Free After Midnight by Diana Palmer

can you do this to me? What sort of deal are you working on that demands a whole evening of your time?”
    â€œThat’s hardly your concern,” he said in a very quiet voice. Her rudeness and lack of compassion were beginning to irritate him. She was a competent psychologist, and he couldn’t fault her intellect. But their mutual need for safe intimacy had been their only common bond. Chris wanted a man she could lead around by the nose in any emotional relationship. Kane wasn’t the type to let anyone, man or woman, dictate to him. He’d tired of Chris. Tonight, she was an absolute nuisance.
    â€œWhen will you phone me, then?” she asked stiffly.
    â€œWhen I have time. It might be as well if we don’t see as much of each other in the future.”
    There was a hesitation, then a stiff, “Perhaps you’re right. You’re a wonderful lover, Kane, but I always have the feeling that you’re going over cost overruns even when we’re together.”
    â€œI’m a businessman,” he reminded her.
    â€œYou’re a business,” she retorted. “A walking, talking industry, and I still say you should be in therapy. You haven’t been the same since…”
    He didn’t want to hear any more. “I’ll phone you. Good night.”
    He put the receiver down before she could say anything else. He’d had quite enough of her psychoanalysis. She did it all the time, even when she was in bed with him; especially when she was in bed with him, he amended. If he was aggressive, she labeled him a repressed masochist. If he was tender, he was pandering to her because he felt superior. Lately, she inhibited him so much that he lost interest very quickly when he was in bed with her, to the point of not being able to consummate lovemaking. That really infuriated her. She decided that his real problem was impotence.
    If her barbs hadn’t been so painful, they might have been amusing. He’d never been impotent in his life with anyone except Chris. Certainly he was more capable than ever when he just looked at Nikki. But, then, Nikki apparently didn’t have any reason to hate and despise men. She was very feminine along with her intelligence, and she didn’t tease viciously.
    He got up and changed from jeans and jersey into dress slacks and a comfortable yellow knit shirt. Fried fish with Nikki was suddenly muchmore enticing than a prime rib and cocktails with Chris.
    He selected a bottle of wine from the supply he’d imported and carried it along with him. He wondered if Nikki knew anything about fine white wine. She was an intelligent girl, but she hadn’t the advantages of wealth. Probably she wouldn’t know a Chardonnay from a Johannisberg Riesling. That was something he could teach her. He didn’t dare think about tutoring her in anything else just yet. She could become even more addicting than alcohol if he let her. Chris was all the trouble he needed for the present.
    Nikki had cleaned and fried the fish and was making a fruit salad and a poppyseed dressing to go with it when Kane knocked briefly and let himself into the cottage.
    She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Come on in,” she invited. She was wearing a frilly floral sundress that left most of her pretty, tanned back bare while it discreetly covered her breasts in front. She was barefoot at the kitchen table and Kane felt his body surge at the picture of feminine beauty she presented. How long had it been, he tried to recall, since he’d seen a woman in his own circle of friends wearing anything less masculine than a pin-striped business suit? Nikki dressed the way he liked to see a woman dress, not flaunting her curves but not denying it, either. Shedressed as if she had enough confidence in her intellect not to have to hide her womanhood behind it.
    â€œI’ve just finished the salad and dressing. Want to set the table?” she asked