Stormy Challenge by Stephanie James, Jayne Ann Krentz

we're to get there on time," he interrupted absently, glancing at the thin gold watch on his browned wrist.
    "What?" she managed, taken aback. She eyed him in confusion. "If you think I'm really going to that party with you ..."
    "You just said you were," he reminded her with deceptive casualness. A casualness that didn't hide the underlying steel. "You said we were going to a party and not to bed. You wouldn't think of backing out of a second date with me, now would you?"
    "Court—!" Leya began wrathfully, a growing conviction that she was being manipulated eating into her bones.
    "Get dressed, Leya, or I'll help you," he ordered calmly.
    "The only thing you'll do is get out of my bedroom! Now!"
    "Darling," he murmured in a tone of weary patience, "I'm trying very hard to tame my shrew with kindness and a degree of gentleness but if she doesn't learn the limits of how far she can push me that way, I'll be forced to try another technique. The choice is up to her. Which is it to be?"
    "You're insufferable!"
    "You're intoxicating. Even when you're scowling at me," he retorted smoothly.
    "Fifteen minutes? I'll wait for you downstairs."
    Leya stared at his broad back as he sauntered out of the room. Never in her entire life had a man ever told her she was intoxicating.
    She deliberately stretched the fifteen minutes to twenty but didn't quite have the nerve to push it any farther. It wasn't that she was the least bit afraid of Court Tremayne, Leya reassured herself, it was just that he was a great deal larger than she was and he was currently blocking the only exits out of the house. And she had been intending to go to the party anyway.
    With any luck, she told herself in renewed spirit as she descended the stairs a few minutes past the deadline, she would find some opportunity at the party to repay Court for his ill-treatment. At the very least, she would make certain she had another ride home. Keith would be there and he could be relied upon to provide transportation. Court Tremayne might be escorting her to the event but she didn't intend to allow him to bring her home!
    The subject of her thoughts lifted his streaked brown head as she came toward him, tossing aside a magazine on gemstones as he got to his feet. He was smiling with that curious, proprietary smile of a man who thinks he has only to put out his hand and the prize will be his.
    "More of your own hand-crafted jewelry?" he asked, his eyes going to the unusual chains at her neck, which nestled in the hollow of a high-standing oriental collar. The dress was a boldly marked sheath of red and gold.
    She nodded curtly, stepping lightly aside to collect her shawl as his fingers reached out to touch the necklace. The small evasion served its purpose, but when she glanced at him again she could have sworn she surprised a strange degree of hurt in the tortoise-shell eyes. It was gone in an instant as bis hand dropped to his side.
    "You can't avoid it forever, you know," he cautioned softly as he took her arm and started toward the door. He slanted a glance down at her profile, his eyes lingering on the dark braid. "Sooner or later you'll have to forgive me. Why not make it now?
    Tonight?"
    "Think how much easier that would be for you," she scoffed sweetly. "No need to exert yourself at all!"
    He grinned wryly. "I knew you'd understand."

    "Sorry, Court, you're not getting off that easily," she muttered waspishly.
    "What are your terms?" he demanded cheerfully, opening the car door for her.
    "I'm still drafting them,"
    "Let's hope I don't entirely run out of patience before you decide how I'm supposed to make up for my misdeeds," he observed politely.
    It was only as she walked into the party on his arm that Leya finally found something to take her mind temporarily off the matter of her entanglement with Court Tremayne.
    She would have preferred almost any other diversion. Across the room, she met the sophisticated and cynical blue eyes of the one other man in her life who