“Don’t get smart with me, Faythe,” he said, his teeth grinding together during the pause. “I’m barely holding on to my temper right now as it is. If you were a guy, you’d be hurting already.” He was right. If I were a tomcat, I might have been declawed. He’d done worse to strays who broke the rules. But since it was clearly not the time to lobby for equal treatment for women, I opted for an apology.

“I’m sorry.” I spiked my voice with a heavy dose of sincerity as I stepped into my shorts, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn and face him.

“You’re sorry? ” Again with the whispers. This was definitely not good.

My hands shook as they pawed through a selection of old bras, and I was glad he couldn’t see how upset I real y was. I’d rather let him think I didn’t care, than think I was emotional y frail.

“You’re going to have to do better than that.”

Better than that? In my opinion, nothing was better than an apology.

Stal ing for time to think, I picked a bra at random and leaned over to scoop myself into it. Hooking the bra in place, I turned to face him, forcing my hands to stop shaking and cooperate, rather than ask him for help. I grabbed a T-shirt from the floor and tugged it over my head. Fully clothed, I felt like I had an advantage over Marc for the first time since I’d come home. Nude men don’t look threatening, no matter how mad they are. They just look vulnerable.

“Well?” He leaned against the wall, taking weight off his injured leg. My eyes wandered down his body, on their way to inspect his ankle, but when I got to his bare lower stomach, I stopped, jerking my gaze away as if the sight of him naked had burned my retinas.

His eyes, I thought. Only his eyes.

Spinning abruptly, I stomped over to my bathroom and opened the door, my hand hovering over the robe hanging on its hook. But it was lavender, embroidered with purple and white irises. Marc would never wear it. Shaking my head, I bal ed up a bath towel from the rack instead and tossed it to him, one-handed.

Marc shook the towel out and glanced at me quizzical y, as if he didn’t understand what I expected him to do with it.

“Wear it, or get out,” I said, careful to look only at his eyes.

He scowled, but wrapped the towel around his waist, tucking one corner in at his hip. “Better?” he asked, arms spread for my approval.

My pulse jumped as my traitorous eyes traveled over his chest, lingering on the old claw marks. “Marginal y.”

“Good, now talk.”

My eyes roamed the room, searching for any excuse to avoid looking at him.

The empty suitcase caught my attention, lying on the carpet below the dent it left in my wal . “What do you want me to say?” I stomped past him and snatched up the suitcase. “I messed up—badly—and I’m very sorry. I’l never do it again.” I opened the case on the end of the bed and turned to face him. “So hit me, or ground me, or do whatever it is you do when one of the guys gets out of line. Then get the hel out of my room.”

Fury flashed in his eyes, and his voice was barely audible. “You’re real y tempting me, you know.”

“Tempting you to what, get out?”

“To knock some sense into you.”

“Go ahead. This can’t be the first time you’ve wanted to.” I snatched a lump of white nylon from the scattering of clothes I’d tossed from the suitcase that morning and swung around to face him with my arms open, inviting him to take his best shot. But the image must have been ruined by the bra dangling from my fist, because he just stared at me, his arms crossed over his chest.

Marc had never hit me, and he never would, not just because the council frowned heavily on hitting tabbies, but because he knew better. I wasn’t a turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl. But mostly he wouldn’t hit me because he’d never hit a woman. Even one who’d nearly bitten his foot off.

Anger at me had driven him to put his fists through wal s, to rip doors from their hinges, and to pick fights with other toms out of frustration. On one memorable occasion, he threw my mother’s solid-oak dinner table across the room and into a wal , leaving a dent four feet long in the Sheetrock. But the word dent didn’t do justice to the damage. It was more like the wal buckled. The table actual y snapped one of the studs, its splintered edges protruding through the wal into the next room.

As wel as docking Marc’s paycheck, Daddy had taken away my al owance for eight months to help pay for the repairs, though I hadn’t even touched the table.

He’d blamed me for pushing Marc’s buttons on purpose. Like that was fair.

Marc sighed and shook his head slowly. “What am I going to do with you, Faythe?”

Not a damn thing, I thought. But I knew better than to dare him. If I claimed to be beyond his authority, he’d do something to prove me wrong, just to make a point. “You sound like my mother,” I muttered, tossing the bra into the suitcase as I bent to grab a dog-eared copy of Sense and Sensibility. I was intentional y ignoring my resemblance to my mother as I tidied up to keep my nervous hands busy. When left empty, they tended to form fists.

Marc’s eyes tracked me as I moved to place my copy of Beowulf on the shelf.

“I feel more like your father,” he said.

“Wel , you’re not my father.”

“Thank goodness,” he muttered, shaking his head. I had to agree. I crossed the room again with a smal stack of books clenched to my chest. Marc stepped into my path. “Come on, Faythe,” he said, taking the books from me. He set the entire stack on my desk without breaking eye contact. “Tel me what happened out there.”