“Artists are supposed to suffer,” she shot back. “And I don’t see how I’ve had anything to do with it. I’ve given in to every single demand you made. Replaced windows, ripped out plumbing, gotten rid of that tool-and-knot wiring.”

“Tube and knob,” he corrected, nearly amused.

“Well, it’s gone, isn’t it? Have you any idea just how much lumber I’ve authorized?”

“To last two-by-four, I know. This is not point.”

She studied him owlishly. “Do you know you drop your articles when you’re angry?”

His eyes narrowed. “I drop nothing.”

“Your the’s and an’s and a’s,” she pointed out. “And your sentence structure suffers. You mix your tenses.”

That wounded. “I’d like to hear you speak my language.”

She set the purse she still carried onto a table with a snap. “Baryshnikov, glasnost.”

His lips curled. “This is Russian. I am Ukrainian. This is a mistake you make, but I overlook.”

“It. You overlook it,” she corrected. “In any case, it’s close enough.” He took a step forward, she took one back. “I’m sure we can have a fascinating discussion on the subtleties of language, but it will have to wait.” He came closer, and she—casually, she hoped—edged away. “As I said before, I enjoyed the evening. Now—” he maneuvered her around a chair “—stop stalking me.”

“You imagine things. You’re not a rabbit, you’re a woman.”

But she felt like a rabbit, one of those poor, frozen creatures caught in a beam of headlights. “I don’t know what’s put you in this mood—”

“I have many moods. You put me in this one every time I see you, or think about you.”

She shifted so that a table was between them. Because she well knew if she kept retreating her back would be against the wall, she took a stand. “All right, damn it. What do you want?”

“You. You know I want you.”

Her heart leaped into her throat, then plummeted to her stomach. “You do not.” The tremble in her voice irritated her enough to make her force ice into it. “I don’t appreciate this game you’re playing.”

“I play? What is a man to think when a woman blows hot, then cold? When she looks at him with passion one minute and frost the next?” His hands lifted in frustration, then slapped down on the table. “I tell you straight out when you are so upset that I don’t want your mama, I want you. And you call me a liar.”

“I don’t…” She could hardly get her breath. Deliberately she walked away, moving behind a chair and gripping the back hard. It had been a mistake to look into his eyes. There was a ruthlessness there that brought a terrible pitch of excitement to her blood. “You didn’t want me before.”