do about the printing press? Will they tear it up?" Georgina strived for a tone of reasonableness as she watched him soap the light hairs across his broad chest. She hadn't noticed before, but the wet mat made a pattern that seemed to trail into an arrow that pointed directly downward. And she was trying her best not to look directly downward.
Amusement laced Daniel's voice as he watched her watching him. "They'll wish they hadn't if they try. There are laws, Georgina. Artemis may have the local lawyers tied in knots, but I know how to reach some of the best in the business. That press is private property. If the city takes it upon themselves to close that building, then they are legally responsible for what happens to it and anything in it. I'll retrieve our things tomorrow."
Georgina suspected Daniel was talking off the top of his head just to reassure her, but she let herself be reassured. If he wasn't worried about the press, neither was she.
"Have you ever made love in a bathtub, Miss Merry?"
The switch of topic was disconcerting. She stared at him and found that even her toes were quivering at the idea he had so casually suggested. She shook her head slowly, not daring to speak.
"Neither have I, but I've always wanted to try."
Before she could offer any kind of reasonable protest, Daniel caught her wet waist, lifted her over him, and slid beneath her so she was sitting on his lap.
As he gently soaped her breasts, Daniel kissed her lips and murmured against them, "I'm going to take good care of you, Miss Merry. Don't you worry about a thing."
And because she wanted to believe him, she did. What else could she do while her head spun with the things he was doing to her? She let him take her, she welcomed him, and she gave herself with all the heart and soul of which she was capable.
Because she loved the dratted man.
* * *
Daniel was dismantling his printing press in the heat of a late June afternoon when Egan entered. Wiping his hands on a dirty rag, Daniel cursed himself for leaving behind the boards he had pried from the first-floor windows. They would have made great weapons.
The piece of heavy iron in his hand would serve, but only at close range. Daniel hefted it casually as he nodded at the thug. Egan looked like a small-time hoodlum in his derby and checkered vest. No man in his right mind would sit down to a poker game with a man like that.
"Thought I'd find you here." Egan looked around, and finding no one else in the enclosed space, relaxed and stretched his large arms. "You and me got a few things we need to work out."
"Wouldn't, if I were you, dog-face. Haven't you heard? My daddy doesn't want me dead, just out of town."
Egan stared at him, and Daniel threw the iron part from hand to hand, admiring the effect of honesty. Why did men like that always think they knew everything and no one else knew anything? Positively fascinating the way the human mind worked.
"He don't mind if you get messed up a little before I take you to see him." Egan advanced a pace or two closer, forcing Daniel backward against the heavy machinery.
"Well then, he won't mind if I eliminate the middleman, will he?"
Before Egan could figure out what he was saying, Daniel kicked high and hard, striking the larger man right where it hurt the most. Egan really was a trifle slow. One would have thought he'd have remembered that maneuver.
The man screamed with pain but threw himself forward like a bull, aiming his head at Daniel's stomach. Tut-tutting, Daniel nimbly side-stepped and let the idiot ram his head into the printing press. He really wasn't much of an opponent at all.
As Egan slid to the floor, Daniel picked up his tools and the various parts of the press he had dismantled and started down the stairs. It rather sounded like his father was summoning him. That suited him just fine, because he had a thing or two to say to the old man himself.
Daniel worked up a full head of steam on his way downtown. The rejection he had felt as a child was as nothing to the fury he felt now as an adult at his father's callous refusal to acknowledge his eldest son. Perhaps there were very good reasons for not acknowledging him, but there