The Glass Shoe (7 page)

He lifted an eyebrow and waited.

She eyed him for a moment,
then
gave in reluctantly.
"All right.
Make it Amanda... Ryder."

"That's a step in the right direction," he noted.
"Now for the next one.
Do you think we can be friends, Amanda?"

It was her turn to lift an eyebrow.
"Friends?"

"Well, for a start. I'm a reasonable man, after all. I don't expect it to be easy."

She shouldn't have said it. She knew that, but Amanda heard the question emerge from her lips. "Don't expect what to be easy?"

"Getting you into my bed."

Amanda blinked. She had heard a number of propositions in her time, but most had been couched in charming euphemisms. Oddly enough, she found his bluntness refreshing. And she didn't know whether to be angry at her own reaction or absolutely appalled.

"That's in the nature of a friendly warning," he explained gravely.

"And I'm supposed to agree to befriends with you after hearing it?" she asked dryly.

"Of course.
You can always say no when we get to the next step. But—another warning—I don't give up easily."

She shook her head slightly. "I'm not in the market for a fling, thank you very much."

"Did I say anything about a fling?"

"I don't hear you singing 'O Promise me.' "

Ryder chuckled softly. "No. That would be a little premature. We might not hit it off."

"Exactly what I've been trying to tell you," she said with forced patience.

"Yes, but you aren't willing to give us a chance." He leaned toward her slightly, one powerful arm stretched along the back of the couch between them. "Amanda, I'm a businessman. I've learned never to turn away from an opportunity without exploring all the possibilities."

"And I'm an opportunity?"

"I think we could be. But we'll never find out unless we explore the possibility."

"Did anybody ever tell you that you have the peculiar effect of water dropping on stone?"

"Constantly."
He smiled at her.

That smile, she reflected somewhat helplessly, was lethal. The moonlight hadn't done it justice. She found herself shrugging in what she knew was a ridiculously weak way. "All right, dammit.
Friends.
But even though you may be on vacation, I'm working here, don't forget that."

Having won the battle, Ryder didn't press his advantage. Casually he said, "As a matter of fact, this isn't exactly a vacation for me."

"No?" Amanda relaxed just a bit, but continued to eye him warily.

"No. I was invited here to meet a man to talk about a possible business deal. Cyrus Fortune."

She remembered the name from the guest list. "He's due to arrive on Friday. What kind of business deal? Or is it a state secret?"

"It isn't secret—except in Boston. I wouldn't want my competitors to know about the deal before I have a chance to nail it down. Somebody could try to sneak in and outbid me, and I don't have a lot of capital to play with."

Amanda felt an odd jolt as she realized that she could be Ryder's competition. But, no, she thought, that couldn't be. Wilderman Electronics and Foxfire, Ryder's company, were on different levels of the business; they'd never been competitive. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.

"I'm in the electronics business. So far, it's been mostly toys and games, and heaven knows that's been lucrative. But I want to expand the business, and for that I need an edge."

"An edge?"

"Something to put me well ahead of the competition.
There's an independent computer hacker in the Northeast who's been working on a new invention. He's hardly more than a kid, but then, the visionaries in electronics tend to be very young. Anyway, he's come up with a patented new system that's pretty sure to revolutionize the computer industry. I want the rights to that system."

"And he's offering them to you?"

"No, he sold the rights to someone else. Cyrus Fortune. I couldn't find out much about the man, but he seems to be a kind of entrepreneur willing to gamble on a smaller company like mine over some of the bigger ones."

"It sounds like an important deal," Amanda said slowly.

"For my company it's vital," he said. "I don't have the capital to form a research and development team, or the patience to wait years for some kind of breakthrough. Everyone's into games and toys, and there isn't much potential for growth or a bigger slice of the market. Personal computers are the thing now, and the next logical step is a system that runs everything in a house from security to the environment with high efficiency and low cost."

Dunbar's system.

She knew about it—all too well. Though she'd never taken much interest in the day-to-day running of the Wilderman business empire, she did keep a close eye on one relatively small part of it.

Wilderman Electronics had been her father's baby. He's started it nearly thirty years before with the design and manufacture of small appliances—radios and the like. When he and his brother formed a partnership and branched out, Patrick Wilderman kept the electronics division separate from the other ventures.

Though Amanda had inherited substantial shares of the family businesses that her uncle Edward now ran, Wilderman Electronics had been left to her alone. It was a public corporation, but since Amanda controlled slightly over sixty percent of the voting stock, her decisions were the company's. In addition, Wilderman Electronics was the parent corporation for several smaller divisions, including a nationally known research and development branch.

That particular subsidiary had been trying to get Eric Dunbar on their team for several years.

Dunbar's new system wouldn't make existing technology obsolete—at least not immediately—but it would, as Ryder said, offer a distinct advantage to any company with an eye to the future. And at Wilderman Electronics's most recent board meeting less than two weeks before, a substantial chunk of capital had been earmarked for the sole purpose of acquiring the permanent employment of Eric Dun-bar, the rights to his new system, and, if possible, getting the patent itself.

"The wave of the future," she said now, trying to think. "But what if... what if you can't get the rights?"

Ryder smiled a bit wryly. "I've been scratching and clawing for ten years to build the company. I wouldn't go under without this new system, but I'd have to go on fighting just to stay afloat. It's a competitive market; I need an edge."

Though she had more than once thought it a curse rather than a blessing, Amanda had taken her personal wealth for granted. It had always been there, and a carefully handpicked group of advisers, accountants, and lawyers virtually assured that it always would be. She had never had to scratch or claw for anything she wanted.

And now she felt like the worst kind of fraud. Heaven knew she hadn't intended to deceive, but here she was, squarely behind the eight ball. Ryder knew her under a false name, and he never would have confided his business plans to her if he'd known who she was. He was fighting for a goal with limited capital; she had access to almost unlimited capital.

For him, it was
do
or die, with years of struggle ahead of him if he lost the deal. For her, it was a deal that would definitely make a difference—but not that big a difference. Wilderman Electronics had the resources and the time to control a healthy share of the market even without an edge.

He laughed suddenly. "I'm
sorry,
you can't be interested in all this."

She looked at him and felt trapped. "I—I find it very interesting. I minored in electrical engineering in college."

"What was your major?"

"Business administration."

"So you ended up managing guest ranches?"

Amanda hesitated. "I'm just here to oversee the renovation and decorating."

"And after that?
Do you live in Wyoming?"

She felt as if she were skating on very thin ice. "No. As a matter of fact, I live in Boston. The owner of this place lives there; I'd done some work for him in Vermont, and he wanted me for this job."

"You live in Boston? Isn't it odd that we both had to come way out here to meet?"

"Yes," Amanda said.
"Very odd."

"It's not the first time that's happened to me," Ryder said consideringly. "I mean, meeting someone from Boston when we were
both hundreds or
thousands of miles away."

Amanda smiled. "I know
,
it's happened to me too. I once met a neighbor of mine for the first time in London. And we'd lived near each other for years."

As if the phrase "near each other" had reminded Ryder of the distance between the two of them, he slid closer suddenly and lifted the catalogues from her lap. "Choosing furniture?" he asked, leafing through the topmost brochure quickly.

"Just making a few preliminary decisions," she replied, trying not to think of how close he was. But he was close, and all her senses were reacting to him. She was so involved in trying to ignore her senses that she was just a fraction too late in reacting when he leaned forward to drop the catalogues onto the coffee table and then returned to her side.

It all happened very quickly, she realized somewhat dazedly. Without a wasted motion Ryder had lifted her legs across his lap, keeping one arm over her thighs and slipping the other around her shoulders. She was half lying in the corner of the couch, conscious of his hard thighs beneath hers and his powerful arms holding her prisoner.

Trapped, she felt unnervingly helpless.

Her hands had lifted instinctively to his chest, braced to hold him off. But Ryder made no attempt to use force. Instead, he smiled down at her, a curiously apologetic smile that still managed to hold a great deal of masculine triumph.

"I couldn't stand it anymore," he explained softly.

Since she didn't have to hold him off, Amanda realized that her fingers were moving just a little of their own volition, probing through his thick sweater to find the hard flesh beneath. She tried to make them stop, but the silent command couldn't seem to reach that far.

"You're—moving too fast," she managed to protest in a strained voice.

"Am I?" He shook his head slightly. "I don't think so. I've got the feeling if I give you too much time to think, you'll run away from me."

"That's ridiculous. I'm a grown woman. I don't—I don't run away from men."

"I'm glad to hear it." His voice was deepening, growing a little rough. "Do you know there are secrets in your eyes?"

"What?" She was startled, uneasy.

The arm around her shoulders shifted so that his fingers tangled in her thick hair, holding her head firmly. "No, don't look away. Amanda?"

Warily she met his gaze again, wondering what on earth was happening to her strength of will. He seemed to have the knack of eroding it.

"Amazing eyes," he
murmured,
his own probing almost unconsciously.
"So green.
Even now, in an almost dark room, they're green. It isn't fair for you to have eyes so green."

The long fingers moving in her hair were unexpectedly pleasurable; she could literally feel her ability to think clearly slipping away, dissipating like smoke in the wind. All the things she knew she should tell him were locked inside her somewhere, and she couldn't find them, couldn't shape the words. She could only look at him and wonder on some distant level of
herself
what was happening to her.

"Damn those eyes," he said on a long breath, then lowered his head until his mouth touched hers.

Amanda felt a hot shiver of pure need ripple through her body at the first touch of his lips. Her mouth opened to him instantly, and she felt as well as heard the strange, muted sound in the back of her throat.

He kissed her with utter absorption, as if there were nothing in the world except the two of them and this urgent desire rising inexorably between them. His mouth was hard, yet it seduced rather than demanded, beguiled rather than forced.

She was half conscious of her arms sliding up around his neck, of her fingers twining in the thick silk of his dark hair. Never in her life had she felt anything like the need inside her; it was shattering in its intensity, and she could no more fight it than she could stop breathing. When his lips finally left hers she murmured a husky protest, not even aware of doing so.

"Amanda," he said tautly as his mouth moved slowly down over the warm flesh of her throat.

Hearing her name from him surprised her somehow, and she understood dimly that it was because her identity was overwhelmed by this passion between them. She could recall reading novels where the women had "lost themselves" in passion, and because she herself had never caught fire, she'd been able to sneer inwardly at those weaklings. But now she understood—and it frightened her.

He made her surrender to feelings she couldn't control. The need he aroused in her swamped her willpower, shattered reason until she was defenseless with want.

The realization was a shock, and if it wasn't strong enough to fully penetrate the hot veils of passion, at least it allowed her a shaken protest.

"Ryder... it's too fast... please..."

He lifted his head slowly, gazing down at her with hot eyes. His face was hard, the features masklike with intensity. "I want you," he said softly, roughly.

Amanda could feel her entire throbbing body weaken. She fought desperately for control. "It's too soon," she whispered. "We hardly know each other. Ryder—"

"Do you think that matters?" His voice was raspy. "I knew when you fell off that damned ladder and I caught you."

"I didn't know," she protested. "I still don't. I won't just tumble into bed with a stranger, dammit!"

Ryder lowered his head and captured her mouth again. And this time there was force, intensity; this time there was a stark assurance. He took her mouth as if there were no question it belonged to him, that she belonged to him.