A Self-Made Man. Kathleen O'Brien

to…put me in my place.”

      “Your place, Adam?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t presume to know where your place might be.”

      “Well,” he murmured. “Under your thumb, perhaps?”

      She laughed, a brittle sound that once again reminded him of ice cubes tinkling against crystal. “Actually, the last time I remember thinking about where you should go, it was somewhere considerably farther south. And somewhat warmer.”

      “Oh?” He smiled and let his gaze travel slowly south across her body. He couldn’t help himself. He knew what she meant, of course—that he belonged in the lowest level of Hell. But she wasn’t very good at this game, was she? She had thrust, but the effort had left her exposed.

      In the space of two hot, blinking seconds, she knew how it had sounded. Her eyes widened, and her fingers tightened on the papers they held.

      He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. He waited for the signature cherry-red circles to bloom in her cheeks. She had always been a blusher. She had blushed when Mrs. Bickens called on her in Calculus, when Adam’s fellow construction workers whistled at her as she picked him up after the late shift, when her aunt scolded her for coming in beyond the stroke of midnight….

      And, with an intoxicating innocence that had sent quakes through his entire system, she had blushed in his arms when he undressed her. Though they had been alone in the melting summer darkness, it had taken a dozen murmuring kisses to coax her fingers away from her burning cheeks.

      But, to his surprise, she didn’t blush now. If anything, her strangely immobile face, ivory under its weight of dark hair, grew even more pale.

      She stared at him a long moment and then, slowly, she came around the desk and leaned against the corner. She adjusted her skirt with graceful hands. A wink of silver at her wrist showed beneath her cuff and a scallop of white lace retreated obediently under her hem.

      The shift brought their knees together, separated by no more than a sliver of an inch. It was deliberate—he could see the challenge in her steady gaze. She was completely unaffected, she was assuring him, by both his words and his body.

      “Perhaps we’d better get something straight,” she said in a voice that was commendably even, if not quite natural. “Touring potential investors is part of my job. Don’t flatter yourself that I would let anything you did in the past—last night or ten years ago—keep me from raising money for this hospital.”

      He stared back at her, realizing that suddenly, absurdly, he was angry. Angry at that marble-statue face, at that automaton voice, at those graceful hands that no longer trembled. What a waste. What a criminal waste of sweet fire and flesh and blue-moonlight blushes.

      What the hell had she turned herself into? And, more to the point, why did he give a damn?

      “Don’t worry, Lacy,” he said with another cold grin, this one curving to within an inch of rudeness. “I know you better than to believe you’d ever let anything come between you and a man’s wallet.”

      Had he still been hoping for a reaction? If so, she had bested him again. She merely nodded and returned his smile.

      “Especially a wallet as fat as yours,” she agreed concisely. Without waiting for a reaction, she stood. “Shall we get started?”

      From then on, it was all business. Without stumbling over a single syllable or a single threshold, she led him through gleaming sterile corridors and into crisply organized offices, delivering as they went one of the most comprehensive sales pitches he’d ever witnessed. From exotic medical terminology to infant mortality statistics, from estimated square footage to anticipated funding partners and percentages, she covered her material so thoroughly that whenever she turned to him with a politely inquisitive smile, inviting questions, he couldn’t think of a single one.

      Except perhaps…when did this happen to you, Lacy? Do you remember how, back at old man Morgan’s department store, you were so shy you could hardly look at the customers while you counted out their change?

      But of course he didn’t ask any such thing. He already knew the answer. No. She didn’t remember.

      She introduced him to doctors and administrators, even a patient or two, apologizing gracefully each time for interrupting their busy schedules, though apologies clearly weren’t necessary. Mrs. Malcolm Morgan was obviously welcome anywhere in this hospital. Two particularly athletic obstetricians, Adam observed wryly, nearly plowed down a maternity ward nurse in their rush to guarantee that they’d intersect Lacy’s path.

      Forty-five minutes later, the tour ended up in a wood-paneled conference room, hung from door to door with expensively framed blueprints. In the center of the room, an intricate maze of miniature cobalt and gray buildings sprouted like some geometric fungus across a huge mahogany table.

      “The finished product,” she said, waving two elegant, peach-tipped fingers at the table. “Designed by Prescher and Osteen. You may remember them—they’ve been the premier architects on Pringle Island for generations.”

      “I remember,” he said, strolling casually by the little painted boxes and dollhouse shrubs. He flicked a very real dead fly from the pretend sidewalk, then tilted a half-cocked grin up at her. “How is good old Biff? Did his daddy’s plastic surgeons ever sand that kink out of his nose?”

      But even that didn’t ruffle her. God, she was good. Or maybe, he thought, it wasn’t an act. Maybe she didn’t even remember why he had smashed Biff Prescher’s nose after basketball practice, out behind the gym with the entire basketball team standing around, watching.

      “Biff’s doing well,” she said smoothly. “He lives in Seattle, with his wife and four children. I haven’t seen his nose in years. It’s Biff’s father, actually, who was the architect here. You may remember old Mr. Prescher?”

      His fingers twitched slightly as he followed the curving lines of the little parking lot. “Sorry, never met him. Somehow I guess our paths just never crossed at the University Club. And I don’t think he ever showed up at my office behind the gymnasium for a nose job.”

      She raised her eyebrows gently. To his surprise, she reached out and touched the back of his hand with the silky pad of one forefinger. More proof of how impervious she was, no doubt. He waited.

      “Really, Adam,” she said chidingly, hitting a sophisticated note of well-meaning detachment with her well-modulated voice. Deliberately casting herself as a distant friend, a sympathetic stranger… Anything but what she was, a old lover with burning embers strewn at her feet.

      “Really what, Lacy?” His eyes met hers.

      “It’s just that… This bad-boy-redux act is a bit much, don’t you think?” She tapped his knuckles one at a time. “See? No bruises. No torn, swollen skin. I’d say these hands haven’t broken any noses in a long, long time.”

      He grinned. “Or maybe I’m just much better at it these days.”

      She shook her head. “In that suit? I doubt it. We’re past that now, Ad—”

      He flipped his hand over so fast she didn’t have time to gasp, and he caught her wrist in his palm. She looked shocked, as if she’d been carelessly touching a branch that turned out to be a snake.

      “Don’t kid yourself, Lacy,” he said, bending across Prescher Senior’s toy-block kingdom, not caring if he crushed a tower or two. “We’re not past anything. I told you—this is just a uniform. Pockets full or empty, I’m still the same man, and I still don’t care much for snobs. Or hypocrites, no matter how slick and pretty they are.”

      She was rallying, but the effort was costing her. He watched the column of her throat adjust as she swallowed her natural reactions of both fear and anger. Her blue eyes lost their strain, rounding instead in an artificially mild enquiry.

      “Dear me,” she said softly. “How frighteningly macho…. Should I look into acquiring a helmet and face mask—to