"This isn't high school."
"No, it's more interesting and more fun. Oh, I know you're scalded good and proper, Jo." she patted her sister's cheek. "I'd be as spitting mad as a stoi-nped-on cat myself But just think how satisfying it's going to be when he crawls. Don't you take him back until he does. And he comes up with at least two bouquets of flowers and a nice, expensive present. It should be 'cwclry."
Jo's humor made a rapid return. "Lexy, you're a manipulative and materialistic woman."
"And proud of it, honey. You listen to your baby sister and you'll end up owning that man. Now I figure he's been down there waiting and sweating long enough for the next slap." she rubbed her hands together. "I'll make it count for you, don't you worry."
Jo stayed leaning against the doorjamb as Lexy flounced away. "I bet you will," she murmured. "And I'll owe you big for it."
Satisfied, Jo turned back into the darkroom. she tidied her workbench, rearranged her bottles of chemicals, then put them back in their original positions. she examined her nails and wondered if she should let Lexy give her a manicure after all.
When she heard the footsteps, she turned toward the door, prepared to hear Lexy's report. When Nathan filled the doorway, his temper shot straight into hers.
"I need you to come with me." His voice was clipped and anything but apologetic.
"I believe you were informed I'm busy. And you haven't been invited into this room."
"Save it, Scarlett." He grabbed her hand and pulled. When her free one reared back, whipped forward, and cracked hard across his face, he narrowed his eyes and nodded. "Fine, we do it the hard way."
The room turned upside down so rapidly she didn't even get out the curse burning on her tongue. He was halfway out of the room with her slung over his shoulder before she got past the shock enough to fight.
"Get your goddamn belly-crawling Yankee bastard hands off me."
she punched at his back, furious that she couldn't manage a full swing.
"You think you can send your sister to brush me off. In a pig's eye." He shoved open the door with his shoulder and started down the narrow stairway. "I've been traveling the whole fucking day to get here, and you'll have the courtesy to listen to what I need to say."
" Courtesy? Courtesy? What does a snake oil New York hotshot know about courtesy?" In the confines of the stairway, her struggles only resulted in her rapping her head against the wall. "I hate you."
Her ears rang fromboth the blow and the humiliation.
I've prepared myself for that." Grim and determined, he hauled her into the kitchen. Both Lexy and Brian froze and gaped. "Excuse me," he said shortly, and carried her outside while she left a trail of threats and curses behind them.
"Oh." Lexy sighed, long and deep, holding a hand to her heart. "Wasn't that the most romantic thing you've ever seen in all your life?"
"Shit." Brian set down the pie he'd just taken out of the oven. "she'll rip his face off first chance she gets."
"A lot you know about romance." Lexy leaned against the counter. "Twenty dollars says he's got her in bed, fully willing, within an hour."
Brian heard Jo scream out something about castrating a certain Yankee son of a bitch and nodded. "You're on, darling."
0 sat in simmering silence as Nathan drove the Jeep across hissing Shell Road. she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of leaping out of a moving vehicle, or of running away once he stopped it.
she would simply tear his skin into bloody shreds when they %Acre no longer in danger of running off the road.
"This isn't the way I wanted to go about this," Nathan muttered. "I need to talk to you. It's important. A hell of a time you pick to pull some lame female cold-shoulder routine."
Ignoring her low, purring sound of warning, he dug a deeper hole for himself. "I don't mind a fight. Under any reasonable circumstances I don't mind a good kick-ass fight. Clears the air. But these aren't reasonable circumstances, and you having your nose out of joint is only complicating an already painful situation."
"So it's my fault." she sucked in her breath as he jerked the jeep to a halt at the cottage. "This is my fault?"
"It's not a matter of fault, Jo. That's the whole-" He broke off abruptly, too busy defending himself to bother with more words.
she didn't go at him with teeth and nails and heated accusations. she waded in with balled-up fists, and the first several blew right past his guard.
"Jesus! Jesus Christ!" He wished he could laugh at them. He wished to God he could just drag her close, pin those surprisingly well toned arms with his and just howl at the pair of them.