to himself as he left the room.
“I don’t want any,” she called after him.
“Yes, she does,” Steve said immediately, catching her eyes. “You’re too thin. If you lose another two or three pounds, you’ll be able to walk through a harp.”
“I’m a dancer,” she said. “I can’t dance with a fat body.”
He smiled gently. “That’s right. Fight me.” Something alien glittered in his eyes and his breathing quickened.
“Somebody needs to,” she said with forced humor. “All that feminine fawning has ruined you. Your mother said that lines of women form everywhere you go these days.”
His eyes contemplated his coffee cup intensely and his brow furrowed. “Did she?” he asked absently.
“But that you never take any of them seriously.” She laughed, but without much humor. “Haven’t you even thought about marrying?”
He looked up, his expression briefly hostile. “Sure. Once.”
She felt uncomfortable. “It wouldn’t have worked,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t have shared you, even when I was eighteen and naive.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think I’m modern enough in my outlook to keep a wife and a mistress at the same time?”
The question disturbed her. “Daphne was beautiful and sophisticated,” she replied. “I was green behind the ears. Totally uninhibited. I used to embarrass you…”
“Never!”
There was muted violence in the explosive word.
She glanced up at him curiously. “But I did! Your father said that’s why you never liked to take me out in public…”
“My father. What a champion.” He lifted the cold coffee to his lips and sipped it. It felt as cold as he did inside. He looked at Meg and ached. “Between them, your mother and my father did a pretty damned good job, didn’t they?”
“Daphne was a fact,” she replied stubbornly.
He drew in a long, weary breath. “Yes. She was, wasn’t she? You saw that for yourself in the newspaper.”
“I certainly did.” She sounded bitter. She hated having given her feelings away. She forced a smile. “But, as they say, no harm done. I have a bright career ahead of me and you’re a millionaire several times over.”
“I’m that, all right. I look in the mirror twice a day and say, ‘lucky me.’”
“Don’t tease.”
He turned his wrist and glanced at the face of the thin gold watch. “I have to go,” he said, pushing back his chair.
“Are you off to a business meeting?” she probed gently.
He stared at her without speaking for a few seconds, just long enough to give him a psychological advantage. “No,” he said. “I have a date. As my mother told you,” he added with a cold smile, “I don’t have any problem getting women these days.”
Meg didn’t know how she managed to smile, but she did. “The lucky girl,” she murmured on a prolonged sigh.
Steve glowered at her. “You never stop, do you?”
“Can I help it if you’re devastating?” she replied. “I don’t blame women for falling all over you. I used to.”
“Not for long.”
She searched his hard face curiously. “I should have talked to you about Daphne, instead of running away.”
“Let the past lie,” he said harshly. “We’re not the same people we were.”
“One of us certainly isn’t,” she mused dryly. “You never used to kiss me like that!”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Did you expect me to remain celibate when you defected?”
“Of course not,” she replied, averting her eyes. “That would have been asking the impossible.”
“Fidelity belongs to a committed relationship,” he said.
She was looking at her hands, not at him. Life seemed so empty lately. Even dancing didn’t fill the great hollow space in her heart. “Being in a committed relationship wouldn’t have mattered,” she murmured. “I doubt if you’d have been capable of staying faithful to just one woman, what with your track record and all. And I’m hardly a raving beauty like Daphne.”
He stiffened slightly, but no reaction showed in his face. He watched her and glowered. “Nice try, but it doesn’t work.”
She glanced up, surprised. “What doesn’t?”
“The wounded, downcast look,” he said. He stretched, and muscles rippled under his knit shirt. “I know you too well, Meg,” he added. “You always were theatrical.”
She stared at him without blinking. “Would you have liked it if I’d gone raging to the door of your apartment after I saw you and Daphne pictured in that newspaper?”
His face hardened to stone. “No,” he admitted, “I loathe scenes. All the same, there’s no reason to lie about the reason you wanted to break our engagement. You told your mother that dancing was more important than me, that you got cold feet and ran for it. That’s all she told me.”
Meg was puzzled, but perhaps Nicole had decided against mentioning Daphne’s place in Steven’s life. “I suppose she decided that the best course all around was to make you believe my career was the reason I left.”
“That’s right. Your mother decided,” he corrected, and his eyes glittered coldly. “She yelled frog, and you jumped. You always were afraid of her.”
“Who wasn’t?” she muttered. “She was a world-beater, and I was a sheltered babe in the woods. I didn’t know beans about men until you came along.”
“You still don’t,” he said flatly. “I’m surprised that living in New York hasn’t changed you.”
“What you are is what you are, despite where you live,” she reminded him. She looked down again, infuriated with him. “I dance. That’s what I do. That’s all I do. I’ve worked hard all my life at ballet, and now I’m beginning to reap the rewards for it. I like my life. So it was probably a good thing that I found out how you felt about me in time, wasn’t it? I had a lucky escape, Steve,” she added bitterly.
He moved close, just close enough to make her feel threatened, to make her aware of him so that she’d look up.
He smiled with faint cruelty. “Does your good fortune compensate?” he asked with soft sarcasm.
“For what?”
“For knowing how much other women enjoy lying in my arms in the darkness.”
She
