Helen pursed her lips. “I like it the way it is,” she said, turning to eye Amanda severely.
In a cheerful tone Amanda said, “The new owner wants it fixed up.” Before Helen could say anything about that, she went on in the same friendly voice. “You didn’t ride over here, did you, Miss Nell? The wind’s picking up and it must be nearly freezing outside. Why don’t I have one of the men drive you back home?”
“It’s only three miles or so, child; I’ll be fine. Heavens, I’ve spent days in the saddle in my time. Don’t worry about me.” She was moving toward the door as she spoke, briskly drawing on a pair of suede gloves. “You just give me a call if you need anything. Anything at all. I’m a good neighbor; anyone will tell you that.”
“Thank you, Miss Nell,” Amanda murmured.
As soon as the door closed behind Helen, Amanda heard an uncertain laugh escape her. Uncle Edward, she acknowledged silently, hadn’t exaggerated; Miss Nell Patterson quite definitely kept an eye on her former home. She’d blown through the door like a miniature storm, bent on finding out exactly what had been done to the place and offering innumerable criticisms and suggestions.
Under different conditions, Amanda would have enjoyed Miss Nell, since eccentric personalities appealed to her. But Ryder Foxx had shaken her off balance and she was having a difficult time regaining it. She was feeling more than a little daunted. Carpenters everywhere, a big dog constantly at her heels with an unnerving habit of fainting, a strong-minded neighbor with definite opinions about this place and no hesitation in expressing herself, five more guests due to arrive in the coming days, and—and—Ryder Duncan Foxx.
Amanda muttered to herself, relieving her feelings with a few colorful words and phrases since she thought herself alone. But she wasn’t alone, and the sound of a low laugh made her look up quickly toward the second-floor landing.
“Not very ladylike,” Ryder said mockingly.
She watched him come down the stairs, wondering what she had ever done to the fates that they’d do this to her in revenge. The man looked indecently handsome in his casual clothing, she thought, the jeans too form-fitting for her peace of mind and the thick, dark blue sweater setting off the powerful width of his shoulders.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to eavesdrop?”
“Certainly she did,” he returned promptly, a disquieting gleam of enjoyment in his eye. “I even paid attention to the lessons. I wasn’t eavesdropping, Miss Trask, I simply didn’t want to intrude. Who is Miss Nell?”
“She used to own this place,” Amanda replied, watching him guardedly as he reached the bottom of the stairs and came toward her. “I hope you find your room…satisfactory,” she added politely.
“You hope nothing of the kind,” he told her in a pleasant tone. “Tell me, Miss Trask, are you this hostile to everyone, or do I deserve your special attention for some reason?”
“Some people,” she said in a freezing voice, “simply don’t hit it off.”
“But there’s usually a reason,” he said with a slow, fallen-angel kind of smile. “I’m curious about that. Do I remind you of a discarded lover, is that it?”
She had the uneasy feeling that she wouldn’t like where he was going with this conversation. “I have work to do.”
“And you think I might interfere with your work?”
A wise little voice in Amanda’s head told her that if she’d only keep her mouth shut, Ryder Foxx would rapidly tire of the sparring and leave her in peace. But she wasn’t very surprised to find herself ignoring the voice.
“Mr. Foxx, the staff here—such as it is—has no time to provide entertainment for you. There’s a grimy deck of cards around here somewhere if you want to play solitaire. There are horses out in the corral if you ride, but please leave a trail of bread crumbs so none of us is forced to disrupt the work by having to go look for you.”
“You have quite a chip on your shoulder. I wonder why,” he said thoughtfully, that gleam of enjoyment still present in his eye. “It might be worth my while to find out.”
Amanda felt a definite shock. She recognized that speculative tone in his voice, and it shook her. Totally against her will, she felt a rush of heat from somewhere inside her, and her legs went weak.
No, she thought blankly. Oh, no…
She squared her shoulders and glared at him. “I have a job to do here. So whatever you’ve got in mind, you can forget it.”
No more than a couple of feet away from her, he leaned an elbow on the counter and looked her over quite deliberately from her running shoes to her bright red hair. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to throw down a gauntlet?” he drawled.
Amanda fought a sensation of half-excited panic. The only effect her rudeness seemed to have on him was to encourage him even more, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t deceive herself into believing that she didn’t enjoy the sparring, but she was too conscious of this man to allow any kind of relationship to develop—even an argumentative one. Particularly when all her instincts told her that getting involved with him on any level would be like striking a match in a room full of explosives.
She got a grip on herself. “Any gauntlet you see is imaginary, Mr. Foxx.”
“Is it? Well, we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we, Miss Trask? In the meantime, don’t let me keep you from your work.”
Amanda managed to keep her face expressionless as she turned away from the counter and headed down the hall toward the south wing of the house, but it was difficult. She felt definitely bested in the encounter, and found her thoughts divided between wry amusement and panicked bewilderment.
Her sense of responsibility made it impossible for her to call her uncle and ask him to find someone else for the job, and that meant she was stuck for the duration. And she was uneasily aware that her hostility toward Ryder Foxx had done nothing except pique his interest.
The man had been at the ranch less than two hours, and already her nerves were on edge. She told herself that her only option was to ignore him as much as possible and keep herself busy, to stay out of his way. It was good advice. She only hoped that she could take it.
—
“You missed supper, Miss Trask.”
Amanda felt herself tense. So much for good advice, she thought wryly. She’d managed to keep out of Ryder’s way for several hours, surrounding herself with the work crew while they were there, then retreating into the den with paperwork. She’d built a fire in the old fireplace to combat the chill of the room, and was curled up at one end of the couch looking over furniture catalogues.
Nemo, her constant companion, was sprawled out on the frayed hearth rug snoring softly.
She watched as Ryder came around the end of the couch and sat down, annoyed with herself because she couldn’t help thinking that he moved with a cat’s unconscious grace.
“Am I interrupting?” he asked innocently.
“Yes,” she said.
“You can’t work all the time. It’s bad for your health, to say nothing of your temper.”
“Mr. Foxx—”
“Ryder,” he suggested.
Enough, Amanda decided, was enough. She looked him straight in the eye. “Why don’t we save ourselves a lot of time,” she proposed.
“I’m all for efficiency.”
“Okay. I don’t know you, Mr. Foxx, but it seems fairly obvious that you’ve decided I make a dandy sparring partner.”
“Among other things,” he said.
“What other things?” she demanded baldly.
He smiled slowly.
When it became obvious that was going to be the only answer he gave her, Amanda drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “Mind telling me why? I mean, do you have some masochistic need to go after any woman who’s pointedly not interested?”
“No.” He spoke casually, as if the conversation were about the weather. “There’s just something about you, I guess. Your sharp tongue or your red hair. Something.”
Amanda
stared at him and felt an unexpected flash of amusement. “Chemistry?”
“For want of a better word. Don’t you believe in chemistry, Miss Trask?”
“Sure, in a laboratory.”
“But not between a man and a woman?”
That little voice in Amanda’s head was urging caution; she ignored it, and didn’t stop then to wonder why. “Look, I’m not responsible for your, er, chemical reactions.”
“In this case,” he said calmly, “you certainly are.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Engaged?”
Amanda shook her head.
“Anybody special?”
“Not at the moment. Mr. Foxx—”
“Let me guess. You’ve had a tragic past romance and now you’re very bitter toward men.”
She dropped her gaze to the catalogues in her lap. Damn the man, why wouldn’t he stop this? With an effort she held her voice even. “Can’t you just accept the fact that I’m not interested?”
“Only if you give me a good reason.” He studied her lowered head, watching the shimmer of firelight on her hair. It occurred to him vaguely that he was pressing too hard, that for some reason this was terribly important to him, but he didn’t question that. He’d always listened to his instincts, and right now they were telling him to break through her guard even if he had to use strong tactics to do it.
She looked up at him, and Ryder felt his insides tighten. She was lovely, he thought, and there was something almost fragile about her—not physically, but emotionally. He had the feeling that the chip on her shoulder had been earned, that his light remark about tragic past romances had been closer to the target than he’d expected.
“Mr. Foxx—”
“Ryder.” He heard the change in his voice, the note that wasn’t mocking or casual but something very serious. And she heard it too; he saw her green eyes widen slightly. “Please,” he added quietly.
Amanda tried to keep her guard up, but he was being unfair by suddenly switching tactics like this. It was shockingly difficult to maintain a belligerent front when the man looked at her with an unexpected gentleness in his gray eyes.
“Dammit,” she muttered.
Quick amusement curved his firm mouth. “Is it so hard? Just a name, two syllables. And since Miss Nell isn’t the only one who knows the meaning behind some names, I’ll admit that mine means ‘knight’ or ‘horseman.’ ”
“Figures,” she said, half to herself.
His smile widened. “And yours means ‘beloved.’ I suppose I could call you that since you won’t let me call you Amanda.”
“Make it Amanda,” she said somewhat hastily, choosing the lesser of two evils.
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 be friends 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 Foxxfire, 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’d 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 separa
te 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 Dunbar, the rights to his new system, and, if possible, 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.