Free Winds of Heaven by Karen Toller Whittenburg

happens, won’t we?” she said absently. “I think I’ll call it a night. Good night, Nick.” She walked to the doorway, already anticipating the release of the evening’s tension in a hot bath.
    Nick’s gaze fell from the doorway directly onto the note pad and the sight of his name marked through a half dozen times. He circled the coffee table to examine the pad more carefully. But there was no mistake. Kylie had written his name and then boldly slashed through it—not once but several times.
    Alex’s name wasn’t marked that way, he noticed. In fact, Alex’s name was encircled by a wreath of flowers. A flash of unreasonable jealousy raced through Nick as he turned a suspicious eye on the bouquet of roses. If Kylie thought for one minute that she and Alex ...
    Before he quite knew his intention, Nick was standing outside her bedroom door. With a peremptory knock he opened the door and stepped inside.
    Startled, Kylie whirled to face him, making an inadequate attempt to cover her breasts with one hand as she grabbed frantically with the other for the blouse she’d just discarded.
    “Nick! What are you doing?” Her groping fingers fastened on the soft material, and she jerked it up to cover herself, realizing too late that she’d pulled the coverlet from the bed. Angry embarrassment flooded her cheeks with hot color as she tried to adjust the bulky satin spread around her. When she focused her attention on Nick, though, the embarrassment gave way to a different type of heat.
    The smoldering appraisal in his eyes took her breath away, and for a pulsebeat her fingers relaxed their grip. But as the satiny material began to ease down the curve of her breasts, Kylie recognized the danger and clutched the makeshift wrapper to stop its willful descent. With as much dignity and poise as she could manage, Kylie squared her shoulders and tipped her chin.
    “You’d better have a good reason for barging in here like this,” she stated, trying to recapture her initial angry response.
    “I did, but I completely forgot what it was.” His gaze slid slowly upward, lingering at the base of her throat and caressing her bare shoulders before singeing her lips with its intensity. “You look great in a bedspread.”
    Her lips pursed in a line of irritation. “Thank you. It’s the latest style for those times when a man walks uninvited into your bedroom.”
    “What’s the style when he’s invited?”
    Hitching the coverlet higher, she glared at him, vacillating between annoyance and sensual awareness. “If you don’t know the answer to that question, Nick,” she challenged, “maybe you should ask Alex for some pointers.”
    Immediately Nick’s expression grew stern, and he scanned the room with ill-concealed impatience. Kylie watched, mystified, as he walked to the dresser, lifted the rose she’d placed there, and turned to face her.
    “This is the reason I barged uninvited into your room.” His voice was low but unmistakably determined as he dropped the yellow rose into the trash receptacle. “You may as well understand right now, Kylie, that nothing is going to happen between you and my cousin. No wager, no relationship—nothing is going to happen with Alex. Do you hear me?”
    “Loud and clear,” she snapped. “And now I’d like to hear why you feel this chauvinistic display of authority is necessary. Are you afraid that with my help Alex might gain a little authority of his own? Maybe even pose a threat to your job?”
    “Job?” Nick asked with a puzzled lift of his brows. “What does my job have to do with this?”
    “Alex said enough about the situation for me to know that the two of you are involved in some executive power struggle. But if you think for one minute that I’m—”
    “Kylie, this has nothing to do with my job or Alex’s. I want to be sure you have no plans to change his mind about women in general and blondes in particular.” Nick’s gaze held hers with unyielding strength. “I