Seductive Stranger

'What would you know about love?' she sneered.

hurt and angry at the same time. When Josh looked at her with such contempt she wanted to burst into tears, but she held her head up and tried to inject an answering dislike into her eyes.

He laughed shortly. 'More than you do, anyway!'

'I doubt it!' Prue said bitterly.

At that moment another car, passing them, slowed down, and the driver put his head out to shout, 'Hello, need any help?'

Josh sat up, darkly flushed. He leaned over to shake his head. 'No, thanks.'

'Anybody hurt in the crash?' asked the other man curiously, looking past Josh at Prue.

'No, it wasn't serious,' Josh said. 'Just a skid.'

The other man looked back at Prue's car. 'Whoever was driving that was damn lucky then! Could have been killed, veering off the road like that!' He drove on and Josh gave an ironic grimace.

'He thought I was giving you the kiss of life, I suppose.'

Prue was scarlet and unamused. 'He was right about me being lucky not to be killed!' She put a hand to the door-handle. 'Will you help me to get my car back on to the road?' she stiffly asked.

'I'd never manage it; after all the rain we've been having, that verge is much too soft. We'd just churn up the mud and probably make matters worse. Leave it there and I'll ask my garage to send someone out here to pick it up.'

Prue seethed, but there was nothing she could do but accept the situation. 'My cases are in it,' she said coldly, and Josh went over to get her suitcases and load them into his own car.

'I'll take you home,' he then said, and there was nothing much she could do about that either, not that it made her any happier to admit it.

'Will you stop trying to run my life?' she snapped as Josh started the car and began to drive away.

He stared straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, his mouth tight, his profile as sharp as a razor. 'Somebody has to!' he muttered without looking at her.

'I've managed it myself for years!' Prue bit back, scowling.

'You don't seem to have made much of a job of it so far,' Josh told her.

'You picked the most God-awful man and you jump to the craziest of conclusions about things without really knowing what you're doing!'

She opened her mouth to yell back at him, then remembered how wrong she had been about his mother, what flimsy evidence she had had for the false conclusions she had drawn about Lucy Killane—and closed her mouth again.

Josh had been watching her sideways, waiting for her come-back, and his brows lifted at her silence. 'Well, well . . . nothing to say?' he mocked, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.

'I've decided I won't let you drag me into another stupid, pointless argument; you may enjoy them, but I don't! I hate them. I've never quarrelled with anyone the way I quarrel with you, and I don't know why we keep shouting at each other…'

'Don't you?' he interrupted, smiling crookedly. 'I could tell you, but...'

'I'm not listening!' Prue broke out, in a panic, her skin filmed with fine sweat.

'But you won't want to hear!' Josh finished drily. His smile made her face burn, then she realised that he was not taking her home, he was heading in the direction of Killane House, and she sat up rigidly.

'Where are you taking me?'

He shot her one of his dry glances. 'Where do you think?'

'I want to go back to my father's farm.'

'Later,' Josh said coolly.

'No, now! Take me home!'