Even if he was weaving around like a punch-drunk fighter as he stood. Even if he was bruised and churlish. She was suddenly breathless; and she hadn’t run anywhere. She was sweating, and she was still standing across the room.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, instinctively stepping toward him, anyway. “And what do you mean I’m sabotaging you?”
He pushed her away and held onto the bedpost for support, his head down a little so that his hair fell across his eyes. Amanda came perilously close to sweeping it back with her hands.
“I’m getting...up,” he grated, taking a careful breath. “Alone.”
“Why? Just so you can fall on your nose?”
He turned on her then, and Amanda saw that the dizziness had passed. His eyes were sharp and clear and deadly. He was angry. He was ambivalent. He was intimidating her again when he shouldn’t possibly have been.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he informed her in a steely voice. “Do you want to help?”
“What do you mean,” she repeated instead, “that I’m sabotaging you?”
“That’s why you make me mad,” he told her, straightening by inches, one hand loose from the bedpost, his height crowding her, his body mesmerizing her, his expression stunning her. His eyes were smoldering. “You won’t let go. Not with the ranch, not with the hands, not with me. Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want you here?”
She should have been angry. She was hurt instead. “Why?” she asked, her voice soft with confusion.
Jake cursed. He cursed violently. “Never mind, Amanda. Just go.”
“I don’t think so,” she persisted. “This is the closest I’ve gotten to the truth with you, and I don’t think I’m going to get another chance. Why?”
His head shot up, his eyes blazing. “Because I want you,” he said. “That’s why.”
Amanda felt battered, by his words, his emotions, his power. He was the one without clothes on, yet she felt naked. Exposed and vulnerable. She struggled to stand her ground, to keep her head up, to pull words free of the whirling emotions his words had unleashed. “That’s so bad?” she wanted to know, her voice now very small, the truth escaping before she realized it. “Wanting someone?”
He glared at her, and suddenly Amanda saw all the pain she’d only guessed at before. It tore at him like barbed wire, leaving those beautiful, proud eyes raw and sore. Leaving Amanda in shreds, because she knew he wouldn’t let her reach out to him.
“I’ve made some mistakes in my life, lady,” he snarled, a cornered, injured animal. “But I’m not about to make that one.”
“Why?” she demanded, not even coherent enough to understand why she was protesting. Running on instinct, fueled by loneliness and attraction, by emotions she couldn’t even label yet. “What have I done to you?”
“You don’t belong here.”
Amanda shook her head. “Who says? Hell, Jake, this place is more like where I grew up than anywhere I’ve lived since.”
Jake pulled himself together and away from her, his eyes hardening. “You left, Amanda,” he said simply. “And I didn’t. Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d close the door on your way out.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Not protest or agreement or argument. Pushing himself away from the bed, he walked into the bathroom and closed the door. When Amanda heard the lock click, she turned from the room and didn’t come back.
