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  He struck all the wrong chords within her, making her furious. Why couldn’t she hang on to that and conquer this weakness that held her captive? Why did she let him make her want to abandon everything else just for the taste of his mouth on hers?

  As far as Pierce was concerned, Amanda was madness, sheer madness in an impossibly rumpled blue suit. Yet something within Pierce ached to take possession of her, to plunge himself into her and somehow purge himself of all the shadows that lived within him. That haunted him. He had been able to walk away from every other woman without so much as a backward glance.

  What was there about this one that kept him coming back for more?

  He felt her attempt to wrench away and instinctively reached to hold her against him. Swallowing a curse, he made his fingers go slack and released her. He wasn’t going to take by force what wasn’t willingly offered to him. He wouldn’t lower himself to that degree.

  He didn’t need her that much.

  He didn’t need anyone that much.

  Breathing hard, Amanda somehow found the strength to push him away. The outline of her lips blurred with the imprint of his, her eyes wild, she glared at him, hating him for making her want him this way.

  “Is that your answer to everything?” she demanded.

  He considered his answer slowly so that she wouldn’t see the effect she’d had on him. It was worse than stupid to feel like this because of a woman, and yet, he felt his blood drumming in his ears, humming in his veins, like a mantra chant.

  And the chant was her name.

  “My answer to life is to take opportunities when they happen, or be sorry.”

  Like a cornered animal, she pressed her back against the wall, watching him for any sudden moves. “I’m not an opportunity and I won’t be taken.”

  Pierce gave her a look that spoke volumes.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “My hormones are reacting to you, nothing else. That’s not a reason to base something on.”

  Pierce smiled slowly, his eyes dragging over her body as if he was already familiar with it.

  “A few hours pleasure,” he countered. It was all he wanted, he told himself again, nothing more. A few hours and then she’d ceased to throb under his skin. He’d made himself believe it.

  A few hours. That would be all he’d want, she thought with another pang of disappointment. “I’m not in it for a few hours. I’ve got a lifetime goal.”

  He shook his head, his nonchalance rankling her. “Sorry, I’m a moment-to-moment type of person.” This was his cue to walk. Why wasn’t he doing it? Instead, he remained where he was, looking into her eyes, as much mesmerized as mesmerizing. “Why don’t we take it that way?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Your way?”

  He inclined his head. He didn’t bother telling her that it was always his way, or no way at all. Those were the rules. For now, he’d let her think it was a fifty-fifty deal. “It’s a start.”

  She edged closer to the door. She needed space when she was near him and the den was far too confining. “I said I don’t want to start anything.”

  When she reached the doorway, Pierce rubbed his thumb along her cheek. “Too late, Mandy, it’s already started.” He sighed patiently. “Since you won’t go to bed with me tonight—“

  “Ever.”

  “—tonight,” he repeated, “why don’t you go out with me tomorrow? Borquiese had extra tickets to a jazz concert at D’Jazz Club. He gave me two.”

  Borquiese did the reviews at six and had access to the hottest tickets in town. But she couldn’t get over Pierce’s gall. How could he stand there waving tickets in front of her and expect her to jump at them, and him, after he had invaded her privacy and tried to use her for a news story? “You’re asking me out?”

  “I just said that.”

  “After what you’ve done—?”

  “What I’ve done,” he interjected before she could continue with her tirade, “was be a good reporter. Even you can’t fault me for that, Mandy. Persistence is the essence of being a good investigative reporter.” He placed the flat of his hand on the wall above her head, leaning into her. Trapping her again. “You read the reporter handbook, you know that.”

  Amanda looked up at his hand. “Persistence,” she repeated.

  “Yeah.”

  There came a time, she thought, when one had to pretend to accept the inevitable if one was to survive. “Does that mean that you’re going to keep popping up whenever I turn around?”

  Smart lady. Pierce grinned mockingly. “What do you think?”

  Amanda sighed. She was a woman about to step off the edge of a cliff but unable to stop herself. She wondered if lemmings experienced this sort of a feeling just before they dropped off into the sea.

  “I think that I had better go out with you and get this over with so you can get this out of your system.”

  “In that case—“ He took her hand.

  She knew exactly what he was thinking, and tired or not, she wasn’t about to give in. She pulled her hand out of his. “No.”

  He shrugged as if it made no difference to him whether it was now or later. The look in his eyes told her that he knew that eventually it was going to become a reality.

  “Have it your way.”

  What Amanda was afraid of was that when the time came, it would be her way. And that her way would be to give in to him. And herself.

  She was asking for trouble.

  Like a child fascinated with the flare of a match she had struck, Amanda couldn’t make herself look away from his eyes. She knew that part of her, the part that probably had a death wish, wanted to go out with him. But she could lay some ground rules.

  “And we don’t talk about Whitney.”

  Something akin to contempt curved his mouth. “Protective of him, aren’t you?”

  He wouldn’t make her ashamed of that. “Very.” She laid down the second term. “And I won’t be pumped for information.”

  He leaned closer, cutting off her air. “I have no intentions of pumping you.” Pierce paused pregnantly before continuing. “For information.”

  Panic began to fray the edges of her nerves. What was she thinking of? Going out with Pierce? Willingly? That was like agreeing to coat her body with honey and then running into a caveful of bears. She was obviously too exhausted to think rationally.

  “Look, forget it—“

  Pierce laid a finger to her lips. “Sorry, all promises are final and binding.”

  She jerked her head back. “I didn’t promise.”

  No, not in so many words. But he wasn’t listening to words. “Your eyes did.”

  She wasn’t going to allow him to talk to her like this, to undermine her as if she were some sophomoric high school girl. She’d learned too many lessons for that. “Leave my eyes out of this.”

  “If only I could, Mandy,” he said soulfully. “If only I could.”

  She sighed. Maybe she hadn’t learned anything at all. “What time should I be ready?”

  He grinned. She was great for straight lines. “All the time, Mandy. All the time.” He saw her face cloud over and decided not to push his luck any further tonight. “But the concert starts at six. I’ll pick you up at five.”

  She nodded.

  Suddenly, she was almost too tired to stand. It was time to get him out of here. “I’ll walk you to the door.” She began to head toward the front of the house.

  He followed her and laughed. “Don’t trust me, do you, Mandy?”

  Reaching the door, she opened it and smiled at him sweetly. “As long as we understand each other.”

  He let her ease him into the doorway, then turned to look at her. He studied her eyes for a moment. He saw a vulnerability there as well as weariness. But he also saw something else. Something that shimmered and called to him. A passion that was kindred to his.

  Just a matter of time.

  “I think we do, Mandy, more than you’re willing to admit.”

  Amanda closed the d
oor firmly behind him. She would have slammed it, but then she would have woken Carla and Christopher up, and she was in no mood to deal with sly questions or suddenly energized two-year-olds.

  She stared at the closed door, seeing Pierce through it. She was making a mistake, she thought. A tremendous one. Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, she was going to rethink this and find a way out. She wasn’t about to go unarmed into his verbal tap dance. The man could probably talk the Queen Mother into doing a striptease at a Shriners’ Convention.

  Right now, she was far too tired, too vulnerable, too confused to think, much less to hold her own. She’d agreed, she told herself as she slowly walked to her bedroom, only to get rid of him. Her mind and her body felt as if they had just gone over the falls in a barrel and been dashed against the rocks. She’d just barely escaped with her life intact.

  Tomorrow, when she was feeling alive again, she’d find a way to get out of the “date from hell” that her evening with Pierce promised to be. Tonight all she wanted was her pillow. And maybe a bed under her.

  An empty bed, she added silently, glancing over her shoulder at the closed door.

  A multitude of emotions warred within Pierce as he drove away from Amanda’s. He wasn’t used to this. He liked his thoughts just the way he liked his women. Free, with no demands.

  Pierce turned his car toward the Sin Pit. He needed a drink. And noise to numb his thoughts. He wasn’t acting like himself, or feeling like himself either.

  Without completely understanding why, he found himself being jealous of Granger, of the loyalty he inspired within Amanda. Even if she hadn’t been to bed with the man—and Pierce had his doubts about the truth of that—Amanda cared about Granger, cared about the man with a quiet, steady passion Pierce had never known.

  For the first time, he knew that he wanted something like that in his life, just as he knew that he would never attain it.

  Preoccupied, Pierce almost went through a red light. He slammed his foot on the brake, and his car fishtailed as it came to a screeching stop more than a foot over the street’s white boundary lines.

  More tired than he realized, he scrubbed his hand over his face. Like some kind of witch who had the inside track on his mind, Amanda was scrambling his brain. The sooner he got her in bed, the sooner this temporary madness would ease away and he could think straight again.

  He wanted her out of his system.

  No other woman had ever had him leaping through hoops like this before. He’d never pushed like this before, not for a woman. He’d been available and they had always done the rest.

  Amanda was different.

  Maybe wanting her was the sign of some sort of early mid-life crisis, although he figured he should have been spared that. God knew he’d had enough crises when he was younger to have filled up his dance card. God should have found someone else to torture.

  That was assuming there was a God, he thought cynically as he approached the dim lights of the Sin Pit.

  And he didn’t. He’d long since given up believing in a deity who would allow the atrocities he’d seen. Better to believe in nothing than to feel that there was a power over him with such a cold disregard for the life He’d created.

  But if there actually was a God, Pierce thought vaguely as he parked his Car, He had one hell of a sense of humor.

  Pierce got out and went in search of about the only thing that did seem to make sense at the moment: a shot of whiskey.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She’d changed three times, from jeans into the yellow spaghetti-strapped sheath, into jeans again, and then finally back into her dress. The jeans represented her staying home, the dress her going. Her emotions were in a state of complete upheaval as her common sense warred with her sense of adventure.

  Common sense won. She was on her way back into her bedroom, to change into her jeans, when the doorbell rang.

  Amanda was across the room instantly, pulling the door open. Her apology was on her lips before she even looked at Pierce. “I’m sorry, but you drove over here for nothing. I’m not going.”

  His eyes slid over her and registered approval. She was wearing a dress that begged him to peel her out of it. Each short breath she took raised her breasts invitingly up for his pleasure.

  “You look like you’re going.”

  She wasn’t accustomed to seeing him look like this. In fact, she had never seen him dressed in anything but casual clothing and pullover shirts that strained against his muscles. Right now, he was wearing a navy sports jacket, gray slacks, and a shirt that was just the first hint of pink.

  Seeing him made refusing more difficult. Amanda searched for strength. She had to be resolute in her decision.

  “I’m not.”

  Pierce looked into her eyes and made a decision. Crossing the threshold, he looked around the living room.

  “Where’s your purse?” There was a small beaded clutch purse lying on the sofa. He walked over and picked it up, then held it aloft. “This it?”

  Amanda swallowed, not knowing whether to be angry or afraid. He was usurping her authority—and reading between the lines.

  “Yes, but—“

  He tossed the purse to her casually. Amanda just managed to catch it as he crossed back to her. “Have you told your baby-sitter where you’re going to be?”

  “Home,” Amanda insisted. “And she’s not a babysitter, she’s a—“

  “A home engineer, specializing in preadults. Yes, I know.” He was tired of euphemisms and titles that put ribbons on the truth. Nobody was a janitor or a housewife anymore. As far as he was concerned, there was no shame in honest work. “You women, with your galloping need to be independent and have your existence justified.” He gave a disparaging shake of his head. “Carla?” he called out.

  He needn’t have bothered raising his voice. Carla was in the next room, listening to every word. He figured she would be. She hurried in, her eyes eager and all over him. “Yes?”

  Pierce placed a proprietary hand on Amanda’s arm. Amanda shook him off. It didn’t faze him. “Mandy and I are going to a concert at D’Jazz Club. If you need the number for some reason, call information.”

  He saw the pad Christopher had been scribbling on earlier. A spilled box of crayons lay next to it. He selected one and wrote down a series of numbers in magenta.

  “Here, this is my number. Leave a message if you need to.” He winked at the woman as he handed her the pad and crayon. “And don’t wait up.”

  Carla giggled, clearly envying Amanda the evening that lay ahead.

  Amanda didn’t feel like a person who should be envied. She felt as if she were a person under siege. She glared at Pierce. Who the hell did he think he was?

  “You can’t just take over like this.”

  Contradicting her words, Piece took her hand and drew her out the door. “I just did.” He shut the door behind them, then looked at her.

  Amanda saw something in his eyes that she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  “Look,” he began honestly. “I don’t often dress up for a woman. This jacket’s uncomfortable.” He rotated his shoulders as if to prove how confining he found it. “And I’m not in the best of moods.” He opened the passenger car door and gestured for her to get in. “So—“

  Against her better judgment, Amanda got in. “Where’s your tie?”

  He didn’t answer her until he got in on his side. “I don’t own a tie.” He turned on the ignition. “Ties are for hanging people with.” He guided the car out of her driveway. “We’d better get going. Traffic at this time of night can be pretty heavy.”

  Amanda sat back, but she couldn’t bring herself to relax. This was a mistake; she felt it in every part of her body. “There’s a penalty for kidnapping,” she reminded him nonchalantly.

  He slanted her a look just before taking a turn. “There’s one for murder, too, but I’m not planning to do either—unless I’m provoked.”

  Amanda worked at unknotting her hands. They wer
e going to a crowded outdoor theater. There was nothing to worry about, except rain.

  “Are you always this charming?’

  “No.” He swore as he just missed a light. It gave him a moment to look at her again. Dusk was beginning to paint wide, dark strokes across the sky. It created a more intimate environment. He felt desire tightening its hold. “But I’ve never had to cajole a woman before.”

  It was a line; she knew it was a line. And yet, she couldn’t suppress the smile the words generated. “Poor baby.”

  Her mouth, even at this angle, was sensuous and tempting. “I’m counting on you to stroke my ego later.”

  “I hope you know how to count to a very high number, Alexander.”

  Pierce stepped on the accelerator and laughed.

  The restaurant was softly lit, hushed, and came as a complete surprise. She had expected him to bring her to the Sin Pit after the concert. Instead, he’d brought her to The Islander, a restaurant known for its good food, its excellent service, and its very high prices. She didn’t know whether to be impressed or very, very wary.

  She was a little of both.

  Amanda toyed with her second glass of champagne. The sparkling wine went down with amazing ease and helped to soothe her nerves. She realized that she’d been enjoying herself for most of the evening. Wonder of wonders.

  Who was this man sitting across from her? She’d been so sure she knew at the outset of the evening. Now she was beginning to think she hadn’t a clue.

  “I had no idea you liked jazz.”

  The light from the candle on their table was trapped in the sphere of her earrings, shining there like tiny moonbeams. He watched, fascinated.

  “You didn’t ask.” His voice was slow, measured, flowing like molasses. It coated her completely. “When I was a kid, sometimes I’d sneak out of my grandmother’s house and go listen to the jam sessions that went on at The Club down the river.”

  Like a child listening to a bedtime story, Amanda felt herself being drawn in, wanting to know more. “What was the club called?”