed her like that? He usually waited until he’d dated the woman! And yet, there was something about this particular woman….

      “All right. Then maybe you’re in the mood for talking,” he said as he took a seat a few inches away from her.

      She scooted to her left to put an even safer distance between them. “I—I don’t think it would do any good to talk now, Mr. Bedford. We’d both be wasting our time.”

      He studied her for a moment as though he was weighing whether this meeting between them actually held any importance. “Perhaps you’re right. But I would like to know one thing. What did you mean when you said you couldn’t get me out of your mind? You don’t know me.”

      Before he could see the bewilderment in her eyes, her gaze dropped to a spot on the hardwood floor. “I suppose I didn’t phrase that quite right. You’re not exactly ‘in my mind.’ I just see you—at odd times.”

      His expression said he was completely confused and Claudia couldn’t blame him. She’d been confused for days now.

      “What does this mean, you see me?”

      She made a palms-up gesture with her hands. “I see you. For no reason at all. Your face comes to me out of nowhere.”

      Baffled, his head swung back and forth. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you first walked into this office, you told me we’d never met.”

      “That’s true. We haven’t.”

      “Then how…how did you know what I looked like? You had a picture? Where did you get it?”

      “I didn’t have any idea what Hayden Bedford looked like until I walked into this office! Look, Mr. Bedford, this isn’t…some crazy infatuation and I’m not stalking you. It’s nothing like that. I’ve been—well, I’ve been very worried and confused because this problem has been going on with me for two or three weeks now and frankly, I want to know why.”

      “Are you—” He rubbed the heels of his palms against his thighs, then