Man of the Hour Read Online Free

eyes closed. He almost shuddered with reaction. He shook with the force of his rage at his father and Meg’s mother.
    “It’s all water under the bridge now, though,” she said then, studying his rigid posture with faint surprise. “Steve?”
    He took a long, deep breath and lit another cigarette. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you wait and talk to me?”
    “There was no point,” she said simply. “You’d already told me to get out of your life,” she added with painful satisfaction.
    “At the time, I probably meant it,” he replied heavily. “But that didn’t last long. Two days later, I was more than willing to start over, to try again. I came to tell you so. But you were gone.”
    “Yes.” She stared at her slender hands, ringless, while her mind fought down the flood of misery she’d felt when she left Wichita. The fear had finally defeated her. And he didn’t know…
    “If you’d waited, I could have explained,” he said tautly.
    She looked at him sadly. “Steve, what could you have said? It was perfectly obvious that you weren’t ready to make a real commitment to me, even if you were willing to marry me for your own reasons. And I had some terrors that I couldn’t face.”
    “Did you?” he asked dully. He lifted the cigarette to his chiseled mouth and stared into space. “Your father and mine were involved in a subtle proxy fight about that time, did anyone tell you?”
    “No. Why would they have needed to?”
    “No reason,” he said bitterly. “None at all.”
    She hated the way he looked. Surely what had happened inthe past didn’t still bother him. His pride had suffered, though, that might explain it.
    She moved closer, smiling gently. “Steve, it was forever ago,” she said. “We’re different people now, and all I did really was to spare us both a little embarrassment when we broke up. If you’d wanted me that badly, you’d have come after me.”
    He winced. His dark silver eyes caught hers and searched them with anguish. “You’re sure of that.”
    “Of course. It was no big thing,” she said softly. “You’ve had dozens of women since, and your mother says you don’t take any of them any more seriously than you took me. You enjoy being a bachelor. If I wasn’t ready for marriage, neither were you.”
    His face tautened. He smiled, but it was no smile at all. “You’re right,” he said coldly, “it was no big thing. One or two nights together would have cured both of us. You were a novelty, you with your innocent body and big eyes. I wanted you, all right.”
    She searched his face, looking for any trace of softening. She didn’t find it. She hated seeing him that way, so somber and remote. Impishly she wiggled her eyebrows. “Do you still? Feel like experimenting? Your bed or mine?”
    He didn’t smile. His eyes flashed, and one of them narrowed a little. That meant trouble.
    He lifted the cigarette to his lips one more time, drawing out the silence until she felt like an idiot for what she’d suggested. He bent his tall frame to put it out in the ashtray, and shewatched. He had beautiful hands: dark and graceful and long-fingered. On a woman’s body, they were tender magic…
    “No, thanks,” he said finally. “I don’t like being one in a queue.”
    Her eyebrows arched. “I beg your pardon?”
    He straightened and stuck his hands deep into his pockets, emphasizing the powerful muscles in his thighs, his narrow hips and flat stomach. “Shouldn’t you be looking after your roast? Or do you imagine that David and I don’t have enough charcoal in our diets already?”
    She moved toward him gracefully. “Steve, I dislike very much what you’ve just insinuated.” She stared up at him fearlessly, her eyes wide and quiet. “There hasn’t been a man. Not one. There isn’t time in my life for the sort of emotional turmoil that comes from involvement. Emotional upsets influence the way I dance. I’ve worked too hard, too long, to go