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so preoccupied.
"I have to make a telephone call, or I'd help you clean the fish," he said when he left her at the front
door of her beach house with the cooler.
"Business?" she asked.
His face showed nothing. "You might call it that." He didn't say anything else. He smiled at her
distractedly and left with a careless wave of his hand.
Nikki went in to clean the fish, disturbed by his sudden remoteness. What kind of business could he
have meant?
Kane listened patiently while the angry voice at the other end of the telephone ranted and railed at
him.
"You promised that we could go to the Waltons' party tonight!" Chris fumed. "How can you do this to
me? What sort of deal are you working on that demands a whole evening of your time?''
"That's hardly your concern," he said in a very quiet voice. Her rudeness and lack of compassion
were beginning to irritate him. She was a competent psychologist, and he couldn't fault her intellect.
But their mutual need for safe intimacy had been their only common bond. Chris wanted a man she
could lead around by the nose in any emotional relationship. Kane wasn't the type to let anyone, man
or woman, dictate to him. He'd tired of Chris. Tonight, she was an absolute nuisance.
"When will you phone me, then?" she asked stiffly.
"When I have time. It might be as well if we don't see as much of each other in the future."
There was a hesitation, then a stiff, "Perhaps you're right. You're a wonderful lover, Kane, but I
always have the feeling that you're going over cost overruns even when we're together."
"I'm a businessman," he reminded her.
"You're a business," she retorted. "A walking, talking industry, and I still say you should be in
therapy. You haven't been the same since..."
He didn't want to hear any more. "I'll phone you. Good night."
He put the receiver down before she could say anything else. He'd had quite enough of her
psychoanalysis. She did it all the time, even when she was in bed with him; especially when she was
in bed with him, he amended. If he was aggressive, she labeled him a repressed masochist. If he was
tender, he was pandering to her because he felt superior. Lately, she inhibited him so much that he lost
interest very quickly when he was in bed with her, to the point of not being able to consummate
lovemaking. That real y infuriated her. She decided that his real problem was impotence.
If her barbs hadn't been so painful, they might have been amusing. He'd never been impotent in his life
with anyone except Chris. Certainly he was more capable than ever when he just looked at Nikki. But,
then, Nikki apparently didn't have any reason to hate and despise men. She was very feminine along
with her intelligence, and she didn't tease viciously.
He got up and changed from jeans and jersey into dress slacks and a comfortable yellow knit shirt.
Fried fish with Nikki was suddenly much
more enticing than a prime rib and cocktails with Chris.
He selected a bottle of wine from the supply he'd imported and carried it along with him. He
wondered if Nikki knew anything about fine white wine. She was an intelligent girl, but she hadn't the
advantages of wealth. Probably she wouldn't know a Chardonnay from a Johannesburg Riesling. That
was something he could teach her. He didn't dare think about tutoring her in anything else just yet. She
could become even more addicting than alcohol if he let her. Chris was all the trouble he needed for
the present.
Nikki had cleaned and fried the fish and was making a fruit salad and a poppyseed dressing to go with
it when Kane knocked briefly and let himself into the cottage.
She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. "Come on in," she invited. She was wearing a frilly
floral sun dress that left most of her pretty, tanned back bare while it discreetly covered her breasts in
front. She was barefoot at the kitchen table and Kane felt his body surge at the picture of feminine
beauty she presented. How long had it been, he tried to recall, since he'd seen a woman in his own
circle of friends wearing anything less masculine than a pin-striped business suit? Nikki dressed the
way he liked to see a woman dress, not flaunting her curves but not denying it, either. She
dressed as if she had enough confidence in her intellect not to have to hide her womanhood behind it.
"I've just finished the salad and dressing. Want to set the table?" she asked brightly.
He hesitated. He couldn't remember ever doing that in his life. Even as a child, there had always been
maids who worked in the kitchen.
"The plates are there," she nodded toward a cupboard with her head. "You'll find utensils in the
second drawer. Place mats and napkins are in the third drawer." She noticed his expression and his
hesitation with faint amusement. "You do know how to set a table?"
"Not really," he admitted.
"Then it's high time you learned," she said. "Someday you may get married, and think how much more
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