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“She’s still sharp-tongued as a snake, mean-tempered as a mule and headstrong as a goat.”
The foreman smiled with relief as he put the truck in gear.
“She’s gonna be OK, you mean?”
Cade felt the tension flowing out of him as the hospital fell farther and farther behind.
“Yeah,” he said, “she’s going to be fine.”
Angelica lifted her uninjured hand and pounded it against his rock-hard shoulder.
“Dammit,” she cried, “don’t talk about me as if I weren’t here,”
“I want to get her back to Dallas as quickly as possible, Tom.”
“Sure. I understand.”
“Did you hear me? I am right here, I am perfectly capable of—”
“I left my plane at a little airstrip outside Notrees,” Cade said. “Do you know it?”
Tom nodded. “No problem, boss.”
Boss, Angelica thought bitterly, boss! The foreman who’d done his best to ignore her all these months was doing everything but clicking his heels for Cade.
And to think, for a few brief moments when she’d recovered consciousness in that examining room, she’d almost felt grateful toward this man. She had a halfremembered vision of herself lying in his arms while he sucked the venom from her flesh, a memory of his voice, demanding that Tom find a way to make the truck go faster. And she’d thought she could still hear his tender whisper telling her that she would be fine, that he would not permit anything to happen to her.
Apparently, scorpion venom could cause hallucinations!
Angelica shut her eyes. “I hate you, Cade Landon,” she said. She’d meant to shout the words at him but they came out a choked whisper. “I hate you,” she said again.
Cade looked at the woman in his arms. Her hair was a tangle of copper silk, her blouse was dirty, her right arm was in a sling, and a glimmer of dampness was on her forehead.
She was a miserable-tempered, miserable-looking mess—and he needed to kiss her as badly as he needed to breathe.
In a day of illogical happenings, who was he to question yet another one?
“Hate me, then,” he said, and he bent and touched his lips to hers.
He heard Tom’s incredulous gasp, heard the same disbelief echoed in whatever it was Angelica started to say as his mouth took hers.
And then her free arm, the one that had been lying so stiffly around his neck, curved against his flesh. She gave a little shudder, not of fear but of something darker, and it sent an answering tremor racing through Cade’s blood.
He drew her closer to him, reveling in the feel of her body turning soft and warm in his arms, in the way her mouth trembled and opened to his.
“Uh, boss?” Tom’s dry gulp was audible in the stillness. “We’re, uh, we’re here. At the Notrees airstrip.”
Cade blinked. He drew back, looked into Angelica’s face, watched as the sweep of dark lashes fanning her cheeks slowly lifted.
She stared at him in silence, her eyes blurred with confusion. Then she stiffened in his arms and fixed him with a look the Medusa would have envied. It was only luck that kept him from turning to stone.
“I was right about you,” she whispered. “You truly are a contemptible bastard.”
Cade wanted to deny it—but, at the moment, he could only agree.
CHAPTER SIX
AS SOON AS they boarded the Apache, Angelica surprised Cade by opening the vial of pain tablets and gulping two of them down.
“Does your hand hurt?”
“No,” she said in a voice that dripped icicles, “it does not hurt. I took the pills because I had nothing better to do, and I thought they might be fun.”
He looked at her in the faint light of the instrument panel and gave her a smile that more than matched the chill in her words.
“I’ll be satisfied if they keep you quiet,” he said.
And she was quiet. By the time they were airborne, her head was drooping back against the seat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blink, then yawn. Within seconds, she was asleep.
Cade sighed and felt his muscles begin to relax. He loved flying, especially at night. He’d always found a star-filled sky the best place to think about whatever might be on his mind.
Tonight, what was on his mind—what wouldn’t go away—was what had happened when they’d pulled up beside the plane.
Why in hell had he kissed her? It made no sense.
A contemptible bastard, she’d called him.
“Damn,” he muttered in the darkness of the cockpit.
“Contemptible” was surely not the way a man wanted to think of himself. It was definitely not the way he wanted to be described by a woman, even when that woman was Angelica Gordon.
Even worse was the nagging realization that she was right.
He looked at Angelica again, lying curled beside him in sleep. She looked soft, and vulnerable, and almost painfully feminine—which only showed how deceiving looks could be. She was none of those things—or was she? He had tasted the softness of her lips, seen the sudden vulnerability in her eyes, felt the ripeness of her rounded breasts and hips….
He thumped the control wheel with his hand.
“Dammit, Landon!” he growled.
What kind of nonsense was this? There was nothing about Angelica Gordon that appealed to him. She was the very antithesis of what he liked a woman to be; what’s more, she brought out the very worst in him, a strange, primitive desire to subdue and conquer.
For the first time in his life, he understood why a caveman might have hit a woman over the head, then dragged her off to his lair to prove, once and for all, which of them was the master—and, suddenly, it came to him.
He was not contemptible at all. He was desperate, as desperate as any man would be when pushed to the boundaries of sanity by a mean-tempered shrew.
Otherwise, why would he have confused the desire to throttle Angelica Gordon with the desire to kiss her?
And it was all Grant’s fault. Grant was the one who’d sent him on this crazy mission, who’d urged him to move cautiously and discreetly, but then, his brother was a lawyer, and lawyers were notorious for making mountains out of molehills.
Cade’s eyes narrowed. To hell with caution! It was time to trust his instincts.
It was time to call Angelica’s bluff.
Either she produced proof to back up that verbal contract she’d boasted about or he’d smile, say goodbye and turn this entire mess over to the Landon legal eagles.
Let them sort it out. He was an oil man, not a detective, and he had things to do and places to see. He?
?d made it a point never to be tied to one place for too long and certainly not to one woman—and yet here he was, anchored to this place and this woman, and the worst of it was, he didn’t care a damn about either!
London was waiting, and Dumai, where—where…
He frowned. What was that dancer’s name, anyway? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even remember what she looked like.
But she was waiting, that was what mattered.
In the distance, he could see the white runway lights of the small airfield where this endless day had started. He began his descent, satisfied now that he’d decided upon a course of action.
All that remained was to get the incapacitated, sleeping woman beside him home and into bed.
And into bed... The thought sent a rush of heat curling through his blood. He could see himself taking her in his arms, carrying her up the stairs into darkness, then slowly stripping away her clothes.
Contemptible, he thought.
No, a voice inside him whispered, not contemptible. Insane. Staying in this city, dealing with Angelica—the whole thing was crazy.
Goodbye, Dallas, he thought. Goodbye, Angelica Gordon.
And then—hello, sanity.
If he could have patted himself on the back, he’d have done it. Instead, he settled for grinning foolishly at the fast-approaching runway.
* * *
Angelica yawned, stretched—and caught her breath.
Her hand, and her arm, hurt like the dickens.
Frowning, she struggled to get her bearings. She was in a vehicle—a pickup truck—racing swiftly through the night. And beside her, driving it, was the Hero of the Odessa oil fields, Mr. Cade Landon.
She put her uninjured hand to her hair and shoved the tangled mass from her face. If Cade was driving, they must be in Dallas. Yes. She could remember getting into the truck outside the hospital, remember the ride to the Notrees airstrip…
… remember Cade taking her in his arms and kissing her, ignoring her protests, her pleas, her angerBut not her breathless surrender.
She shuddered. Disgusting! How could she have responded to a kiss from that insufferable man? And he was insufferable, no doubt about it, and never mind the movie-star good looks or the kisses that she knew were meant to make such a fool of her.
