With a shrug, she rose from the table and began to pace the room. It might be better all around if they finished off the tour with him cold and distant. There’d certainly be fewer personal problems that way because there’d be nothing personal between them. There’d be no edge to their relationship because they wouldn’t have a relationship. Logically, this little incident was probably the best thing that could have happened. It hardly mattered if she’d been right or wrong as long as the result was workable.

She took a glimpse around the small, tidy, impersonal room where she’d spend little more than eight hours, most of it asleep.

No, she couldn’t stand it.

Giving in, Juliet stuck her room key in the pocket of her robe.

Women had made him furious before. Carlo counted on it to keep life from becoming too tame. Women had frustrated him before. Without frustrations, how could you fully appreciate success?

But hurt. That was something no woman had ever done to him before. He’d never considered the possibility. Frustration, fury, passion, laughter, shouting. No man who’d known so many women—mother, sisters, lovers—expected a relationship without them. Pain was a different matter.

Pain was an intimate emotion. More personal than passion, more elemental than anger. When it went deep, it found places inside you that should have been left alone.

It had never mattered to him to be considered a rogue, a rake, a playboy—whatever term was being used for a man who appreciated women. Affairs came and went, as affairs were supposed to. They lasted no longer than the passion that conceived them. He was a careful man, a caring man. A lover became a friend as desire waned. There might be spats and hard words during the storm of an affair, but he’d never ended one that way.

It occurred to him that he’d had more spats, more hard words with Juliet than with any other woman. Yet they’d never been lovers. Nor would they be. After pouring a glass of wine, he sat back in a deep chair and closed his eyes. He wanted no woman who compared him with a muscle-bound idiot, who confused passion for lust. He wanted no woman who compared the beauty of lovemaking to—what was it?—a cruise on a water bed. Dio!

He wanted no woman who could make him ache so—in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day. He wanted no woman who could bring him pain with a few harsh words.

God, he wanted Juliet.

He heard the knock on the door and frowned. By the time he’d set his glass aside and stood, it came again.