As she rose from her desk and discarded her glasses, she tried to figure out why she had no desire to lock herself in her room. She’d never liked conflict and never been all that good at it—witness her dismal skirmishes with Jerry Miles. Maybe she wasn’t anxious to avoid this battle because it would be with Cal. All her life she’d been so polite, so dignified, so careful not to offend. But Cal was impatient with politeness, unimpressed by dignity, and impervious to offense. She didn’t have to watch what she said or mind her manners. She could simply be herself. As she crossed the room, her pulses hummed, and her brain cells went on full alert. She felt completely and wondrously alive.
From the foyer below, Cal watched her approach the top of the stairs. Her trim little butt swayed from side to side inside her slacks, and her green knit top emphasized a pair of breasts so unimpressive in their size he couldn’t figure out why he was so anxious to set eyes on them. Her hair, pulled away from her face with barrettes like an upper-crust schoolgirl’s, swung back and forth, as saucy as her mouth.
She looked down at him, but instead of being scared as she should have been, he could swear he saw a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Somebody looks mad,” she drawled, all spunk and sass.
“You—” He slammed his hands on his hips. “—are going to pay for this.”
“What are you gonna do, big guy? Spank me?”
Just like that, he got hard. Damn it! How did she keep doing this to him? And what kind of kinky talk was that for a respectable college professor?
An unwilling vision of that sweet little butt curving beneath his palm shot through him. He clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and gave her a look so mean-assed he was ashamed of himself for using it on a poor, defenseless, pregnant female. “Maybe a bare-butt spanking is exactly what you need.”
“Really?” Instead of fainting from fear the way any sensible woman would have done, she got this calculating look on her face. “Might be fun. I’ll think about it.”
Just like that she turned on her heel and swept back to her room, leaving him standing at the bottom of the stairs in her dust. He was stunned. How did she manage to keep turning the tables on him like that? And what did she mean, she’d think about it?
He remembered that mangled Escort sitting in the drive right where his kickass Jeep should have been and charged up the stairs after her. He wasn’t half done with this fight!
Jane heard him coming and was ashamed of the thrill of anticipation the sound of those pounding feet gave her. Until these past few weeks, she hadn’t realized how heavily the mantle of maintaining her dignity had weighed on her shoulders. But Cal had no more use for dignity than a dog for panty hose.
He flew through her bedroom door and jabbed his finger in the general direction of her forehead. “Starting right now, the two of us are going to get a few things straight. I’m the head of this household, and I expect respect! I don’t want to hear another piece of sass out of you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
His confrontation techniques undoubtedly worked very well with men, but she felt a flash of sympathy for those poor young girls he’d chosen as his past companions. He must have devastated those curvaceous little infants.
But for some reason the picture of him yelling at a defenseless twenty-year-old beauty queen wouldn’t take shape in her mind, and it didn’t take her long to understand why. He would never do it. Cal was incapable of unleashing the full force of his anger on someone he regarded as weaker than himself. The knowledge gave her a deep sense of pride.
“Your lip is bleeding again,” she said. “Go in the bathroom, and I’ll fix it.”
“I’m not going anywhere until we settle this.”
“Pretty please. I’ve always fantasized about tending a wounded warrior.”
That gave him pause. He got this dangerous, squinty-eyed look that made her knees a little wobbly. He was 190 pounds of dynamite getting ready to detonate, so why wasn’t she afraid?
He stuck a thumb in the pocket of his jeans. “I’ll let you patch me up under one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“After you’re done, you sit quietly—and I mean with your mouth shut—while I take you apart.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” His roar nearly blew out her eardrums. “Is that it? Lady, you must not understand what I’ve got in mind because if you did, you wouldn’t be standing there telling me ‘okay’!”
She smiled just because she knew it would further irritate him. “I believe that open communication is important to a marriage.”