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the rush of need to retreat.
    “Better?” he asked. She nodded. He applied
the antibiotic cream and carefully positioned the bandage into
place. “All done.”
    “Thank you.” Paige shifted to cover herself
with the robe.
    Before his brain could issue the command to
stop, Nathan had caught the fluffy material in his fingers and
slipped it back down. He dropped a light kiss on her shoulder next
to the clean, white bandage. “All better now,” he whispered. Desire
pooled hot and heavy below his belt.
    Paige whirled to face him, the robe still
hanging off one delicate shoulder. He’d have happily traded ten
years of his life just to touch that shoulder and allow his hand to
slip beneath the fabric and cup her breast.
    Her eyes searched his. He saw the questions.
Saw the hesitation before she reached out and touched his tense
jaw. Nathan closed his eyes and allowed himself this one small,
temporary pleasure. Years of want only she could assuage welled
inside him until he felt ready to explode. He shuddered. Pain he
couldn’t bear to feel again stiffened his already rigid
muscles.
    “Nathan, we need to talk.”
    Her soft voice made his eyes open. He looked
at her sweet face. The face he’d dreamed of, been haunted by for as
long as he could remember. Reality shot through him like a piercing
arrow. She would never be his. She’d only hurt him again. He
recoiled from her touch. The anger that always hovered just below
the surface erupted. “What do we have to talk about?” he
snarled.
    Paige blinked and backed away from him. He
ignored the pain that stabbed at his heart when he watched in the
emotion in her eyes turn to something resembling
disappointment.
    “We need to settle this thing between us. The
past.” Her voice sounded small and hesitant, “We need to—”
    Nathan snorted in disgust, cutting her off.
“I’ve got better things to do.” He turned away and strode out the
bathroom door and across the bedroom.
    “Wait! Nathan, I mean it. We need to talk
about… things ,” Paige pleaded, right on his heels.
    Nathan whipped around to face her. “What do
you want to talk about, Paige? Your father, the big-shot attorney
who thinks his money can buy anything?” His rage had reached a
dangerous level, but he couldn’t slow its ascent. “Or maybe you
want to talk about the way you left and never came back…until…” He
swallowed hard, then forced himself to continue. “Or better yet,
let’s talk about the way you threw yourself at me after my mother’s
funeral. Now there’s a hot topic.”
    “I can’t believe you said that.” Her eyes
filled with tears.
    “That night meant a great deal to me even if
it meant nothing to you.” Her lips trembled, then tightened.
    Nathan laughed, a rude, grating sound. “Why’d
you do it, Paige? Sympathy? Trying to make me feel better because
I’d lost the only family I had in this world?” His words contained
all the bitterness that had consumed him for far too long. “Or
maybe you just wanted to see if you could still have me?”
    Nathan caught her wrist before her palm
connected with his jaw. He jerked her close. “I guess you don’t
want to talk after all.”
    “I hate you, Nathan Blackrope,” she shouted.
Her shoulders shook with the outrage he saw in her eyes. Tears
brimmed, ready to fall past her thick lashes.
    “Good. Don’t you ever forget it, either.”
Dangerously close to making the monumental mistake of kissing her
again and begging her not to hate him, he flung her wrist from his
grasp and stormed out of her room.
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    Paige regarded the food that sat before her
with complete disinterest. Silas Dutton sat across the table,
pretending not to notice her somber mood. Paige stabbed a lettuce
leaf and brought the fork to her mouth, but couldn’t bring herself
to eat. Nathan’s words still rang in her ears. Don’t you ever
forget it, either, he’d said. He wanted her to hate him. Maybe
that meant he hated her as