He didn’t seem to breathe for several seconds. “All the more reason for an examination,” he replied. “You like to live dangerously, I gather. You’ve got no business on a horse.”

“Ed said the horse was gentle. It was my fault I got thrown. I jerked the reins.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes, I remember. You were trying to get away from me. Apparently you think I have something contagious.”

She could see the pride in his eyes that made him resent her. “It wasn’t that,” she said. She averted her gaze to the wall. “It’s just that I don’t like to be touched.”

“Ed touches you.”

She didn’t know how to tell him without telling him everything. She couldn’t bear having him know about her sordid past. She raised turbulent gray eyes to his dark ones. “I don’t like to be touched by strangers,” she amended quickly. “Ed and I have known each other for years,” she said finally. “It’s…different with him.”

His eyes narrowed. He searched over her thin face. “It must be,” he said flatly.

His mocking smile touched a nerve. “You’re like a steamroller, aren’t you?” she asked abruptly. “You assume that because you’re wealthy and powerful, there isn’t a woman alive who can resist you!”

He didn’t like that assumption. His eyes began to glitter. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip,” he said, his voice deadly quiet. “She was a spoiled little debutante who thought Daddy should be able to buy her any man she wanted. When she discovered that he couldn’t, she came to work for a friend of mine and spent a couple of weeks pursuing me around Jacobsville. I went home one night and found her piled up in my bed wearing a sheet and nothing else. I threw her out, but then she told everyone that I’d assaulted her. She had a field day with me in court until my housekeeper, Tolbert, was called to tell the truth about what happened. The fact that she lost the case should tell you what the jury thought of her accusations.”

“The jury?” she asked huskily. Besides his problems with his mother, she hadn’t known about any incident in his past that might predispose him even further to distrusting women.

His thin lips drew up in a travesty of a smile. “She had me arrested and prosecuted for criminal assault,” he returned. “I became famous locally—the one black mark in an otherwise unremarkable past. She had the misfortune to try the same trick later on an oilman up in Houston. He called me to testify in his behalf. When he won the case, he had her prosecuted for fraud and extortion, and won. She went to jail.”

She felt sick. He’d had his own dealings with the press. She was sorry for him. It must have been a real ordeal after what he’d already suffered in his young life. It also explained why he wasn’t married. Marriage involved trust. She doubted he was capable of it any longer. Certainly it explained the hostility he showed toward Leslie. He might think she was pretending to be repulsed by him because she was playing some deep game for profit, perhaps with some public embarrassment in mind. He might even think she was setting him up for another assault charge.

“Maybe you think that I’m like that,” she said after a minute, studying him quietly. “But I’m not.”

“Then why act like I’m going to attack you whenever I come within five feet of you?” he asked coldly.

She studied her fingers on the desk before her, their short fingernails neatly trimmed, with a coat of colorless sheen. Nothing flashy, she thought, and that was true of her life lately. She didn’t have an answer for him.

“Is Ed your lover?” he persisted coldly.

She didn’t flinch. “Ask him.”

He rolled the unlit cigar in his long fingers as he watched her. “You are one enormous puzzle,” he mused.

“Not really. I’m very ordinary.” She looked up. “I don’t like doctors, especially male ones…”

“Lou’s a woman,” he replied. “She and her husband are both physicians. They have a little boy.”

“Oh.” A woman. That would make things easier. But she didn’t want to be examined. They could probably tell from X rays how breaks occurred, and she didn’t know if she could trust a local doctor not to talk about it.

“It isn’t up to you,” he said suddenly. “You work for me. You had an accident on my ranch.” He smiled mirthlessly. “I have to cover my bets. You might decide later on to file suit for medical benefits.”

She searched his eyes. She couldn’t really blame him for feeling like that. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let her examine me.”

“No comment?”

She shrugged. “Mr. Caldwell, I work hard for my paycheck. I always have. You don’t know me, so I don’t blame you for expecting the worst. But I don’t want a free ride through life.”