LITMIR.BIZ

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any thoughts of marriage. In fact, she was staring at him right now as though he were a particularly repulsive, if somewhat intriguing creature.

      “Why on earth not?” she asked incredulously. “I thought you wanted to win this race. Harvey says you’ve got this absurd obsession about winning and after listening to you issue orders down there like a drill sergeant, I have to agree with him. You’re a little weird on the subject.”

      She regarded him speculatively. “It’s not too late, you know. Most of the others probably aren’t even ready to take off yet. You have plenty of time to find the qualified person this Cal sent. I’ll just get busy on those press releases. We’ll forget this little incident ever took place.”

      She gave him what she obviously hoped would be a persuasive smile. He grinned back. All that good humor—hers so clearly phony, his sincere—hung in the air.

      “Do you intend to let Harvey forget?”

      Her smile faded so rapidly it made him regret having brought up the subject. “Perhaps sometime in the next fifty years or so,” she said darkly. “Until then, I want him to pay dearly for getting me into this.”

      “Harvey didn’t get you into this,” he reminded her. “He sent you to Colorado on a perfectly legitimate PR assignment. I hauled you into the balloon. Are you going to make me pay as well?”

      Her icy gaze met his, challenged the fiery look in his eyes, then faltered. The ice melted. “I’ve already said we could drop it, if you’ll just get me back on the ground.” It was a plea of sorts, but she was trying very hard not to beg. He liked that, too.

      “I have plenty of work to do down there,” she added, when he didn’t respond. “There are probably newspaper people, maybe even magazine writers from all over. We could get terrific coverage. I think I even saw a network camera crew. Harvey especially wanted me to try to set something up with them. If he doesn’t see you on the national news tonight, he’ll have my hide.”

      Blake waved his hand dismissively. “Forget the releases. The press has enough background and gossip about me to fill the entire feature section.”

      Her hard-won control snapped then and her eyes flashed at him angrily. “Then why the hell did you want someone from public relations out here?”

      He shrugged. “You know Harvey. When he told me about Joe’s situation, I told him it wasn’t necessary, that I’d handle things myself, but the man takes his job seriously. He seems to think if he has someone around, I’ll stay in line.”

      Suddenly, Audrey laughed. It began as a chuckle low in her throat. The sound rippled sensuously along his nerves, before erupting into a full-scale roar. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He watched her anxiously.

      “Are you okay? You aren’t going to go hysterical on me, are you?”

      The laughter died and she shot him a calculating look. “Will it get me down?”

      “Probably not.”

      She choked back another nervous laugh, rubbed the tears from her cheeks and sighed. “Then I won’t waste my energy.”

      She studied him curiously, and Blake felt another wave of heat sear his insides. “I’m surprised at Harvey,” she said, when she’d completed her rather thorough, disconcerting examination. “He’s usually very perceptive, but you don’t strike me as the type of man who’s easily kept in line. Goodness knows, I’m not having any luck at it.”

      “Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.”

      A flush stained her cheeks as she caught the blatant innuendo, but she responded gamely, “Does Harvey have some special technique he failed to share with me?”

      “Nope, but he does keep trying. I used to think he was worried about me, but then I figured out it was only the company. Every time my picture turns up on a tabloid at the supermarket checkout, he’s convinced our sales will plummet.”

      “If you ask me, they’d probably go up. The same people who read those things for vicarious thrills will probably buy your wine just to see if it improves things for them the way it has for you. Do you realize there are probably thousands of men sipping your Chablis and expecting some incredibly sexy actress to materialize by their side?”

      Blake grinned at her. “Precisely my point. The company benefits from my image. It was a calculated intention on my part that began the day I took over a failing winery and swore to turn it around. It’s probably the only PR gimmick for which Harvey isn’t responsible. Now I’m caught in my own trap. If I had my way, I’d live a quiet, secluded life-style, surrounded by five or six kids and a doting wife.”

      She regarded him skeptically. “Why don’t you, then? According to the figures I put in the annual report, the company is now on solid financial ground. Surely, you no longer have to make the supreme sacrifice of dating all those gorgeous women just to keep it afloat.” She sounded as though she found the thought of all those women intensely irritating. “Maybe you’re enjoying it more than you want to admit.”

      To his astonishment, he realized that her irritation pleased him. Normally he sent a woman packing at the first sign of jealousy. Instead, he found himself wanting to offer some explanation that would remove that disdainful look from her eyes. She’d obviously accepted his playboy reputation as fact and found it distasteful. He wondered if she’d believe the truth coming from him, especially when he was holding her hostage. He decided to try.

      “Actually, my exploits have been greatly exaggerated. These days I’d be a fool if I behaved as irresponsibly as the press would like everyone to believe I do. Even so, doting wives are hard to come by in my particular circle of so-called friends, especially if it means living on a ranch that doesn’t even offer a Jacuzzi. Most of the women I know can’t live that far from Saks and Neiman-Marcus, much less Elizabeth Arden and their personal fitness trainer. Not one of them has any desire to see a grape until it’s been duly processed into an expensive vintage of wine.”

      Suddenly he peered at her intently. “Let me see your nails.”

      A dark brow lifted quizzically. “My nails? Aside from a tendency toward kidnapping, you also have some weird thing about fingernails?”

      He grinned. Thank God, she was finally making jokes. He tapped her on the nose. “Just humor me. Hold out your hands.”

      Like a child whose hand-washing technique was being evaluated by a critical parent, she glowered at him, but she held out her hands for his inspection. They were dainty, the sort of hands that could caress a man with a gentle, magical touch. Her short nails, just long enough for setting up shock waves along a man’s spine, were buffed to a clear shine.

      “I knew it,” he said approvingly, sharply aware of the little frisson of excitement that was racing along his own spine. “You don’t spend half your life at a manicurist. Do you realize how many women go into a deep depression if they break a nail? Do you realize how often some of them change their polish to match their outfits? I’ve been left cooling my heels while some woman had her nails wrapped, whatever that is,” he muttered in bewilderment. Sometimes he wondered how he’d survived the inanity of it.

      “Sounds like a tough life,” Audrey said with a touch of mockery. If he’d been expecting sympathy, he’d definitely taken the wrong tack. She gestured at the balloon. “What about this? Where does this fit in? Are all the stories about your obsession with this exaggerated, too? Is this just another public relations ploy?”

      Audrey watched closely as Blake’s blue eyes instantly sparkled with unsophisticated, boyish excitement. She saw the tension leave his shoulders and the gentle softening of his lips. “Now this is something else again,” he said in that husky tone that played over her nerves like a lover’s caress. “Every word you’ve ever read about my love affair with this is probably true.”

      “I don’t get it. Is it the danger, the thrill, what?”

      “It’s an escape. It gives me a sense of total freedom, a release from

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