Raven's Prey

up her margarita.
    Judd studied the rigid line of her eyebrows and the sulky twist of her mouth and then he astounded her by asking, “Have you?”
    “Have I what?” She didn’t bother looking at him, concentrating instead on the row of men at the bar.
    “Have you ever been seriously involved with a man?” he asked patiently.
    For an instant she didn’t know what to say, and then she decided on the truth. Perhaps he really was trying to make meaningful conversation. She didn’t want to throw cold water on his efforts. “A couple of times,” she admitted cautiously.
    “When?”
    Why was he suddenly so interested? Well, far be it from her [_to _]squelch the first heart-to-heart talk they’d had yet. “There was a man in Phoenix,” she began hesitantly, thinking of Steve Melbourne with his three-piece suits and his easy, sophisticated charm. “We had a lot in common. Both of us had careers in the business world, we enjoyed the same things. He was very handsome,” she added lamely.
    “So what went wrong?” Judd demanded.
    Honor glared at him. “Nothing went wrong. We just decided we weren’t right for each other, that’s all.” How could you explain a relationship that had seemed to have everything going for it but somehow lacked the magic? There had never been any flash of boundless excitement between herself and Steve Melbourne, no matter how hard she had wished for it. Everything had seemed [_so _]right [_on the _]surface, but her romantic soul had shied away from a relationship that totally lacked passion. It was not, Honor had sadly learned, a commodity that could be infused at will into an association between a man and a woman. It was either present from the beginning or it was completely lacking.
    “Do you still see him?” Judd pressed stonily.
    “We’re friends.” She shrugged. “He’s engaged to someone else now, but, yes I still see him occasionally.”
    “Friends! Then you couldn’t have been in love with him,” he declared flatly. “No man who’d ever been involved with you in a love affair could remain friends with you after it was over!”
    “You’re an authority on the subject?” she drawled, fiercely resentful of his certainty.
    “I’m just stating the obvious. Tell me about the other times you were in love. You said there had been a couple of occasions.”
    “Is this just morbid curiosity on your part or genuine interest?”
    “Just tell me, okay? It was your idea to talk about this.”
    “The second occasion was a bit more dramatic, ft nearly got me killed!” she retorted without pausing to think. He was annoying her now with his persistent questioning of her love Me.
    “Almost got you killed? Oh, Prager.”
    “Yes, Prager.” She looked down at her drink, morosely stirring it with a finger. She suddenly didn’t want to talk about Nick at all.
    “You told me before that you were carrying on a long-distance romance. You might as well give me the whole dazzling story,” he mocked gruffly.
    Was anything being accomplished with this? Honor wondered unhappily. “Nick and I were becoming very close. He hired me into the firm and right from the start we were interested in each other. I suppose he seemed very romantic to me with his globe-trotting and all his connections. And he can be very charming,” she admitted with a sigh. “He knows how to make a woman feel pampered. Special. I thought… I thought he loved me” She broke off, shivering at the memory of how quickly Nick’s love had turned into a chilling threat. The man knew how to create the kind of mood that had appealed to her sense of the romantic, and she had been fool enough to respond to it. That trip to Hong Kong would have been the setting for the true beginning to their love affair if only Nick hadn’t turned out to be another kind of man altogether. Honor shuddered again at the thought of how close she had been to going to bed with a man who had shown no compunction about trying to kill her.
    “So far you’ve told me you’ve managed to get involved with a man with whom you’re now ‘friends’ and another whom you claim wants to kill you. Hell of a[_ _]track record, Honor. Only a woman with a vivid imagination could classify either of those two tales as love affairs.’ You must be one of the last of the great romantics. If you want my opinion all you’ve had are a few interesting affairs, just like me.” Judd sounded utterly convinced of his own conclusions.
    So much for the