"I don't."
"There you are." He lifted a hand, smiling still, as if she'd made his point for him. "And my courting you has nothing to do with rights or equality, doesn't make you less or me more. It's just that I've the initiative, so to speak. You're the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. And I've been fortunate enough to see a great deal of beauty."
Flummoxed by the quick spurt of pleasure, she looked down at her plate. There was a way to handle this, to handle him, she was certain. She just had to find it.
"Murphy, I'm flattered. Anyone would be."
"You're more than flattered when I kiss you, Shannon. We both know what happens then."
She jabbed a piece of chicken. "All right, I'm attracted. You're an attractive man, with some charm. But if I'd been considering taking it any further, I wouldn't now."
"Wouldn't you?" Christ, but she was a pleasure to converse with, he thought. "And why would that be, when you want me as much as I want you?"
She had to rub her dampening palms on her napkin. "Because it's an obvious mistake. We're looking at this from two different angles, and they're never going to come together. I like you. You're an interesting man. But I'm simply not looking for a relationship. Damn it, I ended one only weeks ago. I was practically engaged." Inspiration struck. She leaned forward, her smile smug. "I was sleeping with him."
Murphy's brows quirked. "Was seems to be the key. You must have cared for him."
"Of course I cared for him. I don't jump into bed with strangers." Hearing herself, she hissed out a breath. How had he managed to turn that around on her?
"It's past tense as I see it. I've cared enough about a woman or two to lie with her. But I never loved one before you."
Panic had the color draining out of her face. "You're not in love with me."
"I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you." He said it so quietly, so simply, that she believed-for a moment completely believed. "Before that, somehow. I've waited for you, Shannon. And here you are."
"This isn't happening," she said shakily and pushed away from the table. "Now, you listen to me, you put this whole insane business out of your mind. It's not going to work. You're romanticizing the situation. Hallucinating. All you're going to accomplish is to embarrass both of us."
His eyes narrowed, but she was too busy fuming to notice the change, or the danger in it. "My loving you is an embarrassment to you."
"Don't twist my words around," she said furiously. "And don't try to make me seem small and shallow because I'm not interested in being courted. Jesus, courted. Even the word's ridiculous."
"There's another you'd prefer?"
"No, there's not another I'd prefer. What I prefer, and expect, is for you to drop it."
He sat quietly a moment, dealing with a slowly building anger. "Because you have no feelings for me?"
"That's right." And because it was a lie, her voice sharpened. "Do you really have some deluded idea that I'd just fall in meekly with whatever absurd plans you're cooking up? Marry you, live here? A farmer's wife, for God's sake. Do I look like a farmer's wife? I've got a career, a life."
He moved so quickly she only had time to suck in one shocked breath. His hands were on her arms, fingers dug in. His face was a study of the pale and dark of fury.
"And my life's beneath you?" he demanded. "What I have, what I've worked for, even what I am is something less? Something to be scorned?"
Her heart was beating like a rabbit's, in quick bumpy
jerks. She could only shake her head. Who could have guessed he had such temper in him?
"I'll accept that you don't know you love me, won't clear your eyes to see that we're meant. But I won't have you disparage what I am and spurn everything I and my family for generations has struggled for."
"That's not what I meant-"
"You think the land just sits, pretty as a picture, and waits to be reaped?" The candlelight threw shadows over his face, making it as fascinating as it was dangerous. "There's blood spilled for it, and more sweat than can be weighed. Keeping it's hard, and keeping it's not enough. If you're too proud to accept it as yours, then you shame yourself."
Her breath was shuddering out. She had to force herself to draw it in slowly. "You're hurting me, Murphy."
He dropped his hands as if her flesh had burned them. He stepped back, his movements jerky for the first time since she'd known him. "I beg your pardon."
It was his turn for shame. He knew his hands were large, and knew their strength. It appalled him that he would have used them, even in blind fury, to put a mark on her.
The selfdisgust on his face kept her from giving in to the urge to rub at the soreness on her arms. However huge her lack of understanding of him, she knew instinctively he was a gentle man who would consider hurting a woman the lowest form of sin.
"I didn't mean to offend you," she said slowly. "I was angry and upset, and trying to make the point that we're different. Who we are, what we want."
He slipped his hands into his pockets. "What do you want?"
She opened her mouth, then shut it on the shock of finding the answer wasn't there. "I've had a number of
major changes in my life over the past couple of months, so I still need to think about that. But a relationship isn't one of them."
"Are you afraid of me?" His voice was carefully neutral. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"No, I'm not afraid of you." She couldn't help herself. She stepped forward, laid a hand on his cheek. "Temper understands temper, Murphy." Almost certain the crisis had passed, she smiled. "Let's forget all of this, and be friends."
Instead he stopped her heart by taking her hand, sliding it around until his lips pressed tenderly into the palm. "'My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite.' "
Shakespeare, she thought as her body softened. He would quote Shakespeare in that gorgeous voice. "Don't say things like that to me, Murphy. It's not playing fair."
"We're past games, Shannon. We're neither of us children, or fools. Here now, I won't hurt you." His voice was soothing, as it was when he gentled a horse. For she'd gone skittish when he'd slipped his arms around her. "Tell me what you felt when I kissed you the first time."
It wasn't a difficult question to answer, as she was feeling it again. "Tempted."
He smiled, pressed his curved lips to her temple. "That's not all of it. There was more, wasn't there? A kind of remembering."