black silk dress that was belted at the waist. The silk clung gracefully to her curves, and when she danced... when she moved... she was fluid and lithe and beautiful.

And as enticing as a rose in full bloom.

He shouldn't be watching her, he thought. Drumming was like breathing, but the drums wouldn't play

themselves.And although he had sung this song a thousand times, at this rate...

He couldn't look away from her. And he couldn't stop his anger from rising and sky rocketing. She was

laughing as she talked to the golfer. Laughing...and her eyes were sparkling with a beautiful radiance.

You don't own her, he warned himself sharply.

But he felt as if he did, in a way.Because he was completely entranced with her. She was naked magic in

his arms at night, sleek and satin passion.To see another man touching her...that way....

It made him feel like being savage, all right.

His biceps strained and bulged beneath the white ruffled shirt; he sang the last words of the song, and

rolled out a fading beat.

He barely heard the applause. He had been stupid to do the dinner. Nothing was going to be achieved

tonight.

What had he expected?

Something...something to happen.

But nothing had.Except that his temper had been stretched to the snapping point.

"Hammarfield is interested in the pictures," Bryn said as Lee revved the engine of his car. It was late;

only the cleanup crews still remained. And Lee had been distantly silent since she had met him on the stage when the band had been breaking down their equipment.

Lee kept his eyes on the road and replied with a low grunt.

"Are you listening to me, Lee? Hammarfield asked me about the pictures."

"I heard you. What else did he ask you about?"

"What?" Bryn murmured,confused by the hostility that lay beneath the question.

He glanced her way briefly, a quick gaze of yellow fire, before turning his attention to the road once

again. "I asked you what else he talked about."

Bryn shrugged, still not understanding the brooding emotion simmering within him, but findingherself on

the defensive anyway. "I don't remember." "I see. It's hard to listen very closely when you're dancing that close." "Dancing that close!It wasn't my idea!" "Umm.You never thought about pushing the man away, I assume." "I did!" "That's funny. I never found you ineffective at repulsing a man when you chose to do so.And what about that jock golfer?"

"Mike Winfeld?"

"Is that his name?"

Bryn felt her anger rise to meet his. "Look, Lee, I don't know what your problem is tonight, but I'm not

going to sit here and take this from you. It was your idea to play for this dinner, and your idea that Barbara and I come along. You insisted that I might get something out of Hammarfield. You--" She bit off her words, determined not to fly into a name-calling fit. But she was furious. The night had been incredibly tense to begin with, and now he was suddenly coming down on her for things that had been his fault. "You bastard!" she grated out against her best intentions. "How do you think I felt? The man might be still holding Adam. I didn't want to be anywherenear him!"

"Hmm.And what about Winfeld?" "Winfeld?Just drop it, Lee." "You told me you liked golfers." She was worn and frazzled--and not at all prepared for the conversation. Tears stung her eyes, and she determined to fight back--hurting him as she was hurt. "All right--I love golfers! It's none of your damn business. Drop it!"

"Bryn," he began, but then he muttered "Oh, hell!"

He shifted in the driver's seat, keeping his steely glare upon the highway. They would be turning off in a

minute. Bryn thought, arriving at his house. It seemed as if the car were filled with a static electricity. She wasn't terribly sure she wanted to go into the house with him. The rigid strain on his features, thevise grip he held on the steering wheel, the lethal tension that radiated from him, all promised an explosion waiting to happen.

"It wasn't my idea to watch the woman I'm sleeping with being petted publicly on a dance floor," he said suddenly.

"Petted!"Bryn snapped. "Damn it, Lee--"

The car veered sharply into his drive and jerked to a halt before the front door.

He turned to her, a pulse throbbing along his jaw."Petted. Yes, the word fits, I think. What else would you call it when a man's hands are all over you?"

Bryn stared at him for a minute, wishing she could strike him, hoping she wouldn't burst into ridiculous tears. The attack was unfair. "I didn't want to be where I was!"

"You were smiling away a mile a minute at the golfer. Seems to me you were quite happy where you were."

Bryn hopped out of the front seat, slamming the door behind her. Her van was parked in front of the garage, and she started walking toward it, her heels clicking sharply against the gravel driveway.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" he called after her, crawling from the driver's seat and staring after her.

"Home," she said briefly, fumbling in her bag for her keys. "I'll get things ready for Adam to come back tomorrow.With or without your help. And I'll be here to get the boys before they wake up."

"No you will not, because you're not leaving."

"Oh? Because I'm 'the woman you're sleeping with'? You don't own me, Lee. You don't even have a lease on me. And since I've already been 'petted' for the night, I think I'd prefer to sleep in my own bed." Her fingers locked around her keys and she pulled them from her small clutch purse.

He started to swear softly, and his shoes crunched loudly as he strode across the gravel. Bryn felt her heart begin to pound viciously in her chest. Had she wanted him to stop her in her anger? Or had she believed that he might deny his own words and say that she was much, much more than just the woman he was sleeping with?

She wasn't sure; she just knew that she was suddenly frightened. She turned to the van, but she knew that she'd never get the door open before he got there.

She didn't. She felt his hand on her shoulder, his grip painful as he spun her around.

He spoke softly, enunciating each word carefully. "Bryn-- even if I hated, loathed and despised you, and if your feelings for me were exactly the same, I wouldn't let you get into that van and drive away. Not tonight. Now act reasonably and turn around and get in the house]"

"Reasonably?"Bryn shrieked. It was a foolish thing to do. His lips compressed and his eyes seemed to sizzle in the moonlight with white fire.

"Have it your way," he told her.

He ducked with a fluid movement, catching her about the midriff and flinging her over his shoulder. She swore at him violently as he headed for the door and carefully punched out the code for the new security lock. As soon as they were inside, he flicked on the hall light and set her down. Shaken and feeling as if her own temper possessed her entire body in a reckless grip, Bryn clenched her hands into fists at her sides and tossed back the tangled waves of her hair to meet his gaze with a fiery one of her own.

"I'll walk out of this house any time I choose." "No, you will not. Not while we're involved with all this." "Involved? It's over tomorrow, and the hell with the damn pictures! What are we going to find? What are we going to prove? All I want is Adam. I'd rather just drop the whole damned thing here and now."

"But you won't Miss Keller.Because I won't. I'm in on this too. And I don't like being threatened and manipulated. So we won't forget about the pictures. And--" with his arms crossed over his tuxedoed chest, he began to move slowly toward her, stopping an inch away "--you won't walk out of this house. I have no intention of aiding and abetting murder or suicide. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I might have been able to do something the night I found you splattered all over the road! Don't act like a child, Bryn, or I'll treat you like one."

There seemed to be no dignified way out of the situation. She would be a fool to fight him; she could feel his strength when he wasn't even touching her. All she could do wassalvage her pride with as calm a demeanor as possible.

"All right, Lee. You've been helping with...with Adam. I need you tomorrow, and you are in on the pictures. We'll get Adam--" Please make that be true!she silently prayed. But she had to believe it, and so she kept talking to Lee. She was so tautly wound inside that she was ready to fight. "We'll keep playing with the pictures. But it will all end there. I do realize that I should be ready to jump, beg, and roll over when the great star speaks, but I've already been that route once. It's not for me. Now, I'm going to bed. Alone."

He had watched her silently through the entire speech; when she finished he was still watching her. Rigidly.

The only signs of the intensity of his anger were his narrowed eyes and the pulse furiously ticking a vein in his corded neck. Bryn smiled bitterly and turned, heading for the stairway. She walked quickly, purposefully. She could feel his eyes piercing through her back, as if they were rays of heat and her flesh was naked.

She started up the steps.

And then she felt his grip; this time she hadn't heard him move, she hadn't sensed his silent pounce. And she was so startled that she cried out in alarm.

It was just like the scene they had practiced so often for the video. She turned, falling into his embrace. She was staring into his eyes, feeling the force and power of his arms around her.

"I mean it, Lee!" she snapped out, struggling uselessly against him. "I don't want to sleep with you!"

"Shut up. You'll wake Marie and the kids. I don't intend to let you crawl back behind a celibate touch-me-not wall because you can't deal with an argument!"

They were moving smoothly up the stairway; his long strides carried them quickly along the hallway balcony. "Lee! We were not having an argument! You were making caustic, insulting remarks and not giving me a chance to defend myself. Defend myself! What am I saying! This whole thing is a joke! I don't owe you any explanations or excuses. I was a fool to have--''

Her words were cut off by the force of his mouth as his lips ground hard upon hers. Yet even in his anger there was persuasion; she couldn't twist from him as he held her, only accept and parry the heated strokes of his tongue. No matter how deep her hurt, indignity or anger, she couldn't still the tempest of excitement that swelled within her. Desire began to course through her like the wild, undeniable wash of a waterfall.

The kiss ended as she found herself tossed unceremoniously onto the bed. Shaken, Bryn tried to gather her wits and dignity about her.

"I don't think you've listened to me," she said harshly, struggling to sit with a contemptuous decorum. He still wasn't listening to her. The tux jacket fell to the floor. With precise movements, he removed his cuff links. His shirttails were wrenched from his pants, and then the moonlight was gleaming upon his naked shoulders. The click of his buckle and the rasp of his zipper seemed ridiculously loud in the quiet of the night. And all the while she saw his golden eyes upon her. "What do you think you're doing?" Bryn demanded. He raised a polite, mocking brow."Undressing." "For what?" she snapped icily.

"To sleep with the woman I'm sleeping with, of course." His shoes were tossed toward the closet with a thud, and he stepped out of his trousers and briefs. She should have been accustomed to his body by now, but she wasn't. Not quite. Each time she saw him naked again she felt her breath catch with a little thrill. She found new fascination in the bronzed breadth of his shoulders, with the gleaming ripple of his muscles, the steel hard flatness of his belly.

She even forgot his stinging words as he started walking toward her, eyeing her with the moonlight giving his golden gaze a satyr-like glitter. He picked up her foot, his touch absurdly gentle considering his heated tension as he cast away her shoe.

' 'Lee..."

Her second shoe was tossed aside. Sensation rippled through her as his fingers grazed the length of her panty hose to her thighs, to the elastic that wound about her waist, and skimmed them away; then his touch was upon her bare flesh.

Bryn realized that she had lain there, compliant and aching, seduced by the desire he could so easily awaken within her. She was not going to be a victim of her own traitorous needs. With a small cry of anger, she spurted from the bed, only to come crashing hard against the power of his chest and find herself swept to the bed again, a prisoner of tangled limbs andsinewed strength. His fingers wound into her hair and he began to kiss her again, his lips teasing, haunting, solicitous upon hers, then hard with need and passion....

Gentle again...and then demanding. Rough, but never hurtful, a maelstrom that roiled within her womb, making her want him, his touch...

His hands roamed with bold possession over her body, searing through the gown that covered her, covering her breasts, rousing their peaks to a betraying hardness. His palm came to herthigh, sliding beneath the fabric to taunt her nakedness and move against her with a bold and blunt intimacy.

His head rose from hers and he still spoke with anger, but she clung to the words. "You little fool! Don't you know how much I care about you, how much I've come to need you? And yes, when a man loves a woman, he gets angry.Crazy.Savage.When he sees her in the arms of another man. No, I don't own you. But you're still mine. Mine to be with in the moonlight... like this...together...intimate...."

They were shattering words. Heated, whispered words that spun in her mind like crystal. He loved her; he had said that he loved her__ He had said he loved her. But had he? Wasn't it a word that men whispered easily in the heat of the moment?

She cried out as he shifted suddenly, abruptly, easing the skirt of her gown up, wedging his body between her legs. The force of his entry was a shock, but a gratifying, dizzying shock, causing her body to shiver in liquidafterquakes . Unwittingly she dug her fingernails into his back, whimpering softly as the unleashed storm of pain, anger and untamed desire swept into and around them with the merciless vigor of a cyclone. Bryn had no thought of anything but the driving need, the sweetness that coiled and coiled within her, the wonder of feeling him move inside of her, easing the need, stroking it to frenzy....

Her release sent wave after wave of shivering aftershocks shooting through her, releasing her body slowly from the wild, tempestuous beauty of the storm. She heard him groan her name, felt him strain above her, shudder violently, and leave within her the warm liquid fire of his own release. As she clung to him, she began to wonder what was truth, the anger or thelove? And she burst into tears.

He moved like silent lightning, shifting from her, taking her into his arms. And his words were no longer angry; they were anxious and filled her heart with pain and remorse. "Oh, God, Bryn, I never meant to hurt you; I would never want to hurt you. Oh, my God, I am so, so sorry. Please don't be afraid of me. I couldn't bear it if you were afraid of me...."

It took her a moment to absorb his words, to understand that he was ripping himself apart; his pain was that of a dagger twisting in his gut. She disentangled herself from his arms long enough to meet his eyes, and she shook her head in confusion. "You didn't hurt me, Lee. And I'm not afraid of you."

He was silent for a moment that seemed to slip into eternity. And then his hand moved to touch her face; it trembled as he grazed her tears away.

"Then why are you crying?" he asked her, his whisper hoarse.

' 'Because..." Bryn faltered. She wanted to tell him the truth; she wanted to demand to know if he really loved her. But she couldn't. Not even with him, could she be that trusting yet. And love...well, she had learned once that it could mean many things. Before she could give him her trust, she would have to believe that it meant forever and forever--and that the man could extend his love for a lifetime to three little boys who weren't his.

But she had to say something, because the anxious concern he was showing her was abaring of his own soul; she didn't understand it, but she had never seen him so upset.

"Lee, I swear to you that I'm not afraid of you--and you've never, never hurt me. I think it's just the night. I've been so worried, and frightened. And tonight was horrible, and then you started on me..." Lee groaned. "Oh, God, Bryn, I am sorry. I don't know what got into me. Can you forgive me?" "Yes, of course, Lee. But, please...can't you tell me why you're so...upset?" He sighed, grazing his palm over her cheek,then lying back on a pillow to stare up at the ceiling.

"Sometime, Bryn. Not now." A tremor gripped him suddenly and he spoke softly, almost hesitantly.

"Bryn...you don't find me...brutal?" Bryn smiled and laid her head against his chest, puzzled at his words, but determined to ease him. "Torrid, tempestuous, passionate, intense, strong and forceful.A whirlwind, yes.But brutal, never. You are fire and wind and gentle breezes, and I love them all." He was silent, stroking her hair as he pulled her close and rested his chin upon her head. Bryn waited a moment, knowing that for once, it was he who leaned on her for the strength. Then she spoke softly to him.

"Please tell me about your wife, Lee."