"You jerk!"

His hands automatically shot up to ward it off, but he wasn't quick enough. The cake caught him in the shoulder and erupted.

She watched the wreckage with a curious detachment. Bits of cake and icing flew everywhere. White frosting splattered his hair and eyebrows, even his eyelashes. Chocolate lumps clung to his jaw, then dropped onto the shoulder of his T-shirt. Her detachment came to an abrupt end as she watched him turn red.

He was going to kill her.

He reached up to clear his eyes at the same time that he moved toward her. She sidestepped and, taking advantage of his temporary blindness, ran out the door.

She glanced frantically around, searching for a place to hide. The big top was down, the smaller tents had disappeared, most of the trucks had pulled out. She ran across a stretch of dry weeds and shot into a narrow space between two of the vans. Her heart slammed against her ribs with sickening dread. What had she done?

She jumped as she heard a man's voice and slipped deeper into the shadows only to bump up against something solid. Without looking to see what it was, she leaned back and tried to catch her breath. How long would it take him to find her? And what would he do then?

A growling sound came from just behind her ear.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood, and an icy trickle slithered down her spine. She whirled around. And stared into a pair of pale golden eyes.

Her body grew paralyzed. She knew what the beast was. She understood she was looking at a tiger. But she couldn't absorb the reality of it.

The animal was so close she felt its breath on her face. It bared its teeth, stiletto sharp and lethal. She smelled its scent, heard its low menacing growl grow in volume, escalating into a vicious barking roar. Her paralysis ended as the animal sprang for the iron bars that separated the two of them, and she leaped backward.

Her spine slammed up against something very solid and very human, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the tiger. A terrible ringing sounded in her head. At that moment, the beast seemed to be the manifestation of all that was evil, and she felt as if every bit of that malevolence was directed at her. Somehow, on this feral South Carolina night she had met her destiny.

She spun around, unable to bear the force of those golden eyes any longer. As she turned into the solid warmth behind her, she knew she'd found sanctuary.

Then she felt the squish of frosting beneath her cheek. The fear, the exhaustion, the life-shattering events of the past two days overwhelmed her, and she whimpered.

His hand, surprisingly gentle, tilted up her chin. She gazed into another set of pale, golden eyes so like that tiger's that she felt as if she had journeyed from one beast to another.

"Sinjun can't hurt you, Daisy. He's in a cage."

"It doesn't matter!" Hysteria threatened her. Didn't he realize that a cage couldn't protect her from what she'd seen in the tiger's eyes?

But he didn't understand and she could never explain her fleeting sense of having come face-to-face with her own fate. She drew away from him. "I'm sorry. You're right. I'm being foolish."

"It's not the first time," he said grimly.

She gazed up at him. Even speckled with cake and frosting, he looked fiercely magnificent and utterly terrifying. Just like the tiger. She found herself fearing him in a new way, one she didn't entirely understand except to know that it had a dimension that went beyond the threat of the physical. It was more elusive than that. Somehow she feared he would damage her soul.

She had reached the limits of her endurance. There had been too many changes, too much conflict, and she had no more fight left. Her weariness reached all the way to the marrow of her bones, and she could barely find the strength to speak.

"I suppose you're going to threaten me with something terrible now."

"Don't you think you deserve it? Children throw things, not adults."

"You're right, of course." She shoved a shaky hand through her hair. "What's it going to be, Alex? Humiliation? I've already had a big dose of that tonight. How about contempt? Lots of that, too. Dislike? No, that won't work; I've gotten numb to dislike." She paused, her voice faltering. "I'm afraid you'll have to come up with something completely different."

As Alex gazed down at her, she looked so unhappy that something inside him loosened. He knew she was afraid of him-he'd made sure of it-and he still couldn't believe she'd found the nerve to throw that cake. Poor little feather head. She hadn't yet figured out that snapping those baby-cake eyes at him and going after him with those kitten claws wouldn't do her a bit of good.

He felt her shiver beneath his hands. Her claws were sheathed now, and her eyes showed only despair. Did she know she wore every one of her feelings on her face?

He wondered how many men she'd had. She probably didn't even know. Despite that open-eyed innocence, she was a natural pleasure seeker. She was also a scatterbrain, and he could well imagine her ending up in more than one playboy's bed with only the vaguest idea how she'd gotten there.

At least that was one thing she'd be good for. As he watched her, he had to fight the sudden urge to pick her up and carry her back to the trailer, where he would lay her on his bed and satisfy every one of the questions that had begun to nag at him. How would those flyaway curls feel spread out like dark ribbons against his pillow? He wanted to gaze at her naked in the rumpled sheets, see the paleness of her flesh against his darker skin, test the weight of her breasts in his hands. He wanted to smell her and feel her and touch her.

Just yesterday at the wedding ceremony, he'd told himself she wasn't the kind of woman he'd choose as a sexual companion, but that was before he'd glimpsed her round bottom peeking out from under the bottom of his T-shirt as he woke her up. That was before he'd watched her in his truck, crossing and uncrossing those sweet legs of hers, dangling that silly little sandal from her toe. She had pretty feet, small and well-shaped with a high, delicate arch and nails painted the same red as the gown on a Signorelli madonna.

He didn't like the fact that other men knew more about her sexual appetites than he did. But he also knew it was too soon. He couldn't touch her until he was sure she understood the way things were going to be between them. And by that time, there was a very good chance she would have packed up her suitcase and left.

He took her arm and steered her toward the trailer. For a moment she resisted, and then she gave in. "I'm really starting to hate you," she said dully. "You know that, don't you?"

He was surprised that her words hurt, especially since this was exactly the way he wanted it. She wasn't cut out for such a hard life, and he had no desire to torture her by drawing this out endlessly. Let her realize right now that she couldn't cut it here.

"That's probably for the best."

"Up until this very moment, I've never hated any other human being. Not even Amelia or my father, and both of them have given me plenty of cause. But you don't care how I feel about you, do you?"

"No."

"I don't think I've ever met anyone so cold."

"I'm sure you haven't." Cold, Alex. You're so cold. Cold, Alex. You're so cold. He'd heard it from women before. Good women, with kind hearts. Competent, intelligent women who'd deserved something better than a man whose emotional makeup had been deformed long before they'd met him. He'd heard it from women before. Good women, with kind hearts. Competent, intelligent women who'd deserved something better than a man whose emotional makeup had been deformed long before they'd met him.

When he was younger, he'd thought that a family of his own might heal that lonesome, wounded place inside him. But all he'd done in his quest for a lasting human connection was hurt those good-hearted women and prove to himself that some people's capacity to love was stolen from them before it ever had a chance to develop.

They had arrived at the trailer. He reached around her to open the door, then followed her inside. "I'm going to take a shower. I'll help you clean up when I get out."

She stopped him before he reached the bathroom door. "Couldn't you have pretended to be just a little bit happy tonight?"

"I am what I am, Daisy. I don't play games with anyone. Ever."

"They were trying to do something nice. Would it have hurt you so much to go along with it?"

How could he explain it to her so she'd understand? "You grew up soft, Daisy, but I grew up rough. Rougher than you can imagine. When you grow up like I did, you learn that you have to find something to hold on to that'll always be there for you, something that keeps you from turning into an animal. For me, it was my pride. I don't give that up. Not ever."

"You can't build your life around something like that. Pride isn't as important as a lot of other things."

"Like what?"

"Like..." She hesitated, as if she knew he wouldn't like whatever she was about to say. "Like caring and compassion. Like love."

He felt old and tired. "Love doesn't exist for me."

"It exists for everyone."

"Not for me. Don't try to romanticize me, Daisy. It'd only be a waste of time. I've learned to live by my own code. I try to be honest, and I try to be fair. That's the only reason I'm overlooking your stunt with the cake. I know this is a hard adjustment for you, and I guess you're doing the best you can. But don't confuse fairness with sentiment. I'm not sentimental. All those soft emotions might work for other people, but they don't work for me."

"I don't like this," she whispered. "I don't like any of it."

As he spoke, he couldn't remember ever hearing his own voice sound so sad. "You've fallen in with the devil, sweetheart. The sooner you accept that, the better off you'll be."

He went into the bathroom, shut the door, and closed his eyes, trying to block out the play of emotions he'd just witnessed on her face. He'd seen it all: wariness, an almost childlike innocence, and a dreadful kind of hope that maybe he wasn't really as bad as he seemed.

Poor little feather head.

6.

"Go away."

"Last warning, angel face. We're pulling out in three minutes."

She squeezed her eyes open just far enough to focus on the clock by the couch and realize it was five in the morning. She didn't go anywhere at five in the morning, so she snuggled deeper into her pillow, and moments later, she drifted back to sleep. The next thing she knew, he was picking her up.

"Stop it!" she croaked. "What are you doing?"

Without a word, he carried her outside into the chilly morning air, tossed her into the cab of the truck, and slammed the door. The chill of the vinyl upholstery against her bare legs brought her instantly awake and reminded her that she wore only his gray T-shirt and a pair of ice blue bikini underpants. He climbed in the other side, and moments later, they pulled away from the abandoned lot.

"How could you do this? It's only five o'clock! Nobody gets up this early!"

"We do. We're moving into North Carolina today."

He looked disgustingly awake. He was clean-shaven, dressed in a pair of jeans and a wine red knit shirt. His eyes trickled down to her bare legs. "Next time maybe you'll get up when I tell you."

"I'm not dressed! You have to let me get my clothes. And I need makeup. My hair-I have to brush my teeth!"

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a flattened pack of Dentyne.

She snatched it from him, and as she took out a piece and put it in her mouth, last night's events replayed in her mind. She searched his face for some sign of remorse but saw none. She was too tired and depressed to pick another quarrel, but if she just let it go, everything would still be on his terms.

"It's going to be hard for me to fit in here after what happened last night."

"You're going to have a hard time fitting in no matter what."

"I'm your wife," she said quietly, "and you're not the only one who has pride. You publicly embarrassed me last night, and I didn't deserve it."

He said nothing, and if it hadn't been for the slight tightening at the corners of his mouth, she might have believed he hadn't heard her.

She removed the gum from her mouth and folded it in the wrapper. "Please pull off the road so I can get my things from the trailer."

"You had your chance, and you blew it."

"I wasn't awake."

"I warned you."

"You're like a robot. You don't have any human feelings at all, do you?" She tugged on the bottom of the T-shirt, which kept hitching up.

His gaze settled in her lap. "Oh, I've got human feelings. But maybe not the ones you want to hear about right now."

She busied herself trying to adjust the T-shirt. "I want my clothes."

"I woke you in plenty of time to get dressed."

"I mean it, Alex. This isn't funny. I'm practically naked."

"You don't have to tell me that."

Maybe if she'd had more sleep, she wouldn't have felt so snappish. "Am I turning you on?"

"Yep."

She hadn't expected that. She thought he'd give her one of his put-downs. Recovering from her surprise, she glared at him. "Well, that's too bad because I'm not interested. In case you haven't heard, the brain is the most important sexual organ, and my brain isn't interested in having anything to do with you."

"Your brain?"

"I do have one."

"I never said you didn't."

"Your tone inplied it. I'm not stupid, Alex. My education may have been unorthodox, but it was amazingly comprehensive."

"Your father doesn't seem to agree."

"I know. He likes telling everyone I'm badly educated because mother used to take me out of school so much. But if she was going on an interesting trip, she believed I'd benefit if I went along. Sometimes a few months would pass before she'd remember to send me back. Even then, she didn't always return me to the same school she'd taken me out of, but she still made sure I was learning."

"How did she do that?"

"She'd ask whoever she was visiting or entertaining to spend some time with me and teach me a little of what they knew."

"I thought your mother hung out with rock stars."

"I did did learn a lot about hallucinogenics." learn a lot about hallucinogenics."

"I'll bet."

"But she spent time with a lot of other people, too. Princess Margaret taught me most of what I know about the history of the British royal family."

He stared at her "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious. And she wasn't the only one. I was raised around some of the most famous people in the world." Only the fact that she didn't want him to think she was bragging kept her from mentioning the rather spectacular scores she'd received on her SATs. "So I'd appreciate it if you'd stop making your little digs about my intelligence. Anytime you want to discuss Plato, I'm game."