“What do you mean by that?”

“Men like battering things. Bombing things.”

“Your friends bomb things. My friends just cuss, kick the couch, then fall asleep in front of the TV.” Once again he rattled the knob.

“Calm down. She’ll open the door in the morning.”

“I’m not spending the night closed up in here with you.”

“If you’re afraid I’ll attack, don’t worry,” she snapped. “You’re stronger than I am, so I’m sure you can defend yourself.”

“Come on, Nell. We haven’t been able to keep our hands off each other for days.”

She gave him a snooty look. “I haven’t had one bit of trouble keeping my hands off you.”

“That’s a bald-faced lie. You want me so bad you can’t stand it!”

“I was dallying with you, that’s all.”

“Dallying?”

“Amusing myself. Really, Mat, you didn’t believe I was serious, did you? The lies men tell themselves to protect their fragile egos.”

“The only thing fragile about me right now is my self-control. You know exactly what’s going to happen if we spend the night in here together!”

She congratulated herself on getting him riled again. “Of course I do. You’ll scowl and insult me. Then you’ll remember who you’re insulting, and you’ll back off.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She bore in on him. “I’m Cornelia Case, the widow of the President of the United States. And you can’t deal with it!”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

He was starting to yell again, which gratified her because there was nothing she wanted more than to go back to that place of yelling and passion and raw, biting emotion. “Things were fine when you believed I was poor little abandoned Nell Kelly, weren’t they?”

“Talk to me when you’re ready to make sense.”

“You could feel superior to poor Nell. But now that you know who I am, you aren’t man enough to handle it!”

Oh, boy . . . she’d done it with that one. Nobody challenged Mathias Jorik’s manhood and got away with it.

His gray eyes gleamed, he shot toward her, and the next thing she knew, she’d hit the mattress.

The bed frame shook as he sprawled next to her, triumph gleaming in those flint-gray eyes. She finally had him where she wanted him, but her victory wasn’t satisfying because she’d used psychological warfare when what she really wanted was to be courted.

He looked down at her, a myriad of emotions going to war on that magnificent battlefield of a face. “I’ve tried to be a gentleman about this . . .”

“A wimp is more like it.”

He reached beneath her top, whipped off the padding, and tossed it to the floor. “I’ve tried to be respectful . . .”