AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Humming happily, Angelica turned her attention to the room’s fixtures. The shower was grand, a big glass enclosure with spray heads everywhere.
Ah, but the tub was something else entirely. It was a sunken oval of shiny black that looked as if it could accommodate a family of four without crowding—and it had a hand-spray attachment. She could wash her hair, rinse it, then sit in the water until her toes began to shrivel.
She smiled as she turned on the taps. A long, luxurious soak would go a long way toward making her feel more human.
Still humming, she plucked tiny packets of scented bubble bath and shampoo from a small wicker basket on the vanity. Her injured hand hampered her a little, but eventually she managed to tear open the bubble bath and pour it into the rapidly filling tub.
Angelica shut off the water, stepped carefully down into the tub and sighed with pleasure. She bathed quickly, washed her hair despite the occasional twinges of pain in her hand, and then, at last, she lay back and closed her eyes.
It was heaven, letting the bubble-filled water lap gently over her breasts while the music streamed down over her like a waterfall of sound…
“Angelica!”
Her eyes flew open. Cade was standing in the bathroom doorway. With a cry of outrage, she sank lower into the bubbles.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked. “You get the hell out of this bathroom!”
“What are you doing in that tub?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Damn you, Cade, get out!”
“The hell I will!” He folded his arms over his chest, his face stony. “You were supposed to be napping.”
“Do you have difficulty understanding English? Get out of this room!”
“But were you napping?” he continued nastily. “No, you were not!”
“And how did you find that out?” Angelica demanded. “By sneaking into my room!”
“I thought to look in and see how you were doing.”
“Ha!”
“I knocked, but you didn’t answer. So I opened your door-”
“And you decided to come barging into my bathroom!”
“I heard noise coming from the bathroom,” he said coldly, “and even though I knocked again—” He leached up and punched the button on the TV set. A tense silence filled the room. “Dammit, Angelica, for all I knew you’d fallen and broken your fool neck!”
“The only neck that’s going to be broken is yours, if you don’t turn around and get out of here!”
“What in hell’s wrong with you?” A look of thunderous disapproval spread across his face. “Weren’t you paying attention when we discussed this?”
“Are you deaf, Cade?” She pointed her hand at the door. “Go away!”
“You said you’d call me if you needed me,” he growled as he started toward her. “You said—”
“I said no such thing.” She slid lower in the concealing bubbles. “No one says much when you’re around. You do all the talking.”
“You could have gotten dizzy. You could have fallen. Knowing your track record, you could have drowned! Hell, this morning you were determined to burn down your house.”
“I was not. Besides, I was ill then. I’m fine now, and…” She took a ragged breath, then spat out a word never used by anyone at Miss Palmer’s Academy. “What am I doing, explaining myself to you? If you don’t get out of here this instant, I’m going to scream.”
“So scream,” he said coldly, and snatched a bath towel from the heated rack. “See if I give a damn. See if anybody gives a damn! Go on, scream and let the staff and the guests come running. Let them crowd in here and then maybe you can tell all of us why you’re so pigheaded.”
“I don’t have to explain anything to anybody, Cade Landon! I am my own person.”
“You mean, you’re your own worst enemy. Come on, woman. Get out of that tub.”
“Get out of this bathroom!”
Cade’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’ve got five seconds to get moving.”
“I’m not going anywhere, not until you’re on the other side of that door.”
“Five seconds, or I’ll come in and get you.”
She stared at him, enraged.
“One,” he said.
Would he do it? No. Not even Cade Landon was that crazy.
“Two.”
For one thing, he was fully dressed.
“Three.”
For another, he had to know that she would sooner drown than let him drag her from the tub.
“Four.”
On the other hand, this was the man who’d spent the night in her bedroom, who’d all but blackmailed her into moving into this hotel…
“Five. That’s it, sugar. Here I come.”
“Damn you, Cade!” Angelica touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “You cannot really expect me to—to get out of this tub and into that towel while you hold it.”
“Can’t I?” His lips drew back from his teeth. “It’s bad enough I’m going to have to pick up yesterday’s hospital bill, but if you expect me to pay the fees when you step out of that tub, slip and break your silly neck, you’d better think again.”
“What I think,” Angelica said, her voice trembling, “is that it’s always best to placate a madman!” She looked at the towel in his hands. Stretched to its limits, it was almost the size of a blanket. “Lift that towel higher. And if you so much as touch me, I’ll scratch out your eyes.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he snapped. “I prefer my women with at least a modicum of femininity.”
He lifted the towel. She took a breath, rose and stepped quickly from the tub. With one deft movement, she stepped into the towel, snatched it from him, wrapped it around herself and knotted it above her breasts.
“I am out of the tub,” she said. “Now you get out of this bathroom. And out of my bedroom. I am going to dry off, get dressed, go home and lock my door. Tomorrow, I will be at the office at whatever hour you like. And I will stay there until whatever hour you like.” Her chin shot forward. “And if you harass me or threaten me or do any of the impossible things you’ve done in the last twenty-four hours, so help me, I’ll—I’ll bring charges against you!”
He didn’t move.
“I don’t understand you,” he said, shaking his head. “Is it beyond you to accept help when you need it?”
“Help? Is that what you call your—your interference? You don’t offer help, Cade. You control, you command, you try to take over another person’s life!”
Cade’s mouth narrowed. “I do not.”
“You do. It’s the truth, but you d
on’t give a damn about the truth!” She glared at him. “You don’t give a damn about anything I say, because I’m a woman! If I were a man—”
Cade grabbed her by the shoulders. “If you were a man, I wouldn’t be in this mess! I’d have driven you home last night, poured you a shot of whiskey and said listen, pal, hire yourself a housekeeper and send the bill to me.”
“Well? Why didn’t you?” Angelica lifted her chin in defiance. “What does my sex have to do with anything?”
The question jolted him with its directness. What did it have to do with anything? She was a woman, yes, a gorgeous woman—but she wasn’t the type that appealed to him. She was a copper-curled spitfire and nothing would ever matter half as much to her as her own ambition.
His hands tightened on her, and suddenly he knew the answer.
Angelica Gordon was nothing he wanted—and everything he had to have. Hell, he’d known it all the time, but he’d refused to admit it.
There would be no peace for him until he took Angelica Gordon to bed and subdued her in the oldest way a man could subdue a woman.
Then she’d be out of his system, and for good.
Something of what he was thinking must have showed in his face. He could tell by the sudden intake of her breath, by the way a pulse leaped to nervous life in the hollow of her throat.
“Cade,” she said, “Cade, I’m warning you—”
Hell, it was what they needed from each other, what all the pettiness and snarling was about. It was about being oil and water, yin and yang, fire and ice, it was nothing but a hot, physical need that had been eating at them both from the beginning.
And there was only one way to put an end to it.
“Cade,” Angelica said again, and he smiled.
“What?” he said. His voice sounded thick; his tongue felt thick, as if he were drunk. And he was. He was drunk on the remembered taste of that rosebud mouth, that creamy skin. “What are you warning me about, sugar?”
“I’m—I’m warning you not to—not to…”
She caught her breath as his hands moved against her skin. His fingers were callused and rough; the sensations they drew from her nerve endings sent a race of flame along her flesh.
“Cade,” she said.
