Still unaware of his presence, Alexandra suddenly called out that it was time to stop. Breathless and laughing, she reached behind her head, pulled off her face mask and gave her head a hard shake that sent her long, heavy hair falling over her shoulders in a riotous tumble of rich mahogany waves threaded with gold. "Tony, you're getting slow," she teased, her laughing face beguilingly flushed as she removed the protective padded chestplate and knelt on one knee to put it against the wall. Anthony said something to her and she looked over her shoulder at him, smiling… Suddenly Jordan felt himself catapulted backward through time while the image of the lush beauty before him abruptly blended into another image—that of an enchanting, curly-haired girl who had brandished a makeshift saber at him in a woodland glade and knelt down among the flowers, looking up at him with a puppy squirming in her arms and unconcealed love glowing in her eyes.

Within him, Jordan felt a pang of nostalgia, mingled with a sharp sense of loss because the girl in the glade was gone now.

Tony finally saw him standing there. "Hawk," he jokingly asked, "do you think I'm slowing down, because I'm getting old?" On the opposite side of the room, Alexandra lurched around and her face froze.

"I hope not," Jordan replied dryly. "I'm older than you are." Turning to Alexandra, he said, "Since I'm free earlier than I expected to be, I thought we could have our meeting now, rather than later."

In place of the cold animosity that had marked his mood yesterday, his tone today was impeccably polite, impersonal, and businesslike. Relieved but wary, Alexandra glanced down at her snug-fitting pants, erroneously thinking that she would be at a distinct disadvantage if she met with him dressed like this, with her face flushed and her hair in disarray. "I'd like to change first."

"It isn't necessary."

Unwilling to antagonize him by caviling over trifles, when she in fact had a matter of great import to negotiate with him, Alexandra acquiesced with a coolly polite inclination of her head. In tense silence she accompanied him downstairs to his study, mentally rehearsing for the last time what she intended to say.

Closing the double doors behind them, Jordan waited for Alexandra to be seated in one of the chairs arranged in a semicircle in front of his massive, intricately carved oaken desk. Instead of sitting behind it, he perched a hip on the edge of it, crossed his arms over his chest and studied her impassively, his leg swinging lazily to and fro, so close to her own leg that the fabric of his trousers whispered against hers.

It seemed like an eternity before he finally spoke. When he did, his voice was calm and authoritative: "We have had two 'beginnings,' you and I—that first one at my grandmother's house a year ago, and the one here in this house yesterday. Because of the circumstances, neither of them has been particularly auspicious. Today is the third—and last—beginning for us. In a few minutes, I will decide what the course of our future will be. In order to do that, I'd first like to hear what you have to say about this…" Reaching behind him, he picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and calmly handed it to her.

Curious, Alexandra took the sheet, glanced at it, then nearly shot out of her chair as fury boiled up inside her, exploding through her body with the force of a holocaust. On the sheet, Jordan had listed more than a dozen "questionable activities" including her dueling practice with Roddy, her race in Hyde Park, her brush with disgrace when Lord Marbly tried to lure her off to Wilton, and several other escapades that had been relatively harmless, but when catalogued in this fashion read like an indictment.

"Before I decide on the course of our future," Jordan continued dispassionately, immune to the wrathful expression on her beautiful face, "I thought it only fair to give you a chance to deny any item on the list that isn't true, as well as to offer any explanations you may wish to give."

Rage, full-bodied and fortifying, sent Alexandra slowly to her feet, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected he would have the gall to criticize her behavior. Why, next to the life he had led, she was as innocent as a babe.

"Of all the loathsome, hypocritical, arrogant—!" she burst out furiously, and then with a superhuman effort, she took control of her rampaging ire. Lifting her chin, she looked straight into his enigmatic eyes and took infuriated pleasure in baldly admitting to the entire—grossly exaggerated—list. "I'm guilty," she wrathfully declared. "Guilty of every single meaningless, harmless, innocuous incident on that list."

Jordan gazed at the tempestuous beauty standing before him, her eyes flashing like angry jewels, her breasts rising and falling with suppressed fury, and his anger gave way to a reluctant admiration for her honesty and courage in admitting her guilt.

Alexandra, however, was not finished. "How dare you confront me with a list of accusations and give me ultimatums about my future!" she raged, and before he could react, she moved sideways out of his reach, turned on her heel, and headed for the door.

"Come back here!" Jordan ordered.

Alexandra spun around so swiftly that her shining hair came spilling over her left shoulder in a riotous waterfall of gleaming waves and curls. "I'll be back!" she assured wrathfully. "Just give me ten minutes."

Jordan let her go, his brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown as he stared at the door she had slammed behind her. He hadn't expected her to react quite so violently to the items on the list. In fact, he wasn't entirely certain what he'd hoped to achieve by showing her the list, other than to somehow discover from her reaction if that was all she'd been up to while he was gone. The only thing he wanted, needed to know, was the one question he couldn't possibly ask her—and that was who had shared her bed and her body while he was gone.

Reaching over to the stack of papers on his desk, he picked up a shipping contract and began absently reading it while he waited for her to return.

The list, he admitted to himself, had not been a sterling idea.

That conclusion was emphatically borne out a few minutes later, when Alexandra rapped upon the door, stalked into his study without waiting for him to invite her to do so, and slapped a sheet of paper on the desk beside his hip. "Since you want to exchange accusations and offer opportunities for denial," she told him furiously, "I'll give you the same 'courtesy' before I hand you an ultimatum about our future."

Jordan's curious glance shifted from her flushed, beautiful face to the sheet of paper lying on his desk. Laying aside the contract he'd been reviewing, he nodded toward the chair where she had been seated earlier, and waited until she sat down, then he picked up the list.