The desire to rip apart the curtain and demand answers was close to overwhelming. Cade cursed under his breath, turned away and paced up the corridor.
Scorpion stings were not uncommon in his world, just as he’d told Angelica. The fiendish creatures tended to inhabit some of the places oil liked best—hot, dry scrubland—and they had the terrible habit of striking first and asking questions later, with the results ranging from vaguely annoying to life-threatening.
The first doctor had said Angelica’s wound fell somewhere in between, that it would make her hand and arm swell and would cause her pain but that it would not—that it would not…
“Damn!” Cade’s scowl darkened as he swung toward the examination cubicle again.
Not even the ride across the flats had seemed to take this long. He’d never felt so useless in his life, the woman in his arms moaning softly, her hand swelling dangerously despite his immediate attempt to suck out the scorpion’s poison, and all he’d been able to do was whisper to her, over and over, that she’d be fine—even though it was a promise that he’d known wasn’t really his to make.
Cade’s jaw tightened. He should never have taken her out to that damned oil field with him. She didn’t belong in the middle of a place like that, no matter what she claimed—but what choice had there been? The woman insisted on claiming that she was in charge of Gordon Oil. Until he could do something about that, she’d be mucking around places where accidents could, and did, happen with terrifying frequency.
Hell, it was just a miracle she hadn’t gotten herself injured or worse long before this—
“Mr. Landon?”
Cade swung around, his face dark. Dr. Broderick had drawn open the curtains. Scowling, he started toward her.
“Mr. Landon, I’m delighted to tell you that I agree with my colleague’s prognosis. Miss Gordon will recover—uneventfully, I’m certain, and—”
“I assume, Doctor, you explained to Miss Gordon that it would be unfortunate if she got stung again anytime in the near future?”
“Well, no. I didn’t.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Cade looked at Angelica, sitting up on the examining table. She was still pale, her skin drained of all its color by the accident. He wanted to go to her and shake her until her teeth rattled for her foolishness, take her in his arms and kiss her until color flowed back into her ivory skin.
Something knotted in his gut and turned all his worry and confusion to barely contained anger.
‘I’m not sure Miss Gordon understands the full implications of what she’s done to herself,” he said in clipped tones.
“What I did to myself?” Angelica stared at him. “What do you mean, what I did to—”
“Have you explained that the scorpion’s venom may have sensitized her, Doctor? That if she’s stung again she might well have an allergic reaction?”
“Excuse me,” Angelica said. “But—”
“She needs to have some sense put into her head. I haven’t managed it, Doctor. Maybe you will.”
Angelica stared at him in disbelief. Who had put this man in charge of her life? She’d been stung by a scorpion, not deprived of reason.
“Cade, I’m not a child! I don’t need a lecture.”
His eyes narrowed. “Whether you do or don’t is debatable.”
“Mr. Landon,” the doctor said, “Mr. Landon, if you’d please calm down—I know you’re upset, but—”
“Certainly, I’m upset,” he snapped.
Angelica glared at him. “I don’t need you to be upset on my account.”
“Who the hell said I was? I’m upset because you’re my employee. Any time you lose from work will be to my disadvantage.”
Silence greeted his outburst. Cade looked at the doctor, whose face told him just what she thought of him, and then at Angelica, who simmered with rage.
Dear God, what an incredibly stupid thing to have said! The worst of it was that he hadn’t meant it. Whether Angelica lost time from work was the last thing on his mind.
“Dr. Broderick,” Angelica said coldly, “will it be all right if I leave now?”
The doctor offered a grateful smile, one that said she was more than eager to see her do just that.
“Of course, Miss Gordon. I’ll just get those tablets for you. One every four hours, remember.”
“Yes.”
“And take things easy for the next few days.”
“I understand.”
“Is there someone at home to help you?”
Angelica’s chin lifted. “I don’t need help, thank you very much. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Miss Gordon, when that shot my colleague gave you wears off, your hand and arm are going to hurt like—forgive me, Miss Gordon, but they’re going to hurt like hell!”
“You said the tablets would help.”
“They will, but they’ll also make you groggy. And then there’s the problem of dressing yourself, and bathing, and—”
“Thank you for your concern, Doctor, but I’ll be fine. Now, if you’d be so good as to arrange for my discharge—oh, and if someone could phone for a taxi, I’d be—”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Cade marched across the room and glared at Angelica. “What is this nonsense? I brought you here and I’ll take you back.”
Her mouth was a thin, tight line. “I want no help from you, Mr. Landon.”
“I’m not giving you a choice, Miss Gordon.” He swung toward the doctor. “Did you say something about getting tablets?” The doctor nodded. “Then do so, please.”
Angelica’s eyes narrowed as the physician hurried off. “Remarkable,” she said, “how efficiently you intimidate women, Mr. Landon.”
Cade smiled tightly. “Years of practice, Miss Gordon.”
“I’m sure of that.” She sat up straighter. “But it’s not going to work with me. I am leaving here in a taxi, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
He smiled again, a quick showing of white, predatory teeth.
“We disagree,” he said.
“On many things,” Angelica said coolly, “especially about my right to speak for myself.”
Cade threw up his hands. “Next you’ll be quoting passages from the Bill of Rights!”
“Precisely, Mr. Landon. This may be Texas, where men are men and women are not much more than chattel, but the law still applies. In other words,” Angelica said, swinging her legs to the floor, “I am a free pers—Oh,” she whispered, and reached for the edge of the examining table.
Cade caught her just as her knees buckled.
“You little fool,” he growled as he swung her into his arms. “Did you really think you were going to go marching out of here as if nothing had happened to you?”
“Put me down,” Angelica said, in a voice that seemed strangely not her own.
“Stop giving orders and start taking them,” Cade snarled. “Put your arm around my neck.”
She did, because there really was no other choice. He was already leaving the examination cubicle and heading down the corridor. A nurse appeared ahead of them, her eyes rounding at the sight.
“I have some medicine here,” she said, “for Miss Angelica Gordon…”
Cade snatched the vial from her hand. “Thank you.” When he reached the admitting desk, he paused and looked at the clerk. “I believe you had some questions for Miss Gordon.”
The clerk swallowed hard. “I—yes. Yes, sir, I did. About her medical insurance?”
Cade smiled coldly. “Miss Gordon works for the Gordon Oil Company, in Dallas. The company’s supposed to have coverage but I’m fairly certain you’ll find she’s permitted its policy to lapse.” He glanced at Angelica. “Isn’t that right?”
“Go to hell,” she whispered.
“Miss Gordon confirms my supposition,” Cade said. “My name is Cade Landon. Send whatever bills she’s run up to me care of Gordon Oil. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cade nodded. “Fine,” he said, and continued toward the front doors.
“I’ll pay you back,” Angelica said stiffly.
He laughed. “How? Fifty cents a week, for the next hundred years?”
“You addle-brained ape,” she said, “you are the most arrogant human being! Put me down this instant, Cade Landon! Do you hear? Put me down!”
“Don’t tempt me,” he snapped as he shouldered the doors open and made his way down the stairs to the street. “If I put you down, you’d fall on your nose and they’d carry you right back inside and put you to bed.” He gave her a chill smile as he strode toward the pickup truck parked at the curb. “Have you ever spent any time in a hospital, Angelica?”
“No. And I’m not in the habit of getting in the way of scorpions, either.”
“No,” Cade said coldly, “no, you’re just a woman who passes out at the sight of a sharp needle—which is what hospitals are full of. The vampires in white coats keep coming around to siphon out blood.” He smiled tightly. “Think what fun you’d have.”
“You’re a bastard, Cade Landon,” Angelica said weakly. “An absolute, gold-plated bastard!”
Ahead of them, Tom shot from the driver’s seat, hurried around the side of the truck and yanked open the passenger door.
“How is she?” he said worriedly, as Cade climbed inside and settled Angelica in his lap.
“She’s still sharp-tongued as a snake, mean-tempered as a mule and headstrong as a goat.”
The foreman smiled with relief as he put the truck in gear.
“She’s gonna be OK, you mean?”
Cade felt the tension flowing out of him as the hospital fell farther and farther behind.
“Yeah,” he said, “she’s going to be fine.”
Angelica lifted her uninjured hand and pounded it against his rock-hard shoulder.
“Dammit,” she cried, “don’t talk about me as if I weren’t here,”
“I want to get her back to Dallas as quickly as possible, Tom.”
“Sure. I understand.”
“Did you hear me? I am right here, I am perfectly capable of—”
“I left my plane at a little airstrip outside Notrees,” Cade said. “Do you know it?”
Tom nodded. “No problem, boss.”
Boss, Angelica thought bitterly, boss! The foreman who’d done his best to ignore her all these months was doing everything but clicking his heels for Cade.
And to think, for a few brief moments when she’d recovered consciousness in that examining room, she’d almost felt grateful toward this man. She had a halfremembered vision of herself lying in his arms while he sucked the venom from her flesh, a memory of his voice, demanding that Tom find a way to make the truck go faster. And she’d thought she could still hear his tender whisper telling her that she would be fine, that he would not permit anything to happen to her.
Apparently, scorpion venom could cause hallucinations!
Angelica shut her eyes. “I hate you, Cade Landon,” she said. She’d meant to shout the words at him but they came out a choked whisper. “I hate you,” she said again.
Cade looked at the woman in his arms. Her hair was a tangle of copper silk, her blouse was dirty, her right arm was in a sling, and a glimmer of dampness was on her forehead.
She was a miserable-tempered, miserable-looking mess—and he needed to kiss her as badly as he needed to breathe.
In a day of illogical happenings, who was he to question yet another one?
“Hate me, then,” he said, and he bent and touched his lips to hers.
He heard Tom’s incredulous gasp, heard the same disbelief echoed in whatever it was Angelica started to say as his mouth took hers.
And then her free arm, the one that had been lying so stiffly around his neck, curved against his flesh. She gave a little shudder, not of fear but of something darker, and it sent an answering tremor racing through Cade’s blood.
He drew her closer to him, reveling in the feel of her body turning soft and warm in his arms, in the way her mouth trembled and opened to his.
“Uh, boss?” Tom’s dry gulp was audible in the stillness. “We’re, uh, we’re here. At the Notrees airstrip.”
Cade blinked. He drew back, looked into Angelica’s face, watched as the sweep of dark lashes fanning her cheeks slowly lifted.
She stared at him in silence, her eyes blurred with confusion. Then she stiffened in his arms and fixed him with a look the Medusa would have envied. It was only luck that kept him from turning to stone.
“I was right about you,” she whispered. “You truly are a contemptible bastard.”
Cade wanted to deny it—but, at the moment, he could only agree.
CHAPTER SIX
AS SOON AS they boarded the Apache, Angelica surprised Cade by opening the vial of pain tablets and gulping two of them down.
“Does your hand hurt?”
“No,” she said in a voice that dripped icicles, “it does not hurt. I took the pills because I had nothing better to do, and I thought they might be fun.”
He looked at her in the faint light of the instrument panel and gave her a smile that more than matched the chill in her words.
“I’ll be satisfied if they keep you quiet,” he said.
And she was quiet. By the time they were airborne, her head was drooping back against the seat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blink, then yawn. Within seconds, she was asleep.
Cade sighed and felt his muscles begin to relax. He loved flying, especially at night. He’d always found a star-filled sky the best place to think about whatever might be on his mind.
Tonight, what was on his mind—what wouldn’t go away—was what had happened when they’d pulled up beside the plane.
Why in hell had he kissed her? It made no sense.
A contemptible bastard, she’d called him.
“Damn,” he muttered in the darkness of the cockpit.
“Contemptible” was surely not the way a man wanted to think of himself. It was definitely not the way he wanted to be described by a woman, even when that woman was Angelica Gordon.
Even worse was the nagging realization that she was right.
He looked at Angelica again, lying curled beside him in sleep. She looked soft, and vulnerable, and almost painfully feminine—which only showed how deceiving looks could be. She was none of those things—or was she? He had tasted the softness of her lips, seen the sudden vulnerability in her eyes, felt the ripeness of her rounded breasts and hips….
He thumped the control wheel with his hand.
“Dammit, Landon!” he growled.
What kind of nonsense was this? There was nothing about Angelica Gordon that appealed to him. She was the very antithesis of what he liked a woman to be; what’s more, she brought out the very worst in him, a strange, primitive desire to subdue and conquer.
For the first time in his life, he understood why a caveman might have hit a woman over the head, then dragged her off to his lair to prove, once and for all, which of them was the master—and, suddenly, it came to him.
He was not contemptible at all. He was desperate, as desperate as any man would be when pushed to the boundaries of sanity by a mean-tempered shrew.
Otherwise, why would he have confused the desire to throttle Angelica Gordon with the desire to kiss her?
And it was all Grant’s fault. Grant was the one who’d sent him on this crazy mission, who’d urged him to move cautiously and discreetly, but then, his brother was a lawyer, and lawyers were notorious for making mountains out of molehills.
Cade’s eyes narrowed. To hell with caution! It was time to trust his instincts.
It was time to call Angelica’s bluff.
Either she produced proof to back up that verbal contract she’d boasted about or he’d smile, say goodbye and turn this entire mess over to the Landon legal eagles.
Let them sort it out. He was an oil man, not a detective, and he had things to do and places to see. He�
�d made it a point never to be tied to one place for too long and certainly not to one woman—and yet here he was, anchored to this place and this woman, and the worst of it was, he didn’t care a damn about either!
London was waiting, and Dumai, where—where…
He frowned. What was that dancer’s name, anyway? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even remember what she looked like.
But she was waiting, that was what mattered.
In the distance, he could see the white runway lights of the small airfield where this endless day had started. He began his descent, satisfied now that he’d decided upon a course of action.
All that remained was to get the incapacitated, sleeping woman beside him home and into bed.
And into bed... The thought sent a rush of heat curling through his blood. He could see himself taking her in his arms, carrying her up the stairs into darkness, then slowly stripping away her clothes.
Contemptible, he thought.
No, a voice inside him whispered, not contemptible. Insane. Staying in this city, dealing with Angelica—the whole thing was crazy.
Goodbye, Dallas, he thought. Goodbye, Angelica Gordon.
And then—hello, sanity.
If he could have patted himself on the back, he’d have done it. Instead, he settled for grinning foolishly at the fast-approaching runway.
* * *
Angelica yawned, stretched—and caught her breath.
Her hand, and her arm, hurt like the dickens.
Frowning, she struggled to get her bearings. She was in a vehicle—a pickup truck—racing swiftly through the night. And beside her, driving it, was the Hero of the Odessa oil fields, Mr. Cade Landon.
She put her uninjured hand to her hair and shoved the tangled mass from her face. If Cade was driving, they must be in Dallas. Yes. She could remember getting into the truck outside the hospital, remember the ride to the Notrees airstrip…
… remember Cade taking her in his arms and kissing her, ignoring her protests, her pleas, her angerBut not her breathless surrender.
She shuddered. Disgusting! How could she have responded to a kiss from that insufferable man? And he was insufferable, no doubt about it, and never mind the movie-star good looks or the kisses that she knew were meant to make such a fool of her.
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