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changed.”
    Katrina felt uncertain, and searched his face with an unconscious intensity. He was different, she realized, and she mistrusted the change in him because it seemed so sudden. He had left her only hours before, his implicit demands and remote voice ringing in her ears, having as good as told her they would be lovers again; yet now he was guarded, and she could feel his strain.
    “Haven’t I?” she managed to say at last.
    “You were always so reserved, so calm. I never knew how much you felt.”
    “You knew,” she said before she could stop herself, and wished she had left the words unsaid.
    His face tightened. “No. You were loving. Passionate. But always elusive.”
    Wondering what he could mean, Katrina was silent, unable to say anything between her surprise and the uneasy suspicion of his motives.
    “The way you are now,” he said abruptly. “Is this going to be your defense, Trina?”
    She couldn’t misunderstand that. “I’m afraid you’re jumping to conclusions—again,” she said deliberately. “I’m defending nothing.” She thought that he might have winced, but if he did, the expression was so fleeting she couldn’t be sure.
    His arms tightened around her, and with the fluid grace that was so compelling about him, he began turning the dance into a subtle seduction. His body was hard against hers, his movements so sensuous that her own body responded immediately.
    “No?” he muttered.
    The sound of the music receded as she felt heat flow through her, and her own heartbeat sounded like a drum in her ears. Only her knowledge of his motives enabled her to keep her expression placid. Her body was his for the taking, and she knew it, but there was more bitter than sweet in that certainty.
    “No.” She met his gaze steadily, unaware of the clear honesty in the direct look. “If you mean to hurt me this way, I can’t fight you. We both know it. But I won’t let you destroy me. Not this time.”
    “Could I hurt you?” he asked roughly.
    Katrina didn’t hesitate. “Passion without love is always hurtful.”
    He was staring down at her, a muscle jerking in his lean jaw, and his eyes intense. He glanced around as if suddenly aware of where they were, then swore beneath his breath and led her swiftly from the restaurant. Alone with her in the elevator, he held her hand tightly and said in a grim voice, “You seem to bring out the worst in me.”
    She stole a glance up at his profile and felt a strange tremor within her. There was something in his face she’d never seen before, something she was almost afraid to try to define. She could almost have believed…But it wasn’t possible, there was too much bitterness and pain between them; it was only revenge he wanted.
    He didn’t take her to her suite but to his own room on the eighth floor, and when the door had closed behind them he released her hand and went to the window, standing with his back to her. “You believe I want to hurt you,” he said finally in that same bleak tone.
    Katrina could have left, but something in the stiffness of his body or the dullness of his voice held her motionless by the door. “You told me—” She broke off as he made a curiously uncontrolled gesture with one hand.
    “I know what I told you.” He turned suddenly but didn’t move from the window. “I said some of the things I’ve wanted to say to you for six endless years, and it almost killed me.”
    She swallowed hard. “I don’t understand.” Was he only toying with her now, attacking from a different direction? She gazed at his white face—and couldn’t believe the answer was yes.
    He seemed to hesitate, then said steadily, “Can we start over, Trina? Or have I made you hate me?”
    Katrina felt oddly suspended; she had nerved herself for a battle, all her will bent on surviving intact, and now she didn’t know what emotions were churning inside her. “What do you want from me?” she asked finally, huskily.
    “Another