that began the day I took over a failing winery and swore to turn it around. It’s probably the only PR gimmick for which Harvey isn’t responsible. Now I’m caught in my own trap. If I had my way, I’d live a quiet, secluded life-style, surrounded by five or six kids and a doting wife.”
She regarded him skeptically. “Why don’t you, then? According to the figures I put in the annual report, the company is now on solid financial ground. Surely, you no longer have to make the supreme sacrifice of dating all those gorgeous women just to keep it afloat.” She sounded as though she found the thought of all those women intensely irritating. “Maybe you’re enjoying it more than you want to admit.”
To his astonishment, he realized that her irritation pleased him. Normally he sent a woman packing at the first sign of jealousy. Instead, he found himself wanting to offer some explanation that would remove that disdainful look from her eyes. She’d obviously accepted his playboy reputation as fact and found it distasteful. He wondered if she’d believe the truth coming from him, especially when he was holding her hostage. He decided to try.
“Actually, my exploits have been greatly exaggerated. These days I’d be a fool if I behaved as irresponsibly as the press would like everyone to believe I do. Even so, doting wives are hard to come by in my particular circle of so-called friends, especially if it means living on a ranch that doesn’t even offer a Jacuzzi. Most of the women I know can’t live that far from Saks and Neiman-Marcus, much less Elizabeth Arden and their personal fitness trainer. Not one of them has any desire to see a grape until it’s been duly processed into an expensive vintage of wine.”
Suddenly he peered at her intently. “Let me see your nails.”
A dark brow lifted quizzically. “My nails? Aside from a tendency toward kidnapping, you also have some weird thing about fingernails?”
He grinned. Thank God, she was finally making jokes. He tapped her on the nose. “Just humor me. Hold out your hands.”
Like a child whose hand-washing technique was being evaluated by a critical parent, she glowered at him, but she held out her hands for his inspection. They were dainty, the sort of hands that could caress a man with a gentle, magical touch. Her short nails, just long enough for setting up shock waves along a man’s spine, were buffed to a clear shine.
“I knew it,” he said approvingly, sharply aware of the little frisson of excitement that was racing along his own spine. “You don’t spend half your life at a manicurist. Do you realize how many women go into a deep depression if they break a nail? Do you realize how often some of them change their polish to match their outfits? I’ve been left cooling my heels while some woman had her nails wrapped, whatever that is,” he muttered in bewilderment. Sometimes he wondered how he’d survived the inanity of it.
“Sounds like a tough life,” Audrey said with a touch of mockery. If he’d been expecting sympathy, he’d definitely taken the wrong tack. She gestured at the balloon. “What about this? Where does this fit in? Are all the stories about your obsession with this exaggerated, too? Is this just another public relations ploy?”
Audrey watched closely as Blake’s blue eyes instantly sparkled with unsophisticated, boyish excitement. She saw the tension leave his shoulders and the gentle softening of his lips. “Now this is something else again,” he said in that husky tone that played over her nerves like a lover’s caress. “Every word you’ve ever read about my love affair with this is probably true.”
“I don’t get it. Is it the danger, the thrill, what?”
“It’s an escape. It gives me a sense of total freedom, a release from all the pressures of work, even though it has its own challenges. I think all of us harbor a desire to be able to experience flight like a bird. This is the closest man can come.”
“It’s a little too close, if you ask me.”
“Come on now,” he chided. “Just take a look around.”
“I’d rather not,” she muttered, pointedly keeping her gaze directed at his knees, where the denim of his jeans was unexpectedly and charmingly worn and faded. Good heavens, what was wrong with her? She didn’t want to be charmed by anything about this man—not his infectious smile, his brief flashes of sensitivity and certainly not by a worn spot in his pants. “I think I’ll just stay right down here. I get dizzy standing on the first step of a ladder.”
“Come on,” he taunted persuasively. “You’re no coward.”
“Who says?”
“I do. Stand up. You don’t know what you’re missing.” He held out his hand. His fingers were square and strong, his hands roughened by work, good honest labor. Blake Marshall was clearly no pampered executive and, for all the publicity, he was apparently far more than a jet-setting playboy. She’d heard tales of his days in the fields working side by side with his men. She’d thought they were merely publicity schemes dreamed up by Harvey. Now she saw the proof. It only added to the enigma.
When Audrey took his hand at last, she told herself she wasn’t abandoning her fury at her predicament, that she wasn’t giving in. Except, perhaps, to temptation. She allowed him to pull her to her feet, then didn’t do a thing to stop him when he drew her to his side. She told herself she needed the support, especially since her eyes were clamped tightly shut again.
“Now just look around,” he urged. “Have you ever seen anything any more beautiful?”
She opened one eye and peeked. A bright yellow balloon, decorated with a large rat that reminded her rather vividly of her opinion of Harvey, hovered a few hundred feet away. A multicolored balloon was just above them to the right. Snowcapped mountain peaks beckoned from a distance, and far, very far, below were thousands of colorful specks dotting the meadow like so many wildflowers.
“People?” she mumbled in a choked whisper. “Those are people down there? Exactly how high up are we?”
“Not so far.”
“How high, Blake?”
“Maybe a thousand feet, probably less. That’s nothing. We’re just drifting now. Wait until we go over the mountains.”
She twisted around until she could get a good look at his face. He seemed to be serious.
“I am not going over any mountains,” she said adamantly. An assertive woman made her point without wavering, wasn’t that what she’d read? “Am I making myself clear? No way. You do not pay me enough money to make me go one foot higher in this thing.”
The blasted man grinned at her. “Perhaps not,” he said, “but I do seem to have you at a disadvantage, unless you brought along a parachute.”
She obviously didn’t have the knack quite yet for making herself perfectly clear. He thought she was still pussyfooting around. Like Harvey, he was just hunting for the right buttons to push. In this case, there most definitely weren’t any. She wanted to be back on the ground and she wanted to be there now! She was tired of being understanding about this little case of mistaken identity. She was tired of being patient. And she was definitely tired of floating around up here, like a dandelion caught on a breeze. The only thing she wasn’t tired of was Blake and that wasn’t something she cared to deal with.
“Blake Marshall, you take me back down there this instant or I will report you to every government agency I can think of that supports and enforces employee rights. I will charge you with harassment, unsafe working conditions,
