To Die For by Linda Howard Page B

slid behind the steering wheel . . . and just kept on sliding, pushed by his big body as he forcibly took my place behind the wheel.
    I shrieked and tried to push him out; when he didn’t budge, I pulled my feet up and pushed with them, too. I’m strong for a woman, but he was like a rock sitting there. And the jackass was smiling.
    “Going somewhere?” he asked as he neatly filched the keys from the floorboard where I’d dropped them.
    “Yes,” I said, and opened the passenger door. I was sliding out when he caught me under both arms and hauled me back into the truck.
    “There are two ways we can do this,” he said calmly. “You can sit there like a good girl, or I can handcuff you. Which do you choose?”
    “That isn’t a choice,” I said indignantly. “That’s an ultimatum. Neither is what
I
want to do!”
    “Those’re the only two alternatives I’m offering. Look at it this way: you put me to the trouble of chasing after you, so you’re damned lucky I’m giving you even this much of a choice.”
    “Hah! You didn’t have to follow me and you know it. You had no reason other than being an arrogant jackass for telling me not to leave town, so don’t act so put upon. You got laid, didn’t you? I didn’t notice you acting like I was a lot of trouble when you were tossing me on the bed.”
    He reached across me and grabbed the seat belt, pulling it around to buckle it. “I’m not the only person in this truck who got laid. Fun was had. Rocks were got off. It was a mutual thing.”
    “Which shouldn’t have happened. Casual sex is stupid.”
    “Agreed. But what’s between us isn’t casual.”
    “I keep telling you there is no ‘us.’ ”
    “Sure there is. You just don’t want to admit it yet.” He started the truck and put it in gear. “Nice truck, by the way. It surprised me. You strike me as a luxury-car kind of person.”
    I loudly cleared my throat, and he looked at me with raised brows. I stared pointedly at his seat belt, which he hadn’t fastened. He grunted and put the truck back in park. “Yes, ma’am,” he said while he buckled himself in.
    As he backed out of the driveway I returned to the argument. “See? You don’t know what kind of person I am. I like driving pickups. You really don’t know anything at all about me, so therefore we have nothing between us except for physical attraction. That makes the sex casual.”
    “I beg to differ. Casual sex is scratching an itch, and nothing more.”
    “Bingo! My itch has been scratched. You can go now.”
    “Are you always like this when your feelings get hurt?”
    I set my jaw and stared out the windshield. I wished he hadn’t realized that hurt feelings
were
behind my hostility and resistance to him. You have to care about someone before he can hurt your feelings, because otherwise what he said or did wouldn’t even blip on the old radar screen. I didn’t want to care about him; I didn’t want to care about what he did or whom he saw, if he was eating properly or getting enough sleep. I didn’t want to be hurt again, because this man could hurt me big-time if I let him get really close. Jason had hurt me bad enough, but Wyatt could break my heart.
    He reached out and put his hand on the back of my neck, gently massaging. “I’m sorry,” he said gently.
    I could tell I was going to have trouble with him when it came to my neck. He was like a vampire, going straight for it whenever he wanted to influence me. The apology wasn’t playing fair, either. I wanted him to crawl, and here he was undermining my resolve with that simple apology. The man was sneaky.
    The best thing to do was fight fire with fire, and tell him exactly where he stood and what the problem was. I reached up and removed his hand from the back of my neck, because I couldn’t think straight while he was touching me there.
    “Okay, here it is,” I said steadily, still focusing on what was outside rather than in the truck with me. “How can I trust you