"I'm filthy. I haven't had a chance to jump in the shower. You wouldn't want to mess up a nice silk blouse."
Why should it matter? He'd once torn one off her. He hadn't held her in days. Yet he stood there now with—was it boredom in his eyes?
"What is it, Michael?" Her stomach jittered, echoed in her voice. "Are you angry with me?"
Deliberately he tilted his head. "Why do you do that? Why do you always assume that whatever's going on around you is your fault or your responsibility? That's a real problem you've got there," he added as he walked past her to get a beer out of the refrigerator.
He twisted off the top, drank deep. "Do I look mad to you?"
"No." She folded her hands, gathered her composure. "No, you don't. You look vaguely annoyed that I'm in your way. I assumed you'd want me to come, that you'd want to be with me tonight."
"It's a nice thought, but don't you think this has run its course?"
"This?"
"You and me, sugar. We've taken this about as far as it's going to go." He tipped the beer back again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Listen, you're a hell of a woman. I like you. I like your style, in bed and out. But we both know we've got to move on eventually."
She would breathe, she told herself. However tight the fist was around her heart, she would breathe, slow and easy. "I take that to mean you've decided to move on now."
"Some things came up when I was in L.A. Changed my plans. I like to be fair with a woman I've slept with, so I figured I should let you know I'm moving down there next week."
"You're moving to L.A.? But your house—"
"Never meant a damn to me." He jerked his shoulder. "Just a place. One's the same as the other."
One's the same as the other, she thought dully. One house. One woman. "Why did you come back at all?"
"I left my horses." He forced his lips into a grin.
"You went to Ali's recital. You brought her flowers."
"I told the kid I'd go. I don't make many promises, so I don't break the ones I do make." In this at least, he didn't have to improvise. "You've got terrific kids, Laura. I've liked getting to know them. And I wouldn't have let her down last night."
"If you go, they'll be devastated. They'll—"
"Get over it," he said, his voice roughening. "I'm just a guy who passed through."
"You can't believe that." She stepped toward him. "You can't believe you mean so little to them. They love you, Michael. I—"
"I'm not their father. Don't lay that guilt trip on me. I've got my own life to worry about."
"And that's it." She drew in another breath, but it wasn't slow, it wasn't easy. " 'See you around, it's been fun?' We meant nothing to you."
"Sure you did. Look, sugar, life's long. A lot of people walk through it. Both of us gave each other what we were looking for at the time."
"Just sex."
"Great sex." He smiled again. Then, because his reflexes were good, dodged by inches the bottle she picked up and heaved at him. Before he could recover from the shock of that, she was using her hands. Both of them shoved hard enough against his chest to knock him back two full steps. "Hey."
"How dare you! How dare you lower what we have, what I felt, to some animal urge? You son of a bitch, you think you can brush me off like an inconvenient speck of lint, then walk away?"
A lamp went next, and he could only watch, speechless, and duck, fast, when she threw whatever came to her hand at his head.
"You didn't think I'd cause a scene, did you?" She picked up an end table, toppled it. "Wrong. Finished with me, are you? Just like that." She snapped her fingers under his nose. "And I'm supposed to meekly walk away, sob into my pillow and say nothing?"
He backed up. "Something like that." So it wasn't going to be quick and clean, he decided, but messy. Nonetheless, it had to be done. "Break the place up if it makes you feel better. It's your stuff. I expect even royalty has to have its tantrums."
"Don't you speak to me that way, as if I were some interesting toy that's suddenly run amok. You came into my life, you exploded into my life and changed everything. Now you're just finished?"