Excerpt:
Katrina glanced down into the hallway, where the shadows were far too mobile
for her liking, as if the ghosts of the house were about to emerge from the
walls. Stepping quickly across the half landing, she went upstairs to the
wing where the bedrooms were located. Pausing at the end of the corridor she
noticed that the wall lights were now switched off, only the occasional
ceiling lights every ten feet or so illuminated the corridor, which gave it
even more of an air of mystery than the office area.
Except for the sound of crickets outside, all was quiet, but the scent of
the night was heavy in the air. The moist plants outside the windows omitted
a heady smell, made stronger after the gardener had watered the foliage
beneath the windows at sundown. She breathed it in, noticing the aromas of
earth and the eucalyptus trees from farther away, mingling in with the scent
of the garden. As she watched, the night breeze shifted the curtains at the
open windows between the doorways. The long swathes of sheer fabric lifted
eerily in time, one after the other, like the tide along the shore. It was a
ghostly image and it reminded her of any number of scary movies. This
corridor felt even spookier then the rest of the place, as if an unknown
presence lurked by.
The curtains lifted again. The skin on her back prickled, and Katrina felt
herself becoming aware of all the lives that had been lived here, the people
who had walked these corridors in years gone by. It was a beautiful house,
but a strange one too—a house full of secrets and ghosts.
She clutched her laptop bag against her chest and tiptoed quietly along the
corridor. As she did, she heard a sound. She paused, but other than the
movement of the curtains, all was still. She walked on.
A door to her left, at the rear of the house, was ajar. She kept walking,
eager to get to her room. As she passed the open door, her footsteps slowed.
She could see a large bed and beyond it a desk. Sergio was sitting at the
desk, working, but with the door open. Was he waiting to catch her as she
walked by? If so, she wasn’t ready for that, not now. Could she creep past
unseen? Cautiously, and as stealthily as she could, she moved on. When she
reached her door and had her hand on the handle, she glanced back down the
corridor to see if Sergio had emerged. Her breath caught in her throat.
There was someone standing there in the half-light, but it wasn’t Sergio.
At the end of the landing where she’d been just moments before, stood
Nicolas Teodoro. At first glance she thought she was imagining it, that she
had conjured forth an image from the shadows to satisfy her desire for him.
But no, he really was there.
Dressed entirely in black and still as a statue, he looked like a cat
burglar. Is that what he was, a forbidden intruder here? He was watching her
intently, his eyes black in the dim light, his unruly hair falling forward.
She sensed that he was ready to act. How, to take flight if she raised the
alarm?
Confusion riddled through her, and that wasn’t all that she was feeling. He
looked so darkly sexy and she’d been held in those arms, felt those lips on
hers—a forbidden liqueur that she had tasted in a dark street during the
festival.
Why was he here, now?
He put his fingers to his lips and at first she thought it was a signal to
be quiet, but then he turned those fingers toward her and mouthed a kiss,
winking at her. Katrina’s legs felt shaky under her and she gripped the door
handle tighter. As if she hadn’t been aroused enough the night before, here
he was making a secret connection with her, reminding her of what had
happened between them.
Glancing from Nicolas back to the open door halfway between them on the
other side of the corridor, she could scarcely breath. If Sergio emerged
now, he’d see them both, he might even guess she'd had contact with his
disinherited brother, the brother she had been warned about.
Nicolas followed her glance, and then gestured at her, nodding and
indicating that she should go into her room. Then he tapped his chest and
pointed at her door. Katrina stared at him. He couldn’t be serious? He was
going to just walk down there to her, past the open door, past his estranged
brother?
No. He stepped quickly to the nearest window on the front side of the house.
Signaling again, a master of mime, he indicated to her that he meant to come
to her room from the outside of the building.
Her concern ratcheted. The balconies were too far apart, surely? That would
be even more dangerous than walking past Sergio’s open doorway. But before
she could even react he was climbing out the window, and as she watched his
fit rear end disappear through it she couldn’t decide what unsettled her
more—that he was risking the climb, or that he would appear in her room at
the end of it.
Her legs swayed, she felt suddenly weak. He was scaling the outside of a
building aiming for her window. He wasn’t supposed to be there at all, not
in the middle of the night, and especially not in her room.
Go in and refuse him, lock the windows to the balcony.
Even as she thought it, she knew she had no intention of doing so. She had
to know what he was going to say. The way he’d held her in Barcelona and the
way he’d touched her, all of it echoed through her senses, and she staggered
against the wall as she went inside and closed the door, pressing it closed
and holding it that way, as if that would ground her.
The curtains wafted in the breeze and she stared at them, not daring to
blink as she watched the moonlight filtering into the room—until she saw a
shadow move at the edge of the balcony.
What if her clients found her talking to him, in here, in their home?
There was still time to run over there and bar the window before he got
inside.
But Katrina didn’t want to lock him out, and as she watched the shadow
climbing onto her balcony in the moonlight, her heart raced, her body
suffused with anticipation.
|