InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Husband Hunters ❯ Married to a Mistress ( Chapter 4 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

CHAPTER FOUR
A disturbingly familiar male voice bit out something raw in a foreign language and a pair of male feet appeared in Kagome's limited view. Strong hands turned her over and began to lift her.

"You're all... spotty..." Inuyasha glowered down at her with unblinking golden eyes, full of disbelief.

"Go away..." she mumbled.

"It just looks a little...strange," Inuyasha commented tautly, and after a lengthy pause, while Kagome squeezed shut her eyes against the painful intrusion of that overhead light and him, he added almost accusingly, "I thought only children got chickenpox."

"Leave me alone..." Kagome succumbed weakly to another coughing fit. Instead, he lifted her back onto the bed and rolled the bulky duvet unceremoniously round her prone body.

"What are you doing?" she gasped, struggling to concentrate, finding it impossible.

"I was on my way down to my country house for the weekend. Now it looks like I'll be staying in town and you'll be coming home with me," Inuyasha delivered, with no visible enthusiasm on his strong, hard face as he bent down to sweep her up into his powerful arms.

Kagome couldn't think straight, but the concept of having nothing whatsoever to do with Inuyasha was now so deeply engrained, his appearance had set all her alarm bells shrieking. "No...I have to stay here to look after the house…"

"I wish you could...but you can't"

"I promised Sango...she's away and she might be burgled again...put me down."

"I can't leave you alone here like this." Inuyasha stared down at her moodily, as if he was wishing she would make his day with a sudden miraculous recovery but secretly knew he didn't have much hope.

Kagome struggled to conceal her spotty face against his shoulder, mortified and weak, and too ill to fight but not too ill to hate. "I don't want to go anywhere with you." Gulping, she sniffed.

"I don't see any caring queue outside that door ready to take my place...and what have you got to snivel about?"

Inuyasha demanded with stark impatience as he strode down the hall. Then he stopped dead, meshing long fingers into her hair to tug her face round and gaze accusingly down into her bemused eyes. "I smashed my way in only because I was aware that you were ill. Decency demanded that I check that you were all right."

"I do not snivel," Kagome told him chokily.

"But the only reason I came here tonight was to return your "something on account" and to assure you that would be a cold day in hell before I ever darkened your door again…"

"So what's keeping you?"

But Inuyasha was still talking like a male with an ever-mounting sense of injustice. "And there you are, lying on the floor in a pathetic shivering heap with more spots than a Dalmatian! What's fair about that? But I'm not sniveling, am I?"

Kagome opened one eye and saw one of his security men watching in apparent fascination.

"I do not snivel..." she protested afresh

Inuyasha strode out into the night air. He ducked down into the waiting limousine and propped Kagome up in the farthest corner of the seat like a giant papoose that had absolutely nothing to do with him.

Only then did Kagome register that the limousine was already occupied by a gorgeous redhead, wearing diamonds and a spectacular green satin evening dress which would've been at home on the set of a movie about the Deep South of nineteenth-century America.

The other woman gazed back at Kagome, equally nonplussed.

"Have you had chickenpox, Natalie?" Inuyasha enquired almost chattily.

Natalie Cibaud. She was an actress, a well-known French actress, who had recently won rave reviews for her role in a Hollywood movie. It had not taken Inuyasha long to find other more entertaining company, Kagome reflected dully while a heated conversation in fast and furious French took place. Kagome didn't speak French, but the other woman sounded choked with temper while Inuyasha merely got colder and colder. Kagome curled up in an awkward heap, conscious she was the subject under dispute and wishing in despair that she could perform a vanishing act.

"Take me home!" she cried once, without lifting her sore head.

"Stay out of this...what's it got to do with you?"Inuyasha shot back at her with positive savagery. "No woman owns me... no woman ever has and no woman ever will!"

But Inuyasha was fighting a losing battle. Natalie appeared to have other ideas. Denied an appropriately humble response, her voice developed a sulky, shrill edge. Inuyasha became freezingly unresponsive. Strained silence finally fell. A little while later, the limousine came to a halt. The passenger door opened. Natalie swept out with her rustling skirts, saying something acid in her own language. The door slammed again.

"I suppose you thoroughly enjoyed all that," Inuyasha breathed in a tone of icy restraint as the limousine moved off again.

Opening her aching eyes a crack, Kagome skimmed a dulled glance at the space Natalie had occupied and recently vacated. She closed her eyes again. "I don't understand French..."

Inuyasha grated something raw half under his breath and got on the phone. He had been ditched twice in as many days. And, wretched as she was, Kagome was tickled pink by that idea. Inuyasha, who got chased up hill and down dale by ninety-nine out of a hundred foolish women, had in the space of forty-eight hours met two members of the outstanding and more intelligent one percent minority. And it was good for him—really, really good for him, she decided. Then she dozed, only to groggily resurface every time she coughed. Within a very short time after that, however, she didn't know where she was any more and felt too ill to care.

"Feeling a bit better, Miss Higurashi?"

Kagome peered up at the thin female face above hers. The face was familiar, and yet unfamiliar too. The woman wore a neat white overall and she was taking Kagome's pulse.

Seemingly she was a nurse.

"What happened to me?" Kagome mumbled, only vaguely recalling snatches of endless tossing and turning, the pain in her chest, the difficulty in breathing.

"You developed pneumonia. It's a rare but potentially serious complication," the blonde nurse explained. "You've been out of it for almost five days…"

"Five...days?" Kagome's shaken scrutiny wandered over the incredibly spacious bedroom, with its stark contemporary furniture and coldly elegant decor. She was in Inuyasha's apartment. She knew it in her bones. Nowhere was there a single piece of clutter or feminine warmth and homeliness. His idea of housing heaven, she reflected absently, would probably be the wide open spaces of an under-furnished aircraft hangar.

"You're very lucky Mr Taisho found you in time" her companion continued earnestly, dragging Kagome from her abstracted thoughts. "By recognizing the seriousness of your condition and ensuring that you got immediate medical attention, Mr Taisho probably saved your life…"

"No...I don't want to owe him anything...never mind my life!" Kagome gasped in unconcealed horror.

The slim blonde studied her in disbelief. "You've been treated by one of the top consultants in the UK...Mr Taisho has provided you with the very best of round the clock private nursing care, and you say…?"

"While Miss Higurashi is ill, she can say whatever she likes"' Inuyasha's dark drawl slotted in grimly from the far side of the room. "You can take a break, Nurse. I'll stay with your patient.'

The woman had jerked in dismay at Inuyasha's silent entrance and intervention. Face pink, she moved away from the bed. "Yes, Mr Taisho."

In a sudden burst of energy, Kagome yanked the sheet up over her head.

"And the patient is remarkably lively all of a sudden," Inuyasha remarked as soon as the door closed on the nurse's exit. "And ungrateful as hell. Now, why am I not surprised?"

"Go away," Kagome mumbled, suddenly intensely conscious of lank sweaty hair and spots which had probably multiplied.

"I'm in my own apartment," Inuyasha told her dryly. "And I am not going away. Do you seriously think that I haven't been looking in on you to see how you were progressing over the past few days?"

!I don't care...I'm properly conscious now. If I was so ill, why didn't you just take me to hospital?" Kagome demanded from beneath the sheet.

"The top consultant is a personal friend. Since you responded well to antibiotics, he saw no good reason to move you."

"Nobody consulted me," Kagome complained, and shifted to scratch an itchy place on her hip.

Without warning, the sheet was wrenched back.

"No scratching" Inuyasha gritted down at her with raking impatience. "You'll have scars all over you if you do that. If I catch you at that again, I might well be tempted to tie your hands to the bed!"

Aghast at both the unveiling and the mortifying tone of that insultingly familiar threat, Kagome gazed up at him with outraged blue eyes bright as jewels. "You pig,'"she breathed shakily, registering that he was getting a kick out of her embarrassment. "You had no right to bring me here…"

"You're in no fit state to tell me what to do," Inuyasha reminded her with brutal candor. "And even I draw the line at arguing with an invalid. If it's of any comfort to your wounded vanity, I've discovered that once I got used to the effect the spotty look could be surprisingly appealing."

"Shut up!" Kagome slung at him, and fell back against the pillows, completely winded by the effort it had taken to answer back.

While she struggled to even out her breathing, she studied him with bitter blue eyes. Inullasha looked soul destroying spectacular. He wore a beige designer suit with a tie the shade of rich caramel and a toning silk shirt, The lighter colors threw his exotic darkness into prominence. He exuded sophistication and exquisite cool, and at a moment when Kagome felt more grotty than she had ever felt in her life, she loathed him for it! Rolling over, she presented him with her back.

Maddeningly, Inuyasha strolled round the bed to treat her to an amused appraisal. "I'm lying over to Athens for the next ten days. I suspect you'll recover far more happily in y absence."

"I won't be here when you get back...oh, no, Sango's house has been left empty!" Kagome moaned in sudden guilty dismay.

"I had a professional house sitter brought in." Kagome couldn't even feel grateful. Her heart sank even further. He had settled Toutosai's loan. He had paid for expensive private medical care within his own home. And now he had shelled out for a house sitter as well.

If it took her the rest of her life, she would still be paying off what she now had to owe him in total!

"Thanks," she muttered ungraciously, for her friend's sake.

"Don't mention it," Inuyasha said with considerable irony. "And you will be here when I return. If you're not, I'll come looking for you in a very bad mood..."

"Don't talk like you own me!" she warned him in feverish, frantic denial. "You were with that actress only a few days ago...you were never going to darken my door again…"

"You darkened mine. Oh...yes, before I forget..." Inuyasha withdrew something small and gold from his pocket and tossed it carelessly on the bed beside her.

Stunned, Kagome focused on the bracelet which she had pawned. ""Ice Queen in pawn shop penury" ran the headline in the gossip column," Inuyasha recounted with a sardonic elevation of one ebony brow as he watched Kagome turn brick red with chagrin. "The proprietor must've tipped off the press. I found the ticket in your bag and had the bracelet retrieved."

Wide-eyed and stricken, Kagome just gaped at him. Inuyasha dealt her a scorching smile of reassurance. "You won't have to endure intrusive publicity like that while you are with me. I will protect you. You will never have to enter a pawnshop again. Nor will you ever have to shake your tresses over a misty green Alpine meadow full of wild-flowers...unless you want to do it for my benefit, of course."

Kagome simply closed her eyes on him. She didn't have the energy to fight. He was like a tank in the heat and fury of battle. Nothing short of a direct hit by a very big gun would stop his remorseless progress.

"Silence feels good," Inuyasha remarked with silken satisfaction.

"I hate you," Kagome mumbled, with a good deal of very real feeling.

"You hate wanting me," Inuyasha contradicted with measured emphasis. "It's poetic justice and don't expect sympathy. When I had to think of you lying like a block of ice beneath Toutosai, I did riot enjoy wanting you either!"

Kagome buried her burning face in the pillow with a hoarse little moan of self-pity. He left her nothing to hide behind. And any minute now she expected to be hauled out of concealment. Inuyasha preferred eye-to-eye contact at all times.

"Get some sleep and eat plenty," Inuyasha instructed from somewhere alarmingly close at hand, making her stiffen in apprehension. "You should be well on the road to recovery by the time I get back from Greece."

Kagome's teeth bit into the pillow. Her blood boiled. For an instant she would have sacrificed the rest of her life for the ability to punch him in the mouth just once. She thought he had gone, and lifted her head. But Inuyasha, who never, ever, it seemed, did anything she expected, was still studying her from the door, stunning dark features grave. "By the way, I also expect you to be extremely discreet about this relationship…"

"We don't have a relationship!" Kagome bawled at him. "And I wouldn't admit to having been here in your apartment if the paparazzi put thumbscrews on me!"

Inuyasha absorbed that last promise with unhidden satisfaction. And then, with a casual inclination of his dark, arrogant head, he was gone, and she slumped, weak and shaken as a mouse who had been unexpectedly released from certain death by a cat.

Kagome finished packing her cases. While she had been ill, Inuyasha had had all her clothes brought over from Sango's. The discovery had infuriated her. A few necessities would have been sensible, but everything she possessed? Had he really thought she would be willing to stay on after she recovered?

For the first thirty-six hours after his departure she had fretted and fumed, struggling to push herself too far too fast in her eagerness to vacate his unwelcome hospitality.

The suave consultant had made a final visit to advise her to take things slowly, and the shift of nursing staff had departed, but Kagome had had to face that she was still in no fit state to look after herself. So she had been sensible. She had taken advantage of the opportunity to convalesce and recharge her batteries while she was waited on hand and foot by the Greek domestic staff...but now she was leaving before Inuyasha returned. In any case, Sango was coming home at lunchtime.

Two of Inuyasha's security men were hovering in the vast echoing entrance hall. Taut with anxiety, they watched her stagger towards them with her suitcases. Neither offered an ounce of assistance.

'Mr Taisho is not expecting…" the bigger, older one finally began stiffly.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll stay out of this!" Kagome thumped the lift button with a clenched fist of warning.

'Mr Taisho doesn't want you to leave, Miss Higurashi. He's going to be annoyed." Kagome opened dark blue eyes very, very wide. "So?"

"We'll be forced to follow you, Miss Higurashi…"

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, boys," Kagome murmured gently. "I would hate to call in the police because I was being harassed by stalkers. It would be sure to get into the papers too, and I doubt that your boss would enjoy that kind of publicity!"

In the act of stepping forward as the lift doors folded back, both men froze into frustrated stillness. Kagome dragged her luggage into the lift.

"A word of advice," the older one breathed heavily. "He makes a relentless enemy."

Kagome tossed her head in a dismissive movement. Then the doors shut and she sagged. No wonder Inuyasha threw his weight around so continually. Everybody was terrified of him. Unlimited wealth and power had made him what he was. His ruthless reputation chilled, his lethal influence threatened. The world had taught him that he could have whatever he wanted. Only not her...never ever her, she swore vehemently. Her mind was her own. Her body was her own. She was inviolate. Inuyasha couldn't touch her, she reminded herself bracingly.

The house sitter vacated Sango's house after contacting her employer for instructions. Alone then, and tired out by the early start to the day, Kagome felt very low. Making herself a cup of coffee, she checked through the small pile of post in the lounge. One of the envelopes was addressed to her; it had been redirected.

The letter appeared to be from an estate agent. Initially mystified, Kagome struggled across the barrier of her dyslexia to make sense of the communication. The agent wrote that he had been unable to reach her father at his last known address but that she had been listed by Onigumo as a contact point. He required instructions concerning a rental property which was now vacant. Memories began to stir in Kagome's mind.

Her father's comfortably off parents had died when she was still a child. A black sheep within his own family even then, Onigumo had inherited only a tiny cottage on the outskirts of a Cambridge shire village. He had been even less pleased to discover that the cottage came with an elderly sitting tenant, who had not the slightest intention of moving out to enable him to sell up.

Abandoning the letter without having got further than the third line, Kagome telephoned the agent. "I can't tell you where my father is at present," she admitted ruefully. "I haven't heard from him in some time."

"The old lady has moved in with relatives. If your father wants to attract another tenant, he'll have to spend a lot on repairs and modernization. However," the agent continued with greater enthusiasm, "I believe the property would sell very well as a site for building development."

And of course that would be what Onigumo would want, Kagome reflected. He would sell and a few months down the road the proceeds would be gone again, wasted on the racecourse or the dog track. Her troubled face stiffening with resolve, Kagome slowly breathed in and found herself asking if it would be in order for her to come and pick up the keys.

She came off the phone again, so shaken by the ideas mushrooming one after another inside her head that she could scarcely think straight. But she did need a home, and she had always loved the countryside. If she had the courage, she could make a complete fresh start. Why not? What did she have left in London? The dying remnants of a career which had done her infinitely more harm than good? She could find a job locally. Shop work, bar work; she wasn't fussy. As a teenager Kagome had done both, and she had no false pride.

By the time Sango came home, Kagome was bubbling with excitement. In some astonishment, Sango listened to the enthusiastic plans that the younger woman had already formulated.

"If the cottage is in a bad way, it could cost a fortune to put it right, Kagome," she pointed out anxiously, "I don't want to be a wet blanket, but by the sound of things…"

"Sango.. .I never did want to be a model and I'm not getting any work right now," Kagome reminded her ruefully. "This could be my chance to make a new life and, whatever it takes, I want to give it a try. I'll tell the agency where I am so that if anything does come up they can contact me, but I certainly can't afford to sit around here doing nothing. At least if I start earning again, I can start paying back Inuyasha."

If Kagome could've avoided telling Sango about the house-sitter and her own illness, she would've done so. But Sango had a right to know that a stranger had been looking after her home. However, far from being troubled by that revelation, Sango was much more concerned to learn that Kagome had been ill. She was also mortifyingly keen to glean every detail of the role which Taisho Inuyasha had played.

"I swear that man is madly in love with you!" Sango shook her head in wonderment. Kagome vented a distinctly unamused laugh, her eyes incredulous. " Inuyasha wouldn't know love if it leapt up and bit him to the bone! But he will go to any lengths to get what he wants. I suspect he thinks that the more indebted he makes me, the easier he'll wear down my resistance…"

"Kagome...if he'd left you lying here alone in this house, you might be dead. Don't you even feel the slightest bit grateful?" Kagome prompted uncomfortably. "He could've just called an ambulance…"

"Thereby missing out on the chance to get me into his power when I was helpless?" Kagome breathed cynically. "No way. I know how he operates. I know how he thinks."

"Then you must have much more in common with him than you're prepared to admit," Sango commented.

Kagome arrived at the cottage two days later. With dire mutters, the cabbie nursed his car up the potholed lane. In the sunshine, the cottage looked shabby, but it had a lovely setting. There was a stream ten feet from the front door and a thick belt of mature trees that provided shelter.

She had some money in her bank account again too. She had liquidated a good half of her wardrobe. Ruthlessly piling up all the expensive designer clothes which Toutosai had insisted on buying her, Kagome had sold them to a couple of those wonderful shops which recycle used quality garments.

Half an hour later, having explored her new home, Kagome's enthusiasm was undimmed. So what if the accommodation was basic and the entire place crying out for paint and a seriously good scrub? As for the repairs the agent had mentioned, Kagome was much inclined to think he had been exaggerating.

She was utterly charmed by the inglenook fireplace in the little front room and determined not to take fright at the minuscule scullery and the spooky bathroom with its ancient cracked china. Although the furnishings were worn and basic, there were a couple of quite passable Edwardian pieces. The new bed she had bought would be delivered later in the day.

She was about a mile from the nearest town. As soon as she had the bed made up, she would call in at the hotel she had noticed on the main street to see if there was any work going. In the middle of the tourist season, she would be very much surprised if there wasn't an opening somewhere ...

Five days later, Kagome was three days into an evening job that was proving infinitely more stressful than she had anticipated. The pace of a waitress in a big, busy bar was frantic.

And why, oh, why hadn't she asked whether the hotel bar served meals before she accepted the job? She could carry drinks orders quite easily in her head, but she had been driven into trying to employ a frantic shorthand of numbers when it came to trying to cope at speed with the demands of a large menu and all the innumerable combinations possible. She just couldn't write fast enough.

Kagome saw Inuyasha the minute he walked into the bar. The double doors thrust back noisily. He made an entrance. People twisted their heads to glance and then paused to stare. Command and authority written in every taut line of his tall, powerful frame, Inuyasha stood out like a giant among pygmies.

Charcoal-grey suit, white silk shirt, smooth gold tie. He looked filthy rich, imposing and utterly out of place. And Kagome's heart started to go bang-bang-bang beneath her uniform.

He had the most incredible traffic-stopping presence. Suddenly the crowded room with its low ceiling and atmospheric lighting felt suffocating hot and airless.

For a split second Inuyasha remained poised, golden eyes raking across the bar to close in on Kagome. She had the mesmerized, panicked look of a rabbit caught in car headlights.

His incredulous stare of savage impatience zapped her even at a distance of thirty feet. Sucking in oxygen in a great gulp, Kagome struggled to finish writing down the order she was taking on her notepad. Gathering up the menus again, she headed for the kitchens at a fast trot. But it wasn't fast enough. Inuyasha somehow got in the way.

"Take a break," he instructed in a blistering undertone.

"How the heck did you find out where I was?"

"Hyata Midoriko at the Star modeling agency was eager to please." Inuyasha watched Kagome's eyes flare with angry comprehension. "Most people are rather reluctant to say no to me."

In an abrupt move, Kagome sidestepped him and hurried into the kitchen. When she reemerged, Inuyasha was sitting at one of her tables. She ignored him, but never had she been more outrageously aware of being watched. Her body felt uncoordinated and clumsy. Her hands perspired and developed a shake. She spilt a drink and had to fetch another while the woman complained scathingly about the single tiny spot that had splashed her handbag.

Finally the young bar manager, Hachi, approached her. "That big dark bloke at table six...haven't you noticed him?" he enquired apologetically, studying her beautiful face with the same poleaxed expression he had been wearing ever since he'd hired her. With an abstracted frown, he looked across at Inuyasha, who was tapping long brown fingers with rampant impatience on the tabletop. "It's odd. There's something incredibly familiar about the bloke but I can't think where I've seen him before."

Kagome forced herself over to table six. "Yes?" she prompted tautly, and focused exclusively on that expensive gold tie while all the time inwardly picturing the derision in those penetrating golden eyes.

"That uniform is so short you look like a bloody French maid in a bedroom farce!" Inuyasha informed her grittily. "Every time you bend over, every guy in here is craning his neck to get a better view! And that practice appears to include the management."

Kagome's face burned, outrage flashing in her blue eyes. The bar had a Victorian theme, and the uniform was a striped overall with a silly little frilly apron on top. It did look rather odd on a woman of her height and unusually long length of leg, but she had already let down the hemline as far as it would go. "Do you or do you not want a drink?" she demanded thinly.

"I'd like the table cleared and cleaned first,'"Inuyasha announced with a glance of speaking distaste at the cluttered surface. "Then you can bring me a brandy and sit down."

"Don't be ridiculous...I'm working." Kagome piled up the dishes with a noisy clatter, and in accidentally slopping coffee over the table forced him to lunge back at speed from the spreading flood.

"You're working for me, and if I say you can sit down, I expect you to do as you're told," Inuyasha delivered in his deep, dark, domineering drawl.

Engaged in mopping up, Kagome stilled. "I beg your pardon? You said...I was working for you?" she queried.

"This hotel belongs to my chain," Inuyasha ground out. "And I am anything but impressed by what I see here."

Kagome turned cold with shock. Inuyasha owned this hotel? She backed away with the dishes. As she was hailed from the kitchen, she watched with a sinking stomach as Inuyasha signalled Hachi. When she reappeared with a loaded tray, Hachi was seated like a pale, perspiring graven image in front of Inuyasha.

She hurried to deliver the meals she had collected but there was a general outcry of loud and exasperated complaint.

"I didn't order this..." the first customer objected. "I asked for salad, not French fries…"

"And I wanted garlic potatoes…"

"This steak is rare, not well-done..."

The whole order was hopelessly mixed up. A tall, dark shadow fell menacingly over the table. In one easy movement, Inuyasha lifted Kagome's pad from her pocket, presumably to check out the protests.

"What is this?" he demanded, frowning down at the pages as he flipped. "Egyptian hieroglyphics... some secret code? Nobody could read this back!"

Kagome was paralyzed to the spot; her face was bone-white. Her tummy lurched with nausea and her legs began to shake. "I got confused, I'm sorry. I…"

Inuyasha angled a smooth smile at the irate diners and ignored her. "Don't worry, it will be sorted out as quickly as possible. Your meals are on the house. Move, Kagome," he added in a whiplike warning aside.

Hachi, she noticed sickly, was over at the bar using the internal phone. He looked like a man living a nightmare. And when she came out of the kitchen again, an older man, whom she recognized as the manager of the entire hotel, was with Inuyasha, and he had the desperate air of a man walking a tightrope above a terrifying drop. Suddenly Kagome felt like the albatross that had brought tragedy to an entire ship's crew. Inuyasha, it seemed, was taking out his black temper on his staff. Her own temper rose accordingly. How the heck could she have guessed that he owned this hotel? She recalled the innumerable marble plaques in the huge foyer of the Taisho building in London.

Those plaques had listed the components of Inuyasha's vast and diverse business empire. Taisho Steel, Taisho Property, and ditto Shipping, Haulage, Communications, Construction, Media Services, Investments, Insurance. No doubt she had forgotten a good half-dozen. TAI— Taisho Amalgamated Industries—had been somewhat easier to recall.

"Kagome...I mean, Miss Higurashi," Hachi said awkwardly, stealing an uneasy glance at her and making her wonder what Inuyasha had said or done to make him behave like that. But not for very long. 'Mr Taisho says you can take the rest of the night off."

Kagome stiffened. "Sorry, I'm working."

Hachi looked aghast. "But…"

"I was engaged to work tonight and I need the money." Kagome tilted her chin in challenge.

She banged a brandy down in front of Inuyasha." You're nothing but a big, egocentric bully!" she slung at him with stinging scorn.

A lean hand closed round her elbow before she could stalk away again. Color burnished her cheeks as Inuyasha forced her back to his side with the kind of male strength that could not be fought without making a scene. Golden eyes as dark as the legendary underworld of Hades slashed threat into hers. "If I gave you a spade, you would happily dig your own grave. Go and get your coat…"

"No...this is my job and I'm not walking out on it."

"Let me assist you to make that decision. You're sacked..." Inuyasha slotted in with ruthless bite.

With her free hand, Kagome swept up the brandy and upended it over his lap. In an instant she was free. With an unbelieving growl of anger, Inuyasha vaulted upright.

"If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!" Kagome flung fiercely, and stalked off, shoulders back, classic nose in the air.