When he’d touched her, it hadn’t mattered who she was,
who her father was, or what hold she had over everyone in this place. All that mattered was silky skin, heat, enormous blue eyes and the fragrance that clung to her, which made him think of sunlight even in this storm.
When another flash of lightning ripped through the skies, bathing her in white light that succeeded only in defining everything right about her, he muttered, “Impulses can be dangerous things.” And he deliberately pushed his hands behind his back to kill his own impulses, then looked out at the storm that was building in force again.
“You don’t even know me,” she said softly.
He looked back at her, unsettled by how vulnerable she appeared in that moment. “I know you shouldn’t be here.”
Mary Anne Wilson fell in love with reading at ten years of age when she discovered Pride and Prejudice. A year later she knew she had to be a writer when she found herself writing a new ending for A Tale of Two Cities. A true romantic, she had Sydney Carton rescued, and he lived happily ever after.
Though she’s a native of Canada, she now lives in California with her husband and a six-toed black cat that believes he’s Hungarian and five timid Dobermans that welcome any and all strangers. And she’s writing happy endings for her own books.
False Family
Mary Anne Wilson
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
December 21
The thunderstorm that tore through the San Francisco night was the perfect backdrop for murder.
Cold and violent, it blurred the flashing Christmas lights that adorned the businesses and homes in its torrential path, and it made the steep street outside the old Jenning’s Theater slick and dangerous.
Few people ventured out into the pouring rain. A single person, the Watcher, came up the street, staying close to the chipped brick and wooden walls of the closed businesses. An umbrella barely blocked the sting of the torrent.
The Watcher slipped into the doorway of a store sharing a wall with the theater and observed the street in both directions. Few cars drove by, and the ticket booth under the marquee that announced A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens, December 10-30 was still shut.
As a bolt of lightning tore through the heavens, the flash of raw light exposed a woman in a dark raincoat, carrying a bright yellow umbrella as she hurried down the hill toward the theater. Once under the partial shelter of the theater portico, the woman slowed her pace and looked up.
Mallory King.
A riot of dark curls framed a delicate, heart-shaped face flushed from the effort of hurrying. With just a glance at the ticket booth, she veered to the left and into a side alley that led to the stage door. As she disappeared from sight, the Watcher sank back into the shadows.
She’d been easy enough to find. A bit-part actress who worked as a waitress in a restaurant three blocks down from the theater. A nothing person in the larger scheme, yet a person who could make another do desperate things. Killing someone was certainly desperate, but the only thing to do under the circumstances.
When Mallory King left the theater around eleven, she would head for the restaurant where she would work until 7:00 a.m. It was unsafe for any woman to walk on the streets of San Francisco, day or night. So it wouldn’t be surprising if Mallory King never made it to the restaurant tonight, if she became another accident statistic….
CHAPTER ONE
Magic and illusion ended when the lights came up and the curtains went down on a play. And the final curtain was coming down tonight for this play. It had been canceled with five days left on its run.
Poor box office and bad weather had combined to cut it short, and as Mallory King sat applying red lipstick in front of the makeup table in the long, narrow dressing room, she was mentally making a list of places she could go tomorrow to look for another job.
The door opened and a stagehand yelled, “One minute.”
Mallory quickly finished applying the lipstick, then sat back and looked at herself in the mottled mirrors. Her ebony hair had been gathered on top of her head in a riot of curls contained by a holly wreath, and her sapphire blue eyes had been highlighted by dark mascara. Deep blush brought out her high cheek line, and the gauzy, full-length white dress she wore was off the shoulder and nipped in tightly at her waist with a white satin band.
“The Ghost of Christmas Past,” she muttered at her reflection. That’s just what this job had become—a ghost—and she didn’t know what she would do if she didn’t get something else quickly. She couldn’t survive on what she made in tips at the restaurant.
She blotted her lips and stood as the door opened again. “You’re on,” the stagehand yelled into the room.
“I’m coming,” she called back as she tossed a tissue into the wastebasket. Turning, she hurried to the door and stepped into the hallway, turning left toward backstage. But as she rounded the corner near the stage door, she ran right into an immovable object, and felt hands clamp on her shoulders to keep her from stumbling backward. As she looked up, fully expecting to see one of the stagehands, she was shocked to find it was a man she’d never seen before.
He was tall, at least three inches over six feet, and he wore a dark, well-cut trench coat. His rain-dampened raven black hair was slicked back from a face that was far from traditionally handsome, but with a sensuality that struck her instantly, with a force that shook her. His features seemed to be all harsh planes and angles, his skin deeply tanned, his nose strong and his jaw clean-shaven.
But