Affair Of Risk Read Free Page B

ruefully.
    "I can see that. Perhaps the penalty you're paying for your poor manners will serve to teach you better ones," he noted suavely.
    She ignored that. "You'll give me the receipt after dinner?"
    "Yes," he agreed pleasantly enough, guiding her down the hall in the opposite direction of the gambling area.
    "I have your word on that?" she clarified cautiously.
    "You do, although I can't imagine you'd put much faith in it."
    Kendra bit her lip, refraining from the sort of sharp response that would only serve to goad him further. She had made a mistake in handling this man, she acknowledged privately. She should have been polite and charming, and she should have smiled. She should have been all those things, yet instead she had been cold, condemning, and, yes, arrogant. Not a good way to conduct business.
    She gave a mental, philosophical shrug. Well, she doubted that she was in any real danger with him, and if he were to try something physical, she could deal with it. But somehow Kendra didn't think it would come to that. He was just out to get her back for her haughty manner.
    Not an unpredictable reaction if she'd just given the subject some thought earlier.
    She would tolerate dinner and chalk up the event to experience. The next time she dealt with a man whose background probably could not bear close scrutiny, she would take care not to insult him too obviously! She took a long breath. Perhaps the meal would pass more serenely if she mended a few fences first.
    "Mr. Garrett . . ."
    "Call me Case, or I'll insist you stick around for dessert." He smiled deliberately.
    "Case," she repeated dutifully, summoning an apologetic curve of her lips that was not repeated in her eyes. "I'm sorry I offended you, but this whole thing has been rather a nuisance for me. I'm doing a favor for Donna, and—"
    "I only accept the most sincerely meant apologies," he told her coolly, coming to a halt by an elevator and pressing the button. "So let's skip that line about feeling bad for having offended me. Quite unnecessary anyway. I've endured much worse," he added cryptically.
    For some reason the mildness of the statement struck Kendra as so incongruous as to be very funny. A smile sailed into her eyes, and the curve of her mouth took on the spontaneous brilliance that had so overcome Wolf a short time earlier.
    "I'll just bet you have." She laughed up at him, imagining the sort of "offenses" a man like this must have been dealt in his life. "Did you punish the offenders by taking them out to dinner? Strange, but I wouldn't have thought you the 'turn the other cheek' type."
    "You don't think having dinner with me will be such a trying penalty?" he murmured, his dark eye drinking in the sight of her smile with a strangely thirsty look that Kendra didn't understand.
    "Not if the duckling is as good as you say it is," she
    retorted blandly. "Besides, I'm hungry," she added easily, stepping obediently into the opening doors of the wood-paneled elevator. "I was going to have dinner after I finished my business here, anyway." She watched him press the button for the third floor of the building. "Is the restaurant on the top floor?"
    "No," he replied, flicking an amused glance at her inquiring expression. "My apartments are."
    "Your apartments!" she snapped, the well-marked lines of her brows snapping together in a quelling frown. "You invited me to dinner in the restaurant. . . ."
    The elevator was already gliding to a halt, the heavy doors opening to reveal a white-carpeted hallway and a broad, carved oak door directly across from them.
    "I invited you to dinner. I don't recall saying we would dine in the restaurant," he said smoothly, guiding her across the hall and inserting a key into the massively ornate brass lock.
    He opened the door but made no move to force her inside. Instead he smiled with deliberate, goading mockery as she hesitated on the threshold.
    "The deal still stands," he told her easily. "Roast duckling in exchange for Mrs.