“It’s clear when I touch you.” Cliff backed her up against the counter, then pulled another pin from her hair. “It’s clear when you look at me like you’re looking at me now.”

Maggie’s heart began to pound at the base of her throat. She was weakening; she felt it in the heaviness of her limbs, the lightness in her head. Desire was temptation, and temptation a seduction in itself. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you—”

“No, you didn’t,” Cliff interrupted. When he drew out the next pin, her hair fell heavily to her shoulders and lay there, dark and tousled. “I don’t think lying comes easily to you.”

How could she have been so relaxed a few moments before and so tense now? Every muscle in her body was taut in the effort to combat what seemed to be inevitable. “No, I don’t lie.” Her voice was lower, huskier. “I said I didn’t know you. I said you didn’t understand me.”

Something flashed into him. Perhaps it was rage; perhaps it was need. “I don’t give a damn how little we know each other or how little we understand each other. I know I want you.” He gathered her hair in one hand. “I only have to touch you to know you want me.”

Her eyes grew darker. Why did it always seem her desire was mixed with anger and, though she detested it, a certain weakness she couldn’t control? “Can you really believe it’s that simple?”

He had to. For the sake of his own survival, Cliff knew, he had to keep whatever was between them purely physical. They’d make love through the night until they were exhausted. In the morning, the need and the bond would be gone. He had to believe it. Otherwise … He didn’t want to dwell on otherwise. “Why should it be complicated?” he countered.

The anger and the longing flowed through her. “Why indeed?” Maggie murmured.

The room had lost its cozy ambience. Now she felt she’d suffocate if she didn’t escape it. Her eyes were stormy, his almost brutally calm, but she kept her gaze level on his while her thoughts raged. Why should she feel the need to rationalize, to romanticize? she asked herself. She wasn’t an innocent young girl with misty dreams, but an adult, a widow, a professional woman who’d learned to live with reality. In reality, people took what they wanted, then dealt with the consequences. Now so would she.

“The bedroom’s upstairs,” she told him, and, brushing by him, walked out of the kitchen.

Disturbed, Cliff frowned after her. This was what he wanted, he thought. The lack of complications. Yet her abrupt acceptance had been so unexpected, so cool. No, he realized as he started after her, that wasn’t what he wanted.