Still--she wanted a clearer picture of what she was being accused of before she started manufacturing a lie to cover her ass.
“What?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
Because there was no getting around the fact that the man unnerved the hell out of her when he came anywhere near her--at any time--and especially when his mood seemed … a little impatient.
Something flickered in his eyes. He dragged in a heavy breath and let it out slowly--as if he was trying to tamp his anger. “I know you …. Everybody thinks I’m an asshole that just enjoysthrowing my weight around, but there is a reason for my decisions. I thought I’d made it clear that no one was to leave the colony alone,” he managed to say evenly.
She hadn’t forgotten that.
She thought, maybe, she really ought to assure him she didn’t think he was an asshole. That would be the polite thing to do. But it wasn’t as if she’dsaidthat.
Sureit crossed her mind to think of him as an asshole at least as often as she thought about how stunningly attractive he was ….
And, now that he brought it up, shedidrecall that everyone was told not to go off alone, but she hadn’t actually realized that she had.
She couldn’t very well tell him that she’d ducked out of sight because she thought he was going to confront her about something, though.
Well … she could, but she didn’t want to.
She licked her lips while she was struggling to formulate a believable lie. “I didn’t actually realize I had--become separated,” she said--which was the absolute truth because she’d been completely focused on hiding from him.
She wrestled with the urge to tell him the alien man had already been sitting in the tree when she discovered him.
Because she knew he had been--watching their camp--even though she hadn’t consciously acknowledged that was why he was there.
She could protect herself by telling the captain that and it would probably completely divert him--maybe in a hostile way.
She didn’t actually know that he--the alien man--had evil intensions though, she reminded herself.
It didn’t seem right--or smart--to risk stirring up trouble with the natives just to keep from getting lectured. “I thought I was in trouble,” she confessed uncomfortably.
She couldn’t say that the confession did a damned thing for the tension. His lips tightened. That time the flicker she saw in his eyes seemed … more angry, not less.
“So … you’re saying you expected …?”
Belle cleared her throat. “That … woman that spoke to you. She’d … said something to me and then went and spoke to you and I thought …. I thought she was trying to get me in trouble.”
His expression hardened. “You have a hell of an opinion of me,” he said coldly. “That was all it took to have you run right into danger?”
Put that way, it sounded really stupid--like childish stupid. “I don’t know you,” she said angrily. “I havenoopinion of you at all! I just didn’t feel like trying to defend myself from her spite!”
“So you presumed she had said something spiteful? Becauseyouare prone to spite?”
Belle gasped at him in outrage. But then she’d known if the bitch said something ugly about her that she was going to be fighting a losing battle trying to defend herself. People always tended to believe the first ugly thing they heard.
Especially if it was about her.
Because if it was something ugly, then it was probably true, right?
“Sheseemedto be laboring under the idea that I had an interest in you,” she said tightly. “I assured her I didn’t, but she didn’t appear to believe me. Thank you for helping me. I’ll make sure I don’t go out alone again.”
Chapter Four
With that, Belle turned and stalked off angrily, more intent on putting some distance between them than anything else, but not really aware of that. She was too busy angrily rehashing the unpleasant confrontation with the captain.
She had expected that it wouldn’t be pleasant--not because she could actually think of anything particular the bitch might have accused her of.
Granted, she seemed at least a touch ‘off’, but what shemighthave thought to say to strengthen her own ambitions was beyond Belle’s imagination.
