Intimate Surrender. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ she have a choice? If she did, her vote would have been for locking him out on the porch rather than face a confrontation with him. But since she had a pretty good idea that a man like Peter Logan wouldn’t let anything as inconsequential as a locked door keep him away, she had no choice but to surrender to the inevitable. She stepped aside.

      “What are you doing here, Peter?”

      “You mean how did I figure out who the hell you really were?”

      Despite her best efforts at control, she shivered at the menace in his tone. “That, too.”

      “Don’t you read the papers, sweetheart?”

      She stared at him blankly. Across the vast room, she was oddly aware of a log breaking apart in the fireplace with a hiss and crackle. After a moment he yanked a folded newspaper from the inside pocket of his snow-flecked leather jacket and slapped it down on the narrow hall table next to her.

      She eyed it like he’d just let loose a wolverine in the Sweetwater great room. Warily, her pulse skipping with sudden trepidation, Katie picked up the newspaper. It was a copy of the society page of Portland Weekly, the independent tabloid that delighted in poking fun at the city’s movers and shakers.

      Her gaze went to the photo first and her already queasy stomach dipped. It was a photo of her and the man now standing before her, both of them in elegant evening wear. Her back—bared in a glittery emerald-colored designer gown she’d borrowed from her best friend—was to the camera, but anybody who saw the picture could clearly identify Peter Logan—and could see the two of them were locked in a passionate embrace.

      She had seen it before. The newspaper had run the photo months ago as part of a feature spread of a bachelor auction and charity benefit for Children’s Connection, a Portland adoption agency and fertility clinic. The caption had said only something about Peter being photographed in a hot kiss with a mystery woman. When they ran it the first time, she had seen it and thanked her very lucky stars that she hadn’t been recognizable.

      Apparently someone had figured it out. The headline above this photo read “Mystery Solved: Crosby, Logan scions put aside famous feud long enough for kiss.”

      Oh, no. She drew in a shaky breath. This was bad. Seriously bad. She read on.

      “We first brought you the juicy tidbit a few months ago that Logan Corporation CEO and oh-so-sexy bachelor Peter Logan was caught in a very heated embrace with a mysterious glamour-gal during a chi-chi gala for Children’s Connection, a cause the Logan family notably supports. The two of them disappeared together soon after.

      At the time. Logan pointedly refused to answer questions about the object of his affections, but after some digging, Portland Weekly has since learned his snuggle-honey was none other than Katherine Crosby. That’s right, of those Crosbys—Logan rivals on and off the corporate battlefield.

      Does their embrace signal an end to the famous feud? Are Portland’s own versions of the Hatfield and McCoy clans really ready to kiss and make up?

      Apparently at least two of them are.

      Neither Logan nor Ms. Crosby were available for comment but we’ll bring you more about this exciting development as soon as we find out more.”

      Her already queasy stomach dipped. Her mother was bound to hear about this; Katie had no doubt whatsoever about that. And when she did, Katie knew Sheila Crosby would rage and carry on for days, accusing her of everything from disloyalty to outright treason.

      Just thinking about the inevitable scene made her shoulders sag with the exhaustion that never seemed far away these days.

      “Nothing to say?” Peter finally asked when her silence dragged on.

      “I’ve never been called a glamour-gal before. I don’t believe it’s as gratifying as I would have imagined.”

      His sculpted features darkened. “I dislike being made a fool of, Katherine.”

      “Kate,” she murmured, regretting the glibness she tended to turn to during times of high stress. “Nearly everyone calls me Katie or Kate.”

      “Really, Celeste?” He asked in that same biting tone.

      Oh, Katie. What a mess you’re in, she thought. Pregnant with this man’s baby, this overwhelming, powerful, gorgeous man who despised her and her family. If he hated her now, how would he react if he ever discovered the tiny secret she carried inside her?

      The fragile threads of control seemed to slip a few more notches, but she flailed for them valiantly and faced him with what she hoped was cool aplomb.

      Without waiting for the invitation she wasn’t sure she could issue, he yanked off his jacket and tossed it over the rack of entwined elk antlers in the hallway then claimed one of the plump armchairs near the fire. She really had no choice but to follow him and perched on the edge of the sofa, trying not to let him see her nervousness.

      “Okay, let’s hear it. What’s your game?”

      “Game?”

      “What are you playing at? What were you trying to achieve by your little masquerade?”

      Of course he would want explanations from her, some justification for her deception. How could she possibly find the words for something she didn’t even understand herself?

      “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

      “I don’t know that I have a good answer to that.”

      “Try.” His voice was silk-sheathed steel.

      She scrambled for some kind of explanation and finally came up with something she hoped sounded reasonable. It was part of the truth, just not all of it. “Katie Crosby is a fairly boring person,” she said after a long moment. “All she ever thinks about is work. I suppose it was exciting being someone else for a few hours. Someone glamorous and adventurous and…and desirable. I got carried away by the magic of the evening. Then, after we…kissed, I was afraid to tell you who I was. I knew you would be angry and it just seemed easier all around not to say anything.”

      Peter studied her. She chewed her bottom lip after she finished speaking, waiting for him to respond. He wondered how in the hell a woman could appear so sweet and innocent on the outside while inside she was nothing but a deceptive little snake.

      He had never been so furious. It was taking every ounce of willpower he possessed not to rage and yell and throw a table or two through that huge wall of windows.

      His blood should have had time to cool in the twenty-four hours since his assistant had warily shown him that damn newspaper and he’d finally learned the identity of the mystery lover who had obsessed him for months. It had taken him most of that time to use all his connections and finally run her to ground here at this Wyoming ranch in the middle of nowhere, another hour to have his plane readied and two more in the air between here and Portland.

      The whole time he’d been behind the controls of his Gulfstream III, he had waited for his anger to fade, for the familiar cool reserve the world expected of him to take over. But throughout the flight, as now, his skin had been hot and itchy as this fury seethed through him.

      This woman—this slender, delicate-looking woman with her short hair and СКАЧАТЬ