Free Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown

sleep.”
    He cupped her elbow and steadied her as she stood up and took a tentative step. “Ouch.”
    “Wiggle your toes.”
    It was a long minute before she was able to put her full weight on her feet. He kept his hand around her elbow as they shuffled toward the bedroom, where the bathroom was.
    “Have you lived here since you left Charleston?”
    “Yes.”
    “Alone?”
    “A raccoon hung around for a few months.”
    “You didn’t get married?”
    “No.”
    They were in the bedroom now. He reached through the open bathroom door to switch on the light. This afternoon before he left, he’d gone over the fixtures with a disinfectant solution. He’d hung a clean towel on the bar. A new roll of toilet paper was on the spool. He’d put an unused bar of soap in a dish he pilfered from the kitchen.
    All the while he was cleaning, he’d asked himself why he was bothering. It wasn’t like she was going to be a guest. But now he was glad he’d gone to the effort. It made the room, and by extension him, more presentable.
    “Weren’t you engaged?” she asked.
    “Yes.” He stood aside and motioned her into the bathroom. He could read the question in her eyes, but he wasn’t going to discuss his broken engagement. Not yet. “Hurry up. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
    “You haven’t freed my hands.”
    “You’ll manage.”
    “I can’t go with my hands bound behind my back.”
    “I bet you can if you have to go bad enough.”
    Once she’d cleared the bathroom door, she kicked it shut. He turned the knob and pushed it open. “The door stays open.”
    “That isn’t necessary.”
    “It is if you want to use the bathroom.”
    “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? For…for before. You’re humiliating me out of spite, when all I did was my job.”
    “If you’re not going to pee, back in the chair you go.”
    She thought it over, then said, “Can you at least close the door halfway?”
    He conceded her that much. While she was attending to her business, he moved restlessly around the bedroom. He went over to the window and looked out on a night that was black and still. He fiddled with the sash on the window shade, then batted at it angrily and moved to the bed and sat down.
    Damn right he was holding a grudge against her. Giving her a taste of humiliation. Doesn’t taste good, does it, Miss Shelley? If she felt helpless and out of control, good. Because that was how he’d felt five years ago, when she’d entertained her television audience with his personal crisis. Smugly she’d broadcast his degradation with the enticement of a carnival barker.
    Thinking of it now made his hands close into fists. He wouldn’t hit her, but he might hit the wall, pound at it in outrage over the injustice of what had happened to him and how Britt Shelley had contributed.
    With him in this fractious frame of mind, it wasn’t very smart of her to mention Hallie. Weren’t you engaged? Not smart of her at all to reopen that wound.
    He was sitting on the edge of his bed when she used her foot to open the bathroom door. “You—” The word died on her lips. His expression must have conveyed to her the bitterness roiling inside him. He certainly didn’t try to conceal it.
    She wavered there on the threshold between the two rooms, looking ready to duck back into the bathroom for safety. Enjoying her apprehension, he stood up slowly. “Turn around.”
    “What for?”
    “Turn around,” he repeated with emphasis.
    Her face filled with distress. “Mr. Gannon, please. I know you probably think that I…that the news coverage I gave the…the fix you got yourself into was perhaps…”
    “Exploitative?”
    “I was young and green and terribly ambitious. I was trying to build an audience.”
    “At my expense.” He began walking toward her and she started backing up.
    “It was a long time ago.”
    “My memory of it is fresh.”
    “You don’t want to do anything now that would get you into even more trouble.” She