Page 168 of Homeport

The needs that kindled inside her were outrageous, and she was afraid they wouldn’t help either of them.

“You’re not like them.” She pressed her cheek to his before the kiss could weaken her too much.

“Well, not tonight anyway.” He picked up the bottle, handed it to her. “There, that’s a hundred percent profit for you.”

There was a relief in it, he realized. The kind a man feels when he whips the wheel of his car just before plunging off a cliff. “I’m going to go to a meeting before I go home.” He puffed out a breath. “Annie, about tomorrow night. It would mean a lot to me if you’d change your mind and come.”

“Andrew, you know I don’t fit in with all those fancy art people.”

“You fit with me. Always have.”

“Saturday nights are busy.” Excuses, she thought. Coward. “I’ll think about it. I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll walk you back.” He rose, took her hand again. “Annie, come tomorrow.”

“I’ll think about it,” she repeated without any intention of doing so. The last thing she wanted to do was go up against Elise on the woman’s turf.

twenty-seven

“You need to get out of here.”

Miranda glanced up from her desk, where she was buried in a sea of papers, saw Ryan watching her from the doorway. “At this moment, I basically live here.”

“Why do you feel you have to do all of this yourself?”

She ran her pencil between her fingers. “Is there something wrong with the way it’s being done?”

“That’s not what I said.” He walked over, laid his palms on the desk and leaned toward her. “You don’t have to prove anything to her.”

“This isn’t about my mother. This is about making certain that tomorrow night is a success. Now I have several more details to see to.”

He reached over, plucked the pencil out of her hand and snapped it in two.

She blinked, stunned by the ripe and ready temper in his eyes. “Well, that was mature.”

“It’s more mature than doing the same to that stiff neck of yours.”

If she’d held a silver shield and lowered it between them, it would have been no less tangible a block than the way her face closed up.

“Don’t you shut me out. Don’t you sit there and play with one of your ubiquitous lists as if there’s nothing more important to you than the next item to be crossed off. I’m not a fucking item, and I know just what’s going on inside you.”

“Don’t swear at me.”

He turned on his heel and started for the door. She expected him to go straight through, to keep going, as others had. Instead he slammed the door, locked it. She got shakily to her feet.

“I have no idea why you’re so angry.”

“Don’t you? You think I didn’t see your face when I told you where that e-mail had come from? Do you really believe you’re so in control, Dr. Jones, that the devastation doesn’t show?”

It was killing him. Her complexities and complications were killing him. He didn’t want them, he thought furiously. He didn’t want to find himself constantly compelled to fight his way through to her.

“I don’t believe I in any way attempted to kill the messenger,” she began.

“Don’t take that private-school tone with me either, it doesn’t work. I saw your face when your mother walked in. How everything inside you went on hold. Cold storage.”

That got through, and stung. Brutally. “You asked me to accept the strong possibility that my mother used me, betrayed me, had me terrorized. That she’s involved in a major art theft that’s already resulted in three deaths. You asked me to do that, then you criticize the way I choose to deal with it.”

“I’d rather have seen you shove her on her ass and demand an explanation.”

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