"You're going to have a fractured nose if you don't leave me alone," she told him, exasperated.

"Do you always have such a difficult time concentrating on a business discussion?" Justin asked mildly.

"Not a legitimate one."

"Then we shouldn't have any problem."

Flopping back on the chair, Serena eyed him from behind the tinted glasses. She spotted the jagged white scar along his ribs. "That looks as if it was nasty," she said with a cool smile. "A present from a jealous husband?"

"A bigot with a knife." His answer was as cool as her question, devoid of emotion.

A pain shot into her, sharp and unexpected. It caught with a gasp in her throat as she could almost see the blade slicing into flesh. "That was a stupid thing to say. I'm sorry." She glanced at the scar again, nearly sick from her own careless words. "It must've been serious."

Justin thought of the drugged two weeks in the hospital ward, then shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

"What happened?" She couldn't prevent herself from asking, perhaps because some intimate part of her shared the pain without knowing the cause.

Justin studied her for a moment. He didn't think about the incident anymore. Perhaps he hadn't given it more than a cursory thought in fifteen years. Still it was, like the scar, a part of him. It might be better if she knew. Taking a towel from the deck, he wiped his hands.

"I was in a bar in eastern Nevada. One of the regulars didn't care to breathe the same air as an Indian. I had a beer to finish, so I suggested he breathe somewhere else." A very cold, mirthless smile touched his mouth. "I was young enough to find some enjoyment in the prospect of a brawl. At eighteen a fistfight relieves a lot of frustrations."

"But you didn't get that scar from a fistfight," she murmured.

Justin lifted a brow in acknowledgement. "Most things tend to get out of hand when liquor's involved. He was drunk and feeling mean." Almost absently, he ran a finger down the line of the scar in a habitual gesture he thought he'd conquered years before. "It started predictably enough—words, shoves, fists—then he had a knife. He was probably too drunk to realize what he was doing, but he had it into me."

"Oh, God." Automatically, Serena reached out to take his hand. "That's horrible. Why didn't someone call the police?"

It flashed through his mind that despite the wealth, the extensive education, and travelling, she'd lived a sheltered life—perhaps because of it. "Things aren't always done that way," he said simply.

"But he stabbed you," she said with a mixture of logic and revulsion. "He must have been arrested."

"No." Justin's gaze remained as calm and steady as his voice. "I killed him."