“I didn’t turn on you, Shay. I got angry. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes, dammit, there is!”

“If you truly love somebody, you don’t yell at them!”

Mitch’s nose was within an inch of Shay’s. “You’re wrong, lady, because I love you and I’m yelling at you right now! And I’ll keep yelling until you hear me! I LOVE YOU! Is that coming through?”

“No!” Shay closed her eyes tightly. Memories of her mother filled her mind—Rosamond screaming, Rosamond throwing things, Rosamond driving away everyone who tried to love her. “No!”

Mitch’s hands were clasping her shoulders then. “Open your eyes, Shay. Look at me!”

Shay did open her eyes, but only as a reflex.

“I’m still here, aren’t I? You can get mad at me, Shay, and I can get mad at you, and it’s still all right. Don’t you see that? It’s all right.”

She fell against him, burying her face in his shoulder, clinging to him with her hands. She had always been afraid of anger, in other people, in herself. And she trembled in fear of it then, even as she began to realize that Mitch was right. Getting mad was okay, it was human. It didn’t have to mean the end of something good.

Presently, Mitch cupped one hand under her chin and lifted, brushing her lips with his own.

“All weekend,” he said, “you’ve been telling me what your body wants, what it needs. Your mind and your spirit, Shay, what do they want?”

She sniffled. That one was easy. With her whole heart and soul she wanted Mitch Prescott. She wanted to laugh with him and bear his children and, yes, fight with him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say those things aloud. Not yet. She was still coming to terms with too many other emotions and her right to feel them.

Mitch overlooked her complete inability to answer and kissed the tip of her nose. “We’ll get this right, Shay. Somehow, I’m going to get past all that pain and fear and make you trust me.”

Shay swallowed hard. “I—I trust you.”

He started the car again. “I’ll believe that, my love, when you ask for my hand in marriage.”

“It’s supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it?” Shay caught her breath as the car sped onto the highway again.

“Not in this case,” Mitch answered, and the subject was closed.

The boxed manuscript landed in the middle of Ivan’s desk with a solid, resounding thump—Mitch had printed it out just so he could make the impact.

Ivan looked at the box and then up at Mitch’s unyielding face. “Good Lord,” the older man muttered. “You’re not serious!”

“I’m serious as hell, Ivan. I’m through writing this kind of book.”

Ivan gestured toward one of several chairs facing his desk. “Sit down, sit down. Let’s at least talk this over. You didn’t fly three thousand miles just to throw a ream of paper in my face, did you?”